fiction fridays: interview with michelle sutton

I’m excited about today’s interview with Michelle Sutton. Michelle’s novel, Their Separate Ways, is available now in e-book format and will be released in paperback in July.

Welcome to The Literary Mama, Michelle. Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m a forty something mother with two sons in college and a husband of almost twenty one years. I live in Arizona and have since 1991. Before that I lived in NY. I have three wonderful publishers and have been fortunate to be able to write straight from my heart without the stories getting sliced and edited to death. I write for the Lord and to minister to others through stories with real life themes intended to help heal the reader’s heart through spiritual insight and a redemptive message.

**Tell us about your journey to publication.

I went to my first writer’s conference in 2004 mainly to meet Francine Rivers. I was very inspired by the conference and everything she said about how the Lord led her to writing Christian fiction. I met my agent Tamela Hancock Murray at that first writer’s conference and ended up signing with her in 2005. Since then I have sold about a dozen novels with more contracts on the way.

  **What is Their Separate Ways about?

It’s the sequel to Never Without Hope, which I call my “adultery” story. So many books portray the man as the cheater. I wanted to do something different and show what it would look like from a woman’s perspective if her husband had been neglecting her physically and emotionally, thus leaving her wide open to temptation. The first novel shows how she got into the affair and how her life imploded as a result. The book Their Separate Ways chronicles her journey and the journey of the man she had an affair with the year after their relationship ended. I wanted to show how two different couples deal with the fallout. One couple knows the Lord and the other does not. Here is the back cover blurb…

Forgiveness is a beautiful thing when you experience it in marriage… But what if you don’t? 

What happened in the hearts of Tony Perotta and Hope Williams after the affair was exposed and they went their separate ways? Did they ever struggle with memories from their past relationship, or with wishing things would have turned out differently? Was trust ever restored in their homes after their lives crashed and burned around them? Did they ever heal enough to enjoy their marriages as before, or were they even worse off after their sin was revealed? 

Their Separate Ways continues the saga the year after the exposure of Tony and Hope’s extramarital affair. It’s an honest and close-up look at the inner working of each of their hearts as they reflect on the painful memories resulting from that devastating choice. Experience with them the vast difference between couples who know true forgiveness and hope and those who don’t.

 **Who are your favorite characters in Their Separate Ways and why?

Probably Tony. I love writing about messed up men who are prone to sin and who struggle with doing the right thing (in the flesh) and failing miserably because they don’t ask God for help. Tony is one complex man who deceives himself like so many people tend to do.

**What do you hope readers walk away with knowing from Their Separate Ways?

I want my readers to see how having faith in God and a relationship with Jesus really does make a difference in the healing process, but it doesn’t make it without pain or consequences. I want the reader to also see that no matter how badly people want to change in the flesh, without faith it’s an uphill battle that most people can’t successfully fight.

**Where do you see youself in five years?

I’ll still be writing. Hopefully I will be making better money as a writer’s life is no way to get rich. But even if I never make more than a few thousand dollars a year, the fact that I’ve reached anyone’s heart at all keeps me going. I hope to continue to sell novels to publishers and increase my circle of readers and my ability to read people who need to read the types of stories I write.

**What other new projects do you have in the future?*

I have several different stand-alone titles and a series that I will be contracting soon. But if I tell you who they are with or what they are about before I sign the contracts, I’ll have to kill you. So mums the word.

(Preslaysa here: Mum, it is!!!)

**What is your favorite bible verse?

Easy question. Romans 8:11-13. I often sign my books with these verses below my name.

*How can readers get in touch with you?

I’m a lot of places. I run a sight called Edgy Christian Fiction Lovers. It’s a number of places. Just google the phrase and you’ll see it everywhere. I also have a number of blogs and my own personal website (that has a tab for each of my blogs) www.michellesutton.net

*Thanks for stopping by today!