Today Age is Just a Number welcomes Heather Huffman who is touring with Orangeberry Book Tours promoting her latest book, Jailbird. Heather has graced us with a guest post entitled, The Power of Hope. So please sit back, relax and enjoy Heather’s offering:

The Power of Hope

“Conrad always told me not to worry about what’s fair. Just focus on what is.”

That sentence sums up the way my main character in the novel Jailbird lives her life. When I first tried to take that book to the market, I was told readers would never relate to Neena Allen because her backstory was too sad.

After careful consideration, I decided to stick to the story I truly believed in my heart I was supposed to tell. I stuck to it because Neena’s life didn’t turn out the way she wanted it to or planned, but that didn’t stop her from hoping or from putting one foot in front of the other until she found the right path. And that was something I, personally, could relate to. My life was so far away from anything resembling what I wanted it to be, I didn’t think the right path even existed anymore. Yet I had hope, and I decided to keep putting one foot in front of the other until I either found that path again or forged a new one.

I think we all find ourselves there at some point – that moment when we look around our life and say, “What the heck happened here?” Of course, at the time I was trying to find a publisher for Jailbird, I didn’t know that for a fact; I merely suspected it. I knew it was true of me and felt I couldn’t be the only one out there. Once my first book was published and I started hearing from readers, I knew I wasn’t alone – the emails coming in from all over the world told me as much.

So I don’t hesitate to let bad things happen to my heroines because bad things happen to us in real life every day. But I don’t dwell there. I don’t focus on the darkness in my novels because I don’t focus on it in my life. I’d prefer to laugh, to dream, to hope, and to press on until I find the good again.

That’s why the book jacket for Jailbird describes it as “A paradoxical blend of light and dark, Jailbird is a warm and humorous tale about the power of hope.”

Neena is strong, witty and determined. She’s not going to let anything keep her down.

The fact that I’m here today, talking to you about a novel I was told would never be that has since made it all the way to number two on Amazon’s charts, tells me I wasn’t crazy to hope, to press on when it seemed all was lost.

Many say that the evil of human trafficking is a common theme that runs through my novels, and I would answer that it’s merely a common element to many of them. The theme that permeates my writing is hope, the same theme that permeates my life – if there’s a breath left in our body, things can always get better. But if we’re to find that better world, we must fight for it, and we must hope.

Connect with Heather Huffman on Twitter & Facebook
Website http://www.heatherhuffman.net/
Check out where else this author will be talking about her latest release!