Blog Tour Day One...

Following is the first of five questions I've posed to my friend and debut author Nicole Baart about her recently published novel After the Leaves Fall.

You’re from small-town Iowa , how in the world did you get connected with big-city publisher Tyndale?
My connection with Tyndale is very much a God-thing. I wasn’t seeking publication at all when suddenly the Lord began to very obviously open doors. It’s a bit of a long story, but suffice it to say that God is a careful planner, and He worked for almost a year to make paths cross and lives intersect so that He could carry out His will. I still get shivers when I think about it!
It pretty much all came down to an amazing couple that my husband lived with while he finished his denominational requirements for ordination in the Christian Reformed Church. (Try saying that five times fast!) We were living in Iowa at the time, but Aaron had to go to Grand Rapids for fourteen weeks and leave my young son, Isaac, and me home alone. While he was there, Aaron lived with a fantastic couple. They were all talking one night and my husband mentioned that I write. After a few more conversations, the couple told Aaron that they were friends with the senior acquisitions director at Tyndale. They mentioned that they would love to slip her one of my manuscripts.
I was floored. This was the opportunity of a lifetime--and I had nothing to present to my would-be publisher! Though I had other novels in the works, I didn’t feel that they would be suited for a Tyndale audience. So I spent one month writing the first 50 pages of a new novel--a novel that I thought would be appealing to Tyndale and yet that did not compromise my own beliefs about what constitutes God-honoring fiction.
I sent off my manuscript with a wish and a prayer, frankly, never planning on hearing from Tyndale at all. Then, a few months later, I got an email from the senior acquisitions director. She wanted the rest of the manuscript! I felt terrible because it was not done. After I sent off the first 50 pages, my family and I went through a number of personal issues that drew me away from my writing for a time. But Tyndale was incredibly gracious and they allowed me to finish the book. Four months later I was done. I sent off my work a second time, wishing and praying even more fervently than before.It was another four months before I heard from Tyndale again. This time, when they called it was to tell me that they loved the book and they wanted to publish it. Life has been a whirlwind ever since. Lots of fun, a little surreal, and wholly dependent on the God who brought this all to be!