Talkshow Thursday: Meet Sherri Stewart

Talkshow Thursday: Meet Sherri Stewart

Linda: Thanks for joining me today. Congratulations on your recent release, A Song for Her Enemies Where did you get the inspiration for the story? 

Sherri: I have been a fan of Corrie ten Boom since I was a teenager and read The Hiding Place. The atrocities that happened in Europe during World War II have always bothered me—that one man could rally a country to annihilate the Jews. Most of the survivors of the Holocaust have died now, and I’m afraid we’ll forget and become complacent, so I wrote this fictional account of a Jewish opera singer in Haarlem, a small town in the Netherlands. 

LM: Research is an important part of writing a book. How did you go about researching A Song for Her Enemies and did you unearth a particular fun fact you knew you had to include in the story? 

Sherri: I read every Corrie ten Boom book available. The two that I used the most in my book

were The Hiding Place and A Prisoner and Yet. I visited the Netherlands, stayed in Haarlem for a week, and toured Vught, which is one of the labor camps. I also toured Corrie’s house to get a feel for what houses were like in the book. One of the coolest things that happened was the fact that a block from Corrie’s house was a corner bakery and right across the street was a jewelry store. My book is about a girl who lives above a corner jewelry store, and who misses the aroma of freshly baked bread from the bakery across the street because the owners of the bakery vanished in the middle of the night. What are the chances that I’d find a bakery across from a jewelry store so close to Corrie’s? This was a sign from God to me that I should write this book. 

LM: What is your favorite part of the writing process? 

Sherri: Writing The End. Finishing the rough draft is hard. I’m a plantser, which means I write a synopsis of the book and then just glance at it from time to time. So each day when I open my computer to write, I’m not quite sure what will come out, and that makes me nervous. What if I don’t know what to write? What if the story isn’t logical or worse, what if it’s boring? 

LM: What do you do to prepare for writing (e.g. listen to music, set up in a certain location, etc.)? 

Sherri: You’re not going to believe this, but I need noise to write, so I always grab a coffee, sit in my big brown chair, and turn on the television. I don’t want the background noise to distract me so I choose cooking or travel shows, lectures on archeology or world history—that kind of thing. Then I make myself write 500 words. 

 

LM: What is your next project? 

 

Sherri: I am writing the sequel to A Song for Her Enemies. The book takes place four years after the war ended. Tamar is married and the mother of twins, and she’s living back in Haarlem, trying to live a normal life. But someone else is living in the house she grew up in, and they’ve turned her parents’ jewelry store into a dry cleaner. Tamar’s mother had told her years before that she’d hidden some of the family valuables behind a wall grate in the house, so Tamar breaks in. What she finds changes everything. 

LM: Where can folks find you on the web? 

Sherri:

Newsletter: : http://eepurl.com/gZ-mv9

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/author/sherristewart/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sherristewartauthor/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/machere

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/758893.Sherri_Stewart

Website: www.stewartwriting.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stewart_sherri/

Bookbub:  https://www.bookbub.com/profile/sherri-stewart

About A Song for Her Enemies:

After Nazi soldiers close the opera and destroy Tamar Kaplan’s dream of becoming a professional singer, she joins the Dutch Resistance, her fair coloring concealing her Jewish heritage. Tamar partners with Dr. Daniel Feldman, and they risk their lives to help escaping refugees. When they are forced to flee themselves, violinist Neelie Visser takes them into hiding. 

Tamar’s love for Daniel flowers in hardship, but she struggles with the paradox that a loving God would allow the atrocities around her. When Tamar resists the advances of a Third Reich officer, he exacts his revenge by betraying the secrets hidden behind the walls of Neelie’s house. From a prison hospital to a Nazi celebration to a concentration camp, will the three of them survive to tell the world the secrets behind barbed wire? 

 

A Song for Her Enemies is the story of a talented young opera singer and the bittersweet love that grows amid the tyranny and fear of World War II. Set against the backdrop of neighbors willing to risk their lives in the German-occupied, war-torn Netherlands, A Song for Her Enemies is an inspiring and beautiful novel celebrating the resilience of the human spirit and the determination of Christians in the face of persecution. It is a novel for everyone seeking to understand the pain of the past and be inspired to embrace hope for the future. 

Purchase Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Q8HF7Y5