Interview with Caryl McAdoo and #Giveaway

Today I welcome Caryl McAdoo to my blog. Caryl is graciously offering a winner two books:  a VOW UNBROKEN and an ARC of THE  BEDWARMER’S SON. Be sure to leave a comment (with contact information) to enter. 

Welcome, Caryl! 

Where did you grow up and attend school? Are there any other authors in your family? 

I grew up on the northwest outskirts of Dallas in a country atmosphere where I had a pony then a horse, rabbits, cats, and dogs. I went to Letot Elementary School from the 1^st through the seventh grade A junior high when they first built it, my mother had gone there. It was pretty far from home, maybe 5 or 6 miles. Most the time, I rode a city bus, but sometimes I walked home. 

My mother wrote a book titled SO YOU WANT TO KNOW GOD AND HEAR HIS VOICE. And my granddaddy, her father, also wrote a fantasy book about a cat who wanted to marry the princess (all of them were cats) and the king sent him off on a dangerous mission. He was the best storyteller at naptime! J And I was his favorite. J He called me Lavonnee (my middle name is Lavonne… pronounced Lavon). He also called me a Prune-picker because I was born in California. My cousins born in Oklahoma and Arkansas were Okies and Arkeys, and I wanted to be a Cally! 

How did you get started writing? How old were you? What made you want to start? What did you enjoy reading as a child? 

I think in the fourth grade we wrote and made a book…Mine was titled “The Firstborn”, was about me, and had a blue cover. My first thoughts of being a writer came at the age of twelve in the seventh grade when homework was to write an essay “What I’ll be doing in the year 2000”…that was in 1962. I wrote I would be an inter-gallactically famous author jetting to planet to planet autographing books!

I loved visiting the school library and read every horse book I could get my hands on. Black Gold was my favorite by Marguerite Henry. I also remember loving to read the Word Book Encyclopedia there. I sort of lost my love of reading during my teen years, met husband at sixteen, married at eighteen, first son at nineteen and a second at twenty!

My husband actually got me started writing in the mid ’80s. He wasn’t a reader as a child but became an avid reader and got me started back. One awful book about Noah convinced him if that woman could get published, we could, too! So we wrote a 380 page book by hand titled “In the Beginning”. That book in part is now A LITTLE LOWER THAN THE ANGELS, a Biblical fiction series The Generations. 

How and when did you and your husband meet? Was it love at first sight? What does he think about your being an author? 

In the summer of 1966, we both worked for the Park & Recreation, I was a rec leader, and he mowed our park! One day he and a friend came in to eat lunch in the AC and then shoot hoops. I checked out a basketball to him. When he brought it back, he asked me out on a date.

We both stood each other up that first night. He had an uncle die and his mother took him out of school and drug him to south Texas. Let’s just say I didn’t have as good an excuse. J but Ron didn’t KNOW I went out with the first-- of three I’d made a date with for the same night—who got there, so apologized and asked me out again. I forgave him, and we went out every night after that all the way into November when his mother made him stay home a night.

We’ve been together until now, fifty years later. He told me the second night that he loved me, and I found out later that he’d told his mother he was going to marry me. Six weeks into our relationship, we’d decided to have a little boy first and name him Matthew…Matt McAdoo.

My husband is a gifted author in his own right. We wrote our first nine books together with both our names on it. He always hated the marketing—except for going to schools with our children’s titles, he loved that—and is thrilled that now only I have to be concerned about selling the books!

How old are your children? Do they read your books? Have any of them got the writing bug, as well?

My children are forty-seven, forty-six, forty-one, and thirty-four. I had to cry to get my oldest to read my first book on a plane ride. He said he liked it though and was glad he’d read it. I was taking him to the airport…to tell you the truth, I don’t know if the others have read one or not. Isn’t that just sad? My daughter has said she’s going to write a book, but hasn’t ever got around to it. She’d be the only one. 

Caryl McAdoo Author of Christian novels ~ historical and contemporary romance, Biblical fiction, and mid-grade!, Both independently and by Howard Books, a division of Simon and Schuster www.CarylMcAdoo.com //caryl.mcadoo@yahoo.com