This month, our featured author is Julie B. Cosgrove. Welcome, Julie, it’s a pleasure to have you visit with us!

Julie, your website mentions that Christ saved you from being engulfed in a fire at the age of thirteen. Would you care to share a small nugget about that?

At thirteen, I became deeply depressed. We’d sold our family home and moved to an apartment. I lost my cat of ten years, my stay-at-home mom entered the workforce, my sister went to college, and my brother married—my whole world changed.

I was in my room alone while Mom and Dad were at a party. The high-intensity reading lamp I’d gotten for Christmas tipped over onto my mattress as I napped. I remember coughing and feeling hot, but told myself I was getting sick and to keep sleeping. A voice I cannot describe told me to get up. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face for the smoke. I cried out and the smoke parted, showing me a path out of the apartment. I guess I blacked out. Later, after being brought home from the hospital, I got on my knees in the dark and told Jesus since He deemed to save me, He must think I was worth it, so I gave my life to Him and started going to church, even though my parents were not regular attenders.

I want to call you a Renaissance woman. Your biography shows that you do many types of freelance and novel-writing, speaking, retreat leading, among other things. How do you keep yourself balanced and sane through all of that?

Is that really “all of that”? It is hardly Renaissance. They all interplay into each other .I feel so humbled and blessed to be able to live this dream to write and speak about God. I average about 15-16 lectures or workshops a year, so a weekend alone is a rarity. When they do come up, I fence them off and bask in them.  I keep up with my freelance assignments, but portion off times to write my fiction. I get a deep craving as if God is calling me to sit down and write. Often, when that happens, I can happily click away on my keyboard for hours without realizing how much time has passed. 

Perhaps because I am a widow with a part-time job as a church secretary, it frees me up to do what I love—writing and lecturing.  I consider that God’s major blessing. Did I mention I am president over my denomination’s regional women’s groups in 53 churches in three states, active on committees and guilds in my church, and past president of my Toastmasters club? I won Outstanding Toastmaster Club President of the Year for my district two months ago. It was quite an honor.

Is there a story to how your advocacy against human trafficking came about?

You had to ask—that could be a novel all to its own. I wanted to write about something more than a surface romantic suspense. I wanted to touch lives and hearts on a deeper level. All of my writings, be it fiction or non-fiction, speak to finding God in the middle of our lives, and how He can bring redemption from our pain—because in this fallen world, life often hurts and He understands that. This is why Christ died such an agonizing death as He bore our sins on the cross.

I began Hush in the Storm while recovering from major surgery. I pondered if I could I really start a novel with “it’s a dark and stormy night.” Well, I got three chapters in and hit a brick wall. So I put it away and prayed about it. Within a month I had encounters with three different missionaries that combat human trafficking on three different occasions in three cities. I had to laugh! “Okay, God I get it. This is my underlying topic beneath the plot.”

As I researched this ugly thorn in our society’s side, my passion bubbled and my fingers flew over the keyboard. My publisher contracted me to continue with two more novels, the first of which released January 14th called Legitimate Lies.  The next, Freed to Forgive, which is a ten year journey with a Hispanic pre-teen who is trafficked but eventually finds God and healing so she can love, debuts the end of October, 2015.

Now I speak to churches and other organizations about ways everyday citizens can help thwart trafficking’s heinous spread.

Human trafficking is one of the topics of your speaking – how to spot it and how to stop it. How did you become so knowledgeable on the subject, as to become an expert?

The more I researched this topic to write about it, the more I discovered people who are experts in battling it.  I have spent numerous times on phone interviews with lobbyists in Washington D.C, immigration counselors, non-profit organizations and had face-to-face talks with missionaries who are in the trenches rescuing these women and children here and abroad.  I subscribe to a wonderful weekly blog called Prayer For Freedom, which is informative, positive and realistically heartfelt. I also am on email lists for newsletters from the Polaris Project, Women at Risk, Amnesty International, and Shared Hope.

Julie, please share what your current release, Legitimate Lies, is about.

Legitimate Lies is a continuation of the story as it began to unfold in Hush in the Storm. Jen, a 31 year-old widow is kidnapped by a coworker named Tom, who was a military buddy of her late husband, Robert. Tom says it was Robert’s request to protect Jen from the drug and trafficking cartel that caused his death. But the deeper she and Tom plunge down the rabbit hole, she begins to suspect her husband may still be alive, just in hiding. In the meantime, she and Tom develop strong feelings for each other, but their faith prohibits them from pursuing it until Jen is sure she is a free woman.

In Legitimate Lies, Jen goes into witness protection, where she must lie about her identity. However, when her cover is compromised, she is moved to England under yet another identity centered on a new set of lies. She soon discovers that it also a ruse. Held captive in an English Manor, she again rubs elbows with the trafficking cartel. In the midst of everyone’s lies, however, Jen guards a lie and its resulting shame from deep within her past. Jen fears if Tom discovers it, he will walk away. Does she live the lie, as she has been taught to do so well, or dare reveal the truth?

How did the idea for these characters come to you?

That is hard to answer. I want my heroines to be real, flawed, and yet strong, though they may be at a weakened point in their lives.  As I develop their characters the action just seems to follow and it becomes a codependent thing (in a good way I hope.) Action begets character and character drives action.  We authors are a weird breed. We “live” with our characters and get to know them as we write. Sometimes it is hard to type “the end” and let them go off into the world to be discovered. It’s like watching your kids leave home. 

What can we expect to see from you in the near future?

Well, I have told you about Freed to Forgive.  I have also completed a novella under contract which is a romance based on 1 Corinthian’s definition of love not being self-serving.  It’s called Navy Blues and is about a Navy gastroenterologist who falls for a jilted woman on a plane ride back to the states. He is used to curing heartburn, but heartache is new territory. 

I am toying with a cozy mystery series about a group of Bunco playing widows in an urban apartment complex, (dicey, right?) I  also want to complete a sequel to my first novel, Focused, the first in another trilogy, The second, Grounded, is three-quarters of the way done, and Rooted is still in the developmental stages. All three center on a suburban empty-nest couple trying to make sense of their marriage and their life without kids. Obviously these are more light-hearted that the Hush trilogy.

In closing, is there anything else you’d like readers to know?

Simply that God is always as close as their own breath—they just need to refocus their attention from their problems to Him. No matter what our shortcomings, our sins, and our weaknesses, God can turn them into a good purpose—if we let Him.  Each day He is tapping us on our spiritual doors asking to come in and be a part of our lives.

Please follow my blog Where Did You Find God Today.com, and visit my website www.juliebcosgrove.com.  You can also check out my Bible studies and devotionals.

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat, Julie. It’s been a pleasure having you here, and finding out about your book.

If you live in the United States and you’d like to win a copy of Legitimate Lies, use the Contact page and type “drawing” in the comments box. The deadline to enter is February 24th.