Kathi Macias Visits Freda's Voice

We are welcoming author Kathi Macias today to the blog. 

First we will take a peek at her new book, The Moses Quilt, and then we will have a guest post by the author. Which I think is fantastic!!!

The Moses Quilt is a contemporary novel that bridges racial and generational divides. With a realistic and compassionate look into a twenty-first-century dilemma, multiple award-winning author Kathi Macias introduces readers to a confused and apprehensive young woman, Mazie Hartford. Facing major decisions about the love of her life and her future, she must also wrestle with a nagging question about her family’s past. She finds the answer to her questions in a most unexpected way—her great-grandmother’s Moses quilt. As her great-grandmother begins to explain how each patch represents a story of courage and freedom, Mazie must decide if she has the courage and freedom to overcome her own personal fears and prejudices.

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Author Bio:

Kathi Macias is a multi-award winning writer who has authored nearly 40 books and ghostwritten several others. A former newspaper columnist and string reporter, Kathi has taught creative and business writing in various venues and has been a guest on many radio and television programs. Kathi is a popular speaker at churches, women’s clubs and retreats, and writers’ conferences. She won the 2008 Member of the Year award from AWSA (Advanced Writers and Speakers Association) and was the 2011 Author of the Year from BooksandAuthors.net. Her novel set in China, Red Ink, was named Golden Scrolls 2011 Novel of the Year and was also a Carol Award Finalist; her October 2012 release, Unexpected Christmas Hero, was named 2012 Book of the Year by BookandAuthors.net. Kathi “Easy Writer” Macias lives in Homeland, CA, with her husband.

From Kathi:

I’m so excited that The Moses Quilt, the first book in my new Quilt Series from New Hope, released in January, just in time for Black History Month in February. I didn’t realize that would happen when I first thought of this book/series, but God has a way of arranging His perfect timing.

It started as I was considering the new wave of interest in quilt books a couple years ago. I’ve never been a quilter, but I’ve always been fascinated with the stories behind them. When I suggested the possibility of a quilt series to my publisher, Andrea Mullins of New Hope, she told me about the famous Gee’s Bend quilters in Alabama. I’d never heard of them but was immediately fascinated! I began researching Gee’s Bend, and it came to me that I could easily incorporate Gee’s Bend into a story built around one of my all-time favorite heroines, Harriet Tubman. And so The Moses Quilt was conceived. I also began to research women of courage and faith in American history. It didn’t take long until I had my three heroines lined up for the three books in the series.

However, I knew I wanted this series to be comprised of contemporary stories about contemporary issues, so I set about coming up with situations that would adapt to the historical women I’d chosen as the backdrops for the three stories: Harriet Tubman (known as the “Moses of her people” because of all the slaves she led to freedom); Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (the first woman doctor in America who faced monumental challenges to reach that position); Fanny Crosby (known as the “Queen of Gospel and a woman who overcame the many challenges of blindness). In book one of the series, The Moses Quilt, I tell the contemporary story of an interracial romance, where the young woman wants to say yes to her sweetheart’s marriage proposal but resists because of something in her family’s past. Book two, The Doctor’s Christmas Quilt (releasing October 2013), is the contemporary story about a woman who is a doctor and also strongly pro-life. When her unmarried daughter, who is away at medical school, becomes pregnant, the doctor finds herself questioning everything she’s always believed in. Book three, The Singing Quilt (releasing Spring 2014), revolves around a young woman with a disability who finds it difficult to press past her physical problems to answer the call of God on her life.

In each of these books, a quilt tells the story, patch by patch, of the historical woman in the background, while the contemporary characters listen to the story and learn how to work through their own issues in the process. It has been a uniquely fun and interesting project to research and write, and I pray it blesses readers as much as it did me to write it.

DISCLAIMER: I was not compensated.