Interview with Patricia Clark Blake about The Dream of Shiloh and #giveaway

Today we welcome Patricia Clark Blake to my blog. Patricia is giving away one copy of her new book The Dream of Shiloh to one person who comments. Please leave contact information. 

Glad to have you stop by, Patricia. Tell us about the book:

Seven weeks wed, friends in the making, Laurel Campbell and Patrick MacLayne have survived a perilous trek across three hundred miles of wilderness paths in Arkansas to reach his homestead in Greene County. The dream of Shiloh--the sense of home, acceptance and belonging they both seek--appears so distant, the MacLaynes fear it’s beyond reach. They know they can do the tangible parts: build a cabin, grow crops, and earn a livelihood. Yet, can they forge a marriage on friendship, a mutual faith, and vows spoken when they had known each other only four days?  What barriers lay in their path? 

They are strangers. Laurel is grateful but at the same time annoyed that she is “an obligation” to her new husband. He removed her curse of being the “Spinster of Hawthorn,” but can she accept the terms of the marriage? Mac has declared he will never love another woman. Just as in the case of his bride, events from his past loom over the hopes and plans he has made for his future. Perhaps, their dream of Shiloh is only that…a dream.

Have you always like to write?

 When I was a teen, a friend and I wrote romantic short stories that we shared only with each other.  They were about our “mad love affairs” with our favorite musicians, of course.  Then life set in and I taught school for forty years.  I have taken up writing again as my second career.  I should have started much earlier as it’s a passion that truly fills my days.

Just as your books inspire authors, what authors have inspired you to write?

So many writers have spoken to me as I have always been an avid reader.  I adore Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind.  Francine Rivers is at the top of my list.  I like the stories of Janette Okes.  I love writers who can build a saga and lose me in the lives of those characters for hours and hours.  Marie de Jourlet who wrote the Windhaven saga in the 1970’s could do that.  I also love John Jakes.

How did you decide upon the title of The Dream of Shiloh?

 Shiloh is the name of an actual church here in the county where I live.  The history in my novel has been researched, and the places I write about are real.  The story line and the characters are fiction.  Today, the Shiloh United Methodist Church is on the site of the original Shiloh church I wrote about in the book.

How important are names to you in your books? Do you choose the names of character in The Dream of Shiloh based on liking the way it sounds or the meaning? Do you have any name choosing resources you recommend?

Most of the names just came to me as the story grew.  Some of them are names from my genealogy, names of good friends whom the characters reminded me of, and names I copied from gravestones across the northern part of Arkansas as I researched the books.  There are also several names of actual people who were local professional people, public officials, and tradesmen which were taken from the census records of the period.  I used the census records extensively because they help me maintain a sense of authenticity by populating my settlements and towns with people of the ethnic background that actually lived in those areas at that time.  Only Laurel Grace’s name has a symbolic meaning.  Grace is also represented by the light beams on the cover of the book.

What were the challenges (research, literary, psychological, and logistical) in bringing it to life?

The two challenges I faced in writing The Dream of Shiloh were the limited amount of historical documentation of daily life in the Crowley’s Ridge region during the period.  I am grateful for a local historian named Herschel Eaton for four articles he published in The Craighead County Historical Quarterly about life in Greensboro.  That and the census records allowed my imagination and my personal knowledge of the area to create a daily life of the homesteader to go along with my story line.

     Secondly, as The Dream of Shiloh: An Arkansas Love Story is a sequel to In Search of Shiloh, A Journey Home Through Arkansas, I learned how difficult it is to rewrite the opening chapter for a second book in a saga.  I rewrote the opening chapter many times before I had a beginning for a book that could stand alone and as the second book in a series.

Share your bio:

Patricia Clark Blake is a new author whose Shiloh Saga novels are capturing audiences with their stories of relationships and the life and death struggles of early Arkansans who settled her native state. While paying attention to historical detail, her fictional account of frontier life is populated with people of strong faith and dedication to building a good future in their chosen state.

Pat’s interest in Arkansas is understandable as she spent her career teaching English, Spanish, oral communications, leadership, and serving as a counselor in Arkansas public schools.  Her educational credentials were earned at Arkansas State University. She also taught psychology at Black River Technical College and supervised counseling interns at ASU before retiring.

Early publications for Blake has been in juried psychological journals, but the novels of the Shiloh Saga are her first attempt at fiction.  Her first book, In Search of Shiloh: A Journey Home Through Arkansas was published in July of 2017.  This book, The Dream of Shiloh: An Arkansas Love Story is the second volume of the saga.  The third book, which will be entitled Beyond Shiloh is planned for late summer 2018.  Two additional books will complete the series.

Faith in God is a theme woven throughout the Shiloh novels and likewise is an important part of Pat’s life.  She teaches Sunday school and regularly volunteers in her church.  Two other fascinations are genealogy and Arkansas history, both of which have served her well in the Shiloh undertaking.  Readers may be interested to know that Pat actually lives in Jonesboro, Arkansas, near the historic Greensboro community, which was once a town and the place depicted in the Shiloh novels.

Pat proudly tells all she is blessed with a wonderful daughter and son-in-law who made her Nanna to a beautiful granddaughter and a fine grandson.  

Social media and buying links

Please follow me on Facebook at Patricia Clark Blake, my author’s page.

My web page is patriciaclarkblake.com.

Books are available at Barnes and Noble.com

                                    Amazon.com and on Kindle.com.