I feel like I’m about to give birth. Anticipating the release of The Reluctant Billionaire has been almost as exciting as being pregnant. Not quite the same, but just like becoming a mother, this book is the culmination of time spent carrying the story idea and characters in my head.

Like any mother who is expecting a child, I debated for a long time on what to call my book.

One of the most exciting yet challenging parts about being pregnant was choosing baby names. As a young single adult anticipating I’d have children someday, I had some ideas in my head of what I wanted to name a little girl. And my husband wanted a Patrick, Jr.

When we couldn’t agree, I bought a book of baby names and started going through it. Over the course of my pregnancy, I wrote down names that I liked for boys and another list for girls. As our time got nearer, I’d ask Pat if he liked one of the names. If he said no, I crossed it off. If he said yes, I put it in a “maybe” column.

By the time we delivered our firstborn, we had a solid name decided for both a boy and a girl. After our son was born, we named him Travis. At the time, Randy Travis was a popular country singer, and I had a couple of people ask if we named our baby after him. That hadn’t even been on my radar.

For our next child, we went through the process all over again. But we didn’t agree on a girl’s name. When I went into labor with my daughter, I planned to call her Abigail. Then the doctor who delivered us was named Gail so the name didn’t feel quite right. I knew Pat really wanted to call her Holly, and most of the people we’d talked to about choices liked that name best. So we decided to call her Holly.

The third time around, we had not only Pat’s and my opinions, but our older children were seven and nine and had opinions of their own. I wanted to name a boy Tanner, but the other kids and my husband all liked the name Chad. By the time he was born, I decided I liked the name Chad better, too. So he was named Chad Tanner.

Chad was born on October 24, 2000. A couple of weeks later, the election results were so close that the ballots had to be recounted. The debris from the punches in the ballots were called chads. Dimpled chads, hanging chads, pregnant chads: they were all significant in the vote count. Chad became a popular name overnight.

With all three of my children, the names we chose seemed to fit just right. They grew into the names as their personalities evolved. Now I can’t imagine having named them anything other than Travis, Holly and Chad.

Choosing the title for The Reluctant Billionaire was both as much fun and as difficult as choosing the names for my babies. I knew I wanted Billionaire to be in the title, but there are so many books about billionaires on the market. I needed to know what it was about Liam that set him apart from the other books that I’d read. Once I figured that out, the title came easily to me.

How I named the characters is another story altogether that I’ll share next Thursday here.

Today I’m interviewing Sara Beth Williams, author of the new release, Anchor My Heart. Sara Beth, thank you for joining me today. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I am a wife, mother of 2, dog mom of 2. I am from Sacramento, California, born and raised. I love reading, writing, Christian music, graphics creation, coaching and teaching in most any capacity. I currently work as a freelance publicist, and a Montessori teacher’s aide.

What is your book about?

Anchor My Heart tells the story of Matt Lawson and Tara Pierce. Matt has lost everything. In the wake of a life-altering tragedy, anxiety from his childhood rears its ugly head, making it difficult to cope with reality. Tara has walked this road before and refuses to let Matt walk alone. Unexpected attraction flares, but Tara senses Matt’s not ready to give himself away again. Can she risk her heart and their friendship and let God step in to heal where she can’t?

Who was your favorite character to create?

I fell in love with Matt in When Hearts Collide. I fleshed out his back story later on after finishing book one, and had to go back and add in some elements for consistency sake while I worked on book 2 and 3 simultaneously. He’s the strong, silent type, and has a soul-deep love of music. I absolutely love that about him. Music touches me deeply. Though I don’t play professionally, or even past beginner/intermediate stage, Christian music and Christian worship music is how I stay connected to God and has the power to greatly encourage me when I’m going through rough times.

What’s next for you as an author?

I am currently working on a handful of other projects. The one I am pitching to agents is about a pop star who has one summer to pull himself back together or risk ruining his lucrative career—and he’s not about to let his sister’s roommate derail his last chance.

Where to find Sara Beth Williams:

Amazon / Goodreads / Bookbub / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter

Website / MeWe

Buy Link for Anchor My Heart:

https://www.amazon.com/Anchor-Heart-Sara-Beth-Williams-ebook/dp/B08X1GBKSD/

We ate a lot of pancakes when I was growing up. For many years, we topped them with pure maple syrup processed from our own trees. There was a shanty back in our woods where the sap was boiled down. A few years ago, the shanty was rebuilt, and my sister’s family started making maple syrup again. Four generations have tapped the trees and boiled sap in that woods.

When my kids were growing up, I didn’t make pancakes often but sometimes I made them special. When my nephews spent the weekends at our house playing video games, I made chocolate chip pancakes for them. Those were just regular pancake batter with chocolate chips added. There were a few times when I made blueberry pancakes for my daughter.

Today, pancakes are a treat for me as I seldom cook them for myself. While my favorite way to eat them is with the pure maple syrup that my family makes, I also like to mix it up and make them a couple of different ways.

The following are two ways I like to dress them up.

Cheesy pancakes:

Ingredients:

1 batch pancake batter

1/2 cup shredded cheese

Stir cheese into batter, pour onto griddle to form pancakes. After you flip them, make sure they are completely done before removing. The melted cheese sometimes looks like raw pancake batter and the pancakes take longer than normal to cook.

Topping:

Sour cream

Salsa

Trust me, they are good that way.

Crepe-style pancakes:

Ingredients:

1 batch batter, made into pancakes

Topping:

Raspberry or strawberry jam

Whipped cream

It’s like having dessert for breakfast!

The best way to enjoy pancakes, for me, anyway, is to make them plain and add that pure maple syrup to them. But no matter what way I eat them, pancakes bring back warm memories from my own childhood and the years when my kids were all still at home.

Last week I told you about a spring break I took in Mexico. We rode the bus partway to a village, then walked a few miles. We got a ride a couple of times, but we did walk a long way. By the time we got to our destination, we were all hot and thirsty.

When we arrived, we went to the house of one of the church families. They gave us all a glass of ice -cold water.

Did I mention the water? Yeah, um, don’t drink the water in Mexico. That’s what we’ve always heard, right?

Somehow, I forgot that in the heat and exhaustion, and guzzled that glass of cold water. That night, I woke up several times to use the bathroom.

As I mentioned last week, the village had outdoor bathrooms, or as we call them here, outhouses. Those were in the middle of the village, and a short walk from the house where we were staying. Not wanting to go out there alone, I kept waking up my housemate: “Daisy, will you go with me to the bathroom?”

The water didn’t affect my friends. I was the only one from the U.S. on that trip. By the next morning. I was pretty sick, but it wore off as the day went on.

I wrote to my parents about the experience. I’m posting more of my letter here, with my notes of explanation in parentheses:

“I got very little sleep. In the morning, I slept a few hours. The other four (the friends who were with me on the trip) prayed for me and I felt better. We went walking, and rested and slept under a tree for a couple of hours. I ate nothing for lunch, but drank two Cokes.

“I felt perky by time to start the evening service. Again, we saw God’s hand at work on everything, and the time with the church people went really well.

“In the morning, we took the bus directly from San Francisco to Saltillo. If we’d known that there was a direct route between the two places, we wouldn’t have had to walk so far.

“One of the young girls from the church rode with us, as she was coming to Saltillo to sell cheese. She gave each of us about a 1/2 pound of cheese, and for them that’s a lot of money to spend. We paid her bus ticket, but we didn’t feel like it was enough. She wouldn’t accept any money.” (The generosity of that young woman was something I found to be true for most of the people I met during the time I lived in Mexico.)

Upon returning to Saltillo, I saw a doctor and took some medicine for my stomach, but the problems lingered. I think that was when I started to get homesick. It was April, and I was committed to a job through the end of June.

In late June, I returned home to the U.S. with the intention of returning to Mexico, even though I’d been homesick. But once I got home, I didn’t want to go back. I had student loans to pay, and I enjoyed being with my family again. I settled into a job that became a good career for me. I met my husband a few months later, married, and raised my children.

I’ve never gone back to Mexico, although I’ve thought about it many times over the years. I miss the people I met there, and some of my best memories come from that period. I’ll always remember that Spring Break trip as one of the most meaningful experiences in my life.

My new contemporary Christian romance is scheduled to be released in April. The Reluctant Billionaire is my first full-length novel to be published by Anaiah Press.

The characters, Liam and Jessica, lived in my head for a long time. Their story was always at the back of my mind, beckoning me to tell it.

In The Reluctant Billionaire, Jessica returns home with a broken heart. Her longtime friend Liam is there to help her through it, showing her what it means to be cared for. They find that with God, and true love, broken hearts can be healed.

I’m so excited about the fast-approaching release date. I hope you will stay tuned for more details.