Below, you’ll find the full transcript of today’s episode, in case you prefer to read or want to reference something we talked about.

“One day I’m going to marry you…”

Jake Harper had said those words to Vanessa Conroy since kindergarten, but after watching her parents’ bitter divorce and living with her mother’s devastation, Vanessa made a promise to herself—she’s never getting married. She’ll stay single and pursue her dream of being a ready-to-wear fashion designer.

In high school, Vanessa dated and broke up with every bad boy in the book, while Jake remained her consistent buddy. He was her wingman, her best friend, her go-to person for special occasions, but she held him at a distance. Why ruin a wonderful friendship?

On the night of their final prom, Jake takes a risk and kisses her. Stunned by how right it feels, Vanessa rashly blurts out a deal: if they’re still single at thirty, maybe she’ll marry him.

Now, thirteen years later, they’re back in Sweetheart Bay to be part of her sister’s wedding. And they’re both still single at thirty. Vanessa begins to see Jake in a new, more romantic light, but Jake, a successful architect living in California, hasn’t said a word about their old pact.

As family drama bubbles and old feelings resurface, Vanessa must face the one possibility she’s always run from: what if her true love has been standing beside her all along? Can she and Jake find their happily-ever-after back on Sweetheart Bay?

A member of the American Christian Fiction Writers Honor Roll, Lenora Worth writes romance and romantic suspense for Love Inspired, sweet romance for Tule Publishing, and single-title Amish stories for Kensington Books. Three of her books finaled in the ACFW Carol Awards, and she received the Romantic Times Pioneer Award for Inspirational Fiction. Lenora is a NY Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and ECPA bestselling writer and a 2019 RWA RITA® Finalist. With one-hundred-plus books and novellas published and over 5.3 million books in print, she enjoys adventures with her retired husband and loves reading, baking, and shopping … especially shoe shopping.

Danielle Grandinetti: [00:00:00] Welcome to A Spot of Story with Danielle Grandinetti. Cozy up with your favorite beverage as we chat about sweet romance, thrilling suspense, and fascinating history. Perhaps you’ll find your next read in one of these stories.

On this episode of A Spot of Story, I am chatting with Lenora Worth. Lenora is a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers Honor Roll. Lenora writes romance and romantic suspense for Love Inspired, sweet romance for Tule Publishing, and single-title Amish stories for Kensington Books. Three of her books finaled in the ACFW Carol Awards and she received the Romantic Times Pioneer Award for [00:01:00] inspirational fiction.

Lenora is a New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and ECPA bestselling writer. That’s a lot of them. That’s awesome. And 2019 RWA Rita finalist. With 100 plus books and novellas published and 5.3 million books in print, she enjoys adventures with her retired husband and loves reading, baking, and shopping, especially shoe shopping.

Lenora Worth: That’s right.

Danielle Grandinetti: And this particular podcast is gonna talk about a book that will add to that bio, your first independently published book.

Lenora Worth: That’s right.

Danielle Grandinetti: All right. What is the title of this independently published book?

Lenora Worth: It is The Sweetheart Deal.

Danielle Grandinetti: The Sweetheart Deal. Before we start talking about The Sweetheart Deal, though, I love to ask a question because at the end of the day, books is what brings us all together, and like you said, reading is just as much fun as writing these [00:02:00] books.

So what are you currently reading?

Lenora Worth: Well, I’m currently reading, I, I’ve got one in every room, but I got a lot going on. I’m reading The Island Bookshop (affiliate) by Roseanna White because I admire her work. I’m reading a Charles Martin (affiliate) book because I admire his work. And I think I just finished, oh, a Laura Blount (affiliate). One of her wonderful Love Inspired stories. But right now I’m trying to stick to Roseanna’s and just read hers because it’s really good.

Danielle Grandinetti: Yes, I just got that one in the mail, so I’m excited to read that one too.

Lenora Worth: Yes. I love it. And it’s a real book. It’s not on my Kindle, so that’s even more fun.

Danielle Grandinetti: Yes, yes. And it has that beachy cover.

Lenora Worth: Yes.

Danielle Grandinetti: Which kind of brings us to your book then, because yours is also the end-of-summer sweet romance read. I’m excited about it.

Lenora Worth: I am too.

Danielle Grandinetti: All [00:03:00] right, so The Sweetheart Deal. What does a day in the life of your main character look like? First tell us her name and then.

Lenora Worth: Well, Jake and Vanessa, they grew up on Sweetheart Bay in Florida, which is where I live. And so it’s based loosely around Destin, and I had so much fun with that. And they have known each other since kindergarten, but they come home for a wedding as adults, so they’ve got a lot of wedding duties.

She’s a maid of honor. He’s the best man, and they’re forced back together. And they realize that as adults, they’re a little shy about how they feel about each other, because he’s always been her best buddy. But she wouldn’t let it go any further for various reasons that we’ll get into later. But anyway, that’s what they’re doing right now in the book.

They’re trying to take care of her sister’s wedding. Her sister’s younger than [00:04:00] her and she’s aware that everybody knows that and her sister’s getting married before she does. So it’s, you know, they’re a little awkward around each other, but they have a whole week or so to get to know each other again.

And promises have been made that they might have to keep.

Danielle Grandinetti: Ooh, that’s always fun. What is your favorite scene in the book, and why was it your favorite to write?

Lenora Worth: I had several favorite scenes, but the one I loved the most was when they finally see each other again as adults because they’ve kind of made a pact that if they’re still single when they’re 30, she will marry him because he has wanted her to marry him since kindergarten, and he has made that very clear.

But now that she’s interested, he’s kind of backed off because he doesn’t want to scare her. And as an adult, he’s matured enough to know that he shouldn’t have pushed her so much when they were [00:05:00] younger. Her parents got a horrible divorce and she never quite got over that, so she doesn’t believe in marriage anymore.

And just when she sees him, they act, they bump into each other and she feels kind of a jolt and like, oh. He looks great. Oh, now that she’s kind of interested, he’s trying to back off and it was a cute moment where they were both kind of awkward and I loved how we all reacted to it.

Danielle Grandinetti: Yes, yes, yes.

Oh, those are fun. What is some unique research that you had to do for this particular book?

Lenora Worth: There were two unique things. First of all, I had to research wedding etiquette, which is—oh my goodness. I’m glad I eloped. But that was fun. I had to come up with the perfect wedding cake because it wanted to be a beachy cake.

[00:06:00] And I had a lot of help with that, just researching and I got hungry.

Danielle Grandinetti: Yeah, seriously.

Lenora Worth: And there’s a really funny scene about the wedding cake. Well, two. One’s funny, one’s not so funny. And then her father becomes ill. And I had to do a lot of research. I won’t say what happens, but I had to do a lot of research on, in the medical system, you know, what would happen if this happened.

And so I preferred the cake scenes more than the medical scenes, but that was fun.

Danielle Grandinetti: Good. Awesome. So what is one piece of research that didn’t end up making it in the book?

Lenora Worth: You know, I think it all ended up there. I got a little, you know, I had to be a little technical with the medical stuff and I didn’t go into all the graphics of what would happen if this happened, but most of the cake scenes went in there too.

So yeah, they really, they really came in handy and I did a lot of research on both of them.

Danielle Grandinetti: That’s awesome. I know research, you can sometimes go down a rabbit hole and find something really fun. So getting to use it all.

Lenora Worth: They were used.

Danielle Grandinetti: That’s awesome.

Lenora Worth: Put in the book.

Danielle Grandinetti: So. This is gonna be a twofold question.

Lenora Worth: Okay.

Danielle Grandinetti: What was the inspiration behind the book and the inspiration behind making this one your first independently published book?

Lenora Worth: Well, the book, the idea came to me when I had joined up for this big indie promo thing on Facebook. And I realized after signing up that it was supposed to be a novella and I wanted it to be a beach book.

And I came up with this idea because I live in Florida, and I thought, well, if it’s gonna be a beach book, you know, I’ll just put [00:08:00] it in this novella collection. But I realized at the time I had too many deadlines and we were getting prepared to move again, and I just couldn’t go through with it. So I dropped out of that.

So fast forward and I decided, you know, I’m gonna try indie and I thought what would be a good book to start? And I remembered The Sweetheart Deal, the little novella that I had started. So I pulled it out. I worked on the first three chapters for about three months. And I’d just gotten that perfected to put in Atticus and somehow I lost it before I saved it. And I couldn’t—we, we, nobody could find it. I couldn’t, Atticus couldn’t. And because I deleted it before I saved it. So, but I had a copy, you know, saved on my computer. So got that fixed and got over the agony of that. I started rewriting it in January [00:09:00] and it took me till probably May to finish it. And I just really, the more I got into it, it was a time when I was struggling with just writing every day anyway. So by the time I got into it really deeply, I really had fallen in love with the book and I was determined I was going to finish it, whether it never saw the light of day or just.

But then I thought, you know, this is perfect for my first indie book, because I have two other quirky ideas like this that I think I can turn it into a series in the same community that’s on the bay and near the beach and near the Gulf. And have fun with that too.

Danielle Grandinetti: Ooh, exciting. Yeah, I love that. It’s so fun.

Lenora Worth: Well, you know, that is a good question. When I first started out, I thought it was gonna be a rom-com type, you know, just fun book. And the more I wrote, the more it [00:10:00] got kind of serious and I thought, okay, this is classic.

What I’ve written all my life is sweet, cozy romance, and that’s what I’ve written for Love Inspired for 30 years and for Tule and, and you know, even with my Amish books, they’re just sweet romance. And so I thought, you know, I’m just gonna go with it and we’ll turn it into a—it’s got funny moments and it’s got sad moments and.

Them reuniting with each other was such a joy that I hope first it will encourage people to never give up on their faith. Keep the faith because it does have a little bit of a faith thread. And then second, don’t—you can fall in love without losing control of yourself and your life.

If you find the right person to love you, that person will let you be yourself. And [00:11:00] I think that’s the important takeaways. Never give up hope or faith and never think that if you do this thing, you’re gonna lose control of that thing. You have to compromise and make life work and you can be happy.

And have a happily ever after.

Danielle Grandinetti: Oh, I love that. I love that. And happily ever afters are just the best.

Lenora Worth: Oh, yes. That’s a given, you know?

Danielle Grandinetti: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Well, Lenora, thank you so much for joining me today. It was so fun and I’m so excited about this book. I have gotten to hear the progress along the way, so I am, I’m excited.

Lenora Worth: More than you wanna hear.

Danielle Grandinetti: No, not at all. It’s been fun. I can’t wait to actually hold it in my hands now though.

Lenora Worth: Me too. I’m so excited.

Danielle Grandinetti: Which means where can other readers find this book (affiliate)?

Lenora Worth: Well, whenever it gets out there, which we hope it will—it will be in [00:12:00] Amazon for a while and I hope to have print copies available.

And we might go wide with it a little later, but Kindle and hopefully print copies I hope to have by, you know, the fall, the end of summer. So, if all goes well and I don’t mess everything up.

Danielle Grandinetti: Yes, I’m sure it’ll be great.

Lenora Worth: We’ll see. And I’m really excited and I really hope that my readers are very loyal and I hope they’ll buy this one and give it a chance.

Danielle Grandinetti: Absolutely. I’m excited about it.

Lenora Worth: I am too. And thank you for having me. Lemme talk about it.

Danielle Grandinetti: Oh, absolutely. So, if they want to find your other books, all a hundred plus of them, where can they find you online?

Lenora Worth: Well, we just redid my website so they can find them in all their glorious color and titles. And on my new website, which it’ll be still lenoraworth.com. And it’ll be in the same location, but all they gotta do is Google or look for lenoraworth.com. But we’re moving it this week, setting it up. So yes, new start there too. New and fresh. And I hope this book by the end of summer will be right up front.

Danielle Grandinetti: Perfect. Perfect.

Thank you so much, Lenora. This has been so much fun.

Lenora Worth: Thank you, Danielle. You’re a sweetie and I appreciate you thinking of me.

Danielle Grandinetti: Thank you for listening to A Spot of Story with Danielle Grandinetti. We hope you enjoy today’s conversation. Let us know by leaving a comment below and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. Discover more information about today’s book by visiting A Spot of Story online at daniellegrandinetti.com/podcast.

Happy reading.

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Until next time, may your reading bring both light and encouragement.

Happy reading!
~ Danielle.