Naleighna Kai's Literary Cafe Magazine April Issue - Heaven & Hell | Page 38

Naleighna Kai’s Chocolate Chat featuring Piper Huguley hosted by Shannan Harper Cerece Rennie Murphy QUESTION: What books inspired you as a child? Piper G Huguley The historical stuff: Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, Virginia Hamilton and the Little House on the Prairie series. I should have known I was going to be a historical writer much sooner than I did! Christine Pauls: Did you always want to be a writer of Historical fiction/romance? Piper G Huguley: I always knew that I would be a writer of something. I started to get back into it when my son started playing football and didn’t need me as much. I tried my hand at romance because I assumed it would be easier to get published (Ha!) I wrote a contemporary, which was not very successful. Then I realized that there was a hole in the landscape of historical romance--of seeing African American as long standing people of faith. So I started writing in that direction. My Migrations of the Heart series was supposed to center around a ll of the Bledsoe sisters. There are 5 of them. However, 3 were published and my publisher closed. So I went to Plan B, which was to take the love story of the baby sister and spin it off based on the heroes. So I called the series “Born to Win Men” which centers around historical sports romance. The series title is meant to cover the sports fortunes of the Bates cousins, men who were named with “winning” names and were encouraged to play sports from the beginning. So Champion Jack Bates is the first hero out of the gate. Shannan Harper: That answers my question as to why even though Delia was one of the Bledsoe sisters, her story was part of a different series.