Featured Author - D.C. Stewart

I am a stay-at-home mother of three; 4 year old twin boys and a six month old baby girl. I was born and raised in Oklahoma, but spent five years in my mid-twenties outside Little Rock, Arkansas with my husband, Scott. While in Arkansas I worked for a Methodist church as the Communications Coordinator, which is just a fancy way to say I did the weekly bulletin, the monthly newsletter, advertising, brochures and fliers, etc. Then we returned to Oklahoma and I was able to stay home with the kids and attempt to write full-time. Not easy with three kids in the house.

Running wild on my parents’ cattle ranch with my younger brother was the inspiration for this book. I remembered the trouble we got into, and wanted to recapture the fun and excitement of ‘exploring’ and ‘discovering new territory’.

My parents also had cattle stolen after I went away to college, so really this story is a combination of true/autobiographical events, but told in a completely fictional way.

I truly enjoyed exploring my own childhood again while writing this book. I talked to my brother on the phone for hours discussing our adventures on the ranch, and enjoyed sharing that bond with him. I asked my parents questions, and they told us stories we didn’t even remember, so it was a great time learning about our childhood from their perspective as well.

I least liked the difficulty of being true to the voices of eleven year old boys. Again, I had to refer to my brother, and my husband, to keep the voice authentic. And as a mother, I cringed at the things I made the characters do, and the dangerous situations I put them in. If they were really my sons getting into that kind of trouble, I would lock them in their rooms until they were thirty!

Besides joining ACFW? Read, read, read and write, write, write. Writing (in my experience) is not like riding a bike where you never forget. With writing, you can become rusty and outdated if you don’t continue to work at your craft.

I have a plethora of authors I enjoy: Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Nora Roberts, Janet Evanovich and Johanna Lindsey in ABA; Kristen Billerbeck, Rene Gutteridge, Mary Conneally, Diann Hunt, Camy Tang, Brandilyn Collins, and a dozen others in CBA.

I am hoping the Parker Twins books will be a five book series. The second book is under review with my publisher right now. So perhaps soon there will be more adventures for Brad, Charlie, and Zoey.

I am also branching out into the romance genre, and have a romantic comedy I am working on at the moment. We’ll just have to see.

Thank you so much for having me as a featured author, Marian. I have enjoyed giving my first ever interview. Very Exciting! Thanks again.
D.C. Stewart

This is the story of Brad and Charlie Parker, identical twin boys, who LOVE spending their summer vacation on their grandparents’ ranch in Oklahoma. They get to do all the fun and exciting things a kid could want with limited adult supervision. While they are on the ranch, they discover someone is stealing the cattle, and try to solve the mystery on their own. Their little sister Zoey, who has special gifts, causes all kinds of trouble for her brothers, not to mention the trouble the twins get into themselves.

Oh, marketing. I am great on paper or in cyberspace, but in-person marketing makes me break out in hives. Having people I’ve known all my life referring to me (JOKINGLY) as ‘the famous author’ just makes my skin crawl. I am not the outgoing type and have to stumble my way through introductions at libraries and bookstores. It is definitely the biggest challenge so far.

Well, I have heard it said many times, “Write what you know,” and these characters are a combination of me, my brother, my own children, and even my husband and his brothers. My husband’s parents love to tell stories about the trouble their four sons got into, so I combined elements from all these lives to create the characters of Brad and Charlie.

The twins’ characters each have their own personalities and their own interests, but they also share a bond that only siblings as close as twins can understand. And they have the habit of getting into trouble wherever they go.