Beauty in the Binding: Author Interview: Nellie by Amy Walsh

Nellie Blog Tour

Welcome to the Blog Tour for Nellie by Amy Walsh, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!

About the Book

Title: Nellie
Series: Apron Strings #2
Author: Amy Walsh
Publisher: Walsh Mountain Publishing
Release Date: February 15, 2024
Genre: Historical Romance

Finances are tight for the O’Dwyer family who live on a mountain outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1931. Life gets even harder when their beloved Dadaí must cease work as a coal miner to become a patient at the West Mountain Sanitarium.

Nellie is her preferred name, but family and friends have heard Mam shout “Fenella Aileen O’Dwyer!” all too often with the countless predicaments she got herself into throughout childhood. So, it’s not altogether surprising when Nellie impulsively accepts a job as an assistant cook at the Clarinda House in a case of mistaken identity -- though she’s the last person her family would ask to prepare a meal.

Fortunately, along with determination, a talent for acting, and the gift of blarney, Nellie has Mrs. Campbell’s Cookery Book, a treasure she discovered at a Red Cross drought relief sale.

As her reluctant admiration for her employer grows, Nellie wishes she could be the sort of truthful woman of faith that Mr. Mason Peale esteems. If she confesses all, will she lose her job along with the friendships she’s formed at Clarinda House?

PURCHASE LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon

Excerpt

Through the small window, she caught glimpses of Mason conversing with Mam, as on the straight stretches he turned his head to smile at Mam and even laughed a couple of times.

How she wished she could hear what Mam was saying. Was she telling him stories about her antics over the years? Nellie cringed, thinking of a few tales her father often told when company came. One of Daidí’s favorite memories took place when she was Johny’s age, and she replaced Father Doyle’s prayerbook with her cousin’s volume of Grimm’s Tales within the pulpit. With its cover being a similar shade of brown, the priest hadn’t noticed before he started his homily. Father must have been quite distracted that day, for he began reading the page where Nellie had marked her favorite tale with his bookmark. He read all the way down to the part of “Sleeping Beauty” where the frog appeared to the queen while she was bathing and promised her a babe would be born within the year before he slammed down the volume and shouted, “What heresy is this?” Later a fearful Nellie confessed she had just been trying to help him make his sermons more interesting.

About the Author

Amy Walsh

Amy Walsh writes historical and contemporary romance, mysteries, speculative fiction, and women’s fiction. She is a 5th-grade writing teacher in an urban public school. Amy and her husband, Patrick, have three children. Amy considers herself greatly blessed in the roles God has given her as an earthling, including aspiring wordsmith, teacher of youngsters, nature appreciator, tea aficionado, avid dessert fan, book fanatic, lover of family and friends, and Christ-follower.

Connect with Amy by visiting walshmountainpublishing.com to follow her on social media and sign up for email updates.

Author Interview with Amy

Q: What was the inspiration behind Nellie?

Amy: Sometimes stories just pop into my head, inspired by a Bible verse, a house we drive by, song lyrics – you name it. But in the case of Nellie, since this was a multi-author project, I was assigned a decade, and there were series requirements. For example, I needed a character to show spiritual growth, and she had to live in a small town or outside of a city. She had to be in need of a cookbook. I also had my own bucket list of things to try. I’d wanted to experiment with twins and mistaken identities – and with the age gap trope. I thought how fun it would be to have a character who would have been labeled with ADHD if she was in a 2024 classroom. Additionally, I wanted to include real life characters I had fallen in love with while writing my last book, Voices in the Sanitorium, and I wanted an Irish heroine. To all these variables, I also added nuggets I found in old newspapers and in files at the Lackawanna County Historical Society. The last piece of the puzzle was when I saw the cover model. She looked like she would be mischievous and a tad dramatic. That’s when I knew I wanted Nellie to be an aspiring actress, and all of the variables settled into a storyline in my mind.

Q: How long did it take you to write this story?

Amy: It probably took me about a month to write the rough draft of Nellie last summer. As a schoolteacher I have the summers off. A few of those days I was probably typing twelve to fourteen hours straight. It takes me much longer to write during the school year.

Q: Do you have a favorite quote from this book?

Amy: I do! I think it’s extra special because it stemmed from a “God sighting” during a moment when I needed to be reminded that God must delight in variety. I was beating myself up a little, wishing I could be more detail-oriented, more serious. I probably had lost a piece of mail or something–I can’t remember. But I looked up the hill from our house and for the first time I noticed that a poplar tree looked like it was whirling with activity even though it wasn’t the least bit windy. The surrounding trees appeared very somber, still, and stately. That inspired this passage:

She rolled onto her back again and rested her hands under her head. Why had God decided to create poplars just as He had? With leaves that bristled and danced in the faintest wind even when other trees stood solemn and immovable. Was there a message from the Creator in these heart-shaped leaves with silver underbellies? In how from a distance, these trees looked like a swarm of joyful fairies celebrating sunlight?

Q: In the story, Nellie uses Mrs. Campbell’s Cookery Book. Can you share a favorite recipe of your own?

Amy: I do have a favorite recipe of my own. I wanted to invent a recipe to go with my novel Elsie Whitmore about a schoolteacher whose YouTube video goes viral and captures the attention of Graham Thurston, a former teen superstar now producer. In his attempts to woo her, Graham Googles ‘world’s most loved dessert’ and has his housekeeper make it (Sticky Toffee Pudding). I wanted to make a Pennsylvania version of the dessert that included apples. This is what I came up with, “Mrs. Whitmore’s Upside-Down Apple Sticky Toffee Cupcakes”: https://walshmountainpublishing.com/2021/10/31/a-recipe-inspired-by-elsie-whitmore/

Q: What do you hope readers take away from Nellie?

Amy: I’ve already alluded to one takeaway with my poplar tree quote – to appreciate the variety of personalities God created, and to stop comparing oneself with others. Piggybacking on that is that message that God can use us as we are, both our gifts and our deficits, to bring Him glory, and to help others. The hero of the story has his own lessons to learn. In the midst of the Great Depression, Mason sees acting as a frivolous aspiration. He thinks differently after the Actor’s Guild of Scranton donates the proceeds of an entire weekend of performances to the Drought Relief Fund. (Which actually happened!)

Q: Would you share something about yourself that most readers would not know?

Amy: Something random. I am allergic to newsprint. How inconvenient! I have to take a Zyrtec to read a newspaper. And if it’s an old and dusty book, I have had to take Benadryl on occasion. To follow up with the allergy theme–I adore cats. My husband is severely allergic to them so for several years of married life I was catless. However, we discovered there were “hypoallergenic” cats when my youngest was a toddler. We’ve had cats ever since!

Q: How long ago did you start writing?

Amy: I started writing poems, songs and short stories by the end of first grade. I wrote a short YA novel in high school but never showed it to anyone but my writing teacher. I wrote my second novel, A Misplaced Beauty, while I was on maternity leave for my youngest child. (She just turned eighteen, so that was quite some time ago.) This time I shared it with friends and family. Once I went back to teaching, I needed to focus on my home kids and my school kids, so I went back to writing songs, poems, and short stories. It wasn’t until Election Night of 2020 that I began another novel. I had been teaching online for months due to COVID, all my children’s activities, and my ladies ministry activities had been curtailed, and there I was crawling out of my own skin with stress over what would be the outcome of the election. I remember thinking, ‘I need a break from reality. Time to take on a big writing project.’ I stayed up most of that night, and by early morning I had almost ten thousand words written of Elsie Whitmore. It’s been one writing project after another ever since!

Q: What is your favorite thing about being a writer?

Amy: I have many favorite things, but one is that just like writing has been a break from reality for me, I like giving readers the same respite. I’ll never forget the reaction of a dear older woman from my church after reading A Misplaced Beauty. She wasn’t in the habit of reading novels, but she gave the book a try to support me. After reading it, she was just about glowing as she talked about the characters as if they were real people, and was just so excited to talk about some of the happenings in the novel. I realized that I had given her the gift of forgetting her health issues and her grief over having lost her husband while she was living within the pages of the novel.

Q: Do you prefer to read ebooks or physical copies?

Amy: Ooo! Hard question. I love physical copies of books by my favorite authors. I collect antique books, especially children’s books. I also will pick up just about any used hardcover book that is a shade of blue/green since my first floor has a beachy aesthetic. However, most of my reading is done on the Kindle app of my phone – out of convenience.

Q: How many bookcases are in your home?

Amy: Eleven. And sadly, I have boxes of books in the attic. And piles in random corners. I’m a bookaholic.

Q: What do you like to do when you are not writing?

Amy: Read. Ha ha! Even when I am doing chores, driving my car, or exercising, I am listening to audiobooks. I love to walk outdoors. I love racquet sports – ping pong, tennis, and pickleball. I enjoy playing card games and board games with family and friends. Singing – I love practicing with my church’s praise team, and when we have karaoke time. I love entertaining. Oh – and social media. I love interacting with others in my groups on Facebook. I hope you’ll stop by the Apron Strings Book Series group or Wisdom, Whimsy, and Wordsmithing and chat sometime!

Tour Giveaway

(1) winner will win a $50 Amazon gift card, print copies of Nellie and Voices in the Sanitorium, and some historical memorabilia from the West Mountain Sanitarium!

Full tour schedule linked below. The giveaway begins at midnight February 12, 2024 and will last through 11:59 PM EST on February 19, 2024. Winners will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.

Giveaway is subject to JustRead Publicity Tours Giveaway Policies.

Enter Giveaway

Follow along at JustRead Tours for a full list of stops!