Wednesday Writers—Heart Restoration by Regina Rudd Merrick

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clean romance, Excerpt from Heart Restoration, Regina Rudd Merrick, Setting, Sweet romance, the story behind the story of Heart Restoration, Wednesday Writers

Welcome to Wednesday Writers! Today’s guest is Regina Rudd Merrick, back again on the blog with the Behind the Story of Heart Restoration: RenoVations series book 1. I have to tell you that this series has caught my attention. Like Regina I, too, love watching home renovation shows and I think the idea of basing a series on a renovating family is intriguing. So, without any further ado from me, here’s Regina with a post and an excerpt from Heart Restoration: RenoVations Series, Book 1. Welcome back, Regina!

 

Thanks, Catherine.

Heart Restoration is the first book in the “RenoVations” series, featuring the “Reno” family of contractors and designers. I love watching home renovation shows, and was inspired by a brother/sister duo on HGTV in which the sister was a designer and the brother is her contractor. Thus, “RenoVations Contracting” was born, with Lisa and Del Reno working for their father, Steve Reno.

Since my last series was set in my dream locale of the shores of South Carolina, I decided to set this series in my own county in Kentucky. The town where my characters live and work is completely fictional, but details of the county are real. We’re a small, rural community, with a population of 9,200 in the county, and around 3,000 in the county seat of Marion, KY, where I have lived for nearly 30 years.

The area where I’ve set my fictional community of “Clementville” is located along the Ohio River near what used to be “Dam 50,” and is now Riverview Park. Also in the area is a ferry that you can cross to Cave-In-Rock, Illinois, where there is a state park with a cave that was featured in the 1960s movie “How the West Was Won,” and when this was the REAL wild west, outlaws of all kinds hid out there, running nefarious scams to rob travelers coming west along the Ohio.

I love our little community. We are proud to have a thriving Amish community in the area close to the river, and the businesses they run are a big part of the charm of Crittenden County.

If you ever want to take a drive to a county with no Interstate highways, two stoplights, great people, and home-grown restaurants, and amazing Amish products including baked goods, furniture, and greenhouses, Crittenden County is a great place to visit. Cross the ferry (it’s free!) to Illinois and take in Cave-In-Rock State Park and go up to Equality, IL to eat at The Red Onion. That’s the main reason to go there – and it’s worth it!

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Barring a trip to Western Kentucky, you can get the feel of our area in Heart Restoration! Enjoy!

Heart Restoration: RenoVations Series,

Book 1 (Mosiac Collection)

By Regina Rudd Merrick

For interior designer Lisa Reno things go from bad to worse when her contractor brother falls off a ladder and breaks his leg. Now she has to deal with the past coming back to haunt her, an old house with a corpse in the creepy cellar, and her best friend trying her best to fix her up with any man that moves.

Nick Woodward is willing to do his old college roommate a favor – especially since it involves renovating his own inheritance. The last thing he wants is to get involved with anyone. When he lost his wife and unborn child so suddenly, he had made the decision to keep God and everyone else at arm’s length.

So far, so good.

Ah, the difference a trip to a dingy basement makes.

 

EXCERPT

“Del Reno, I could kill you.” Walking up to the front porch of the dilapidated farmhouse, Lisa Reno finally let out the huge sigh that seemed to engulf her.

When her brother broke his leg the week before, she should have canceled all their upcoming Reno Renovations projects.

But no. She had to be the super-sister. After all, she was a designer, wasn’t she? She could figure out this contractor stuff. Didn’t she help him make all the most important decisions, anyway? In the heat of the moment, she was invincible. In the cold light of day, she knew she was in over her head.

Sure, she had building cred. She had watched more home improvement than most girls her age. A degree in interior design and a DIY résumé that went back to watching Bob Vila from her daddy’s lap should be worth something. Shouldn’t it?

Yes and no. She closed her eyes and shook her head. The last thing she needed was the local contracting community regarding her as “Daddy’s little girl.” She was twenty-seven years old and a partner in a design/build firm with her father and brother. And yet, around here she knew everyone thought of her as that redheaded, freckle-faced daughter of Steve Reno, and one of these days everyone would find out she was nothing more than that.

Better go in and see what she’d gotten herself into. She started taking mental notes. Windows to be replaced or restored. Porch floor to be replaced. Pull off the aging vinyl siding and see what was under there. Rip off the dull aluminum trim. That was the worst.

But then she saw the landscaping. Gotta love plastic flowers stuck in the ground. It was springtime year round here, it seemed. She looked again and laughed. Nope. It was Christmas year round. The plastic flowers were faded poinsettias.

Better to laugh than cry, Mama used to say.

 

Want to read more? You can find Heart Restoration at Amazon

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Regina Rudd Merrick is a multi-published writer, church musician, wife, mother, former librarian, lover of all things beachy and chocolate, and grateful follower of Jesus Christ. Married to her husband of 35-plus years, she is the mother of two grown daughters, and the keeper of a 100-year-old house where she lives in the small town of Marion, KY. Connect with Regina on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or on her website at https://www.reginaruddmerrick.com .

 

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Catherine Castle Welcomes Kelly Irvin to Wednesday Writers

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Amish of Bee County Series, Amish romance, guest blog by Kelly Irvin, Kelly Irvin, Setting, setting as a character, The Bee Keeper's Son

Today Wednesday Writers Welcomes back Kelly Irvin. Kelly will be talking about setting in her book Amish romance The Beekeeper’s Son. Here’s a quick blurb to whet your appetite for Kelly’s newest book.

 

The Beekeeper’s Son

 

Phineas King knows better than to expect anything but shock and pity wherever he shows his face. Horribly scarred from the van accident that claimed his mother’s life, he chooses to keep his distance from everyone, focusing his time and energy on the bees his family raises. If no one sees him, no one can judge him. So why does he start finding excuses to seek out Deborah Lantz, the beautiful new arrival in town?

Deborah can’t get out of Bee County, Texas, soon enough. Once her mother and younger siblings are settled, she is on the first bus out of this dusty town. She is only waiting on the letter from Aaron, asking her to return to lush Tennessee to be his fraa. But that letter never comes. As she spends time getting to know Phineas—hoping to uncover the man beneath the scars—she begins to realize that she no longer minds that Aaron hasn’t sent for her.

As both Deborah and Phineas try to come to terms with lives that haven’t turned out the way they imagined, they discover that perhaps Gott’s plans for them are more extraordinary than they could have dreamed. But they need to let go of their own past sorrows and disappointments to find the joy and beauty that lies just ahead for them both.

Amish in Texas sounds interesting, Kelly. So, let’s hear more about the setting in this book.

Setting is more important in The Beekeeper’s Son than in any previous book I’ve written. So much so that I began to think of it as a character in my story. The setting defines my heroine’s struggle and it sets the stage for the theme, which came to me after my first visit to Bee County, home of the only Amish district in Texas.

South Texas is dry, has rocky soil, lots of cacti and scraggly mesquite and live oak trees. It’s not like the typical northern, green farmland readers are accustomed to seeing in Amish fiction. What’s more, the Amish district here in Texas does nothing to enhance their surroundings. They don’t paint their houses or plant pretty flowers in their gardens. Most of us would wonder why they don’t make more of an attempt to spruce up the place. I did.

My heroine, Deborah Lantz, has just move to Bee County from Tennessee and she’s not happy about it. She misses her home and the man she thought would one day be her husband. Her new district’s homes are weather beaten and need a coat of paint. The landscape is barren and full of cacti and scraggly trees. It looks downright ugly to her. After Deborah meets Phineas King, a young man with a scarred face and even more scarred heart, she’s forced to look at beauty from God’s perspective and not the world’s.

This theme of God’s beauty being different from what the world thinks of as beautiful became clear to me after a few visits to Bee County. I couldn’t understand how the Amish folks living there could be so oblivious to the need to spruce up things in their little community. Why didn’t they clean up the junkyard next to the Combination Store? Why didn’t they paint their houses? It came to me as I drove home after a second or third trip. Outward trappings aren’t important to them. They have scant resources and they have to prioritize how they use them. Life has to be extremely difficult, trying to make a living from the land in such a barren place. How dare I judge them based on what I think is pretty or important? Me in my shiny new car, rolling home to my nice home and good paying job? I was judging them by the world’s standards for beauty, not God’s. He created Bee County and south Texas, just as he created the beautiful idyllic scenes a person sees in Lancaster County.

My hope is that The Beekeeper’s Son will cause readers to give some thought to how they define beauty and whether God sees beauty in them and their attitude toward others.

Thanks for joining us today, Kelly. If you haven’t read Kelly’s author interview from last year, be sure and hop over that page to learn more about this author.

 

About the Author:

 Kelly Irvin is the author of the Bliss Creek Amish series and the New Hope Amish series, both from Harvest Housing Publishing.

The Beekeeper’s Son is the first book in the Amish of Bee County series, for Zondervan/HarperCollins. She has also penned two inspirational romantic suspense novels, A Deadly Wilderness and No Child of Mine.

Kelly has been married to photographer Tim Irvin for twenty-six years. They have two young adult children, one gorgeous new granddaughter, two cats, and a tank full of fish. In her spare time, she likes to write short stories and read books by her favorite authors.

Contact Kelly at:

@Kelly_S_Irvin on Twitter

https://www.facebook.com/Kelly.Irvin.Author

website:

http://www.kellyirvin.com