Fabulous Friday Feature-Siri Mitchell

Today I welcome an author who has an amazing ability to craft words: 

author Siri Mitchell

Enter to win Siri's March 2014 release,

Love Comes Calling
and April 2014 release,
The Miracle Thief, 
penned under a different writing name: Iris Anthony

Scroll to the end of the post to see how to enter.

I met Siri through my Writer Alley Cat friends. They told me about her book She Walks in Beauty. What an absolutely wonderful Christian historical fiction book. Now, I can't wait to read another and hope to post a book review later this summer. I asked Siri to share how God has led her on her journey. Here is what she said:

A Book by Any Other Name

I came to publishing, in 2005, with two books I’d written straight from my heart: Kissing Adrien and Chateau of Echoes. Both were set in France, a place I had lived from 1996 – 2000. A place I had fallen in love with. Though those books are still reader favorites, with subsequent novels, I started to learn about the publishing landscape that I was becoming part of.

I learned that France doesn’t really sell very well as setting and neither does most of Europe. I learned what made heroines attractive and what time periods readers were most interested in seeing. I learned what type of POV was most common and what kinds of plots and themes were most typical and I learned, most of all, to wish I could just write the kind of books that I was being told people really wanted to read. The kind of books that everyone else seemed to be writing.

It’s not that I didn’t like the books I was working on. I did. I poured my soul into them. But I started compiling a list of ‘just in case’ ideas in the event that all those ‘rules’ some day changed. And slowly, when I had time, I started developing one of them. It was a story which broke all those rules, so I decided to write it for the general market. It took ten years to do it, but with grace and perseverance, my agent found an editor who believed in the story and contracted it for publication.

Under a pseudonym: Iris Anthony.

Why? Because it had all the elements my readers weren’t supposed to appreciate. Set in France, it had multiple points-of-view, it was written in first person, and it explored some very complex themes. It asked a lot of questions and it didn’t necessarily provide a whole lot of answers. And it lived in the gray areas that people of faith sometimes find to be so unsettling.

It was a chance to re-launch myself. A chance to write without the constraints I was used to chafing against. But a funny thing happened. I found out that under any name, my books are still very much the same. The storylines of my Iris books might be more complex. My POV characters might have multiplied, but I still write in first person about people who clash with their prevailing culture. And my writing is still centered on questions of worth. As long and as hard as I tried to run away from myself, I’ve come to discover that I’m still me.

As I step into territories unknown, I feel as if I’m circling back to where I started. God has provided me the chance to be wholly myself. To write about all of the ideas that I’m interested in. In this place of new beginnings, I feel as if I’m finally settling into myself. The biggest lesson of all? Learning not to despise the voice that I’ve been given.

My twelfth Siri Mitchell book, Love Comes Calling, was released this month. I think you’ll like it. My second Iris Anthony novel, The Miracle Thief, will be released next month and I think you might just like it, too!

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Siri Mitchell is the author of over a dozen novels, among them the critically acclaimed Christy Award finalists Chateau of Echoes, The Cubicle Next Door, and She Walks in Beauty. A graduate of the University of Washington with a degree in business, she has worked in many different levels of government. As a military spouse, she lived in places as varied as Tokyo and Paris.

To learn more about Siri Mitchel, visit:

http://sirimitchell.com and Iris at http://irisanthony.com

Facebook: Siri Mitchell and Iris Anthony

Twitter: @SiriMitchell @IrisAnthony

Pinterest: SiriMitchell and IrisAnthony

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Love Comes Calling (available now):

A girl with the best of intentions. A heart set on Hollywood. An empty pocketbook. That's all it takes for Ellis Eton to find herself working as a telephone operator for a look-alike friend. For Ellis, this job will provide not only acting practice but the funds to get her a start in the movies. She's tired of always being a disappointment to her traditional Boston family, and though she can't deny the way he makes her head spin, she knows she's not good enough for Griffin Phillips, either. It's simple: avoid Griff's attentions, work, and get paid. But in typical Ellis fashion, her simple plan spirals out of control when she overhears a menacing phone call...with her very own Griff as the target.

With an endearing heroine as her lead, Siri Mitchell takes readers on a madcap tale of love and discovering one's true desires!

The Miracle Thief  (coming April 2014)

Do you believe in miracles?

Sister Juliana does. She's seen miracles happen as she tends Saint Catherine's altar and guards her relic. Yet she doesn't quite dare to believe that even Saint Catherine could help her atone for her wicked past.

Anna does. And she so desperately needs one. In a time when a deformity is interpreted as evidence of a grievous sin, in a place where community is vital to existence, Anna has no family, no home, and no master.

Princess Gisele wants to. A miracle is the only thing that can save her from being given to a brutal, pagan chieftain in marriage.

For those who come in faith, saints offer the answer to almost any prayer. But other forces are plotting to steal Saint Catherine's relic, to bend the saint's power to their own 

To enter the contest for an autographed copy of 

Siri Mitchell's book: "Love Comes Calling"
or Iris Anthony's book: The Miracle Thief:

leave a comment (and email address)

AND become a follower of this site, 
if you aren't already.

Sorry  US  only

Winner announced on my facebook page.

Thank you, Siri, for Joining us This Weekend!

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Did you figure out how Siri chose the name Iris for her other books? It's a puzzle. 

We all have different names. We might be called mom, daughter, wife, your given name, aunt, niece, cousin, etc. Under each name we have different roles, yet we are one person. The one God knows.

How can we pray for you today?