More Anticipation for "Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good"

To encourage Mitford fans (and soon to be Mitford fans), I'm sharing a little more from an interview with author Jan Karon.  Watch for the trivia question at the end of the post for your chance to win a free copy of this highly anticipated novel!

1. Your books are brimming with quotable quotes, both sacred and secular.  Do you have a favorite?  Your top 5?

I collect quotes like a child collects butterflies.  They are everywhere, absolutely flying around in the air and I am after them with a net.  I don't usually collect from other quote collections, finding that the easy way.  A great favorite, on which I feasted for many a moon in the early years of my work, is from Goethe: "Whatever you would do, begin it.  Boldness has courage, genius and magic in it."  This is the best if read over and over again, letting the great truth of it sink in.  My sworn favorite is from a 16th century poet: "Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future".  A glorious truth.

2. What makes Father Tim so easy to be with and write about?

Hey, when I first started writing about Father Tim, I found him on the boring side.  Too nice, maybe.  Bland, but as we worked together, I got to know him better.  He became deeper and so did the author.  He suffered and so did the author.  We embarked on a life together, and I began to find him trustworthy, funny, sensitive, loving, thoughtful of others, lacking a little bit in self-esteem, hungry for love but scared of it, and with fewer defenses than the rest of us.  Agatha Christie wrote 60 books and stories about Poirot and said at the end, "I never really cared for that little man."  I find this hilarious, but must tell you that I care very much for my man, and thus have devoted, to date, twenty years of my life telling his story.

3. Is there a story behind the title, "Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good"?

Cynthia got the notion that they should write love letters again, as they did when courting.  So around the time of their ninth anniversary, she posed this to Father Tim.  He did NOT want to do it, but she gave him a blast of those cornflower blue eyes and what could he say?  In her first love letter to him, she said she had longed since childhood to be "somewhere safe with somebody good."  I was really looking for a title, as I like to have one upfront.  So far, one had not come my way.  But there it was, hooray, on her small, almost childlike handwriting.  I am always ecstatic when I find the perfect title, one that distills the meaning of 400 pages into a single line.

So....for that trivia question.  Post your answer along with your name and your email address (thedeena63 @ Hotmail dot com) and you'll gain entry into a drawing for your OWN FREE COPY OF "Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good"!

Here's the question:  Where is your somewhere safe with somebody good?

Oh, and my favorite quote from the Mitford novels: "Well, I'll be et for a tater!"

Happy Reading!





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