WOF:    Congratulations on having Quaker Summer named Women of Faith Novel of the Year!  What prompted you to begin writing fiction?

LISA:     I was always a fiction reader. The thought of writing anything else just wouldn’t have occurred to me.  My major in school was television production with proficiency in writing for radio and television (primarily news, advertisements, and that sort of thing).  I did a screenplay for my senior project, so that was a story.  Anything serious that I had done was in the form of a story.

WOF:    Publisher’s Weekly called Quaker Summer “a staggering examination of the Christian conscience” and “an emotionally and spiritually luminous portrait of a soul beckoned by God.”  That’s high praise!  What is it about Quaker Summer that resonates with the reader?

LISA:     I think what resonates with the reader the most is that we are for the most part caught up in “accumulation”. So we either accumulate stuff or we accumulate degrees or we accumulate Bible study hours or food . . . our life is about more, more, more.

I think if we all just stood in front of a mirror and took off any hats and any pretense whatsoever, we’d have to say, “This just isn’t doing it for me.”  We tend to realize we have sold our soul for a mess of pottage, even if it’s a mess of spiritual pottage. How many Bible studies can one person do?  How many prayer groups can we go to?  How many church services do we attend before we finally get to the point that we realize my life with God isn’t all about me.

I think people are responding to this voice inside of us that says Jesus was about healing, He was about being involved in their lives, and He was about administering grace to those who didn’t deserve it.  Whatever happened to just following Christ, being like Christ?  I think that’s what draws people to the story because it’s saying, “You know, you can do all the stuff that surrounds the church these days but until you start imitating Christ it’s just a substitute.” 

Isn’t that the goal of being a Christian?  The goal is to ‘“be holy as I am holy,” says the Lord.’  How do we do that?  What is holiness? Is holiness just standing apart from the ways of the world or is there more to it?  Is there a proactive side to it and if there is, is it just us doing something to make ourselves feel closer to God or is it breaking into our society ― like Christ incarnate broke into the world ― and making a difference?

WOF:    Heather seems to have it all – but she keeps adding ‘more’.  So often we think that only those who don’t know God feel that kind of emptiness, but Heather does have a relationship with Him.  Do you think a lot of believers experience the same problem?

LISA:     I do. If we’re honest with ourselves, I think we feel the emptiness and it reflects itself in our churches.  If we have more programs for this . . . if we have a better praise team . . . if we buy more land . . . if we grow and grow . . . then we’ll be closer to the Lord.  Unfortunately, the church is pretty much cut off at the knees these days as far as our influence on society because our behavior doesn’t reflect any better than the world’s, according to George Barna’s statistics.  We have the same divorce rate, the same alcoholism rate.  Obviously we must be feeling empty and distraught because we’re turning to the same things everybody else does. I think we tend to pile on things to keep ourselves from doing serious spiritual business with God.

WOF:    Why do you think we do that?

LISA:     I don’t know; I think it’s just easier than to have to recognize that maybe God expects more out of us than we would like to admit.  I think living the gospel life is very straightforward and simple but it’s not easy.  It’s so much easier to pile more stuff on than it is to get real about what it means to follow Christ.  I think we’ve made it a lot more complicated.

It’s harder when you start to live a radical Christian life which says, “I’m going to deny myself; I’m going to start to live Matthew 25, I’m going to start to take Micah 6:8 seriously, I’m going to start to take James 1:27 seriously.”  The problem is, when you start to live that way you look a little freaky ― and your biggest critics are going to be your brothers and sisters in Christ.  They don’t want to be reminded that there is a way of following Jesus which is going to make waves. 

Does Jesus love us all the time?  YES, He sure does.  But He’s calling us to live a life of faith that’s self-sacrificial and I think there are rewards for that.

WOF:    Anna, Liza, and Sister J are all such delightful characters and their effect on Heather’s life is profound.  Is/was there someone like them who influenced your own life?

LISA:     Not really.  I always wanted to have an older woman in my life that wanted to mentor me and it never happened.  It was something that I prayed for but God has never blessed me with an older woman like that.  I think those ladies are who I wish God had sent into my life, had He had that for me.

WOF:    That’s the joy of fiction, isn’t it?  You can make all these things happen.

LISA:     I know!  And then I feel kind of like I was there.  I think it’s so important for younger women and older women to speak into each other’s lives like that.  My goodness, I think that’s so scriptural.

WOF:    There’s a line in the book that says “…there are a million miles between what God should do and what He does.”  It does seem that way sometimes, doesn’t it?  Why do you think that is?

LISA:     I think He knows the end from the beginning; He knows what’s really important; He knows what’s going to last.  I think that’s the biggest thing:  God has got a vision that’s much longer in outlook than right now or this year or next or even the next ten years.  So God’s thinking long-term and we’re not prone to think long-term. 

WOF:    How do you start a new novel?  Do you start with a character or a plot or a theme or . . . ?

LISA:     Yes!  It depends on the book.  It’s happened in many ways.  Songbird, for instance, was about a character that had been in another book and I wanted to tell her story.  Quaker Summer was – I just wanted to talk about consumerism and being the hands and feet of Jesus and how the one can keep us from the other.  That was the idea.  Then I started to think about who I wanted Heather to be.  If I could design the perfect life for myself . . . Heather’s life was totally my idea of the perfect life.  That’s how this one came out – it started with an idea.

WOF:    Tell us about your family.  Do they ever show up in your books?

LISA:     Sometimes they do, but just in ghosts of a way ― just portions of them might show up in a character.  I have three children:  My oldest is 17, her name’s Ty; Jake just turned 13; Gwynneth is 10.  Two years ago we moved down from suburban Baltimore; we sold our big house and kind of traded in the suburban lifestyle.  (Although we were not in Heather’s range, I just want to say that.  She was a step above us.)

We felt God calling us to a greater involvement in the area of social justice. So Will went back to school (he’s getting his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in Sociology) and we moved to downtown Lexington (Kentucky) so we could be confronted with these issues every day.  We have a porch where people will come up and we’ll give them a meal.  We’re here.  People know we’re here. It’s quite simple – just hang around and be there.  We sit out on our porch a lot. 

WOF:    Who’s your all-time favorite author (besides God)?  What are you reading now?

LISA:     W. Somerset Maugham ― I just love him.  I don’t know why, I just do.  He writes a good story and uses words beautifully.  He’d be my favorite. Then F. Scott Fitzgerald would be next.  Contemporarily speaking, Anne Tyler would be my favorite contemporary novelist ― and John Irving.  Right now I’m reading Clay’s Quilt by Silas House, who’s a Kentucky writer – beautiful, beautiful writer, oh my goodness.  And I’m reading Jesus of Nazareth by the pope. It’s just brilliant.  I don’t think there are too many evangelicals who could find fault with what he’s written there.  His portrait of Christ is just amazing.

WOF:    What’s next for you?

LISA:     I’ve done a series for young adults called Hollywood Nobody; the first installment of that comes out the end of August. 

My husband and I wrote a book together and that’s coming out August 1st.  It’s called Justice in the Burbs: Being the Hands and Feet of Jesus Wherever You Are.  It helps suburban dwellers figure out what it means to live a life of justice and compassion from a suburban context.

In March my novel’s coming out; it’s called Embrace Me. It’s a story of seeing with the eyes of Jesus and learning to love people not for what they can give us or how much they have to offer but simply because God loves them and they’re made in His image.

WOF:    Is it different writing for young adults as opposed to ‘grown-ups’?

LISA:     It was different.  Writing about somebody in their forties is very different from writing someone who’s 15 or 16.  I wanted to give dignity and place to the struggles of a teenager.  They’re HUGE, don’t you remember?  The problems actually felt bigger than our problems do now.

WOF:    Is there anything else you want to share with our readers?

LISA:     Just tell them how thankful I am for them and for the opportunity to put this book out through Women of Faith.  I hope the Lord will use it in their lives