About the Book

Book: Love’s True Calling

Author: Lori DeJong

Genre: Contemporary Christian Romance

Release Date: June 27, 2023

After years of jumping through other people’s hoops to be all they thought she should be, and enduring a tragedy no mother should, self-described “newbie” Christian, Harper Townsend, has finally found her true calling … and her true love. Until it appears that to follow one may mean leaving the other behind.

Adolescent Psychologist, Wyatt McCowan, is beyond delighted to have the-girl-that-got-away back in his life, and his heart. But even as they fall more in love, he realizes that being obedient to God’s calling on each of their lives may pull them apart. She rejected him once in favor of another, which left him hurt and angry. But this time, he can’t fault her for following hard after the God she loves with all her heart, even if it means leaving him once again.

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Author Interview

1. Why did you want to become an author?

I have a vivid imagination, and I was always coming up with ideas for what I might write if I were an author. Then I thought, why not? So I just started writing and wrote several manuscripts in about two years. I look back at those early stories and they’re truly horrendous. But that’s because I was writing in a vacuum. No community, no websites or online workshops or conferences to help. I found a national writing community that had a local chapter, and when I first met the other writers, it felt like I was with my people. We all had voices in our heads but weren’t in need of psychiatric help. The voices we hear are supposed to be there because we’re writers and those voices are our characters. And as a Christian author, I feel strongly this is a calling from God, to write stories that offer messages of hope, peace, joy, forgiveness. Whatever He puts on my heart to write.

2. What step of writing this book was the most challenging and why?

Sticking with it. This book was born in a writing workshop geared toward plotting. But here’s the thing: I don’t plot. I’ve always written by the seat of my pants. Hence, why I was in this class. This story was actually the homework for the class and I never intended to actually write it. But once the class was done, I found I truly loved these characters,and they were clamoring for me to tell their story. So I wrote it. And rewrote it. And rewrote it. There’s a ton of editing that goes on as you hone and tighten a story, and there were times I thought I should just set it aside as a learning experience and move on. But something about Wyatt and Harper’s story compelled me to stick with it. Now I’m so happy I did!

3. What did your research process look like for this book?

I had to research some pretty tough subjects for this book, such as drug and alcohol treatment, childhood terminal illnesses, bullying, and so on. I mostly researched online and then it was interesting what would pop up on my screen. I’ve been asked numerous times if I want to talk to a counselor about rehab. Haha! But I also research fun stuff, like houses and cars and clothing. Things that help me shape my characters and ground them into their setting. The story is set in Arlington, TX, but I live about three hours south of there. My daughter lives up there, though, so we’d drive all around looking at various neighborhoods, parks, businesses. Anything to help me set scenes in the book. There’s a student ministry at the center of the story that I loosely based on YoungLife, so I did some research on that as well. Research is a blast. I really enjoy doing research.

4. Did you have to step out of your comfort zone to write this book? If so, how?

Very much so. Like I said, there are some tough subjects in this book. I was even brought to tears a few times while writing certain scenes, but in a good way. My ultimate goal is for the reader to see how God can redeem even the worst of circumstances and make us new. But it was hard putting my characters through some of those things, even though I knew it was going to make them better in the end. I think that’s what God must feel like, only on a much greater degree. He sees us as we’re struggling through hard times, but He in His infinite love and grace and mercy knows we’ll be better and stronger in the end. But it can get very uncomfortable at times writing certain things you hope will be perceived as you intended.

5. What message do you hope readers take away from your book?

That God’s love prevails. His plans are so much greater than ours and we simply need to trust Him. I say simply. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s a simple concept—to trust. But it takes discipline and a lot of prayer and communion with God. God’s love can redeem anything. Can take the worst circumstance or situation and make it new and valuable for His glory and our good. I hope, at the most, a reader will find the redemptive love of Christ in this book, and at the least, just enjoy a nice story of a young couple following hard after God, even when it’s hard.

About the Author

Lori enjoys writing stories full of grace and the redemptive power of God’s love that inspire hope, joy, laughter, and perhaps even touch a soul or two to get to know Him better. She resides in Georgetown, Texas, with her husband and two fur-babies and is the mother of one grown daughter. Love’s True Calling is the 2022 winner of the ACFW Genesis Award for Romance.

More from Lori

I’ve had a dream for a very long time. In fact, I had this dream long before I was even doing anything to achieve it! Turns out I’ve wanted to be a published author since the 1990’s. And I didn’t even start writing, join writers’ groups, or attend conferences to learn the craft until 2002. Something inside me apparently knew more than I did when I put on my 1996 long-term goals list: To be a published author.

Fast forward to 2023 and my debut novel is being published. I’m not great at math, but even I know that’s A LOT of years that have gone by since I first identified that long-term goal. So the take-away from that should be, if you set a goal, no matter what it is, make a plan. Immediately. Not years later. Seriously. Don’t be me.

So, I chugged away at this writing goal for a few years, until my husband was laid off when the economy tanked in 2009 and our lives turned upside down. I didn’t write again until 2020, when we found ourselves empty-nesters and I started listening once again to those voices in my head begging me to write their stories.

Which brings me to how my first published novel was born. Would you believe it was homework? True story! When I came back to writing in 2020, I needed to re-hone my skills. So I took an online class that required us to plot an entire manuscript based on our characters’ motivations. What do they want out of life and why do they want it?

That’s how I came up with Wyatt, the high school geek now an accomplished and handsome college professor and adolescent psychologist, and Harper, the high school Miss Everything who’d weathered plenty of storms in her life before going back to school a decade after graduation to finally get her degree. What happens when Wyatt sees the girl who broke his teenage heart sitting in his class?

I plotted out this story as homework, never intending to write it. But I fell in love with these two and they were clamoring for me to tell their story. Two years later, that story won the ACFW Genesis award and is now being published by Scrivenings Press. Best takeaway from that? Never. Ever. Give. Up.

Who knew that a class assignment could bring about the realization of a twenty-some-odd-year-old goal? Make a dream come true? God did. And I’m so glad I listened to Him as I put this story to paper.

I hope you’ll read and enjoy Love’s True Calling, a story of love rediscovered, the joy of finding purpose, and the blessing of obedience.