Meet Christian Romantic Suspense author Sara Davison! She is also the 2021 winner of the Carol Award for her novel Lost Down Deep. Today, she is discussing her latest release Written in Ink.
Here is Sara:
The following is an excerpt from my latest release, Written in Ink.
Cash studied the darkening sky, tiny pricks of starlight breaking through the cloud cover. “If you actually do care about me, could you maybe give me a sign? Something to show me that you’re real and not just something people invented to try and make sense of the world?”
He waited, digging his cold fingers deep into his pockets. What would happen? More stories from his childhood flitted through his mind. God making a path through the water so a bunch of people could cross on dry land to the other side. One of the men who followed Jesus trying to walk on the water but sinking. Cash scrutinized the river streaming by. No break in the flow that he could see. No one walking on top of the ripples either. Not that he’d expected to see anything like that.
What did he expect? Cash shook his head. He had absolutely no idea.
A cool spring breeze brushed across his cheeks. High up in one of the trees, roots clinging, against all odds, to fissures halfway up the rock across the water from him, an owl hooted, the sound drifting across the ravine. Moonlight glinted off the water, sending sparks of light skittering across the surface. Cash scanned the gorge. As far as he could see in either direction, the beauty of the night, of this place, filled his senses.
Something flowed through him like the water passing between the rocky banks. Cash withdrew one hand from his pocket and held it to his chest. What was that? He struggled to put a name to it. Peace, maybe? It had been a while since he’d felt whatever it was that strongly.
Maybe he never had. Was that his sign?
The clouds had cleared, leaving a million twinkling lights—like candles in the darkness—glowing above his head. “All right. Maybe you’re there. And maybe you do see me. What do you want me to do about that?”
He waited, but nothing else happened. Still, the sense of calm that filled him, that drove out a little of the angst that had gripped him since the night Renee left him, remained. Maybe, for tonight, that was enough.
One of the most interesting, and challenging, aspects of writing Written in Ink was portraying the perspective of characters who knew nothing about Christianity and were exploring who God was and what it might mean to have a relationship with Him. As someone born and raised in a Christian home with godly grandparents on both sides, my viewpoint is radically different from Cash and Renee’s. It was incredibly valuable to put myself in the shoes of characters to whom thoughts of a loving, caring, personal God were completely foreign, and who were so radically transformed and filled with joy at the growing realization that they mattered to the creator of the universe.
When you have grown up in the church, as I have, it can be easy to take God and the knowledge of who He is and what He has done for granted. Experiencing that deepening awareness through the eyes of Cash and Renee renewed in me a sense of joy and wonder that God would care about me and everything that is going on in my life. And that He has promised to never leave or forsake me, whatever I may be going through.
That message is the one that carries through all of my stories, including Written in Ink. It is my hope and prayer with all my books that readers will be reminded, as I was while writing this story, of that incredible promise from God. And that, whatever circumstances they find themselves in, the truth that they are never alone will fill them with the same peace that Cash experienced standing by the river at the bottom of the ravine that night.
Everything he has built his life and future on has been torn away.
Cash McCall has loved Dr. Renee Dawson for half his life. Although they’ve talked about a future together, she has never believed it was the right time for them to get engaged. Now she has ended their relationship, and he has no idea why.
Everything Renee worked so hard for is in jeopardy. One agonizing decision has changed everything, and she has been forced to shatter the heart of the man she loves. And her own.
The extremist militant group The Arm is on a mission. Its leader doesn’t care how many innocent lives are lost in the pursuit of the group’s end goal, and Renee has seen something she was not supposed to see.
If Cash can’t get to her in time, Renee could end up in the crosshairs of the terrorists, and he may lose her—and any chance at the life he’d always envisioned—forever.
Sara Davison is the author of three romantic suspense series—The Seven Trilogy, The Night Guardians, and The Rose Tattoo Trilogy, as well as the standalone, The Watcher. She has been a finalist for more than a dozen national writing awards, including Best New Canadian Christian author, a Carol, two Selahs, a Holt Medallion, and three Daphne du Maurier Awards for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense. She is a Word and Cascade Award winner. She currently resides in Ontario, Canada with her husband Michael and their three children. The words on the mug she uses every morning pretty much sum up her life—I just want to sleep, drink coffee, and make stuff up.
Get to know Sara better at www.saradavison.org and @sarajdavison.
Written in Ink !!!!
Cash sounds like a very interesting man .