Mary, describe yourself for our visitors.
I am a compulsive reader and writer, I’d say. Those two things take up about 85 % of my idle time as far as hobbies. I’m an insomniac, so I stay up late—even though I have to leave for work in the morning. I seem to function fairly well on 6 hours sleep, and often go with 4. It’s just who I am. I’m finished trying to cure myself of it.
I do crossword puzzles and I love sudoku puzzles, though I think I’m maxed out as far as becoming better at them.
I listen to right wing talk radio and KLOVE. I didn’t even own an FM radio in my car until about two years ago.
My favorite song is Rich Mullins ~ If I Stand, but I love so much contemporary Christian music. I listen to that and think it’s a perfect reflection of what’s going on in Christian fiction. Christians claiming a right to take control of any music style they love, but using it to spread the message of Jesus.
I’m very active in my church. I attend the same one I grew up in and have taught Sunday school for years. I also wrote and directed our Christmas Program for years. I’ve had five Christmas Plays published and those were my very first published works. I can still remember getting that letter saying they wanted my play. I’m can still feel the insane thrill of it. They paid me $75.
My youngest child, the youngest of four, all girls, is a high school senior, so I’m looking right down the barrel of the empty nest.
How do you find time to connect with God?
I love listening to music and using it to worship. I was in an online Bible study for a while this year and that was wonderful. I’ve also learned that to have any hope of getting what I want, I need to pray for what I want. I pray for others and as praise and for forgiveness, but asking for things for myself has always had a low priority. I think when I really started praying hard for my books to be published, that’s when things turned around for me. Now I pray, Lord, help me get my books published. Lord help me write something worthy of You.
Tell us about your journey to publication.
Well, journey is the right word. I’m a broadcast journalism major, so I studied writing and did a fair amount of it in college. I’ve always loved to write and remember writing a romance novel when I was about twelve. I started writing again, after my youngest child was in school
At first it was just me, home, alone. It took me two years to find RWA (yes, I live in a cave) Then I found a ‘local’ chapter. I stress local because I live w-a-a-a-a-a-y out in the country. So ‘local’ meant an hour drive. I attended their meetings when I could. And I kept writing, I had maybe three books done.
I entered contests and did okay, I kept doing better as the years went by and I learned, largely from contest critiques, how to improve. There came a time when I expected to final in any contest I entered. And I kept writing. I had maybe six books done by now.
I discovered ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers, joined an online critique group through them, and entered my manuscript Petticoat Ranch in the Noble Theme contest. I was a double finalist in 2004, another book of mine, China Doll, came in third. That contest and the support and encouragement of the writer’s loop convinced me to attend the 2005 conference. I had never been on a plane before and I had never gone on vacation without my husband, Ivan, before. I don’t know if you can imagine the guts it took for me to go. Ivan was great about it. I also kept on writing and I was up around ten books.
I had this online critique group through ACFW who are wonderful friends. It’s so strange to claim as your best friends in the world people you’ve never met. I roomed with Suzanne Smykla Osborne, one of my critique group and we stuck with Christy Barritt, who was there.
I won The Noble Theme and also placed third. I got a lot of requests at the conference. I also got a really simple request from Cathy Marie Hake to send her the first three chapters. She just wanted to see how I wrote.
So now I have about fifteen requests from agents and authors for maybe five different books. Jim and Tracey Peterson requested a full manuscript out of the partial I submitted and kept in touch.
That contest win brought me to the attention of my agent, Les Stobbe. He had already requested a complete manuscript and we’d talked online several times, so I was hopeful, but he hadn’t finalized anything. After that conference he offered representation.
Cathy Marie Hake also kept in touch. She said she thought I was ‘ready’. No editor had yet seen that light, but Cathy’s encouragement kept me hoping. Plus, by this time, I had about twelve books and I’d had so many rejections I had a hide like a rhino, so submitting work didn’t even phase me.
Okay, well maybe I crawled under my computer desk and sucked my thumb for a day or two every time I got one but other than that I was fine.
I kept on writing, and about the time I had fifteen books done, I got tricked into joining this small group of writers. We call ourselves The Seekers. The fearless leader of the group, Ruth Logan Herne and I are now both columnists for the Let there be Lite Column for Afictionado, the ACFW ezine. If you follow this link www.acfw.com/ezine I wrote the December column.
Cathy Marie Hake told me she wanted to pitch my name to write a book in a three book Heartsong series on historical Alaska, along with Kathleen Y’Barbo. I’d been working on a proposal and talking on the phone with Cathy a lot before the 2005 conference.
At the conference Tracie Peterson got up to announce the new contracts. She said Kathy Kovach’s name and I knew there was only one, so okay, I’ve been rejected before. I kind of expect it. And then she said, “And the second contract we’re offering is to Mary Connealy. I get chills just writing that!
I have since gotten two more contracts from Barbour.
Tell us about your current book.
Petticoat Ranch is due out February 1st from Barbour Publishing. Petticoat Ranch is a suspenseful, historical, romantic comedy. A mountain man marries an independent widow and keeps reminding her she said the word OBEY right out loud in front of a preacher and God. She does try to obey him, but honestly, if he wants her to be obedient, he needs to do things her way. Since she does care about him, top spare his feelings, she does things her way behind his back, but he keeps finding out. Is that her fault?
How did you come up with the ideas for your current book?
Petticoat Ranch is the combination of two things.
My husband’s life story, twisted and exaggerated and set in historical Texas, plus vigilantes. That’s the basic premise. Poor befuddled Clay who loves his new family when they’re not scaring him to death. Strong willed Sophie who’s been taking care of herself and her girls even when her last husband, moody and worthless as a rancher, was alive. She doesn’t expect much from a man and this new one is a step up from the last.
And the men who killed her first husband, who now realize Sophie didn’t run back East. She’s surfaced and she’s the only witness to her husband’s murder.
List your current releases
Petticoat Ranch is my first book, a second book, Golden Days, from Heartsong Presents, comes out in April.
What’s next for you?
I’m working at learning how to promote my book. It’s a part of being published I hadn’t thought much about before. I’m also working on several projects, not yet contracted but I’ve received some hopeful signs. All those books I’ve written over all those years are just sitting there waiting, like an open floodgate, to pour out on the world. I hope you all can swim.
Where can our visitors find you online?
www.maryconnealy.com
www.myspace.com/petticoatranch
www.mconnealy.blogspot.com
www.christianauthorsnetwork.com check the authors listings.
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