Author Interview (and a Giveaway!): Erin Bartels & We Hope For Better Things

I am so pleased to introduce you to Erin Bartels & her debut novel We Hope For Better Things (Revell, Jan 2019)!

Erin Bartels has been a publishing professional for seventeen years, most of that time as a copywriter. She is also a freelance writer and editor and a member of the Capital City Writers and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. Erin lives in Lansing, Michigan, with her husband, Zachary, and their son, Calvin. We Hope for Better Things is her first novel. Find her on Facebook @ErinBartelsAuthor, on Twitter @ErinLBartels, or on Instagram @erinbartelswrites. Her weekly podcast, Your Face Is Crooked, drops on Monday mornings.

When Detroit Free Press reporter Elizabeth Balsam meets James Rich, his strange request–that she look up a relative she didn’t know she had in order to deliver an old camera and a box of photos–seems like it isn’t worth her time. But when she loses her job after a botched investigation, she suddenly finds herself with nothing but time.

At her great-aunt’s 150-year-old farmhouse, Elizabeth uncovers a series of mysterious items, locked doors, and hidden graves. As she searches for answers to the riddles around her, the remarkable stories of two women who lived in this very house emerge as testaments to love, resilience, and courage in the face of war, racism, and misunderstanding. And as Elizabeth soon discovers, the past is never as past as we might like to think.

Debut novelist Erin Bartels takes readers on an emotional journey through time–from the volatile streets of 1960s Detroit to the Underground Railroad during the Civil War–to uncover the past, confront the seeds of hatred, and discover where love goes to hide.

Hi Erin! Welcome to the blog!

Erin: Apples. I’m from Michigan, so what would you expect? ? 

Carrie: YUM. I’m from northern IL originally so me too!!

Erin: Winter. You can always put more clothes on if you’re cold. You can only take so many off…

Carrie: Yes! My thoughts exactly…

Erin: Music. Growing up, music was an integral part of our family life. And you can’t sing along to an audiobook.

Carrie: Very true. LOL!

Erin: PRINT! I look at screens for work and writing all day. I can’t look at them when reading for pleasure. Plus print books never run out of battery.

Carrie: Another very good point haha

Q: Around here I like to say that reading is my superpower. If YOU had a superpower, what would it be?

Erin: The ability to speak, read, and understand any language.

Carrie: that would be amazing – i think Heaven will be like that ♥

Q: When you walk into a bookstore, where do you head first?

Erin: I have so many writer friends, that I always check the front table to see who’s on it. Then I snap a pic, post it on Instagram, and tag it. Authors love to see their books out in the wild.

Carrie: i love that!

Q: Characters often find themselves in situations they aren’t sure they can get themselves out of. When was the last time you found yourself in a situation that was hard to get out of and what did you do?

Erin: I was on a hiking trip with my sister in the remote Porcupine Mountains that just wasn’t going well. Torrential rains had made a miserable mess of the trail and the mosquitoes were absolutely unreal. Since we hike to have fun (and we clearly weren’t having much of that) we had to decide whether to stick it out for a few more days to finish the loop or hike out of the woods and hitchhike back to the car. We chose the latter.

Carrie: See…. thinking that hiking is fun is your first mistake 😉

Q: Which of the main characters in We Hope For Better Things is most like you?

Erin: If you put Elizabeth, Nora, and Mary together, both the good and the bad in them, that’s basically me. I write, I garden, I sew, I quilt, and I don’t shirk hard physical labor (even while pregnant). But I can also be self-centered, resentful, judgmental, and a little bitter at times. It’s something I have to keep chipping away at.

Carrie: Ugh. I hear you. Life is always a refining process, isn’t it?

Q: What is something God taught you while you wrote We Hope for Better Things?

Erin: It’s not my business to judge the hearts or actions of others. That’s God’s business. It’s my job to love others.

Carrie: Amen ♥

Thank you so much for taking time to talk with me! 🙂

I am giving away a $5 Amazon gift card to celebrate Erin’s debut novel! Open internationally as long as you can accept electronic gift cards from US Amazon. Void where prohibited by law. This giveaway is subject to Reading Is My SuperPower’s giveaway policies which can be found here.

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