Luana Ehrlich Interview

Q: Let me start with asking you to tell us a little bit about yourself.
A. I grew up in a minister’s home, one of four children, and one of my earliest memories is going with my family to the downtown library in Joliet, Illinois, every Saturday afternoon, where each of us would bring home a ton of books to read. One day, I noticed the books my dad was bringing home from the library looked more interesting than mine, so I asked him if I could read one of them, and after that, I was hooked on the mystery/suspense/thriller genre forever.

Although I hadn’t planned on becoming a minister’s wife, I fell in love with a ministerial college student who came to work with my dad one summer when I was just sixteen, and after we got married—I was eighteen at the time—I immediately became a minister’s wife.

While pastoring different churches, my husband and I have lived in a number of Midwestern states, plus we’ve been missionaries to Costa Rica and Venezuela. For the past twenty-five years, we’ve lived in Norman, Oklahoma, where my husband was the senior pastor of a large congregation until he retired.

Not long after we were married, I began doing freelance writing assignments for a denominational newspaper, but I didn’t write my first novel until 2014, when I wrote One Night in Tehran, Book I in the Titus Ray Thriller Series. I belong to several organizations for writers, including the American Christian Fiction Writers—I was an ACFW Carol Awards finalist for Four Months in Cuba and was named ACFW Mentor of the Year in 2019.

Q: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
A. I don’t recall an exact moment I knew I wanted to become a writer, but in elementary school, whenever I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said I wanted to be either a writer or a teacher. Although I’ve never taught professionally, I’ve spent most of my adult life teaching Bible study classes, and once I became a full-time author, I fulfilled that dream as well.

Q: Could you give us the highlights of your professional writing career including how you got your first writing break?
A. My first break happened almost thirty years ago, when I was asked to write a weekly column for a denominational state newspaper, and a few years after that, I became a correspondent for a world-wide denominational news organization. I didn’t write my first novel until 2014, when I began writing the Titus Ray Thriller Series. That book took me a whole year to write, but now I try to write two to three books a year.

Q: Would you tell us about your current book release Three Steps Away?
A: Three Steps Away, Book VII, is the continuation of the Titus Ray Thriller Series, which features Titus Ray, a veteran CIA intelligence officer, who was brought to faith in Christ through the influence of some Iranian Christians in Tehran, while he was on the run from the Iranian secret police. In the years following his conversion, which are described in Books I-VI, Titus falls in love and marries a local police detective in Norman, Oklahoma, and begins the process of adopting an eight-year-old girl, the daughter of a fallen operative from a previous mission.

In Three Steps Away, Titus is vacationing in Barbados with his new acquired family when he encounters an Iranian he knew in Tehran while living there under a different identity. In order to protect his family, he’s forced to resume his old identity, which eventually leads him to Beirut, Lebanon, where he discovers a Russian banker is supplying weapons to an Iranian terrorist organization.

Q: Where did you get your inspiration for Three Steps Away?
A: I’m a news fanatic, so I get most of my inspiration for my books from the news I hear every day. When I heard how Russia has developed some banking software to overcome U.S. sanctions against Iran, I wondered what would happen if Titus resumed his former Iranian identity in order to gain access to it. The title, Three Steps Away, comes from the fact Titus was three steps away from walking out the door of a coffeeshop in Barbados when he ran into an Iranian from his past life in Tehran.

Q: What is the main thing you hope readers remember from this story?
A: I hope they remember how Titus shared his faith with one of his fellow operatives, even though he failed to do the same thing with another operative. I hope they remember no matter how often Titus fails to do what he knows he should do—like keeping his temper in check or telling the truth when he doesn’t have to lie—he doesn’t let his failure stop him from doing the right thing when he has the opportunity again.

Q: What inspires you to write?
A. One of the things that inspires me to write every day is opening my email and reading correspondence from people who’ve written to tell me how much they enjoy reading Titus Ray Thrillers and Mylas Grey Mysteries. I love how most of them ask me the same question, “When is your next book coming out?”

Q: Would you share with us what you are working on now?
A. I’m working on two different books right now. First, I’m in a boxed set with eight other Christian authors who write in my genre. The boxed set is called Dangerous Deceptions, and my book is Ben in Love: A Ben Mitchell/Titus Ray Thriller. All the novels are brand-new, full-length books in the Christian Romantic Suspense genre. We’ve priced the boxed set at 99¢, which is an unbelievable bargain, but we’re trying to make the USA Today Bestsellers List, so we’re giving all our readers an incredible opportunity for brand-new books from their favorite authors, while trying to gain recognition for our own inspirational romantic suspense novels at the same time. Readers can learn more about Dangerous Deceptions and purchase the boxed set on our website: http://www.dangerous-deceptions.com.

The second book I’m working on is Two Days Taken. It’s Book II in my new series of Mylas Grey Mysteries, which I just started last year with the release of Book I, One Day Gone. Mylas Grey Mysteries feature Mylas Grey, a private investigator in the office of Senator Davis Allen. Two Days Taken will be released in November 2020 and will continue the story of Mylas Grey and photographer, Whitney Engel.

Q: When you’re not writing what do you like to do?
A. Well, of course, I love to read, so if I’m not writing a mystery/suspense/thriller book, I’m reading one, plus I love to go shopping and watch football. I also enjoy spending some time every day in personal Bible study.