Robin Luftig Interview

Q: Let me start with asking you to tell us a little bit about yourself.
A. Robin’s mantra is to be grateful in everything—even the bumpy parts of the rides. That includes either writing for fiction or non-fiction readers. It also spills over to speaking to audiences on healing after tragedy. She’s an award-winning author in both fiction and nonfiction categories. She took the world by storm with her debut mystery novel, Ladies of the Fire (Elk Lake Publications, 2020) and it was a finalist for a Selah award in the Debut Novel category. Her nonfiction book, God’s Best During Your Worst (Bold Vision Books, 2020) won first place in AWSA’s Golden Scroll 2020 in Christian Living as well as a finalist in the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference Director’s Choice for Nonfiction.

Her follow-up novel, Ladies Uncover a Secret is scheduled for release in the fall of 2022.

She’s also an award-winner as columnist for great magazines such as Leading Hearts, CBN.com, and many more.

Robin is a leader in Word Weavers International, a member of American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW), and Advanced Writers and Speakers Association (AWSA). She lives near Harrisburg Pennsylvania with her best pal/hubster and has five grown children and two grandbabies.

Q: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
A. There were two times when writing piqued my interest. Once, as a young girl, I wanted to be a reporter, just like Lois Lane. I figured it would be a glamorous life and I would undoubtedly meet Superman in my travels. The other was when I was in high school. Often, I didn’t get the assignment of reading a novel completed, so I’d make up the story and author. (I don’t recommend the latter point. I dodged detention, but I still remember how close I was.)

Q: Could you give us the highlights of your professional writing career including how you got your first writing break?
A. My first book, Pain After Peace, a nonfiction self-help book was self-published in 2011. Writing that book was the catalyst to drive me to write more. Unfortunately, three weeks after publishing the book, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor and given ten days to get my affairs in order. After months of physical, occupational, and speech therapies, I began God’s Best. I attended my first writers conference in 2013 with the first version of that manuscript. Nobody was interested until after several revisions and God’s perfect timing, it was finally picked up in 2019. To fight discouragement while peddling the manuscript, I wrote my first novel, Ladies of the Fire. That’s how I had my first two books published in the same year.

Q: Would you tell us about your current book release LADIES OF THE FIRE?
A: Here’s the back cover copy: The late 1960s sets the newly widowed Lily-Rose Pembrick reeling as she flees Lincoln, Nebraska, with her children. Only taking the cash from the house safe and what she can get her hands on at the family bank, she leaves the recently inherited and successful Pembrick Transportation company behind.
Exhausted from driving all night, she stops in Applegate, Ohio, and decides to start a new life on Norwood Street. There, she meets Fiona Kasey, an African American no-nonsense housekeeper/companion to an elderly white woman, and Sugar Bowersox a southern spitfire who has lost herself in motherhood.
Together, they enjoy Lily-Rose’s backyard fire pit, where dreams are spoken, and secrets revealed. As they embrace a kinship they never would have sought, Lily-Rose begins to think her past can finally be laid to rest—until someone ends up dead.
When Lily-Rose’s past catches up with her, who will be left standing?

Q: Where did you get your inspiration for LADIES OF THE FIRE?
A: When I was a single mother, I lived by two fabulous women. And over the course of a few years, we met at a backyard fire pit and really got to know one another. We could solve the problems of the world there. Then one moved away, then another. But the friendships and life lessons stayed with each of us.

Q: What is the main thing you hope readers remember from this story?
A: In a word—redemption. If we open ourselves up to the process, there is redemption waiting for us all. Isn’t that why Christ died?

Q: What inspires you to write?
A. I love telling stories. I’ve been blessed with a fertile imagination and a lifetime of unorthodoxy. That gives me lots of room for book writing—fiction as well as nonfiction.

Q: Would you share with us what you are working on now?
A. I’m currently putting the bow on the second installment of the Ladies series, LADIES UNCOVER A SECRET. It’s scheduled to be released in the fall of 2022.

Q: When you’re not writing what do you like to do?
A. I’m a real foodie. I try my best to make healthy choices to cover for the times I dive into chocolates and salty snacks. And Italian food? Don’t get me started! I could bathe in it.