A chance to sit down and talk with award-winning author Julie Lessman, is always a treat. You can’t walk away without being inspired by her testimony and commitment to serve God. It’s the same kind of inspiration you get when you read her books!

Let's start with your leading ladies and what inspiration did you draw on to create such well-developed ladies that your readers can relate to?

Well, the first one of course is the heroin in Passion Most Pure, the first book. And that is Faith. And the reason that I could draw from that is because Faith is my spiritual self. I mean, everything she does in the book is exactly what I do. In a sense, it was my love letter to God. It was my first book. And I wanted to just infuse my spirituality into that book, which is what I do. In other words, I pray about absolutely everything. I talk to God.

 I get mad at him, you know. There's a scene in the middle of the book where she literally turns her back on God. That actually happened to me. I was so angry at him that, in my mind, I just turned around to walk away. And I felt like I walked into a room with three walls. It was like I was cornered. And I remember getting so mad saying, I can never go back to my other life. I can't turn my back on you because I'll be miserable. I'll be ruined. You've ruined me for the world. I mean, I remember that so clearly.

I call myself a CDQ, which is a caffeinated drama queen. And I am, and that's what I did. So, Faith is me. I've got a temper, just like her. That's my spiritual self.

Charity is my carnal self. She is who I was before I became a Christian. I was selfish, I was promiscuous, I was, you know, sibling rivalry. You know, I was so jealous of my sisters. I have nine sisters and three brothers, or I did, many of them are passed on now. I'm number 12 out of 13. But I was just like Charity, and I was like a little vamp. Not that, I mean, I wasn't good looking or anything, but I tried, you know. No, I never believed that, but I was a wild child of the 60s and 70s. So, Charity is me.

So yes, those two characters in particular are drawn from my...alter ego, as you might say, I guess.

Lizzie is my dreamer self. Lizzie is my love for romance. I literally did not write my first book until I was in my mid to late 40s. It might have been 50s even. Yeah, it was 50s. I'm sorry. And I wouldn't do it because I would not allow myself to read romance or write romance because, like the world, a lot of the world looks down on romance. Like, oh. If you read romance, you're not a businesswoman, you're not this, you're not that, you know what I'm saying? And so, I was kind of a little bit of a snob that way too.

And one day I'm sitting in a beauty salon and I'm sure I've told you this story in the past where I was reading a Newsweek cover article that it had a Christian rock concert on the front. It was in 2001, right about the time the Passion of the Christ came up. And remember Hollywood.

Mel Gibson threw Hollywood back on its heels because they went, Oh my gosh, there's a Christian market. And so, I was reading this Newsweek article and what it was saying on the inside, it was that Christian music, Christian books and Christian movies was, a multi-billion dollar industry that was not being realized. It was there and nobody was looking at it. And so I went, I'm sitting there reading and I felt like in my spirit, now's the time to finish your book.

I like to think it was the Holy Spirit. It was one of the books that I started when I was age 12, after I read Gone with the Wind. I was so enamored of that book that I immediately sat down like a million other, you know, American girls, I'm sure, and started writing the great American novel, you know? And I didn't have the audacity to think that I could do Civil War like Margaret.

So, I did World War I with an Irish Catholic family. I wrote 300 pages when I was 12. And that book is what was my debut novel some 40 years later. So that's the story on that. So, Lizzie's my dream. To continue with Lizzie, she's a dreamer. She has a nose in a book, romance all the time.

And I finally, when I was sitting there and, I thought, no, I can't write a romance. And it's like God set me free. Like he said, I created you for this. It was such a deep desire of mine to write romance. I mean, because I never had love growing up. So, I wanted that. I wanted to show what kind of love and marriage that God could give you if you let him.

And so, it was like he literally took the shackles off it. I couldn't care less what anybody thought of me writing romance and so I did. So, Lizzie's my dream herself. So those three components are all me.

Marcy, on the other hand...Well, Marcie's a real stabilizer, which is something I did not have growing up. Marcie is the mother I wished I had. My mom died when I was 16. She did not like me.

When I wrote this book, my first book I was 12. My little sister used to beg me to read it to her and I would. And my little sister was my mom's favorite. And so, she said, Julie, she says, let mama read it. So, I gave it to mama to read. And I was so excited. I waited a couple of days and I finally didn't hear anything from mama. She didn't say anything. So, I said, well, mama, I said, you know, what do you think of it so far?

And she said...I'm sorry Julie, but it was so dry. I couldn't get past the first page. That was what my mother said to me That's the kind of relationship I had. When my younger sister Katie, who I loved with a passion, was a baby mama really loved her. And so, if she did something wrong mama blamed me because she thought I was a bad influence. So my mother and I had just no relationship at all. I didn't like her. She didn't like me.

When she died when I was 16, I remember thinking to myself, oh, well, I guess I can get some mileage out of this at school because people feel sorry for me. I mean, that's how cold I was. That's how removed I was from that woman. So, when I became a Christian at, you know, age 23, it's like God changed everything for me. He healed my heart.

And so I…Marcy was in the original book when I was 12, but of course when I was in my 50s, I fleshed her out because I had already been a mother and I knew what type of mother God wanted. What He wanted mothers to be like, a stabilizer, loving, who dealt with her own sins.

Well you know about Marcy's struggle in book three. She deals with her the way God wants us to deal with them. So, Marcy was my heroine I just admire her a lot and that's the kind of mother I wanted to be and that's the kind of mother I wished I had

 

Can you tell us a little bit about your inspiration behind each of your heroes?

Marcy and Patrick's marriage is based on my husband's mine. There’re the arguments, there's the fighting, but there's the cohesiveness of having God in the middle of our relationship. So, he's like Patrick.

Anyways, my heroes are, from my head of what I love in a man. I want a man to be a man. I believe God made men to be respected and women to be cherished. I mean, it's the whole Garden of Eden thing. I mean, what women want more than anything is to be cherished and loved.

They can say they want respect and respect is good, but deep down in our hearts I believe they want to be cherished and loved. I believe that's priority number one. And for men that's not priority number one. For men it's respect. They want to be respected by the woman they love. If the woman rides roughshod on them, their respect plummets. I really think it's a product of the Garden of Eden.

Adam abdicated his responsibility. He was right next to her when they were tempted. It was his responsibility as her headship to step in and say, no, you're not doing this. And he abdicated it to her and followed her lead. And since that day, women have been trying to lead men in marriages, in relationships and be the head. And that's not the way it was meant to be. 

In the bible it says women respect your husbands and husbands cherish your wives. I mean He lays it out pretty clearly and I believe it's cause and effect. I have proved it in my marriage. I'm a real strong-willed person my husband's a real laid-back easy guy. I could have led him around by the nose, well probably not. That's why I love him because he wouldn't.

Let me tell you something, my respect level for him went right to the roof. That's what I mean, cause and effect. And he would tell you this to this day, if he walked in here, he would say, my wife taught me what a marriage is. My wife taught me how to love because I, not because I'm good. Oh Lord, no. All I did was apply biblical precepts to my marriage.

If he did something to make me mad instead of screaming back and yelling at him, trying to get back at him, I just started praying for him. God bless him. God open his eyes to you and help me to be the wife he needs me to be. And then I would serve him. By serve him I mean I wouldn't retaliate in any way. I'd just go on and still do what I would do, fix him dinner and give him a note, a sweet romance note ,no matter what he did. That was the way I would do it. 

It was the blueprint for our marriage. And to this day, we have a marriage exactly like Marcy and Patrick's. It's not perfect, but it's absolutely as perfect as you can get on this planet is what I think. And so that's Patrick.

Colin, oh my gosh, Colin is the ultimate bad boy. I am an author who loves bad boys. I think I do because it's part of that aspect of, I want, man who's strong enough to stand up to me. Who is not going to let me lead him around by the nose. And a man who's, I guess, almost kind of world bad. That's a little bit of my carnal self, I guess.

So, every one of my heroes has a strength, whether he's a bad boy, whether he used to be a bad boy and now he's serving God, there's a real self, not self-respect, but they're not going let people push them around.

That's why my heroes have that component. I think that's why you're attracted to them. And I think that's why romance exists.

It puts a foundation of humanity in there. And it gives you an opportunity to explore who they are, where they came from, why they're that way. Did their mother, you know, control the father? And so, they're retaliating because the natural bent of a man that God put in a man is to be the head of the family.

What I liked about Collin, he was emotional enough to relate to women. That's why they liked him. That's why he was a bad boy. He had a sensitivity about him, but the baggage he carried from his past hampered it. And so, it was really fascinating for me to take that Component and bring him along and see what it took to bring him to Christ. I normally don't like real emotional men, sounds weak to some people.

Mitch oh gosh Mitch is one of my favorites I'd have to say Mitch and Luke are my two favorite heroes. I just love him. I can't fully tell you why. I like the totally masculine, gruff type, no nonsense. He's not going take any garbage.

And actually, I had a dad like that. If you tried to give him an excuse, he'd go, cut the excuses. So, you were down to bare bones and you had to be honest. That was a little too gruff for me. But Mitch, he just doesn't pull any punches. He doesn't talk, not a lot of words. It's sparser. I like that. I like that a lot in a man. You know, he's a no-nonsense man whose desire for the woman he loves knows no bounds. That's why I have Mitch and Charity as the sexiest couple. I mean, he's just, can't get enough of her, and she can't get enough of him. And that component is something that I really think we need more in marriages.

Brady is a man who loves God more than anything else, but since no one is perfect, he had to have a dark past. So again, you've got a strong man of God, but we all have clay feet. Christians with clay feet, that's what we are. We're going stumble, we're going fall. And that's the beauty of Christ in our lives because to see a life transformed, I think that's one of the most, richest lessons you can learn and read in a book. So that's why I like to start with bad boys and, you know, lumps of clay and just mold them to get what really God intended them to do.

 

We have so much more that we discussed with Julie. Be sure to listen to the episode or watch it on Rumble! You won’t want to miss the revelations and exciting news on Julie’s upcoming release on October 1st. In fact you pre-order A Dare and a Prayer here!

 

You will want start from the beginning, so we’ve each book in the O’Connor family series with links to purchase on Amazon. Have fun falling in love with the O’Connor’s!

 

Prequel:  A Light in the Window

Book 1: A Passion Most Pure

Book 2: A Passion Redeemed

Book 3: A Passion Denied

Book 4: A Hope Undaunted

Book 5: A Heart Revealed

Book 6: A Love Surrendered

Book 7: A Wing and a Prayer

Book 8: A Hope and a Prayer

Book 9:A Dare and a Prayer