It's true, I have accepted a contract for an Amish/vampire book. It's okay to laugh. Go ahead. Everyone usually does at first. You might be wondering how those two things go together very well…in my mind anything is possible. Actually, with God, all things are possible. You may have heard jokes about this type of book, but this is no joke and it's actually a more serious endeavor, without my usual humor. It's a serious book and I'm very excited about it. Here's the blurb:

Plain Fear Series:

1st book: Forsaken

Hannah Schmidt, a young Amish woman mourning the mysterious 'death' of her beloved Jacob, now a vampire, must choose between two brothers, between good and evil, between a lasting love and the damnation of her soul.

I'm not sure of the publication date, hopefully sometime in 2011.

I wanted to share with y'all a little about the conception of this book. Of course, I've heard for a long time the joke about combining these two very different genres, Amish fiction and vampire fiction, which both have been very popular. Well, it must have lodged somewhere in my brain because one day I realized this pairing could be an interesting revisit to the ever popular story and musical, The Phantom of the Opera. The story idea came to me about two years ago. I noodled around on it and played with it. I prayed a lot about it. A few Christian authors encouraged me. Then last year at the American Christian Fiction Writers conference, after I'd already written a proposal for it but had done nothing with it, not even tell my agent about it, I heard editors actually say they were interested in this kind of a novel. I was blown away. So not having planned to pitch that story idea, I made an appointment with an editor. Then I panicked. What was I going to say? So with the help of Rachel Hauck, I told her the story idea, and she helped me hone it down to its essence: a love triangle, the story of good versus evil, brother versus brother. Thanks, Rachel! Then I figured I better tell my agent. I was scared my agent would laugh me off the planet. But she didn't. She laughed but in a good way! She loved it. When I sent her my proposal after the conference, she again loved it.

With much prayer on her part and on mine, with my prayer partners praying as well as other writer friends, we began to submit this story. And I'm very delighted to say that Sourcebooks is going to publish this book. I've already had a nice long conversation with Peter, my new editor, and I'm very excited about beginning to write this book. Of course, I still have other obligations with B&H Publishing, and I pray that partnership continues and grows. I have a book coming out with them, FACELIFT, in October 2010, and then another book in Sept. 2011.

But I wanted y'all to hear this news from me first. And most importantly, I wanted you to know that this project has been bathed in prayer and will continue to be. I hope you will join me in praying for this project as I write it and hopefully as it reaches a wide audience, especially the audience outside of the Christian market. I believe it can be a powerful story that reveals the struggle everyone faces with the attraction of evil (because evil at first is attractive and alluring), and pray that God guides me as I write it.

Blessings,

Leanna