Welcome to Readers Write to Know! I asked you, my readers, what questions they would ask their favorite authors if given the chance, and the authors visiting my blog answered them! This week, I’m thrilled to bring you Patricia Bradley. I love Patricia. Every time our paths cross, I enjoy talking to her and getting to know her just a little bit more. I also LOVE the fact that she wrote what had to be a hard book to write – with a protagonist who escaped the imprisonment of human sex trafficking. Wow! And the title Justice Delivered, knowing the content, gives me chills! Read on to see how you can enter to win a copy for yourself!
Tell us a little bit about yourself. I live in Northeast Mississippi with my two rescue kitties, Suzy and Tux who are very jealous of each other. Tux is a Johnny-Come-Lately and Suzy wants him to leave. I never thought about being a writer until I turned thirty-five and these people came to live in my head and wouldn’t leave until I wrote their stories. Woman’s World published the very first short story I wrote and I thought I was on the fast track to publishing success. And I was if you count thirty plus years before my first novel released the fast track. But I persevered and learned the craft and when God opened the publishing door, I walked through it. I’m working on books eleven and twelve.
Tell us about your current release. Justice Delivered is a book I had to write after a volunteer from Advocates From Freedom came to our church and told us about human trafficking. Here’s the back cover copy:
Carly Smith came by her trust issues honestly. A victim of sex trafficking, she’s been at the mercy of merciless men, ignored by law enforcement officers who should have helped her, and seemingly rejected by her family. She can’t even trust herself to do the right thing. Though she escaped her captors and is working hard on building a new life, the past continues to haunt her when she discovers that the man she couldn’t bring herself to report to police for fear of reliving her captivity is still out there, luring vulnerable girls under the guise of being a modeling agent.
When her own niece is kidnapped, Carly must overcome her fears and come forward with the information she has before it’s too late. When that proves to be not enough, she’ll have to go after the perpetrators herself.
If you knew ahead of time your book would benefit only one person on their spiritual journey, would you still write it? Yes. I decided long ago that I was writing for an audience of One – God. It would be up to Him what He did with my stories. So far it’s worked out pretty well.
What is your personal, most effective way to get past writer’s block? First of all I pray, asking God to reveal why I’ve hit the wall. Then I go back and look at my POV characters. What have they not told me? What did I miss about their wound and lie? When I figure that out, I get back on track.
What inspired you to start writing, or did you always want to write? I was always a reader and hadn’t thought anything about being a writer. Then one night when I couldn’t sleep, this man appeared in my vision. He stood at a window looking out at the smokestacks billowing in the background, and then he turned around and looked straight at me and said, “This isn’t how my life was supposed to turn out.”
For the next week, I told myself stories about what went wrong in his life, and pretty soon I was putting those stores on paper.
Do you have your plotline and character development already laid out before you begin writing a book, or do they develop as you write? When I first started writing, I loosely plotted my books out. Then on the third Memphis Cold Case novel, I hit that writer’s block wall before I ever started writing. My deadline was getting closer so I just started writing, going wherever my characters took me. It happened again on this book. It took writing about my characters before I could get to know them.
Now there are three things I have to have before I start writing: who is murdered and why now; what lie do my POV characters believe about themselves that make them who they are when they walk onto the page; what can they do at the end of the book that they couldn’t do at the beginning.
[Tweet “Enter to win JUSTICE DELIVERED BY @PTBradley1 @halleeb #christsuspense #sextrafficking #giveaway”]
What advice do you have for aspiring writers? Never give up. From the time I first started writing it took thirty-one years before my first novel was released. What if I’d quit at year 30?
What is your preferred method of writing? I wrote my first short story by pen then on a manual Hermes portable typewriter. If I had to do that with my books, there would be no books. So my preferred method is COMPUTER!!
I’m always intrigued by how writers get started. Did you always have these books inside you and knew that you wanted to write them or did the idea just pop into your head one day and you decided to put pen to paper? My ideas pop into my head at the most bizarre times. This last book was conceived in church. My very first book, Shadows of the Past, came to me after God had called me to lay aside my writing in order to work in the abstinence program for seven years. Then one day as I sat on my sofa doing my daily Bible study, a woman popped into my head and told me her name was Taylor and someone was trying to kill her. I pumped my fist and yelled out loud, “Yes!” For God had given my precious murder stories back. lol
Here is where you can find Patricia online:
https://twitter.com/PTBradley1
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Patricia-Bradley-Author/310231559090148
Patricia is giving away a signed copy (US only) or ebook copy of her book to a reader! See below how you can enter to win:
a Rafflecopter giveaway
8 comments
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This book looks so intriguing! Thank you for the introduction
Thanks for interviewing me, Hallee!
Patricia is an exceptional author! I’m excited to read this series.
nice advice
Nice interview, cool book
Great stuff. I like it
Sounds like a good book! Thanks for the giveaway!
Sounds like a great read. Terrific interview. Thanks for the chance.