Fabulous Friday Feature: Beth White

Today I welcome an author who weaves her music and love for the coastal regions into her stories: 

Beth White

Enter to win Beth's 
March 2014 release,

The Pelican Bride

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

I met Beth White at the last ACFW conference I attended. I saw the same lovely smile you see in the photo. She is cheerful and now a delightful friend of mine. I asked Beth to share how God has led her on her journey. What a roller coaster tale. Here is what she said:

The Long and Winding Road

My writing journey has been anything but straightforward, which is usually how God works, isn’t it? 

I had completed two young adult novels (which went nowhere toward publication) when an idea for a historical romance set in Civil War-era Mobile, Alabama came to me. About halfway through writing this book, I realized my Southern-belle heroine’s abolitionist activities might be fueled by Christian beliefs. I wondered if heavy spiritual elements might distract from the power of the romance story.

Around this time I happened to read Francine Rivers’s novel Redeeming Love and her wonderful “Mark of the Lion” series. Her masterful storytelling showed me the power of Christian fiction. One day as I was taking a long prayer walk around my neighborhood, the Holy Spirit impressed on me to not be afraid of threading faith elements into my work--and that publishing “stardom” should not be my goal. Instead, I was to write what came from my heart, work hard to polish my craft, and let God determine who reads my work. 

Not long after, I attended a local writers’ conference where I met an editor from Francine Rivers’s publisher, Tyndale House. He took an interest in my work and eventually contracted one of my other manuscripts, Miracle on Beale Street. (the Civil War story eventually sold to Steeple Hill).

Since that first novella, God has continued to open and shut doors in the world of publication for me even as the industry has undergone seismic shifts in technology, economics, and readership. The Christian publishing market has exploded, offering amazing opportunities in my chosen genre. I’ve been blessed to have the same agent from the beginning (except for a short time when he was a publisher at one of the major houses). I definitely feel this was a work of God’s hand!

The rights to those early novellas have since been returned to me and I've started re-publishing them myself. After a five-year sabbatical from writing, God provided a three-book contract with Revell. The Pelican Bride, the first book of “The Gulf Coast Chronicles,” is releasing this month. 

This writing journey has led me through some strange and scary and exhilarating places, but there’s been deep joy and satisfaction in knowing God is with me. And I wouldn’t have it any other way!

~ ~

Beth's choir students at
LeFlore Magnet High School in Mobile

Beth White is a native Southerner, born on the Gulf Coast and reared in northwest Mississippi. With undergraduate degrees in music and English education, plus a Masters in Creative Writing, she has spent the last thirty years teaching fine arts to preschoolers through college students. Besides performing professionally as a singer and flutist, in the last thirteen years she has published (as Elizabeth White) four novellas and ten full-length novels with such publishers as Tyndale House, Zondervan, and Steeple Hill.

Beth’s current and most ambitious writing project to date is the culmination of a decade’s research into the development of the American Gulf Coast.. The Pelican Bride launches The Gulf Coast Chronicles with the adventures of a ship full of French mail order brides.

Beth and her husband Scott have two married adult children and one grandchild. Beth teaches piano and chorus at an urban high school in Mobile, Alabama, an occupation, which will undoubtedly one day become a story thread in a novel.

To learn more about Beth White, visit:

Her website www.bethwhite.net. Go to the “Contact” page. 

Facebook

Twitter: @bethsquill

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The Pelican Bride  (released April 2014)

She’s come to the New World to escape a perilous past. But has it followed her to these far shores?

It is 1704 when Frenchwoman Geneviève Gaillain and her sister board the frigate Pélican bound for the distant Louisiana colony. Both have promised to marry one of the rough men toiling in this strange new world in order to escape suffering in the old. Geneviève knows life won’t be easy, but at least here she can establish a home and a family without fear of persecution for her outlawed religious beliefs.

When she falls in love with Tristan Lanier, an expatriate cartographer-turned-farmer whose checkered past is shrouded in mystery, Geneviève realizes that even in this land of liberty one is not guaranteed peace. Trouble is brewing outside the fort between the French colonists and the native people surrounding them. And an even more sinister enemy may lurk within. Could the secret Geneviève harbors mean the undoing of the colony itself?

Miracle on Beale Street

Christian Contemporary Romantic Comedy

Miranda Gonzales and Tony Mullins have been tricked! Knowing that the two had clashed over a mysterious event years earlier, their spunky grandmothers plot to reunite them during a dream vacation in Memphis. Reluctantly surrendering to the wiles of their beloved mentors, Miranda and Tony must face the dark shadows of the past and conquer them once and for all.

To enter the contest for an autographed copy of 

Beth White's book: "The Pelican Bride":

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, Beth, for Joining us This Weekend!

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Beth talked about her research and the desire to share her work by writing a book. In the middle of the project she realized what a testimony the story could have.

We've all helped others if for no other reason than"just because". But has one of those moments also turned into an opportunity to share your faith? Feel free to just say yes in the comment section or share your moment with us.