Welcome to those stopping by from today’s Proverbs 31 devotion. We’re glad you’re here! Today we’re honored to have Jennifer Erin Valent share a little about her debut novel, Fireflies in December, a She Reads Winter selection.

You will have a chance to win Jennifer’s novel (along with the sequel, Cottonwood Whispers) and two beautiful devotionals provided by Tyndale Publishers. We’ll have three winners total. The grand prize winner will receive  both of Jennifer’s novels – Fireflies in December and Cottonwood Whispers – along with both devotionals (pictured below). The next winner will receive both novels, and a third will receive Fireflies in December. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post or sign up for our monthly newsletter. Winners will be announced on Friday.

Books and Meatballs

Recently, my father scared my mother twice in short succession, both times enough to make her yell out loud. But that’s child’s play in the Valent family. When I was growing up we had a thing about out-scaring each other. Who could get the jump on whom? It was so common that my father is notoriously known as the man who thought he was jumping out to scare his wife while she was visiting the office and ended up saying a rather silly “boo” to one of his male co-workers.

He never tried that again, by the way.

Consequently, I’ve learned the fine art of strategic hiding. One of my favorites was to climb up underneath the pile of warm towels my mother took from the dryer. She’d toss them on the sofa and then go off to change loads, and I’d dive in underneath, all curled up in a ball. Then I’d wait for her to take off the one towel that would reveal my little foot or my sly grin and let out a yell. (I’m sure she caught on the first time and wasn’t scared the next thirty times I did it, but it was the original idea that counted, right?)

In my family we also danced the twist and the pony to old records, and had contests to see who could do the best Earnest P. Worrell impression (If you’re under thirty, don’t make me feel old by saying, “Who?” Just Google him). We had lip-synching shows, danced in front of a strobe light (i.e. my father jiggling a flashlight back and forth) so it looked like we were in old movies, and played don’t-let-the-balloon-touch-the-floor in the living room.

When my mother made meatballs, she would put on her own little Italian accent and toss them in the air – “One meat-a-ball, two meat-a-ball” – and then pretend to miss when it came down, letting it splat on the counter. A master of slapstick, she once had to explain to the doctor that the huge bruise on her leg was from “pretending” to run into a wall to make her kids laugh only she had missed and actually run into the wall.

My father can talk like Goofy and Donald Duck (although you should keep a three-foot radius between you when he does… or at least keep a towel handy). He’s been known to put on different types of hats and act out the various people who would wear them. And there’s no car trip complete without him passing a random person and asking my mother, “Who’s that?” To which she’ll reply “Sally” or “Frank” or whatever name pops into her head at the moment.

The point is all of this nuttiness will stick with me to the day I die! It’s part of who I am. We all come up differently, and what we grow up with shapes us and affects how we see the world. That’s life!

And that’s writing.

That’s how there can be a million books floating around this world that can all bring something different to a reader. It’s who we are and how we see life that takes stories you may have heard before and makes them new again. After all, people have been writing books forever. We’re bound to have covered all the angles by now. But writing is all about perspective and bringing something new to the table.

For me it’s taking all of life and how I’ve seen it, crunching it all up together in bits and pieces, like granola, and tossing it into a story. I don’t think I’ve ever written a single character that was solely – or even mostly – based on one person. My characters are always people I come up with in my head, and those people I come up with in my head always come from what I’ve seen and heard and experienced. And my stories and scenes are much the same.

They come from family memories, celebrations, everyday chatter, walks in the park, vacations and embarrassing moments. They come from people I’ve known, loved, disliked, rejoiced with, argued with, watched on television, read about in books, learned about in the newspaper. Throughout my life I’ve piled up a lot of memories, remembrances of specific times and places, sounds and smells. If I had never noticed life as it passed me by, I would never have known how to describe people, places, feelings, and relationships as I do in my books.

So I’m thankful for my parent’s penchant for jumping out to say “boo”, the funny little sayings of the kids I’ve nannied, the inside jokes between me and my friends, the beautiful moments of nature the Lord gives us each day, and even the moments of humiliation, God bless ‘em. Because without them, I wouldn’t be who I am and I wouldn’t know how to create a world and put it down on paper.

And I wouldn’t know how to scare the stuffing out of someone, either!

Born in Richmond, VA, Jennifer is the only Southerner in a family of Northerners, as is evidenced by her hybrid accent and love for Pittsburgh sports teams. Often distracted by an overactive imagination, she should have foreseen a career in writing, but as a child she only dabbled in short stories to entertain her friends. Her favorite books were anything Nancy Drew with a smattering of Trixie Belden thrown in, but even with a love for reading she saw herself being anything from scientist to fashion designer. Never a writer. Instead, it was a love for children that led her into nannying, a career she has enjoyed for the past fifteen years.

It wasn’t until her mid-twenties when Jennifer decided to try her hand at writing for children, but the realities of breaking into the publishing industry made it necessary for her to try other forms of writing as well. She began submitting articles to Christian women’s magazines and eventually decided to try writing a novel. A few successful freelance opportunities and the encouragement of a patient industry contact kept her writing and submitting her fiction to publishers.

Her fourth novel, Fireflies In December – a departure from the romantic comedies she first penned – placed in the semifinals of the Christian Writers Guild Operation First Novel contest in 2006. After some revisions, she re-submitted the novel to the 2007 Guild contest and won the prize of publication with Tyndale House Publishers. In January 2009 Fireflies in December released, followed by the sequel Cottonwood Whispers in September. And keep an eye out for the third book in the series, Catching Moondrops, releasing in the Fall of 2010.

Jennifer’s sincerest hope is to glorify the Lord by writing quality Christian fiction that will inspire, encourage, and uplift readers of all ages.

Summary of Fireflies in December:

“The summer I turned thirteen, I thought I killed a man.” So begins the story of Jessilyn Lassiter, a young girl whose world is torn apart the summer of 1932. When Jessilyn’s best friend, Gemma, loses her parents in a tragic fire, Jessilyn’s father vows to care for her as his own, despite the fact that Gemma is black and prejudice is prevalent in their southern Virginia town. It doesn’t take long for the Lassiters to attract the attention of a local band of Ku Klux Klan members, who make increasingly violent threats on Jessilyn and her family. As she struggles to navigate a complex world of first crushes, loyalties, and betrayals, Jessilyn ultimately discovers what it takes to be a bright light in a dark world.

You can read the first chapter of Fireflies in December here.

If you want a copy of Fireflies in December, would you consider purchasing it from Proverbs 31 Ministries? All proceeds from book sales go to support this powerful women’s ministry.

About Ariel Lawhon

Ariel Lawhon is the co-founder of She Reads, novelist, blogger, and life-long reader. She lives in Texas with her husband and four young sons (aka The Wild Rumpus). Ariel believes that Story is the shortest distance to the human heart.

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