First Chapter Amish fiction -Christmas Traditions

In my blogs at www.booksbyfaybookstore.weebly.com and booksbyfay.com.blogspot.com/ you will find the complete first chapter of my first Amish book titled Christmas Traditions. I write about what I like to read, but up to that point I had been writing stories in the mystery and western genre. One Christmas I was looking at the picture on a card and wondered what the story was behind a English dressed couple in a sleigh. They stopped in front of a large white farm house which reminded me of the ones on Amish farms. So from that card I came up with my story.

I never dreamed I'd be writing more Amish books, but when this book sold in Amazon, readers asked for a sequel to continue the story. Instead, I started the Nurse Hal Among The Amish series and found there were many readers interested in Amish stories. It seemed that this was my niche to target with books. I write other stories as well. With all the story lines I've stored up I don't think I'll ever get writer's block. Do the other genre sell as well as Amish books? Not quite, but I'm writing what I do for fun and to see just what I can do. How I am able to stay with this project is I found Create Space which belongs to Amazon. The printing by that company is so affordable and made easy to do.

So when the Nurse Hal books took off instead of writing a sequel, I moved Margaret Goodman and her family to Iowa and made them neighbors to Hal Lapp. After all the two of them have much in common since they had been in both the English world and the Amish one. Margaret is able to lend sound advice to Hal to help her in her new Amish life. One reader emailed me that she enjoyed finding Margaret in Hal's story. Her reaction was I know her. She was able to continue to learn about Margaret's life as well as Hal's story.

Here is the synopsis for the story.

At Christmas time, Margaret Goodman sets off alone in her sleigh from a town in Pennsylvania to Levi Yoder's farm. She's made the same trip for years with her husband, but this time she's alone, traveling over winter roads. Her relief at arriving safely is soon dispelled when Levi gives her a very cold greeting. She expects it, but the reason she continues to visit is to spend time with Levi's young son Luke. Her sister was married to Levi, and Margaret wants to be a part of the boy's life even though she was shunned many years before when she left the Amish faith and Levi behind. The week she spends with the Yoders she pushes the English Christmas traditions to bring some joy into the boy's life while Levi remains stoic and set on practicing the Amish Christmas traditions. A tug of war for the boy's affection happens between Margaret and Levi. She vows to tell Luke family secrets that she hopes will bring him closer to her. Levi threaten this will be her last visit if she doesn't keep still since he had lied to Luke for years about his mother.

It's been a month since I last posted here. Seemed like summer has slowed me down one way or other. We made hay the last of June on what I thought was the two hottest days of summer. I was wrong. We've had company that think it's fun to spend days in the country with us. My computer quit working for a week. Turned out a good share of the dust filtering through our window screens had settled inside the computer. So I'm back at posting, but as soon as I get my posts made I'm going to spend the rest of the day moving between fans inside and shade in the yard. The heat and the forecast for the rest of the week have helped us decide it's time to get central air. Of course, we won't have it installed before the heat wave let up, but we'll be prepared to be comfortable the next hot spell. Come back next week and I'll start first chapters of my mystery series.