A few days ago, I had the opportunity to interview my favorite historical fiction author, Lori Benton. Dig in below to see what she has to share about her writing journey.

(Make sure to ENTER THE DRAWING  below for two AUTOGRAPHED SETS OF THE KINDRED SERIES THAT LORI WILL BE GIVING AWAY.)

When did you first discover your love for writing? When did you realize that is what you wanted to do with your life?

I discovered fiction writing in the third grade. Already an avid reader, it never occurred to me that I could write a story of my own until my friend, Leah, did it first. The moment she showed me her story was a moment of revelation. I had to try writing one myself. It was an instant love affair. I never really stopped writing after that, but my main creative love had been and continued to be art. I had a wonderful art teacher in high school, attended an art college for a couple of years, and painted professionally for a few years after that. Then my husband and I decided to move across the country. We wound up living with my parents for several months in transition. With no place to set up my art studio I thought, “Well, you’ve had this notion in the back of your mind to try writing a novel one day. Why not start now?” I did, and never went back to art again except as a hobby. That was December of 1990.

What inspired you to write Mountain Laurel? Was it your first novel-length story?

Inspiration came from several sources I encountered in the early 2000s. One was Diana Gabaldon’s fourth Outlander novel, Drums of Autumn, in which she’d included a minor character, a young man enslaved on a North Carolina plantation who spoke with a Scottish accent because he’d been raised close to his masters, transplanted Scots. I knew Diana online so was able to ask if she’d made up this aspect or found it in her research. When it proved from research, I read the source, then did what writers do, asked a long string of what if questions until I’d created the plantation, Mountain Laurel, and populated it with characters. The time frame I chose to set their story in was a result of having seen The Patriot (with Heath Ledger) at about the same time and finding I liked the look of men in knee breeches! Those went out of style after 1800 and I didn’t want to write about war, so I chose the 1790s.

While Mountain Laurel was the first novel I wrote set in the 18^th century, I’d written several novels previously, of varying genres, that will never see the light of day. They were for practice.

How did cancer affect your writing? What inspired you to return to the story and to keep writing?

I was treated for cancer in 1999 after spending nearly a decade writing novels in the hope of publication. Though I was in remission by the fall (have been since), I struggled with a side effect called chemo fog, to the extent when I sat down to finish writing the novel cancer had interrupted, I found I couldn’t concentrate for more than a few minutes, recall half of what I’d written only days ago, or what I’d researched, or keep story threads straight. In short, my brain was too impaired to write. It would be five years before I was ready to roll again. It was during those five years I read Drums of Autumn and saw The Patriot, and the course of my storytelling was set.

How did you end up finding and signing with your agent?

I’d met my agent briefly at a 2010 writer’s conference, burdened with a severely overwritten manuscript she wasn’t interested in. “If it was half that length,” she said, “I’d say send it.” A few months later, several of my agent’s clients who blogged together held a contest, inviting writers to submit their first chapters, from which they chose six finalists, then passed them off to their agent to choose a winner. The prize was the winner’s manuscript passing the agent’s slush pile for a read—with no promise of representation. My manuscript, then called Kindred (which by then I’d edited down to something closer to an acceptable length), was chosen as the winner. The agent read it, loved it, and signed me as her client by the end of that year, by which point I had queried editors and agents, attended conferences, and met with editors and agents, for over fifteen years (writing daily for twenty).

Burning Sky was your first novel to be published. How did that transpire?

Dogged determination, I guess! I didn’t sit around waiting for Mountain Laurel to land me an agent, much less a publishing home (that would have been a long wait!). I wrote another novel. While researching Mountain Laurel, a process that lasted four years and included far more subjects and settings that wound up woven into Ian and Seona’s story, I became fascinated with the cultural intermingling between European settlers and Native Nations on the 18th-century frontier, including the stories of men and women captured and adopted—and I’ve always been a fan of Last of the Mohicans. I turned my focus to New York.

A thing to bear in mind is that the publishing industry can move at a glacial pace. Before my agent had begun submitting Mountain Laurel to editors (even before she became my agent), I’d finished writing Burning Sky, so she had that in hand too. During the 18 months it took her to find a publisher interested in my work, I’d written another 18th-century novel, The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn. I barely had that one finished and a proposal to my agent when I learned that book, and Burning Sky, were to be my first contracted books. I signed that contract in March of 2012.

Mountain Laurel was published almost twenty years after you first started the story. Were you ever tempted to give up on the novel or writing? If so, how did you manage to overcome the doubts and persevere?

I was never tempted to give up on writing after those five years of chemo fog passed. The thing that changed was that writing no longer held the place of an idol in my life, as it had pre-cancer. I’d learned to hold the dream of being published in an open hand and to form my prayers to align with God’s will, not mine. For instance, rather than pleading for doors to open, I asked Him to close every door to publication and keep them closed, no matter how often I knocked, if what lay on the other side of that door wasn’t His best.

As for Mountain Laurel, it saddened me a little that it languished and that I wasn’t able to give readers an answer to their most frequently asked question after the publication of Burning Sky. “Will you ever write more about Joseph Tames-His-Horse?” By then I knew that if Mountain Laurel was ever contracted and a sequel desired, that would be the book to provide the rest of Joseph’s story. I’m thrilled to have finally had the opportunity to weave the story worlds of Burning Sky and Mountain Laurel into that dual sequel, Shiloh.

How long does it take you to write a book?

It varies tremendously due to life circumstances. The longest it’s taken is four years (Mountain Laurel). The shortest was ten months (The Wood’s Edge). On average I need 18 months to two years to write a book. I take a few months off between books now to rest and refuel, while the work of editing and promotion is ongoing.

What do you like about the 18^th century? Do you anticipate staying with that century for your writing?

I do, though there are a few other things I’d like to write about and have written about, which have yet to find a publishing home.

What intrigues me about the 18^th century is the notion of migrating cultures, particularly the push into what Europeans considered the Appalachian frontier. Of course, it wasn’t truly a frontier. There were Native Nations living there as they had for centuries. The collision of these cultures—the result of trade, friendship, war, settlement, or evangelism—and its consequences keeps me returning with new stories to tell.

The mountain frontier wasn’t the only place this collision happened. Particularly in the southern colonies (later states) it took place in countless homes, back yards, and fields where people of African, Native, and sometimes European heritage were denied their freedom and forced to labor under harsh deprivation. I’m inspired by the accounts of men and women on either side of any of these cultural or social divides who had the compassion and conviction to see the “other” as human beings created in God’s image, deserving of dignity, respect, and forgiveness.

Now that you’ve finished the Kindred Series, what’s next?

I’m writing a new novel set in the 18^th century, in Scotland and Virginia, but readers may have a long wait since as I’ve barely started it. I have a few other projects with my agent so… time will tell what’s next.

In your author’s notes for Mountain Laurel, you include a quote about how slave narratives written in the decades before the Civil War worked in the hearts of readers to bring about change. Do you seek to bring about change with your writing? If so, what change do you want to inspire?

I suspect most writers hope to influence readers with their writing, if only to provide a few moments of light in what might have been a burdensome day. As far as the issues of this world go, current or historical… when I write a story it’s the characters, time, and setting that choose the relevant issues for me and the deeper spiritual themes are most often birthed from those. I explore them with all the empathy (as a human being), objectivity (as a researcher), and compassion (as a sinner saved by grace) I can muster and hope I don’t go to preaching in the pages but leave conclusions for readers to draw for themselves as they experience the characters’ choices play out, undergirded by Biblical truths of sowing and reaping. I do hope readers who turn the last page of my novels find themselves drawn closer to Jesus than they were before they began the book, or in some way encouraged in their walk with Him. That’s where true change flows from.

What role does your faith play in your writing?

With each novel I write, each character’s journey, I’m essentially telling God, “This is how I see You working on this earth, in the hearts of men and women. This is what You do for us, in us, through us. And it’s glorious.” My novels are my offerings of worship, from the deepest places in my heart.

Any further advice for aspiring writers?

Practice holding your writing dreams in an open hand before God. Be willing to submit your dreams and plans to His timing and purpose, with trust in His goodness, even as you practice daily the art and discipline of writing, sponging up knowledge wherever you find it (it’s spilled everywhere online these days). But first make certain you have that relationship with Jesus, attainable only through acknowledging your sin, believing that He paid the ultimate price for your sin through His crucifixion and resurrection, then confess Him as your Savior and ask Him to be Lord over your life from this day forward. Then you’ll have your Creator, who knit you to love words and the telling of stories, in control of your writing journey and everything else that concerns you. Writing for publication isn’t an easy path no matter how it looks from the outside. It will stretch and challenge you in ways you cannot anticipate. I wouldn’t want to navigate it without God’s hand in mine.