BLOGWORDS – Thursday 6 November 2025 – CHAT THURSDAY – NAOMI MUSCH
BLOGWORDS – Thursday 6 November 2025 – CHAT THURSDAY – NAOMI MUSCH
CHAT THURSDAY – NAOMI MUSCH
Please give a warm feathered welcome to author and friend, Naomi Musch.
rem: Hullo Naomi, and welcome! Tell us three random things about yourself.
NAOMI: 1) My getaway place is anywhere with my vintage camper I call the Dreamsicle (because of its orange and cream exterior). It doesn’t matter if it’s camping someplace, or if I’m just relaxing right in my own backyard looking over the woods and hills. It’s a peaceful place. 2) I live on a whitetail deer farm and hunting preserve. We used to raise all the typical farm animals, but when my kids grew up, my two eldest sons built a new barn/office, put up miles of tall fence, and converted the property to a farm, preserve, and hunting ranch. After my eldest son went home to Jesus three years ago, operation has been handled by my middle son and his bride. 3) I became a grandma at 39, and that baby is now 24 years old (you do the math). I now have TWENTY grandchildren, and the youngest is only four months. They are my heart’s joy!
rem: I love your getaway place!!! I love trees #dendrophile and (almost) all things outdoors. PS – I love that you named your camper. #Dreamsicle
Maybe it has been three years, but my condolences on the loas of you son.
What is your favorite quotation and why?
NAOMI: Funny you should ask! I mentioned it to a friend just a few days ago. In the movie Chariots of Fire, based upon the life story of missionary Eric Liddel, Eric’s sister fusses at him about “wasting time” running races and entering the Olympics. (This may have been fictionalized.) She asks him he’s not focused on his calling to China’s mission field. His reply was: “God made me fast, and I feel His pleasure when I run.” I love that! I feel the same thing about writing. Whether or not a piece I write is published and read by many or a few or even just myself, God is working on my heart as I write, and I feel His pleasure when I put to use the gift and desire He has given me.
rem: Oh, Naomi, we do be thinking the same—I sense His presence when I’m writing every bit as much as when I’m listening to worship music. I even wrote a blog piece about it several years ago.
https://robinsnest212.blogspot.com/2025/01/blogwords-sunday-5-january-2025-front.html
When reading, what makes or breaks a story for you? Your fiction pet peeve?
NAOMI: What makes a story are compelling characters who are both flawed and redemptive with a well-developed character arc, set in a believable situation, fraught with drama either internally or externally. My pet peeve would be whether something is unbelievable or too easily solved—the dreaded misunderstanding that could be taken care of with the smallest communication. Also, if there’s a big historical blunder. I can overlook small discrepancies, but not something that tells me the author didn’t do her research.
rem: Oh yes, I’m character driven whether I’m reading, writing, or watching a show. But details, whether historical or other wise, have to be accurate or it takes me right out of the story. What are you reading right now?
NAOMI: I am RE-reading Angela Hunt’s Heirs of Cahira O’connor series, because I really enjoyed it the first time around some thirty years or more ago, and I’ve forgotten parts. For something new, I am beginning the new Apron Strings Tea Tales collection. It’s a multi-author series that does not have to be read in order, but the first couple of books are available now. They’re sweet retellings of favorite fairytales told between the World Wars and without the magic, but with all the sparkle.
rem: Oh, those sound great. Tell us a little about your writing journey.
NAOMI: I set my course to become a writer at ten years old, but the usual things of life intervened, like jobs, marriage, and raising a family. I still wrote during those years, but wasn’t published in fiction until I reached my 40s. I publish both traditionally and independently, and I currently have nineteen books available with three planned for release in 2026. One of them is finished with editing and is in production stage, and the other two are undergoing rewrites.
rem: I love that you knew you were a writer so young. What genre(s) do you write and why?
NAOMI: I dabble in contemporary romance and women’s fiction, but my great love and primary focus is historical fiction and will focus primarily on that going forward. I discovered post-high school that I love history when it has context. I like to see how people lived and worked through various periods and against both historical and personal odds. That interest compelled me to research and to both read and write a lot of historical fiction.
rem: I do love a good historical fiction story. Tell us a little about your latest book? What is your current project?
NAOMI: Last year, my novella The Angel and the Sky Pilot in the Courting the Country Preacher collection won a Silver Carol Award. Now, just this week, I’ve released a book called Haven for Love, which also pairs two contemporary Christian romance novellas that were written years apart when I needed a break between bigger historical projects. I’ve enjoyed writing novellas from time to time for that reason. The two stories in Haven for Love, both deal with real-world struggles. In A Chosen Pursuit, the heroine is struggling to define success and find fulfillment in light of other people’s expectations and despite her own misconceptions. I love that the story also features a military veteran and is set at a family-centered camp that honors veterans. I modeled the setting after the American Legion Camp in northwest Wisconsin where I was privileged to spend a week with other veterans’ families during my son’s deployment to Afghanistan. The other story, Heart Not Taken, is a revamped, re-release of a novella from 2010 about two people who could discover a love worth fighting for if they can forgive the hurts others have dealt them, and can hurdle the secrets and sinful baggage of the hero’s own past. Also set in a quiet, peaceful family cabin on a riverfront, this story is modeled after a location near my home.
I am currently working on a final read-through of a full-length historical releasing next spring from Barbour as part of their Enduring Hope series (book five). The Girl from Tomorrow’s Town is set in 1918 and involves the historic Hagenbeck-Wallace circus train crash—and a lot of other plot nuances (of course!). I’m also into massive rewrites for a novel I hope to release next summer for America’s 250th anniversary—a Revolutionary War story called Sibella’s Stand. Lastly, I’m working on edits for a book in the Apron Strings Tea Tales series. My title which releases in fall of 2026 is called Cinder Smudged, and—you guessed it—it’s a retelling of Cinderella set in Wisconsin during the Great Depression. My plate heapeth over!
rem: GoodNESS!!! I’ve got stories tramping all over my brain, but I can only focus on writing one at a time. LOL What is YOUR favorite part about the book or why do you love this book? Why should we read it?
NAOMI: Looking at The Girl from Tomorrow’s Town the drama that happens on the day after the circus train crash changes the course of the story, when my heroine Lily is searching desperately for the hero, Francis. She can’t locate him anywhere, and she fears the worst. All she discovers amid the chaos is a single, frightening clue—and a new character who shifts her life in other ways. This book releases in May of 2026, and the preorder is available.
rem: Nice little cliff-hanger there, Naomi. #winkwink What is one take-away from your book(s) that you hope readers identify with?
NAOMI: Grace. Hope. Restoration after brokenness, even if we have to wait long for it.
rem: Yeah, it’s that waiting bit that gets to us. One more and then we’ll close. Do you have a life Scripture?
NAOMI: Psalm 40:1-3
I waited patiently for the LORD;
He inclined to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me up from the pit of despair,
out of the miry clay;
He set my feet upon a rock,
He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear
and put their trust in the LORD.
rem: And there it is; His promised make all the waiting in the world worth it a thousand times over, Anything you’d like to add?
NAOMI: I love connecting with my readers through my newsletter and on all the socials. If you enjoy “visiting” while you do housework, please check out my YouTube channel. We’ll chat about books, housework, family life, food, and all kinds of projects and ideas I like sharing there.
rem: Thanks again, Naomi, so much for chatting with us on my blog today!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Naomi is an award-winning author who crafts her stories from the pristine north woods of Wisconsin, where she and her husband Jeff live as epically as God allows near the families of their five children. She enjoys roaming around on the farm, snacking out of the garden, relaxing in her vintage camper, and loving on her passel of grandchildren. Naomi is a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers; Faith, Hope, and Love Christian Writers; and the Lake Superior Writers. Though she has written in a variety of venues, her great love is historical fiction. She had three new releases in 2022. Her novel, Song for the Hunter is the sequel to Mist O’er the Voyageur, a 2019 Selah Awards finalist and two-time Book of the Year nominee. Not for Love is her novella in Barbour's new Lumberjacks & Ladies collection. Her Heroines of WWII novel titled Season of My Enemy releases in June. She is the author of several other series, collections, and stand-alone novels. Naomi would love to connect with you around the web and you can sign up for her monthly newsletter on her site.
https://www.youtube.com/@NaomiMusch
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4617551.Naomi_Dawn_Musch
https://www.amazon.com/Naomi-Musch/e/B00727J758
https://www.bookbub.com/profile/naomi-musch
https://www.facebook.com/NaomiMuschAuthor/
https://www.instagram.com/naomimusch/
https://www.pinterest.com/nmusch/
Thanks for allowing me to share a little bit on your blog, Robin! God bless!
ReplyDeleteHappy to have you, Naomi. Pop back any time.
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