BLOGWORDS – Thursday 14 August 2025 – CHAT THURSDAY

BLOGWORDS – Thursday 14 August 2025 – CHAT THURSDAY – ROBIN PATCHEN

CHAT THURSDAY – ROBIN PATCHEN

Please give a warm feathered welcome to author and friend, Robin Patchen.

rem: Hullo Robin, and welcome. Tell us three random things about yourself.

ROBIN: 1. My son, daughter-in-law, and two grandsons are missionaries in the Himalayas. We visited this year, and it was amazing. 2. I’ve lived in three out of the four states that begin with “New.” I was born in New Mexico, moved to New Jersey when I was a baby, then moved to New Hampshire when I was three, where I lived until college. 3. I didn’t start writing fiction until I was forty.

rem: What an amazing life and location! I know your trip was priceless. What is your favorite quotation and why?

ROBIN: I don’t know that it’s my favorite, but this one by Frederick Buechner comes to mind: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” I love how this quote captures the intersection of passion and purpose.

rem: That’s beautiful. When reading, what makes or breaks a story for you? Your fiction pet peeve?

ROBIN: A story has to make sense, and the characters have to be true to who the author created them to be throughout the book. I read a book in my genre once. It was amazing, a page-turning adventure from the beginning to…almost the end. And then the character, who’d been brilliant and amazing for hundreds of pages, was suddenly dumb as a box of rocks. Her stupidity propelled her into the climax, and the whole time I was thinking, she’s smarter than this. There’s no way somebody who managed everything she did in the first three-quarters of the story didn’t know better. It was lazy plotting, and that makes me crazy.

rem: “.. dumb as a box of rocks.” Oh my stars! LOL What are you reading right now?

ROBIN: Funny you should ask. I happen to be rereading one of my books, Lineage of Corruption. It’s about to be produced in audio, and I want to make sure it sparkles before I send it to my narrator.

rem: How cool to ‘graduate’ to audio! Tell us a little about your writing journey.

ROBIN: I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was a kid, but I didn’t know what to write. I majored in journalism in college, then sort of fell into a marketing/public relations job. I liked it, but it definitely didn’t make my soul sing. When our children were born, I didn’t work outside the home, instead focusing on raising them. When I turned forty, my husband gave me a laptop for my birthday, and for the first time in my life, I started writing a novel. I’d had a story bouncing around in my head for years, and my only goal was to get it on paper so I could get it out of my head. The book was terrible, but it sparked a new passion inside me. I’ve been writing fiction ever since.

rem: Funny how getting one story out of your head and onto paper makes room for… dozens more. LOL What genre(s) do you write and why?

ROBIN: I write Christian romantic suspense because those were the kinds of stories that first came to me. I love putting characters in dangerous situations and seeing how they handle them.

rem: I’m sure—no, I’ve read some of your books, I know—none of your characters are “… dumb as a box of rocks.” Tell us a little about your latest book? What is your current project?

ROBIN: I just finished Defending You, book 7 in the Wright Heroes of Maine series. It has a woman who witnesses a murder—right after finding a priceless heirloom linked to a double homicide. She’s sent a bodyguard, who happens to be a guy she utterly humiliated back in high school. Together, they travel from Philadelphia back to her hometown on the coast of Maine, trying to stay ahead of the killers throughout the journey. (Spoiler alert: The killers dog them every step of the way.) Think The Bodyguard meets Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

rem: What is YOUR favorite part about the book or why do you love this book? Why should we read it?

ROBIN: The hero had a massive crush on the heroine back in high school. He asked her to the prom, and she laughed in his face—a moment she’s always remembered as “The worst thing I ever did to another human being.” She’d hoped he’d forgotten. Of course, he hadn’t. I love their reunion, her shock at seeing the nerdy kid she used to know as a buff former Navy SEAL, and his reaction to the woman he told himself he hated…but still found far too attractive. That part of the story was so fun to write.

rem: Love a good ‘turn-around’ relationship. What is one take-away from your book(s) that you hope readers identify with?

ROBIN: When Cici witnesses the murder, she grabs the heirloom necklace to return to its rightful owners. She wants to do something heroic, something that matters. She learns in the course of the story that she doesn’t have to be a hero to matter, that she’s valuable exactly the way she is.

rem: That’s profound. And truly the message of Father God’s love for us. One more and then we’ll close. Do you have a life Scripture?

ROBIN: I’ve often thought I did, and then come up with a new one, so I guess I have seasonal Scriptures. One that resonates with me right now is Psalm 20:7: “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”

rem: Robin, thank you so much for chatting with us on my blog today!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robin Patchen is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of Christian romantic suspense. She grew up in a small town in New Hampshire, the setting of her Nutfield Saga books, and then headed to Boston to earn a journalism degree. After college, working in marketing and public relations, she discovered how much she loathed the nine-to-five ball-and-chain. After relocating to the Southwest, she started writing her first novel while she homeschooled her three children. The novel was dreadful, but her passion for storytelling didn’t wane. Thankfully, as her children grew, so did her writing ability. Now that her kids are adults, she has more time to play with the lives of fictional heroes and heroines, wreaking havoc and working magic to give her characters happy endings. When she’s not writing, she’s editing or reading, proving most of her life revolves around the twenty-six letters of the alphabet.

Visit https://robinpatchen.com/subscribe to receive a free book and stay informed about Robin’s latest projects.

Defending You on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSM1XHL

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Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Robin-Patchen/e/B00A289790