Songs for a Sunday: Author Guest Post + Giveaway

Songs for a Sunday JustRead Blog Tour

Welcome to the Blog Tour for Songs for a Sunday by Heather Norman Smith, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!

About the Book

Title: Songs for a Sunday

Author: Heather Norman Smith

Publisher: Iron Stream Fiction

Release Date: February 7, 2023

Genre: Christian Women's Fiction/Southern Fiction/Split Time

Two sets of sisters, generations apart--can one big sister's sacrifice teach the other about love and forgiveness?

1963: Twenty-year-old Annie dreams of managing the dance studio where she has trained since childhood and of marrying her high-society boyfriend. But when her younger sister with special needs gets pregnant, Annie is forced to set her dreams aside for the sake of family.

Present Day: Missy Robbins has always lived in her younger sister's shadow. When given the opportunity, Missy steps out of her comfort zone as stay-at-home mom of four to prove she's as good a singer as Erica. Missy's new pursuit puts her on a path to self-discovery and reclaiming her discarded faith. Until she discovers her grandmother has a sixty-year-old secret.

Will Missy conceal Grandma Annie's deception or will she be forced to reveal the hidden truth?

About the Author

Heather Norman Smith

Heather Norman Smith is a Christian fiction and devotions author. Her goal is to use the written word to entertain and encourage while illuminating the redemptive love of God. She also enjoys singing about Jesus. Heather is a proud life-long North Carolinian and aims to present the beauty of the Tar Heel State in her fiction. Her home is just outside Winston-Salem, N.C., where she lives with her husband and their four children, and several pets.

Connect with Heather by visiting heathernormansmith.com to follow her on social media or subscribe to email newsletter updates.

Guest Post

From Idea to Publication: On Writing Songs for a Sunday

By Heather Norman Smith

This book came as a title. In the shower. Nothing else at first. Songs for a Sunday.

My brain is often infiltrated by seemingly random thoughts and phrases, unsolicited ideas that don’t make sense at first. Sometimes they never make sense. But soon after those four words came to me, a picture followed. I saw a happy couple in an older model convertible on a country road. I remember thinking it was like they were out for a Sunday drive. Later, those people became Annie and Julian, a dating couple in their early twenties. The year was 1963, and they were on their way to a picnic at Hanging Rock State Park, with Annie’s baby sister tagging along in the backseat.

I don’t recall how any other parts of the story came to be. I don’t remember deciding that it would be a split-time story with Annie’s granddaughter, Missy, as the main character in the present-day timeline. But I loved every moment of writing this book. Researching 1960s Winston-Salem, North Carolina was a lot of fun, and finding quite a bit of myself in the character of Missy, for better or for worse, was interesting.

One issue I ran into was that the timeline didn’t cooperate the way I thought it should at first. Because the 1960s story hinges on some historical events, and because the “present day” story depends on the past one, I found myself, technically, writing about the future. By the calendar, Missy’s story takes place in late Fall and early Winter of 2023. I think that it’s a fun fact now, but at the time, when I was creating this story in 2020—which of course held challenges for most of us—I worried it would be a problem. As it happened, from the time I started pitching the idea until date of publication was a span of over two years, so now we’re much closer to “present day” than I anticipated while writing and all is well.

Writing Songs for a Sunday was a healing experience for me in some ways. There are hurts Missy overcomes that I have struggled with myself, and it was cathartic to write a resolution to her pain, which stemmed from feeling shunned by someone within the church. The book contains many themes and situations that I pray readers will find healing and inspirational to them as well. I’m so excited to share this story with readers.

Tour Giveaway

(1) winner will receive a signed copy of the book and a $25 Amazon gift card!

Full tour schedule linked below. The giveaway begins at midnight February 6, 2023 and will last through 11:59 PM EST on February 13, 2023. Winner 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!