Interview with Heather Day Gilbert + Giveaway!

Friends, I am so excited for two reasons. First, I turned in the manuscript for Free to Lean: Making Peace with Your Lopsided Life last night! Woohoo! (It releases from Discovery House in August 2017.) Second: today is RELEASE DAY for Heather Day Gilbert's amazing Viking tale, Forest Child! Find it on Amazon, BarnesandNoble, iBooks, Kobo, and Goodreads. I had the privilege of reading this early and endorsing it. Here's what I had to say:

Forest Child is one of the bravest works of fiction I’ve ever read. Brimming with tension, yet laced with tenderness, this powerful saga is sure to keep you turning the pages far into the night. An ingenious blend of Viking history and timeless issues of the heart still relevant today.

Heather graciously answered a few burning questions I had after reading Forest Child:

1) What first inspired you to write inspirational Viking stories? 

I was interested in my Viking heritage (I'm allegedly related to Eirik the Red/Leif Eiriksson via my Norwegian blood), so I bought a copy of The Sagas of Icelanders. I read up on them and found stories of Viking women who did heroic things—one was a Christian named Gudrid, and one was a warrior named Freydis.

2) Well that is the coolest thing, being allegedly related to Eirik and Leif! I love both God's Daughter and Forest Child so much, but I think Forest Child is my favorite. Do you have a favorite character that you've written? If so, which one and why? 

That is always such a tough question. I'm a little bit in love with each of my leading men (and some of the side men, like Leif Eiriksson and Snorri Thorbrandsson!). I think it's because I'm in my main characters' heads, so I'm writing men I know fit with that character—but the men, as you know, are far from perfect! I would say I love Thorfinn Karlsefni for a fave male character and probably Freydis for female in my Viking series, but don't tell Gudrid I said that! She would probably stew over that slight for weeks. Gudrid tends to ruminate on things, whereas Freydis just rushes right into situations. Let's just say I relate to Freydis a bit more. ;)

3) I had a hard enough time doing research on eighteenth-century France for my upcoming novel. How on earth did you research for these books? 

It is tough, because there are limited written records of the Viking era. I based both novels so closely on The Saga of Greenlanders and Eirik the Red's Saga that the plotlines stemmed from there. One fantastic resource I discovered while writing Forest Child is the Hurstwic.com site. They study/replicate Viking weapons and warfare, but have also compiled some helpful articles on things like Viking farm life and the Althing council meetings. Vikinganswerlady.com is another helpful online resource. And of course I've accumulated a lot of books on the period! As you know, when you write book 2 in a series set in a particular time period, you have a better grasp of the foods they ate then, materials used for clothing, houses, etc., so that makes those details easier to integrate the second go-round.

4) Freydis, daughter of Eirik the Red, was quite a strong, brave character! In telling her story, were you tempted to gloss over some aspects if her life or character? How did you handle that? 

Oh, yes. Yes indeed. I would have loved to leave out one of the most defining moments of her warrior "career", but I knew that was impossible. Every Norse historian knows exactly the event I'm referring to—it was that famous. So I knew there would be no glossing over it! But because I have a strong Christian reader base, I knew I had to make sure the violence wasn't over-the-top and graphic. It was a real tightrope of balancing her real-life actions with a story that wouldn't make you hate her. It took years of pondering and a heavy blanket of prayers to finally break through and discover a reason I thought could explain why a woman would have taken the action she did. After I wrote that pivotal scene, I felt such a sense of relief. It still seemed a bit edgy compared to most Christian fiction, but I felt God helped me handle it in a way that (hopefully!) wouldn't alienate any of my loyal readers. And as it turns out, many of my readers are saying they love this book more than God's Daughter, so that is just evidence that God did this thing, not me!

5) I thought you handled that scene amazingly well. I'm so thrilled that you have another Viking tale coming out in March in the Message in a Bottle Romance Collection! Can you tell us just a little about what we can look forward to in that story?

I'm so excited about this collection, because you know I'm dying to read YOUR novella that's in it! My novella shares the tale of a Viking, Ari, who sails to Ireland to take vengeance for his brother's death, but through a series of God-directed events, he winds up getting to know a rather solitary and bookish Irish princess named Britta. Will they learn to overcome their cultural differences and trust each other? I'd probably better stop right there, because I have a tendency to be a walking "spoiler alert"!

Thank you so much, Heather! It's going to be a fantastic collection, I can't wait for it to release in March!

Thanks so much for letting me visit, Jocelyn! And right now, I have four softcover book bundle giveaways going on to celebrate the release of Forest Child. Here's the link for your readers to check those out: http://bit.ly/2e0eHCi ! Enter before November 13 for a chance to win! 

Yes, these are amazing book bundle packages! See the photo collage below and then jump to the link Heather provided to enter the drawings! Congrats, Heather, on your truly wonderful new book.