![\"\"](\"http:\/\/photo.goodreads.com\/books\/1317624049l\/12735543.jpg\" "\\"Flower")
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Flower Child paints a beautiful picture of little souls growing in a flower garden until they are ripe and ready to live. But what if no one comes to claim a soul? What happens to the unborn child that never was?<\/p>\n
Megan is a mother whose first pregnancy ended in miscarriage, so she was never able to claim the soul of her daughter, but she dreams about her. She even names her — Angela. And even though Megan gets pregnant again, and has a son, she continues to see Angela in her dreams, growing up in the garden she never left.<\/p>\n
This story has a surreal, dreamlike quality to it, with first person point of view switching between Megan and Angela.<\/p>\n
I know those of us who have miscarried a child often dream and wonder. My own musings haven’t taken me down a path like the one in this story, but it was fun to imagine, for a while.<\/p>\n
I recommend this story to anyone who has miscarried a child, or who likes to imagine the infinite possibilities of life and death.<\/p>\n
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I recently had the chance to talk to Sheila about her latest story, Flower Child<\/em>:<\/p>\n What inspired you to write Flower Child?<\/strong><\/p>\n Flower Child started with a prompt at our local writers\u2019 group to base a story on a song. The song I chose was John Denver\u2019s Rhyme and Reason and the line \u201cthe children and the flowers\u201d fed into a memory where, as a small child, I imagined babies grew from seeds in heavenly flower-fields. Megan\u2019s character took over once I\u2019d written the first paragraph\u2014I think she came from memories of losing my first pregnancy to miscarriage. Then Angela appeared, building on questions I\u2019d asked about my unborn child, and so the story grew.<\/p>\n Who do you see as your target audience? What do you hope they’ll get from this story? I suspect mothers must be part of my target audience given the subject, but also anyone who knows mothers too\u2014don\u2019t we all? And anyone who wonders what happens to all those unborn children\u2026 Anyone who grieves\u2026 People who\u2019ve been hurt by other people claiming to have all the answers. I hope readers might be pleased by the mystery in the tale, maybe intrigued. I know I like not knowing all the answers\u2014it leaves so many possibilities\u2014so maybe that\u2019s part of what I want to convey.<\/p>\n I’ve now read two of your stories, each pretty different from the other. Do you feel you have any common elements from story to story? That\u2019s something I\u2019ve been thinking about a lot recently. The search for identity is a common element perhaps\u2014the idea that we\u2019re more than just the things we do and the things done to us. And love too\u2014love\u2019s an important part of each of my stories.<\/p>\n What are you working on now?<\/strong><\/p>\n Currently I\u2019m editing my novel, Divide by Zero, that\u2019s due to come out with Stonegarden next summer. I\u2019m also writing a dystopian tale about a baker and a hungry boy\u2026 and a series of YA novels (two and two halves written to date)\u2026 and I\u2019m trying to finish a Bible study series (plus related children\u2019s stories).<\/p>\n If you were stuck on a desert island with no hope for rescue, but you had food, shelter, and plenty of writing implements, what would you write, knowing no one would ever read it? I\u2019d finish those Bible tales as soon as a Bible washed up on the shore.<\/p>\n Thank you! It’s been great talking to you.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Author Bio:<\/p>\n Sheila Deeth grew up in the UK and has a Bachelors and Masters in mathematics from Cambridge University, England. She moved to the States with her husband and three sons in 1996 and now lives near Portland, Oregon, where she enjoys reading, writing, drawing, telling stories, meeting her neighbors’ dogs on the green, and running a local writers’ group.<\/p>\n Sheila’s first two novellas have been published by Gypsy Shadow and are available from http:\/\/gypsyshadow.com\/SheilaDeeth.html . Her Bible stories, gift books and picture-books can be found at http:\/\/www.lulu.com\/sdeeth . Sheila writes book reviews for NightsandWeekends.com, Poetic Monthly magazine and Summit Book Reviews, as well as regularly posting reviews to Amazon, Barnes and noble, Goodreads, Gather, Lunch and Shelfari. Find her on one of her blogs or websites via http:\/\/www.sheiladeeth.blogspot.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Flower Child paints a beautiful picture of little souls growing in a flower garden until they are ripe and ready to live. But what if no one comes to claim a soul? What happens to the unborn child that never was? Megan is a mother whose first pregnancy ended in miscarriage, so she was never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-interviews","category-what-im-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1109,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions\/1109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/photo.goodreads.com\/authors\/1235149927p5\/2853735.jpg\" "\\"Sheila\\"")
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