I love a good first line. The first line from your new release, Our Lady of the Roses, really sets the tone with this first sentence: “He looks like a gnocchi.” Five words, but the reader already has a sense of the tone and a cultural connection. Can you tell me more about the role of humor in the book and the Italian influence?

I love throwing opposites together because it makes a story ripe for laughs. Janetta and Bob, the main characters in Our Lady of the Roses, are 180 degrees apart in temperament, looks, desires, and beliefs. I’m not Italian; I’m mostly Irish with a smattering of German, English, and Welsh, and I was once selling my novels at a craft show, and I got to talking with the older woman selling jewelry next to me. We started talking about travels, and she told me she was Italian and had just came back from Italy. I told her I’d been to Italy and loved it. I then shared that I’d just come back from Ireland. She laughed and said, “You know I was a bit of an Italian snob, thinking that no place is as nice as Italy, but I went to Ireland last year, and I had to shut my mouth. I loved Ireland.” Like her, Janetta is a bit of an Italian snob, thinking no one has more style, elegance, and culture than the Italians, and she dismisses Bob for being a “gnocchi” a big, white, doughy blob. As the story progresses and Janetta tries to make Bob over, we come to learn that she is the one who needs a makeover because she’s all style and very little substance. 

A Shepherd’s Song was one of my favorite Christmas reads last season. In my review, I wrote, ” Characters and circumstances seemed more raw, more real, and less sterile than I often meet in Christian fiction. ” How do you account for that human authenticity rather than the sanitized characters that are all too common?

I like to figure out what makes a character tick, and I think delving deeply into a character’s past, wounds, and insecurities makes them more real. The more messed up a person is the greater the conversion can be in the story. A lot of people make the mistake in thinking that Christian fiction has to be sanitized. The Bible is not sanitized. It is brutally real in many parts. We read about the rape of Dinah, the slaughter of the innocents, David’s voyeurism, adultery, and murder. I try to portray characters realistically while trying to not cross into explicit, gratuitous sex. I like to write characters that have a heart, mind, and soul. In my opinion, too many “secular” stories lack impact because they don’t take into consideration a character’s soul. There has to be a moral structure for there to be conflict. If it were OK to have adulterous relations, there would be no reason for Hester Prynne to wear the scarlet letter and there would be no story. 

Most Highly Favored Daughter addresses a vile but prevalent social issue: sexual trafficking. Were you surprised by anything you learned in researching the issue?

While researching human trafficking for Most Highly Favored Daughter, I wasn’t too surprised about what I was uncovering because I’d seen some reports about it. However, what surprised me was that there was a saint who was trafficked, St. Josephine Bakhita. She was kidnapped in Sudan by Arab slave traders when she was a girl and was abused so badly, she forgot her name. The good and surprising news is that she eventually became a religious sister, forgave her traffickers and found hope and joy in Christ. I like to offer hope with my books, and I believe Sr. Josephine’s story can offer victims of human trafficking a lifeline. 

Sadly, I’ve also been surprised by how much of what I dreamed up in my mind for the book has actually come to pass. For instance, in the book I needed a means of getting trafficked children to the U.S., and I thought if I were a trafficker how would I get them here? I came up with the idea of shipping containers. Unfortunately, last week I heard a report out of Northern Ireland that 39 people died while being shipped in a truck. Also, I set some of the book during Pittsburgh’s first time hosting the Super Bowl. I spoke at a book club this summer and a woman there was a professor at a local university and teaches on women’s issues, and she confirmed that the two most trafficked events are the Super Bowl and the Olympics. 

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, where you live. How do you think being a “yinzer” influences your books, in style or in setting? Because it’s not something you can ever really get out of your blood.

They say write what you know, and I know Pittsburgh, having lived here all of my life. My oldest son went to college in Washington, D.C., and lived there for six years after college until he moved back to Pittsburgh a few years ago. Originally, I was going to set Most Highly Favored Daughter in .D.C. because I was familiar with the place and the book’s subject was bigger in scope, but I spoke at a woman’s group in Pittsburgh when I was in the first draft of the book, and I told them a little of what I was writing. The women there expressed how much they liked reading about Pittsburgh in my books, and they encouraged me to set the human trafficking in Pittsburgh because at that time it was only becoming apparent what a plague human trafficking was all over and not just in the big cities like New York City and D.C. 

You also do a lot of nonfiction writing alongside of your novels. Do they complement one another or do you find that one is always stealing time from the other? What writing projects are you working on next?

My writing career is a bit like Mr. Holland’s Opus, where “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans”. My other plan has always been to write novels, but paying, non-fiction work has always drawn me away. I enjoy all of the writing that I do and am grateful for any opportunity. While I often feel like I never have enough time to get everything done, writing so many non-fiction articles has made me a speedier writer. On the practical side, I’ve made it a goal to get my books into audio format. I’ve got the equipment, now I’ve got to master the technology and techniques. I’ve also made it a goal to become a better marketer of my work. When I first started writing, I thought that what I was creating was good, but I wasn’t sure if readers would agree. Now, with the release of my fifth novel and after from hearing from numerous readers that they love my books, I have more confidence in what I’m writing, and I believe there’s a larger audience for my work. I just need to find those readers. In the meantime, I know I have at least two more books percolating in my brain. I’m so weird in that I write both romantic suspense and romantic comedy. I believe I’ll start on my next romantic suspense, and it will be called Mother of Sorrows. That isunless another romantic comedy takes over and comes busting out of my brain. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing about Bob’s sister, Freddie, the single mom and reformed drug addict. I’ve tentatively called that book Morning Star. 

"In my opinion, too many 'secular' stories lack impact because they don’t take into consideration a character’s soul." @JaniceLanePalko #authorinterview Share on X

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Janice Lane Palko has been a writer for more than 20 years working as an editor, columnist, freelance writer, teacher, lecturer, and novelist.

She is currently the executive editor for both Northern Connection and Pittsburgh Fifty-Five Plus magazinesand the lead writer for the website PopularPittsburgh.com. She has had numerous articles published in publications such as The Reader’s Digest, Guideposts for Teens, Woman’s World, The Christian Science Monitor, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and St. Anthony Messenger. Her work has also been featured in the books A Cup of Comfort for Inspiration, A Cup of Comfort for Expectant Mothers, and Chicken Soup for the Single’s Soul.

Our Lady of the Roses is a spinoff from her first novel, St. Anne’s Day, a romantic comedy. She has also written the Christmas novel, A Shepherd’s Song, and the romantic suspense novels, Cape Cursed and the award-winning Most Highly Favored Daughter. Currently, she is working on another romantic suspense called Mother of Sorrows. 

Links:

Amazon: http://amazon.com/author/janicelanepalko

Website: janicelanepalko.com

Blog: thewritinglane.blogspot.com

Facebook: facebook.com/janicelanepalko.writer

Twitter: twitter.com/JaniceLanePalko

Instagram: instagram.com/JaniceLanePalko

Pinterest: pinterest.com/janicelanepalko

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