Book of the Day with Author Katie Mettner

Today's Book of the Day Author is Katie Mettner. I "met" Katie through online sites geared to Christian writers wanting to help promote each other and good writing. She has some Christmas books with unique characters. You'll want to check them out. Just click on the covers to follow the links.

Welcome, Katie!

Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Hi Ruth, thanks for having me today! My name is Katie Mettner and I live in Northern Wisconsin, where I’ve lived all my life. I’ve been married to my husband Dwayne for 15 years and have three kids, one girl and two boys. I also live with two leopard geckos and a fish, all named after Japanese Anime characters, thanks to my daughter! I’m a ballroom dancer turned amputee and I’m an advocate for amputee’s right to a well fitting prosthesis. I’m also an advocate of organ donation, because it has so closely touched my life.

When did you know you wanted to be an author?

Hmmm, I guess the answer here is never. I’ve always loved to write, but up until a few years ago I didn’t even know you could self publish books. I always thought “Vanity Publishing” was a thing only rich people did. When I wrote Sugar’s Dance, my first novel (also centered around Christmas), I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I just wanted to write. When a friend read it she said, “You have to publish this!” I didn’t have a clue how. So after some investigating I found Amazon KDP and Createspace and the rest is history.

Can you tell us about your books?

I would love to! I write inspirational romance. I have several series, The Sugar Series, The Northern Lights Series, and the Snowberry Holiday series. There is some romantic suspense in the first two and the last series, Snowberry, is a new adult series. The stories are always centered around a particular Bible verse, though not Christian romance by any definition. They are real life journeys through pain and disappointment to find their true love. In each book one character has a disability they must overcome in order to find happiness. I think it is really important for people in special circumstances to see that they can find love and there is someone out there that will love them completely once they accept themselves. It isn’t easy, I know this from experience, but it’s worth it!

These particular books are centered around the Christmas season. What is it about Christmas that made you want to write them?

This is a funny story. The first in the Snowberry Series, Snow Daze, is a short novella I wrote last year for a contest. It was based loosely on my husband and mine’s relationship, which was as many romance readers call ‘instalove’. The whole book takes places in the span of a month, until the end where you get a prologue a year later. When I didn’t win the contest I published the story myself and was never more shocked to see how much people loved holiday stories! Snow Daze is a little bit spicier than the next few books in the series, but nothing graphic or outlandish. The sex in the story is there to help Snow get past her disability and accept the love Dully has to offer.  Here’s where the funny part comes in, it was meant to be a standalone novella, end of story. However, there were two readers in particular who kept saying they wanted to know more about this town and these characters. “Please write another book! We want to know about Dully’s brother, Jason”, who was mentioned once in the story! So, this spring I sat down and wrote December Kiss, Noel’s Hart (January 2015) and I am currently working on April Melody, out for Easter 2015.

Can you tell us a little bit about your characters?

The characters in this series are all based around one family, The Alexanders. In the first book Dully Alexander is a special education teacher who meets Snow Daze, a physician at the local hospital where he was visiting a student. We don’t meet any other Alexanders specifically in the book, but he tells Snow about his brother, Jason, who was born with spina bifida and has been in a wheelchair his whole life. Snow is also in a wheelchair and was struggling to accept that a man like Dully could love her knowing she would always be in a chair.

Jason Alexander, Jay as he prefers to be called, was a college student when Snow Daze was written. December Kiss opens with him newly graduated and looking for a job in his hometown of Snowberry. He meets December Kiss in a rather uncomfortable situation and has to accept help from her to get back to his car when his wheelchair breaks down. Jay is a good guy, a social worker, who has seen his share of pain and disparagement. He loves his little niece, Sunny, Snow and Dully’s daughter, and Sunny plays a big role in helping him overcome his fears about being a husband and father. December is an all around awesome woman who is a nurse at the same hospital where Snow works. She slowly falls in love with Jay’s charm, but she’s been hurt deeply by her own family, including her twin, Noel. Jay stumbles upon a chance to bring the two of them together and takes it.

Noel Kiss owns and operates seven cafes in southern Minnesota. When you meet him in December Kiss he’s feeling the heaviness of not having his twin sister with him and really wants to reconcile, so when Jay shows up he takes the unexpected opportunity to do so. When he goes to Snowberry for Christmas he meets Snow’s best friend Savannah Hart. He doesn’t know why, but he instantly knows she is going to need something from him. Drawn by the need to be close to Snowberry he buys an old closed down restaurant next door to Savannah’s Flower Emporium, so he can keep an eye on the woman who has found a way into his heart, even though he still has no idea why. This is where the series diverts from the Alexanders and moves into the rest of the town as a whole.

April Melody is Noel Kiss’s right hand woman. She runs the front of the café and does the books for him, grateful to find a job where her disability can stay hidden. A child singing star God threw her the biggest curveball anyone has ever seen and she’s still trying to figure out why. When a kitchen accident sends her to the local hair salon she comes face-to-face with the man who just moved into Old Lady Lifton’s apartment next door to her, a man who just goes by ‘Crow’.

I would love to include a little ditty about why you wrote this book, a funny story about something that happened while you were writing, a difficulty you had while writing, or simply a word to your readers.

I’m sure you can see by the descriptions of the book that each book is a play on names. Snow Daze was written because I had an old patient who would come to the doctor I worked for, and her name was Snow. I always thought it was a great name for a character and finally took the plunge and based a story around it. When it came time for Jay’s story I knew it was going to end on Christmas Eve, so December Kiss was just the best name ever! Noel’s Hart, well Savannah Hart steals his, you get it. I try to find titles that will intrigue people and make them wonder how I got there with the name. The story of how the character got their name from their parents is always revealed inside the book, so the reader is never disappointed.

Where we can find out more about you and read even more of your books?

You can find me lots of places!

Amazon

Twitter

Facebook 

Pinterest

www.katiemettnerbooks.blogspot.com