RWA’s RITA Award Author, Adina Senft joins us this week to introduce us to her latest release, The Tempted Soul. Adina is a best-selling author who writes she writes steampunk and contemporary romance as Shelley Adina; and as Charlotte Henry, writes classic Regency romance. Join us as she gives us a peek into her contribution to the Amish Christmas Miracles Collection along with her other projects.

The following transcript is a shortened version of the original recording.

Tracy:  Welcome to another episode of Buggy Talk. I'm your host, Tracy Fredrychowski each week, I bring you the story behind the stories, along with the storytellers. For this week's episode, we have Adina Senft. How are you today? 

Adina: I'm very well considering I'm three hours behind you. I guess I didn't realize that. So you're just crawling out of bed right now for quite a while, but I certainly appreciate you joining us in the early morning.

Tracy: So, where are you from, Adina?

Adina: Well, I'm from Canada, but at the moment I live on the West coast

Tracy: Well, we have a lot of things to chat about today. One is your part in the Amish Christmas Miracles Collection, but more importantly, I just realized you released a book this week called the Tempted Soul. Would you like to share a little bit about that with us?

Adina: I would be delighted you, so tell us all about it. It’s part of my Whinburg Township Amish Series, which is nine books long, and this is book number three that just came out on Wednesday. 

It's about an infertile Amish couple. It's the story of how she pursues that and possibly risks her Amish beliefs and how God can control life and bring his will about even in matters such as family and love, and her best friends also help her through prompted by the Holy Spirit.

Tracy: So a nine-book series about all taking place in the same community, right.  How do you have the stamina to write a nine-book series and keep it interesting?

Adina: Well, actually, they're all, but one completed. So the only books that I have yet to write, as soon as I get the Amish Christmas miracle story finished is the final book it's called the Sweetest Song. 

Tracy: So, where is Whinburg Township?

Adina: It’s a fictitious town located in Lancaster County, around the Nickel Mines area, just because I liked the landscape there and it had things like creeks and rivers and the roads kind of went in the right direction.

Tracy: I love that. And I do the same thing. My town is Willow Springs. You get so caught up in, in the characters and the town and the surrounding, you become part of that town. I sort of feel like I live there.

So let's go on a bit about your writing career before we talk about the Amish Christmas Miracles.

What is it like as a writer, or what are the essential elements of good writing? 

Adina: Well, I think that after teaching about writing novels for 17 years, I would know the answer to this a little bit better. I think the things that a reader would look for are the things that are the central spirit of the book, the things that touch their hearts. It can be a setting. It can be characters. It can be the way the plot unfolds like a road ahead of an Amish buggy. But I think the most important thing is the way those three elements, the setting, and the characters and the plot just kind of fold together to create a very real experience in the reader's mind, at least that as a writer, that's my go