For your chance to win a FREE copy of Never the Bride, post a comment below!

Jessie Stone has spent thirty-five years fantasizing about marriage proposals, wedding dresses, and falling in love.  She’s been a bridesmaid eleven times, waved dozens of couples off to sunny honeymoons, and shopped in more department stores for half-price fondue pots than she cares to remember.

But shopping in the love-of-her-life department hasn’t been quite as productive.  The man she thought she would marry cheated on her.  The crush she has on her best friend Blake is at very best…well, crushing.  And speed dating has only churned out memorable horror stories.

So when God shows up one day, in the flesh, and becomes a walking, talking part of her life, Jessie is skeptical. What will it take to convince her that God has a better love story than one of the thousands she’s cooked up in her journals?  Will she trust Him with her pen when it appears her dreams of being the bride are forever lost?

A romantic comedy with a spiritual twist, Never the Bride is what it means to lose control—and getting more than any woman could ever imagine.

Post a comment for your chance to win a FREE copy of The Shape of Mercy!

Women of all ages will appreciate this highly-readable, layered, and fast-paced story about self-discovery at all stages of life.  With rich undertones of intrigue and romance, this contemporary novel with a historical twist explores personal blinders and how upbringing and conditioning can shape people to judge others in ways that can lead to unhappy consequences.

Lauren Durough is a college student who finds herself on the road to self-discovery as she is hired by octogenarian Abigail Boyles to transcribe the journals of Mercy Hayworth, a seventeenth-century victim of the Massachusetts witch trials. Almost immediately, Lauren finds herself drawn to this girl who lived and died four centuries ago. The strength of her affinity with Mercy forces Lauren to take a startling new look at her own life, including her relationships with Abigail, her college roommate, and a young man named Raul.  But on the way to the truth, will Lauren find herself playing the helpless defendant or the misguided judge?  Can she break free from her own perceptions and see who she really is?

Readers will identify with Lauren’s struggle to break away from society’s expectations and her attempt to strike out on her own while figuring out what parts of her own story to hold on to.

I had the privilege of asking Susan Meissner a few questions, check out what she had to say:

1. How long have you been writing?

I’ve been putting thoughts down on paper since I was in second grade, but I’ve found my greatest joy in writing novels and have been in this niche of writing for last six years.

2. Did you know since you were a child that you wanted to write or did God totally blindside you?

I’ve always loved to write, even when I was little. I wrote lots of once-upon-a-time stories in grade school, a ton of teenage drama poetry in high school and then in my 20s when I was newly married and working fulltime, and then in my 30s raising four kids, I let the creative writing slide because I was afraid to see if I was really any good at it. I became editor of a small town newspaper and did the journalism thing for 10 years. But there were stories inside me clawing to get out. I realized I’d rather live with rejections than regrets. I quit my 50-hour a week job at the newspaper in 2002 to write my first novel, “Why the Sky is Blue” and wrote it in 10 weeks. In 2004, Harvest House Publishers released it. I wrote eight more for Harvest House in the next four years.  My latest book, The Shape of Mercy, was published by WaterBrook Press.Writing is an itch God gave me and I am restless when I am not scratching it. I think He gives everyone an itch of some kind, to bless you, bless others, and bless Him.

3. Without spoiling the story, tell our viewers about The Shape of Mercy.

The Shape of Mercy has a definite romantic thread but there are a lot of other threads that make up the fabric of the plot. It deals with a college lit major, a reclusive 83-year-old librarian and the 300-year-old diary of a victim of the Salem witch trials. The story in a nutshell is this: the lit major, an only child who grew up in a very affluent family and feels pressured to live up to the family dynasty, agrees to transcribe the diary, which belonged to an ancestor of the librarian. The librarian has her own reasons for having the diary transcribed, and of course the victim of the Salem witch trials was innocent, as nearly all the people executed in Salem in 1692 were. So there are some sad, some poignant moments in this book. But I think we can learn from the past. We have to or we’re doomed to repeat it, so the saying goes. So even though I don’t race backward through time to save a girl who was falsely accused and executed for witchcraft, we learn from her. And that’s the next best thing. I am creating a blog for this book to allow readers some interaction with these characters after they’ve finished the book. They will find it at: http://theshapeofmercy.blogspot.com

4. How do you balance time with your family and your career as a writer?

We live on a busy planet and I am forever wishing there was more time to do everything. I feel that I’m in a hurry much of the time. Not so much because a deadline is looming but because there’s so much that needs to get done in a day and writing often takes a back seat to the day job, the treasured demands of home and family, and the business aspect of being in an industry where self-promotion is part of the wonder of being published.  I am learning to appreciate that I don’t have the luxury of writing whenever I want, for as long as I want. I think I gain perspective by having to think about my stories in the in-between time. Stressing out over lost writing time doesn’t provide any insights to the story at all, so my challenge is to use time away from the writing desk as marinating time. It’s good for the story, it’s seasoning the story. In the end, most of us choose how we will spend the hours of each day given us. Sometimes it feels like we’re in the hamster wheel. But we really do have the ability to parcel out the day. When it feels like I have too much to do, it’s more likely that I have taken on more than I should have and I need to practice saying: “God comes first, family second, career third.”

5. Tell us when you are inspired to write the most? (do you write best in the morning, with music playing, at night-hiding from children, etc.) What does your family think about you being such a gifted writer?

Three of my four children are adults, with just one still in high school, so I have the hours between 9 and 5 every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to write. I direct the small groups ministry at my church and that part-time job takes me away from the writing desk on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I love writing at night when everybody’s asleep but I hardly ever do it! In the morning, my family’s non-writing life (which I am very much a part of) begins and I need to be awake for that! I write during the day in the downstairs den, on a desktop computer, not a laptop. No music. No outside noise. Coffee in the morning and Diet Coke with Lime in the afternoon. Sometimes when I need to hatch an idea I will go haunt my local Starbucks. But the actual writing happens in quiet seclusion. My family is very proud of me but they still want to know at the end of the workday what’s for dinner. They keep it real for me!

6. What advice would you give to an aspiring author?

If you write, you are a writer. There’s a lot you can control about your life as a writer and just as much that you can’t. You can control how much you work on your craft, how much writing time you carve out for yourself, how much effort you put out toward becoming a better writer. But you can’t control perfect timing.  Every book that went from a raw idea in an author’s head to a finished product was grabbed by a publisher because the timing was right. Paying attention to market trends (what is selling and what is not) is helpful to figuring out if your book idea will appeal to readers, but by and large, this aspect of getting published lies outside your control.  Not outside your influence, just outside your control. You can’t make a publisher publish you. What you can do, is write compelling, unforgettable stuff; stuff that transcends the marketplace status quo.  What you can’t control you need to let go of so that you can maximize your efforts on what you can control: Write well, learn as you go, accept criticism with grace, keep at the craft, read good books, do your best and the leave the outcome to a God who loves you.

7. What’s next for you?

I just finished a manuscript for WaterBrook called “White Picket Fences,” which is a story about a family that seems to have the perfect iconic life. Perfect house, perfect jobs, perfect neighborhood, perfect everything. But the reality is, they live on the same fallen planet as the rest of us and suffer the same flaws. To pretend all is well when all is not is to doom yourself to a life of pretense and disappointment and maybe even despair. We all have our flaws but we also have our strengths – and these shine brightest when we are honest about who we are and Who we must run to for help, healing and hope.