Well, the Frasier Winners have been announced. The hard work of the judges has decided the winners, and today we will take a look at the novel of another of our esteemed judges… Sarah Sundin and her book With Every Letter.
Q: Sarah can you tell us a little bit about your story?
As part of a morale-building program, World War II flight nurse Lt. Mellie Blake begins an anonymous correspondence with Army engineer Lt. Tom MacGilliver in North Africa. As their letters crisscross the Atlantic, they develop a deep friendship. But when they’re both transferred to Algeria, will their future be held hostage by the past—or will they reveal their identities?
Q: What is one piece of writing advice you could give to the MBT Audience?
Cultivate both teachability and persistence. Teachability will help you shape your novel into a work of beauty, help you work well with editors and agents, and respond gracefully to criticism. Persistence will carry you through the hard work of rewriting and editing, and will drive you through the rejection-letter years. Teachability without persistence leads to “camping” in chapter one and never moving on, and to rewriting your story so much you lose your own voice. Persistence without teachability can become pigheaded stubbornness, which will not endear you to editors and agents and critique partners. So prayerfully cultivate both.
Q: Do you have a testimonial/review you’d like to include?
“I love the nostalgia and drama of the WW2 era. No one takes me back there better than Sarah Sundin. With Every Letter is a beautiful love story and has everything you want in a novel: romance, suspense and characters you care about from the very first page. A marvelous beginning for her new series. I can’t wait to read the next book.”
-Dan Walsh, award-winning and bestselling author of The Unfinished Gift, Remembering Christmas and The Discovery
***
Sarah Sundin is the author of With Every Letter, the first book in the Wings of the Nightingale series from Revell, and also the Wings of Glory series (A Distant Melody, A Memory Between Us, and Blue Skies Tomorrow). In 2011, A Memory Between Us was a finalist in the Inspirational Reader’s Choice Awards and Sarah received the Writer of the Year Award at the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference. Sarah lives in northern California with her husband and three children, and she works on-call as a hospital pharmacist.