An Interview with Best-selling Author Lauraine Snelling

An Attitude of Gratitude

Lauraine Snelling is a motherly 65 year old woman who looks like she would be most at home in the kitchen, baking up Norwegian treats her mother made, not in front of a computer writing fiction for both children and adults. But Mrs. Snelling has written somewhere between 50 and 70 books (she says she'd rather write them than count them), and has sold more than 2 million books so far. Her books have been translated into Norwegian, Danish, and German, and have been produced as books on tape. I was fortunate enough to meet Lauraine over a two day period earlier this month, and both interview her and learn from her in a writers workshop. I regret that it was only a one-day workshop; in her California home, she often conducts 7-day workshops as well. How she manages to do this, and tour and do book signings, while writing up to three novels per year, is a testament to her hard-working upbringing, as well as her dedication to writing, to teaching, and to testifying to her faith.

What started you writing? I have always been a story-teller, from the time I was a child. I never imagined that I would be writing multi-volume historical family sagas; when I started out, I wanted to write children's stories with girls and horses. When my publisher suggested a historical novel, I was ready to say no. But I didn't, and several series have been the result.

When did you start writing? I started writing books for publication in 1982, when my two sons were in high school. Back then my prime time for writing was between ten and two - a.m.

What was your first book? It was called Tragedy on the Toutle, published in 1982, and it was a book about a girl and a horse, set in the Mount St. Helen's area. I was living in Washington at the time, and I wanted to tell a story about a girl rescuing her horse, that she knew was trapped on the mountain as the volcano began to erupt. I wrote it, and it sold. Up until then I had been writing mostly for little or no pay in Christian publications.

Did you write more books about girls and horses? Yes, I did. There were two more books in that first series, then two other series about girls and horses, the High Hurdles series and The Golden Filly series.