What's Beyond Forks?: Author Interview! Lindy Miller, One of the Authors of Aloha With Love

Aloha With Love by Lindy Miller & Terence Brody
Genre: Adult Fiction(Contemporary Romance)

Date Published: July 13, 2021
Publisher: Rosewind Books

Soon to be a motion picture.

From the screenwriter of Rescuing Madison and A Lesson in Romance on Hallmark

“[A] charming romance. Miller and Brody do a masterful job of pacing and plotting, while creating a hero and heroine readers will easily relate to. This sweet, G-rated contemporary should draw in Hallmark Channel devotees in droves.” ~Publishers Weekly

After a tough week that includes losing a big job opportunity and being dumped by her long-term boyfriend, Jenna Burke receives word that her beloved Aunt May passed away.

Traveling back to her Hawaiian hometown for the reading of the will, Jenna discovers she and her sister have inherited May’s dilapidated Victorian home on desirable beachfront land. The sisters can do whatever they want with the property, but there’s one catch: the house must be renovated before it can be sold, and Jenna has to oversee the work. Their Aunt even stipulated the contractor for the job—Ben Fletcher—who has a gift for making things beautiful again. He also has another skill: driving Jenna crazy.

Jenna vows to sell the property the moment the job is done. But as Aunt May’s broken old house starts to feel like home again, Jenna is torn between the life she’s been chasing in the city, and the one she’d left behind.

How long have you been writing?
Ever since I can remember. Growing up, I was (and still am, of course) a voracious reader. I read everything I could get my hands on—daily newspapers, shopping circulars, my mother’s magazines… My father also read to me at night and kept me well stocked on early chapter books until I started to scavenge books from my mother’s and grandmothers’ shelves and then bring home my own selections from the public library. Somewhere along the way I started to write my own stories, then poems, then novels.

What inspired you to write Aloha With Love?
When my co-author, Terence, first presented the idea to me, he’d been watching a lot of HGTV and I’d been busy doing additions on my home. I fell instantly in love—who wouldn’t be intrigued by the idea of a sweet summer romance set in a beautiful place and sprinkled with family, remembered dreams, and the chance to restore a cherished home to its former glory?

Which of your characters do you relate to most and why?
One of the most relatable characters, at this point in my life, in Aloha With Love is Sarah, Jenna’s older sister. In the book, Sarah’s children are growing up, becoming young adults, and she’s on the edge of an empty nest, wondering where her babies have gone. My son just turned 14, and goodness, the teenage years are real! In Alaska, where I live, kids can get both their learner’s permit and a part-time job at 14, and within a week of his birthday, mine had both. I blinked, and my sweet little boy turned into a young man who works, drives, and is now about to start his freshman year in high school. I’m super proud of him, of course, and there’s still a few years until he flies the nest, but I think a lot of that came through when writing Sarah.

What is a secret about you that nobody else knows?
I secretly really, really love spending a ridiculous amount of time shopping through Facebook ads and never buying anything. I’ll even sign up for the introductory coupon offers, and then still not order anything. It’s one of my favorite guilty pleasures.

What book have you read too many times to count?
I’m actually not a huge book re-reader. There are always so many new and exciting books coming out, that I’m constantly trying to whittle down my TBR and so rarely give myself permission to go back to books I’ve already read. That said, I’ve probably read She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb and Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman several dozen times apiece. John Grisham’s Skipping Christmas is also a perennial read.

What is the best piece of writing advice you ever received?
I come from academia and have written many journal articles and textbooks, which are very different from fiction. It’s not the most exciting piece of writing advice (and rather obvious), but having a really great editor is imperative to good writing. Even better if you have an editor who teaches you, rather than simply corrects you. Craft is always evolving, so there’s always something new to learn.

If you could hop into the life of any fictional character, who would it be and why?
Wow, I don’t know. I think I’d like to be a Disney princess of the animated variety. I could sing, always have great hair and flowy clothes, and commune with animals. It’d be great.

What was one of the most surprising things you learned while creating your books?
I toggle between writing romance and horror, two seemingly very different genres with very different approaches. But perhaps what I’ve been most surprised to learn is how much the two genres aren’t all that different. Both require emotion to be done successfully, and likewise both rely immensely on the construct of hope—to overcome, to persevere, to find happiness.

What do you like to do when you're not writing?
Hands down, it’s play with my dog—a golden retriever named Finn.

Lindy Miller is an entrepreneur, award-winning professor, and publishing professional. In 2011, Miller was part of the executive leadership team that founded Radiant Advisors, a data and business intelligence research and advisory firm, where Miller developed and launched the company's editorial and research divisions, and later its data visualization practice, for clients that included 21st Century Fox Films, Fox Networks, Warner Bros., and Disney. She is the author of numerous papers and two textbooks under the name of Lindy Ryan, The Visual Imperative: Creating a Culture of Visual Discovery (Elsevier) and Visual Data Storytelling with Tableau (Pearson) Miller holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration: Entrepreneurship and Strategy, and a Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership and a Doctorate in Education, Organizational Leadership.

To learn more about Lindy Miller and her books, visit her website. You can also find her on Goodreads, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Terence Brody is an active captain in the New York Fire Dept, assigned to Ladder 10 in lower Manhattan.

Two of his feature scripts, RESCUING MADISON (Ethan Peck, C. Thomas Howell, Alona Tal) and A LESSON IN ROMANCE (Kristy Swanson, Scott Grimes, directed by Ron Oliver) aired on the Hallmark Channel.

In 2021, his script, ALOHA WITH LOVE, was produced by Oren Kamara/Fade to Black Films, Branscombe Richmond, and Brian Bird of When Calls The Heart. The movie starred Trevor Donovan and Tiffany Smith and was directed by Brian Herzlinger. The novel is co-written with author Lindy Miller (July 2021).

Brody also wrote the screenplay for Miller's novel Sleigh Bells on Bread Loaf Mountain (2021) and The Christmas Spirit by Alexandrea Weis (Nov 2020).

Brody resides in Long Island, NY with his wife and two children.

To learn more about Terence Brody and his books, visit him on Goodreads.