Featured Interview With J. M. Hochstetler
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’m the daughter of Mennonite farmers and grew up on a farm in central Indiana. I’ve had a lifelong interest in history, fostered by the inspiring story of my German Amish ancestor, Jacob Hochstetler. He and his wife and children emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1738 and in 1757 were swept up in the brutal raids of the French and Indian War. Three members of the family were killed, and he and 2 sons were carried off by the Indians. I and bestselling author Bob Hostetler closely based the award-winning Northkill Amish Series on their story of captivity and eventual return home.
My husband and I currently live in Elkhart, IN, after more than 20 years in the Nashville, TN, area. In addition to researching and writing historical fiction, I enjoy gardening and crafts such as scrapbooking, counted cross stitch, and cooking up herbal salves.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I discovered an intense love for reading when I encountered Dick and Jane in first grade, and it turned into a voracious reading obsession. I started writing while working on the newspaper of the Indiana University Kokomo campus where I began my college career. But I didn’t write fiction until I had a dream one night that was so intriguing I knew I had to write the story of the people in it in order to figure out what in the world they were doing! It turned out to be a medieval epic tragedy, which has been languishing in my files while other projects have taken priority. But someday I’m going to finish and publish it!
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Favorite contemporary authors include Laura Frantz, Lori Benton, Shannon McNear, Louise Gouge, Julie Klassen, Susan Meissner, Mimi Matthews, and Mary Kingswood, among many others. Favorite classic authors include Shakespeare, Jane Austin, Charlotte Bronte, Rafael Sabatini, Betty Smith, James Hilton, Margaret Mitchell, Elizabeth Goudge, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway and too many others to list.
My very favorite genre to read is historical fiction/historical romance. I found the greatest inspiration for my own writing in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Elizabeth Goudge's Green Dolphin Street, Jams Hilton's Random Harvest, and Rafael Sabatini's Scaramouche and his swashbuckling Captain Blood series.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Forge of Freedom is my latest release, publishing October 1. It’s the seventh and final book in my American Patriot Series on the American Revolution, which started with Daughter of Liberty. Elizabeth Howard is a beautiful young woman who is not only a trained doctor, but also—unbeknownst to her Loyalist parents and the British military establishment occupying Boston—a shadowy spy, courier, and smuggler for the Patriots known only as Oriole. Jonathan Carleton, who harbors his own secrets, is an officer in the British Seventeenth Light Dragoons assigned as aide-de-camp to British General Thomas Gage. The attraction between Carleton and Elizabeth is immediate, powerful, and fought on both sides in a war of wits and words. And when Carleton is assigned to ferret out Oriole, Elizabeth can no longer deny that he is not only her most dangerous foe, but also the possessor of her heart.
The series follows the triumphs, travails, perils, and passionate love story of these two as well as those of a compelling cast of secondary characters. I intensively researched the fortunes of the Americans and the British from the war's beginning at Lexington and Concord in April 1775 to its end following the crucial battle of Yorktown in 1781 and endeavored to portray them accurately. The story's characters interact with real historical figures involved in the war at the highest and lowest levels. The volumes span the North American continent from Massachusetts to New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, among the Shawnee in Ohio Territory, and into Virginia and the Carolinas as well as across the ocean to Paris, France, and epic battles on the high seas.
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