In this episode, Belinda Pollard and Donita Bundy interview romance novelist (and podcast co-host) Alison Joy. Alison writes romance novels set in Australia and the South Pacific. She shares a variety of research techniques she has developed to help her create fictional locations, events and characters that ring true.
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In conversation in this episode:
- Alison Joy, romance author, former early childhood teacher and mother of 4 adult children
- Belinda Pollard, author of mainstream crime novels, writing coach, accredited editor with qualifications in theology, writing and publishing blogger at smallbluedog.com, and Gracewriters founder
- Donita Bundy, writing teacher, preacher and author of the Armour of Light supernatural fiction series
Topics covered in this episode:
- How Alison got an idea for a novel series from an exercise class.
- Creating small town communities on the page using a combination of research and personal experience.
- Different ways to use recurring characters in a series.
- Using actual locations, buildings, sites, facilities to inspire authentic fictional ones.
- How Alison produced an actual country song for book promotion.
- Different research techniques used by Belinda and Donita – interviews, travel, experiences, googling, historical research.
- The benefits and pitfalls of research – how it enriches your writing and your life, but you can end up down rabbit holes!
- Coping with the uncertainty of whether we should be writing, especially when we don’t write “Christian” books.
Find Alison Joy online
Alison’s website: https://www.alisonjoywriter.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsa.joy/
Watch the book trailer mentioned in the interview, which features the country music song Alison wrote and produced with the help of musicians/singers she hired from Fiverr:
Check out Alison Joy’s books
Find links to Alison’s books on her website here: https://www.alisonjoywriter.com/books-by-alison-joy
Or click the covers below:
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Audio
Video
Transcript
Belinda Pollard: Welcome to the Gracewriters Podcast – Christian Writers Changing Popular Culture. Hit subscribe on your favourite podcast player so you never miss an episode and find show notes, useful links and a full transcript at gracewriters.com.
Today on the podcast, Alison Joy, on how she researches her romance novels.
I’m Belinda Pollard, author, editor and book coach with degrees in theology and journalism. I write award winning mystery novels and light memoir, as well as devotionals and non-fiction. I blog writing and publishing tips at smallbluedog.com and you’ll find my creative writing at belindapollard.com.
Donita Bundy: Hi, I’m Donita Bundy. Speaker, teacher, blogger and author of the spiritual warfare novel series, Armour of Light. Find out more at donitabundy.com.
Belinda Pollard: This month, we’ve decided to grill our co-host, Alison Joy, because of some of the fascinating stories she’s told us about the research that has gone into her four romance novels, especially her latest one, Country Haven.
After a career as an early childhood educator, Alison is now expanding her skills as a keen photographer for theatre groups and her local church. Married to Phil with four adult children, she joins us today from her home in Brisbane, Australia.
Welcome to the podcast, Alison.
Alison Joy: Yeah, hi!
Belinda Pollard: You’ve just released a novel, please tell us about it.
Alison Joy: Yes, Country Haven is a story about a country singer, an Australian guy who has made it big in America and he gets burnt out through a series of circumstances and decides to move back to Australia for a break to try and recalibrate. And it’s about his story when he comes back and who he meets and it goes from there.
Belinda Pollard: Excellent. Now, country music, obviously you must be a life-long fan.
Alison Joy: Not necessarily! No.
Belinda Pollard: How did it happen?
Alison Joy: How did it happen? I mean, I don’t mind country music, it’s just not my go-to.
I was looking for a low-impact exercise class in my local area and I found that there was some line dancing happening at a local hall and it was only a few minutes from me, so I went and joined up. And after time goes on, you get to know all these different songs and for me, I’d zone out and start thinking of storylines and characters and that sort of thing, which happens wherever I go! That’s basically how it happened. I started to get the idea from my line dance classes.
Belinda Pollard: So, Gracewriters out there, if you’re looking for inspiration for your novels, go to an exercise class! You never know what might happen.
Alison Joy: Oh, dear! Yeah.
Belinda Pollard: Now, this is a new series for you; isn’t it? And a little bit of a detour, so to speak, in some ways because your first three novels were set on Pacific Islands and Australia’s Great Ocean Road down the bottom end of Australia. So, why have you now shifted inland to a small outback town?
Alison Joy: Western romance, rural romance is very popular. It’s a very popular genre. Being Australian is sort of the two big things, I guess, for me – the beach and the bush. I’ve spent a bit of time in different country towns and living in a country town for a few years, so, that’s sort of always there. I think it’s always there in the background so, it made a lot of sense for me to actually do something that was set in a rural town.
It’s a fictitious town but it’s the general area that I’ve been before. It’s not something I’m starting from scratch. I’m a little bit familiar with the area. I’ve got plans to do one in a beach-side town so, the same thing with that.
I’ve got a few different ideas for different books but I’m trying to keep it into beach and bush. The South Pacific ones, which were the first three, I’ve got plans to do a few more in that area, as well.
So, in each story that I come up with, I’m trying to fit into a couple more slots. This has to fit into this slot. This has to fit into that slot otherwise I’ll end up with so many different series and I know that some authors can do that but I don’t think I’ll be doing that, somehow.
Belinda Pollard: I find country town stories really appealing myself, too. I think maybe partly it’s because I live in a big city and it’s like a bit of a break.
Alison Joy: Yes.
Belinda Pollard: It’s sort of something quieter and there’s more connection and relationships. It gives you a lot of opportunities, doesn’t it, to connect the individual stories.
So, will you have recurring characters and that sort of stuff in your country town?
Alison Joy: Yes, I will. So, I’m trying to set up different characters in the first book. It’s going to be the same cake shop owner in all the books or the café owner or the wherever, wherever. It’s going to be the same person. They’re going to be interacting with all. It’s going to be the same places they hang out, that sort of thing. So, yes, they’ll be in the book.
Some of the characters who are minor characters in one book might be major characters in another.
Belinda Pollard: I like that aspect of certain series. I’ve been reading Jenny Hambly’s Regency Romances and she’s got all these series that just keep building on one another and characters will keep popping up in different places. So, it’s almost like you’re getting to know these people over time.
I think that’s a great idea to do that.
Alison Joy: It’s a very popular thing in the romance area of writing to have series set in a particular location and then build on it. The characters that you have that get together in the first book, down several books might have a family or they might have other things happen, so you haven’t read them and lost them forever. It’s like catching up with friends. You see what’s been happening in their lives since you last read about them.
Belinda Pollard: I think that probably means more to readers in our very disconnected kind of a world where we don’t have as much community. I think that’s one of the reasons we enjoy it so much but perhaps the author enjoys it too!
I hate the thought of saying goodbye to characters. I’ve got ideas for another character to appear in a later book. Obviously, I’ve got two continuing characters in my series because it’s different, it’s not romance, it’s crime.
Do you think so, too, Donita? Do you like bringing them back and getting to know them a bit more in different settings?
Donita Bundy: That’s what I do with each of my books. I introduce at least two new people and then as each book goes on you do actually hear from the previous people and see them. Because, like you say, Alison, it’s a community and it’s one that you’ve created and wherever it’s set, there is connection and we want our characters to be relatable and our stories to keep going. That’s just what life’s like. We meet people, we connect with them and we continue to bump into them and sometimes they live in a different place but we still can reach out and connect.
I find it interesting when you create a character and get feedback that says, “That one’s my favourite!”
I’m like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” So, that was a side character and they play a part and you want to bring them back because you’re interested and because you’ve created them, you want to see them grow.
Belinda Pollard: They almost become like friends, don’t they?
Donita Bundy: They are.
Belinda Pollard: There’s nothing wrong with us! We’re just fiction writers! We’re over here with our imaginary friends and family.
Donita Bundy: We get to pick them!
Alison Joy: You get to pick them and you get to choose the outcomes and they listen to what you say. Well, actually, no, they don’t always listen to what you say.
Belinda Pollard: No, they don’t, do they?
Alison Joy: You’ve got more control over them than you do with real-life characters!
Donita Bundy: Alison, you recently wrote on your blog that to research you sat at the back of Lee Kernaghan’s Boy from the Bush doco movie furiously taking notes. Is this a regular form of research you do or do you use other methods, as well?
Alison Joy: It depends on the story and it depends on what the actual thing is I’m researching.
Like, for Country Haven, I needed a house. I wanted a big old country estate house for the main character and it’s like, write what you know, so I remember going to a place called Jimbour House when I was a child and I thought, “Well, why not?”
So, I got on and I researched all about and found photos and got on their website and got all the information. I actually wanted to do a bit more. I actually wanted to go there because they’re open to the public. So, I talked my brother and my father into going out there for a visit to actually go through the house and take photos and just get some more information. It’s just to help inform your writing.
For the Lee Kernaghan thing, Lee Kernaghan is an Australian country singer for those of you who don’t know, he had a doco-drama out and I thought it’s not so much for Country Haven, it’s for the next book, A Song and a Dance and I wanted to actually see behind the scenes or from the stage, what the singer was seeing in the audience. When I’m talking from his point of view, I can describe what he’s seeing.
I dragged my husband along and we went to a theatre and we sat right up the back, away from everybody else. I’m sitting there, taking notes at different scenes and scribbling away with my iPhone light. Afterwards, I had to try and transcribe them into English but it was just an opportunity to see, okay, this is Lee Kernaghan and the camera is behind him and he’s coming out on stage and this is what he’s seeing in the audience. So, I could use that and seeing what the audience were doing, different people in the audience were doing.
I tend to go down rabbit holes! If they’re going out to a function and they’re all dressed up, I go hunting for outfits and I have folders of clothes, I have folders of cars, I have folders of buildings. Probably could put it on Pinterest but I don’t tend to do that. I just have different folders. When they go to a dinner, I want the menu. I want to know what they’re eating. So, I go and try and find a menu that’s similar that I can use.
So, in For Love & Charity, I went to the actual place that they went to. It actually does exist. So, I went and looked at their menu and picked a few different meal choices out of that. And that’s what I do.
In Country Haven, they have a Christmas in July celebration and one of the things was the deserts they had like petit fours. I went searching, down a rabbit hole, searching for pictures of petit fours that I could use.
Donita Bundy: I can totally relate. Everything you’re saying, totally relates, especially the rabbit warrens.
What tips do you have for other Gracewriters about how to make their books deeper and more authentic?
Alison Joy: Brainstorm and find different ways of looking at things if you’re not familiar with something. It’s really hit and miss, I’ve found.
For example, I go to the ballet quite regularly. It’s one of my things. I go to the Queensland Ballet. So, one of my characters in one of my books is going to be a ballerina which is a short story, prequel, that I’m working on at the moment. I’m at performances so I can see it from that point of view but then I’m trying to look for any behind the scenes stuff. Anything I can find that might give me some insight.
So, I’ll look for similar books. So, for Country Haven and those books I’ve looked for other romance books about country singers or singers in general, just to see how other people do it, to get some ideas, some reference points, maybe.
The one set in Fiji, I’ve been to Fiji but then I go looking for blogs on Fiji or I go looking for different travel things on Fiji.
When I did Brushstrokes of Love, the main character in that was a painter and I did have somebody who read it who is a painter, an artist, and she said, “You actually sounded like you knew what you were talking about!” It’s just like enough information so I can sound like I know what I’m talking about.
Belinda Pollard: Sometimes like a beta reader or an editor can point out that you don’t know something about something, can’t they? Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know until someone points it out.
Alison Joy: Yeah.
Belinda Pollard: But then you can go and look for some more and add to it.
Now, I’m particularly fascinated, Alison, by the fact that not only did you do all of these things for Country Haven, but you actually became a country songwriter yourself. Tell us about that?
Alison Joy: Well, look, I have read several books with singers and often times the author will put lyrics to a song in there. Sometimes the character is singing and the lyrics will be in the book or sometimes they’ll have, every chapter will have a few lines from a song at the start of the chapter. I thought, “Well, yeah, I’d like to do that.” So, I started doing that. There’s a couple of songs that I’ve started to write for Country Haven.
They didn’t have to be in their entirety because that’s not where they fit in the scene. They didn’t need to be. But then afterwards, I thought, “Gee, wouldn’t it be really cool to have an actual country song, sung by somebody who sounds like the character that I’m portraying in the book.”
So, that started a process of trying to a) get someone to finish the song, and b) put music to it. I can sing a little bit and I’m a little bit musical but not enough to actually write songs.
So, I tried a few different things. I don’t know how to do this. Anyway, a friend’s son who’s a bit of a musician, I asked her. She asked him and he said it was not in his skill set but he said, “Why don’t you try Fiverr?” So, then that took me on a journey to try and find somebody on Fiverr who was interested to actually take the lyrics I had, finish them off and then turn them into an actual song. So, that’s what happened.
It took a couple of goes to get what I wanted but we got there in the end. I’m really happy with the end result. So, I’m allowed to pretend that the song is sung by the character in the book whose name is Zachariah Mayne and we will see from there.
Belinda Pollard: Do you mind if I play a bit of it?
Alison Joy: If you want! Yeah, that’s fine.
[music plays]
When I first met you in the middle of the night, said to myself, Lord, this girl all right.
Then you soothed my troubled mind and bound my wounded heart.
Baby, you touched my soul and that was just the start.
Let me love you, darlin. Let my hold you, darlin. Let me keep you warm on the cold, cold nights.
Let me stand beside you. Let me hold your hand. Let me sooth your sorrows.
Baby, I want to be your man.
Belinda Pollard: That’s great, Alison. It’s really interesting. Do you think you’ll use it for a book trailer or at your launch. Like, how are you going to use that?
Alison Joy: At the moment, for being part of the book trailer and to be used at the book launch and any promotion I can do for social promotion.
I would like to have it made into a film clip, if possible, but that’s just me thinking out loud, at the moment.
Getting off me for a little bit. Belinda, how do you research your novels?
Belinda Pollard: Well, I tend to go home to mother, kind of thing.
I’m originally a journalist so I go back to that. I’m often looking for someone to interview on whatever it is that I want to know. That tends to be my default. I’ll hunt around online and look for things and I do find some interesting stuff that way but then I’ll be also looking for a person. They might be a subject matter expert or someone with a personal experience of a particular thing.
For Venom Reef, I interviewed some people who are researching reef venoms. So, the creatures that live on the Great Barrier Reef and the venom that they produce and how certain compounds in those can be used for medical research. I tracked some of them down and they were really kind. Sometimes, they’re just so excited about their subject matter and they actually like that you come and show a great interest in their subject matter too.
Some people never replied to my emails so, it’s a bit hit and miss. You don’t know what you’re going to get. Because I had a Type 1 diabetic in Poison Bay who is lost in the wilderness I tracked down someone whose two family members have Type 1 diabetes and she’s a bit of an advocate for research and she gave me some harsh but fair feedback on the draft of my novel, which I’m very, very grateful for.
Yes, there’s different ways that you can do these things. And like you, too, Alison, I like to go to places. Writing a novel is a great excuse to go to somewhere that you’ve wanted to go for a long time because you can get kind of what they look like, maybe, on YouTube but it’s a bit kind of sanitised and dressed up. Often, they’ve got music over it so you can’t really hear what these places sound like and you don’t know what they smell and feel like and I wanted that extra amount.
I actually hiked the Milford Track for Poison Bay which I think was exemplary of me! It was very hard because I’m not really an athlete. It was very hard.
And I went to Heron Island which is an actual island with a resort and a research station on the Great Barrier Reef and it’s quite remote. I’m not sure how many kilometres it’s out but it’s a long way out. Much further out than most of the other resort islands on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. And I actually managed to get permission to go and stay in the research station which you have to pay to stay in the research station but you pay a researcher rate and I said to them, “Look, I’m only researching a novel, I’m not trying to solve global warming,” and they said, “That’s okay. You’re a researcher.” And they were so good to me and there’s things that you find out when you go to a place that you wouldn’t find out otherwise.
I probably would have written my fictional island as kind of very quiet and peaceful but it’s actually like one great big aviary. It is just so full of birds and the sound of them and the smell of them and it was so different to what I’d imagined. I was really glad that I did that because it helped me to do it quite differently. And I also did some things like in the middle of the night I was recording the sounds of the birds just on my voice recorder on my phone and then when I was writing later, I would play that to try and get the feel of how I could describe my characters experience of it.
And it’s been quite handy because my two main continuing characters in my Wild Crime Series are journalists. The fact that I revert to my journalism thing to research things actually meshes well with what they’re going to be doing in the book so that’s worked quite well for me.
Donita Bundy: Maybe that was no coincidence, Belinda.
Belinda Pollard: Quite possibly wasn’t a coincidence, Donita!
But what about you? Now you write supernatural stories, Donita, so is it mostly the Bible that you’re looking at or what are you up to?
Donita Bundy: To start with, that’s my first port of call especially, apart from the first one, the series is set in the different cities of the letters written in Revelation. So, the first thing I do is go and study that letter and I look at the historical context and I will look at the theological context and that’s the basis of the story.
And then I will look at other books in the Bible that are referring to a similar situation. Sometimes that’s Old Testament, sometimes it’s New Testament – the Epistles and the Prophets in the Old Testament pointing to the same issues. And then I will also look at the purely historical perspective. So, I will do online research.
The current draft that I’m working on is set in Sardis, so I’ve done a lot of research on what life in Sardis was like in the first couple of centuries and what religions, what gods were going on there. The layout of the city, what it actually looked like, so when I set up my story, I’m trying to use a futuristic version of the town layout, the city layout of what was there.
But that’s just the context. I’m a bit like the both of you when it comes to characters so, in my second book, someone became a paraplegic so I went and did a lot of research into what life is like for someone when they first discover they’ve got paraplegia. And then I spoke to surgeons and doctors about the process of the outcomes of surgery and life like that. And then one of my beta readers for that book was a gentleman who lived in a wheelchair. So I wanted him to read through those chapters to make sure that what I had written was respectful and honest and truthful about what life and the struggles are for the people who live with paraplegia.
And then, currently in this draft, I’m writing about people who live with significant mental health issues and what life is like for them. And thankfully my sister-in-law has worked for many, many years at the Healan Centre with people who live with those challenges and so, I’ve been able to talk with her and she’s also agreed to be a beta reader. So, before my manuscript will go to anyone, I will get her to read through those chapters to make sure I’ve been respectful about how I’ve portrayed these characters because even though they’re a side character, they play a significant role in cultural attitude and context and I really want to shine a light on that.
Looking at the future, what is the future going to hold in regards to technology and transport. I’m trying to set only 10 years in the future because I don’t have the intellect or the imagination to think what life is going to be like far into the future. So, I even struggle with 10 years. I speak to people I know who work in that industry and say, “Can you give me some clues? Like, what are we looking at?” That’s not an important part but it’s just a side part of the context that I’m hoping will not be distracting because it’s so wrong.
Alison, I read on your blog that you said that when you were writing about publishing, you said, “As soon as I started searching for help, ads get pushed at me from every side.” Do you find that’s the same for you when you are doing your research?
Alison Joy: More for the places than anything else. I think the unexpected prompts are what lead you down rabbit holes! They probably give you just that little nugget of information that you can add to your story to make it that much more authentic but you’ve got to wade through an awful lot of stuff to get to what you need.
I think, sometimes, when I’m a bit stuck with writing, sometimes doing a bit of research is enough to get your juices flowing again. Then other times it’s just an excuse not to write.
Sometimes it’s just serendipitous connections that you think has to be God stuff, there’s just no other way. How these things slot together, there is just no other way it could be anything else.
For Brushstrokes of Love, set on the Great Ocean Road, the Twelve Apostles, they’re limestone stacks, the character in my book his surname is Davis, that’s Welsh. So, then I started looking. Okay, his family’s Welsh. Name of the house has got to be a Welsh name. Looked for Davis. Where in Wales? And I’m looking around and then I find that there’s a place called Pembroke that off the coast of Wales where they have limestone stacks. Somewhat similar.
So, I’m going, “Well, that’s a no-brainer. The house has got to be called Pembroke.” That sort of thing is serendipitous, I guess. Well, God moments, I guess.
Belinda Pollard: So, Donita, what are the pitfalls and benefits of your research?
Donita Bundy: The theological side is beneficial for my preaching and teaching and blogging. The benefits, I guess, when I am looking into life situations for people, it gives me more understanding and compassion.
However, I’m a bit of history buff so, a pitfall is that I also fall down rabbit holes that turn into warrens that you can’t get out of because I just start looking for the information. For example, the city of Sardis. There is a lot of information there because it’s a very significant city. It no longer exists but trying to find papers that have been written about life there and the history and what went on, you’re looking for elusive piece of information that either isn’t known or it is only known by a few and I don’t have the avenues to get that information. But then I have to ask myself, “Well, if it’s so hard to find, maybe my reader won’t be offended if I get it wrong.” They may not actually realise that this piece of information isn’t necessary.
Anyway, Alison, back to you. How has your writing journey impacted your faith and relationship with God? Specifically, this last book that you’ve just published.
Alison Joy: I think I struggle and I think we’ve all talked about this multiple times – you, particularly, Belinda and myself. It’s because we’re not writing devotionals, we’re not writing specifically Christian books, then we have trouble justifying what we’re doing.
And we’re saying, “Okay, God, do you really want me to do this, or not? Because I feel like I want to do this and I feel like you’ve given me the gift to do this but is this really what I’m supposed to be doing?” And then, when you hit roadblocks and detours and potholes, some of them of your own making, obviously you think, “Okay, is this really what I’m supposed to be doing, God? Can you just give me a hand here? Help me out. Am I supposed to keep perservering because it’s the lesson in the journey or am I supposed to go, ‘Okay, this obviously isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve misread the whole situation. I should be doing something else.’”
And that’s what I really find a challenge and I’m guilty of not taking it to God as much as I should have and I think, I’m going to be trying to invite God along for the ride more. I know He’s there, but actually, physically say, “Okay, God, I’m going to do some writing today and I need you to help me do this. I need you to help me to write. I need you to help me come up with the words. I need you to help me put the gracenotes in. I need you to help me to do this.”
And I think to make it a habit, I guess, of actually doing that every time you sit down to write.
Belinda Pollard: It’s a team effort, isn’t it?
So, you and I, Alison, we might write for people who are a bit further from the Kingdom and maybe, our gracenotes are things that make people curious and make them start to ask questions and maybe question some of the assumptions that they’ve had. And then that moves them a bit closer and then they might pick up a book like one of Donita’s that has got more deliberate Spiritual content.
And I think that’s important and valuable and sometimes those of us who are writing more out on the margins, we can feel is this worthy? I’m not sure if this is worthy?
And I totally get what you’re saying. I totally understand it because I struggle with it myself. There’s so little time, there’s so little energy, the resources are limited and constrained and how should we spend them? And I totally get what you’re saying there, Alison, just constantly praying and asking God what is it that you want me to do? How do you want me to use this for you? How do we move forward?
Donita Bundy: We had a volunteer Prison Chaplain come and speak to us at church and anyone who has been a Chaplain of any variety knows that you are not allowed to mention God or proselytise whilst you are meeting with people.
And he described it as he is the rock breaker. He’s not a reaper but we are all part of the team and his job is to go in and break rocks. He doesn’t even get to plough the ground. Someone else comes behind him, later on in their lives, and they plough ground. His job is to go in and break rocks but without the rock breakers and the ground ploughers, there aren’t going to be reapers.
Everybody’s task is important and I think, if we all look at ourselves alone, we are overwhelmed. But we’re not alone and we’re created in the image of God who is community, three-in-one, and that’s how we see ourselves in community with God and each other. I think it helps to identify our part in the process. We may not know what our part is but we have a part in the process.
Alison Joy: A lot of times we downplay the significance of what we do because it’s just entertainment, it’s just frivolous, it’s just on the side and it’s not important like being a brain surgeon or a dentist or a lawyer or whatever. But by the same token, the surgeon and the lawyer and all these people, they need time out, they need time to relax, they need to recalibrate and they might go to a show or they might read one of our books because it’s escape for them and it helps them to relax and it helps them to be better at their job because they’ve just been able to switch off for a while.
So, that was the other thing, I think we have to take into consideration while we might devalue what we do, everybody needs time out, everybody needs to do something different to recalibrate and relax. Maybe, that’s the value of what we do, as well.
Belinda Pollard: Great thoughts, Alison.
Where can listeners find you online?
Alison Joy: The best place is my website which is alisonjoywriter.com.
Belinda Pollard: Excellent. How about I pray for you and the Gracewriters before we finish?
Heavenly Father, we thank you for Alison and for the ways that you have worked in her life over these years and the way that you’ve made writing a thing for her and you’ve given her this creativity and this curiosity and this ability to create worlds and research worlds and find all these interesting things about your creation and the people who walk upon it.
And I pray that you will bless her mightily and empower her by your Holy Spirit for her writing. Help her to know how to honour you and serve you in it and how to reach the readers that you have for her and for the particular things that she is writing.
And I pray, too, for all of the Gracewriters out there. Everyone who’s trying to figure out how to research some particular thorny problem, that you will lead them to solutions. You will open doors, you will make connections and introductions and lead people to what they need.
And for those who are wondering what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, I pray that you will bless and encourage those writers, too. Just comfort them, empower them, lead and guide them and give them wisdom and peace, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Alison Joy, thank you so much for all these wonderful things that you’ve shared with us on the show today. Thank you, Donita Bundy. I’m Belinda Pollard and we will see you next time on the Gracewriters podcast.
Gracewriters is run by volunteers and we’re incredibly grateful to those who have contributed financially to help keep this ministry running. Thank you so very much.
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