A Season for Inspiring Romance | The Spring Brides Novella Collection

Hi Winnie Griggs here, ready to bring you more on the Inspirational Romance front. This month I’m talking to the three fabulous authors who penned the stories in the Spring Brides novella collection. I asked each of them to tell me a little bit about what inspired their stories. Here’s how they responded:

Rachel Hauck – A March Bride

A March Bride was inspired by the Royal Wedding Series I was writing. I'd just finished book one and was in the midst of book two when the novella project came my way. I realized I never had a wedding scene in book one, ONCE UPON A PRINCE, and it is the Royal Wedding Series after all. So I decided to keep with the royal theme and write King Nathaniel and American Susanna's wedding! It was really fun and romantic.

In trying to decide what the conflict might be I decided to dive into Susanna's identity as an American. To marry the king, it's revealed she'll have to give up her American citizenship. I know it's something we all take for granted but just how would we feel if someone said, "You can no longer be an American?" I think it would hit some of us harder than we realize. And for Susanna, she was giving up her country, her home, everything, to live with Nathaniel in Brighton Kingdom. Then she had to give up the last thing that was completely hers -- her national identity. But it made me reach further to realize as followers of Christ, our citizenship is "not of this world" but of heaven. We already have a new identity in Christ. This is the lesson Susanna learns.

Lenora Worth – An April Bride

I wrote this story after witnessing young women who marry military men and who must learn to deal with issues of war. Marriage is hard on a normal day but when your husband has to leave and go into a war zone, it's a whole other issue. Add to that the wounded warriors who return home much different than when they left, both physically and mentally. I saw this young woman standing at a window looking out over a garden, her wedding dress hanging nearby. But instead of being full of joy, she was terrified and worried. Then I asked myself what would happen if the man returning to marry her was so changed that she didn't know if he still loved her. I tried to respect returning soldiers and to show what a young couple might suffer through for the sake of a love they once had.

What developed was An April Bride. Stella Carson cannot wait another day to marry Marshall Henderson. But when Marshall returns home to Louisiana, it becomes clear to them both that he’s not the man he used to be. With only weeks until the wedding, Stella and Marshall must choose between a marriage built on the past and faith in long-ago love or a very different future than the one Stella imagined.

Meg Moseley – A May Bride

Have you ever heard of a guerrilla wedding? A bride and groom, without reservations or permission, steal into a park or onto the grounds of a church to have a quick ceremony before someone kicks them out. This sneaky, unconventional trend inspired me to write about a very conventional young woman who engages in one questionable activity: the regular tending of a garden that she has no business tending. When Ellie, the guerrilla gardener, encounters a guerrilla wedding in “her” garden, her girlhood dreams start to come true in unexpected ways.

Ellie Martin, a country girl living in Atlanta, has always dreamed of a traditional wedding like the one her younger sister is planning back home. Even though Ellie is an up-and-coming real estate agent in the big city, life isn’t a real adventure until she meets Gray Whitby, an Atlanta native who’s all spontaneity and fun. Ellie soon knows he’s “the one,” but her moralistic mother judges him to be the untrustworthy type like Ellie’s runaway father. When it seems that she can’t simultaneously claim Gray’s love, win her mother’s approval, and protect her sister’s fragile happiness, Ellie has to make some tough decisions.

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Winnie Griggs grew up in south Louisiana in an undeveloped area her friends thought of as the back of beyond. She and her two younger siblings spent many an hour exploring the overgrown land around her home, cutting jungle trails, building forts and frontier camps, and looking for pirate ships on the nearby bayou. Once she ‘grew up' she found other outlets for dealing with all those wonderful, adventurous imaginary friends by filling notebooks with their stories.

Eventually she found her own Prince Charming, a rancher whose white steed takes the form of a tractor and whose kingdom is situated in a small rural community that she loves to call home, and together they've built their own storybook happily–ever–after that includes four now grown children, two of whom are twins.

Now a multi–published, award winning author, Winnie feels blessed to be able to share her stories with readers through her writings for Love Inspired Historical books.