Celebrating a New Book Series Featuring Lori Soard

Today I'll be introducing you to an author from a wonderful book series called Our House on Jakaranda Laan. All the stories In this series, take place In the fictitious town of Cedarfontein, South Africa on Jacaranda Lane. Read on to learn about one author and her story.

First off, tell my readers your book title, the genre for your book and the time frame it takes place? 
Thanks so much for hosting me here today. My book is called The Ranger’s Restoration. It is a Contemporary Christian Romance taking place in present day.

Give us a short book blurb about your story and characters.
Lionel Garrick lost the woman he was going to marry due to his best friend's treachery. Now he's returned to Cedarfontein, bitter and cynical, but being a ranger in the wetlands surrounding the town suits him just fine. Some wounds never heal. The woods ask nothing of him, and the inhabitants of the forest never lie.

Then Ariel Brooks arrives․ 

Lionel's childhood best friend Ariel Brooks has arrived from the United States to stay for two weeks. She doesn’t expect Lionel to have grown into a man who keeps everybody at arm's length, setting an emotional distance she can never cross. But instead of letting him disappear behind guilt and heartbreak, she nudges him back toward the community that never stopped caring about him.

As autumn settles upon Cedarfontein, old memories intermingle with new friendships, and Lionel and Ariel wonder whether the love they’d each been looking for was always there.

But before Lionel can tell Ariel that he loves her, he must first learn to deal with his past grief, and to understand that restoration isn't found by outrunning the past...it's found by trusting the One who can make all things new.

What inspired you to write this story?
God works in mysterious ways. I pray for the next story that has the message that will reach that ONE person God wants to hear it. I was listening to a Lionel Ritchie song and thinking how much God blessed him with songwriting and singing ability. I realized the name Lionel was a pretty great name. I looked up the meaning and it simply means “lion.” Then, I started to think about what makes lions unique. They are fearless, strong and family focused. 

This led me to remembering the lion in the C.S. Lewis books. I kept turning it over and over and eventually decided my character would be named Lionel. That he would be a fierce warrior for God, but that he had a few flaws to overcome first, as any good hero in a story does. 

What’s the best encouragement you’ve had in your writing?
I got a letter from a retired history professor recently about my most recent release. He told me that my perspective was one he appreciated. In particular, he was speaking of a comment I made that things have a way of working out and that God has a purpose. He said he wished he’d learned that earlier in life. It warmed my heart that in his moment of loss, struggle and uncertainty, God used my words to heal something in him and give him a fresh perspective.

What is the best writing advice you’ve received or could give?
“Get over yourself.” When I was fresh out of college, I got a job working as a stringer for my local hometown newspaper. The editor was fierce. He’d mark up my articles, tell me to cut words and he’d often say, “Cut all that fluff. Get over yourself. You’re not that great of a writer yet.”

It sounds harsh, but the skills he taught me, including how to have a tough skin when receiving feedback, have stayed with me throughout my career. He also would frequently say, “I need more Lori in this piece. How do you see the world?”

Are there any other points about writing you would like to add?
If you truly love writing, don’t let anyone or anything discourage you. I’ve often said it’s all a numbers game. Keep submitting your work, or publishing it, and just keep creating.

If you hate writing, do anything else, because it will probably pay better. LOL

What other books do you have in the works? 
My second Mildred Wiggins mystery novel releases in December and I have a book coming up in the Mountain Men 3 series. I’m also working on a children’s book with my little granddaughter, but it’s slow going because my drawing skills are not my strength.

 
That's all for today's interview. To learn more about Lori's books, click on the links below.

Website: https://lorisoard.com
Newsletter signup: https://tinyurl.com/JoinLoriSoard

And here's a special bonus...Get a FREE eBook as part of this series. It's a cookbook that features recipes of some of the characters in the Our House series and introduces you to each of them and their story. https://dl.bookfunnel.com/6i3sifi9ss

Celebrating a New Book Series Featuring Allyson Koekhoven

Today I'll be introducing you to an author from a wonderful book series called Our House on Jakaranda Laan. All the stories In this series, take place In the fictitious town of Cedarfontein, South Africa on Jacaranda Lane. Read on to learn about one author and her story. ( Special note: the author writes in "UK English" so you might see some different spellings for words. They are not typos.)

Tell my readers your book title, the genre for your book and the time frame it takes place.
My book is The Doctor’s Burden, a contemporary Christian novel set in the fictional Western Cape town of Cedarfontein. It takes place over the course of 2026, during Dr Marissa Rossouw’s compulsory community-service year at Sinethemba Community Hospital.

Although it is Christian fiction, I’d probably describe it just as much as a story about people, relationships and belonging. Faith is an important part of Marissa’s journey, but so are friendship, family, community and learning to live with the things in life that can’t simply be fixed.

 
Give us a short book blurb about your story and characters.
Dr Marissa Rossouw arrives in Cedarfontein determined to do one thing: get through her community-service year and leave. She is carrying the burden of a patient’s death during her internship and has lost confidence not only in herself as a doctor, but in a faith that once came far more easily to her. Cedarfontein, however, has other ideas.

At Sinethemba Community Hospital, the formidable Dr Marius de Lange refuses to let her hide behind self-doubt. At number thirteen Jakaranda Laan, Hennie and Elna gradually become the family she didn’t know she needed. And then there’s Liam Hartley, a flight paramedic who alternately irritates, challenges and makes her laugh, and who seems remarkably unwilling to accept the walls she has built around herself.

Marissa comes to Cedarfontein expecting to serve a community for a year. She doesn’t expect the community to change her.

 

What inspired you to write this story?
I’ve always been fascinated by the enormous responsibility we place on doctors, particularly young doctors. We expect them to make difficult decisions, sometimes when the answers aren’t obvious, and then somehow cope emotionally when things don’t turn out as everyone hoped.

That became the starting point for Marissa. I wanted to write about a doctor who hadn’t stopped caring but had stopped trusting herself. From there, the story became about much more than medicine. I became interested in the difference between guilt and responsibility, and in how easily we can allow one experience to become the lens through which we judge everything about ourselves.

The Our House on Jakaranda Laan setting gave me a wonderful way to explore the other side of that. Marissa arrives believing she needs to be left alone. Instead, she lands in a street where people notice when you’re struggling, feed you whether you’re hungry or not, interfere in your life with the very best intentions and gradually become family.

I think that contrast is really at the heart of The Doctor’s Burden. Marissa believes she needs isolation. What she actually needs is connection.

 
What’s the best encouragement you’ve had in your writing?
For years, I was one of those people who said, “One day I’m going to write a novel.” I did courses on novel writing, bought books about writing and had ideas quietly brewing away in my head. What I didn’t do was actually write the book! Self-doubt, procrastination and an impressive ability to find reasons why now wasn’t the right time all played their part.

Eventually, I wrote Under Construction, and perhaps the greatest encouragement since then has been discovering that people I’ve never met are willing to spend hours of their lives with characters who once existed only inside my head.

Reader feedback still amazes me. When somebody tells me they laughed at something a character did, recognised themselves in a situation, were moved by a particular scene or simply didn’t want to say goodbye to the characters when the book ended, it reminds me why I write.

I particularly love hearing that my characters feel like real people. Mine tend to have flaws, peculiarities, complicated relationships and a habit of not doing precisely what I had planned for them. Rather like real people, really.

Perhaps that’s also the encouragement I’d give somebody who has been saying, “One day I’m going to write a book.” At some point, one day has to become today.

 

What is the best writing advice you’ve received or could give?
Finish the first draft. It sounds ridiculously simple, but I think it’s one of the most useful pieces of advice for writers. You can spend forever polishing the opening chapters, changing sentences, questioning whether the story is good enough and comparing what you’re writing with somebody else’s finished, professionally edited novel.

A first draft doesn’t have to be beautiful. It has to exist. Once you have a complete story, you have something you can work with. You can strengthen characters, move scenes, cut things that aren’t working, fix continuity problems and rewrite dreadful sentences. And there will be dreadful sentences. I’ve written plenty of them!

I’d also add: listen to your beta readers and editors, but don’t surrender your story to them. If several people stumble over the same thing, pay attention. They may not all suggest the right solution, but they’re probably telling you that something isn’t working. At the same time, you need to know what your story is trying to be. Not every suggestion belongs in it.

 
Are there any other points about writing you would like to add?
Research matters enormously to me, particularly when I’m writing about a world I haven’t personally lived in.

The Doctor’s Burden required a lot of medical research, and one thing I’ve learned is that research isn’t only about avoiding factual errors. Done properly, it changes the story. You discover things you wouldn’t have thought to invent, and those discoveries affect what your characters can realistically do, the decisions available to them and sometimes even the direction of the plot.

But there’s another side to research: most of it shouldn’t end up on the page. That can be painful! After spending hours learning something fascinating, there’s a terrible temptation to make sure the reader appreciates just how much work you’ve done. I’ve learned that the research has done its job when it makes the fictional world feel convincing without announcing its presence.

And when you’re writing about medicine, having knowledgeable people willing to tell you, “No, a doctor would absolutely not do that,” is invaluable!

 

What other books do you have in the works?
I seem to be incapable of having only one writing project on the go!

My most recent release prior to this one is The Executive’s Dilemma, my contribution to the Our House on Heather Wynd series, set in the Scottish Highlands. Before that, I wrote The Runaway’s Redemption for the Our House on Sycamore Street series, set in southern England. One of the things I’ve loved about being part of the Our House series is that each one has taken me somewhere different. The Doctor’s Burden has been particularly special because this time the series has come to South Africa, and I’ve been able to write within a setting and culture that feel very much like home.

Once I’ve finished with Marissa and Cedarfontein, I’ll be returning to another old friend: Adine. She first appeared in my debut novel, Under Construction, and I’m now working on High Jinx, a cosy mystery set in the fictional KwaZulu-Natal coastal town of Port Sugarstone. It gives me the chance to revisit some characters I became very fond of while writing Under Construction, while introducing a mystery, some new faces and considerably more trouble than Adine would probably have chosen for herself.

Adine is very different from Marissa. She’s outspoken, independent, sometimes impulsive and has a remarkable ability to become involved in situations that would be considerably simpler if she just minded her own business. Fortunately for me, she rarely does.

I’m also working on something completely different: a pottery-inspired devotional book. Pottery is one of my hobbies, and there are so many parallels between working with clay and our Christian lives: being shaped, having things go wrong, starting again, patience, pressure, imperfections and learning that what we originally intended to make isn’t always what emerges from our hands. I’m enjoying exploring those ideas and connecting something I love doing with my faith.

And, inevitably, there are other stories hovering in the background waiting for their turn. Coming up with things to write has never been my problem. Finding enough hours to write all of them is another matter entirely.

To learn more about Allyson's books, check out the links below.

Her website is currently undergoing a bit of a makeover, but it’s still very much open for visitors and has information about her books and what is in the process for new ones. Allyson Koekhoven Writes

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Allyson-Koekhoven/author/B0B7XPCDDN

Allyson Koekhoven Writes on Facebook

Allyson Koekhoven Writes on Instagram

And here's a special bonus...Get a FREE eBook as part of this series. It's a cookbook that features recipes of some of the characters in the Our House series and introduces you to each of them.https://dl.bookfunnel.com/6i3sifi9ss

And one more bonus eBook giveaway...This one is only good till October 10. This is for free first in a series sweet romance stories eBooks. Use this link to see the full list:

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