Deborah Bedford
Personal Information
Description
Deborah Bedford was born on 1958 in Texas, USA and earned her degree in journalism and marketing from Texas A&M University. Immediately after graduation, she accepted editorship of Evergreen Today, a weekly newspaper based in the small mountain town of Evergreen, Colorado. While serving as editor there, she worked 70 or 80 hours each week, writing stories and cut-lines, sports and features, chasing fire trucks and checking police reports, taking pictures, editing, laying out pages, opaquing the negatives, stacking papers into vending machines and taking out the quarters. It was long before she began to dream of returning to her first love, fiction writing. For her birthday in the summer of 1984, her husband, Jack, bought her a copy of the 1984 Writers' Market, and she began to meticulously send letters to every publisher listed in the book. Rejection letters flowed back by the handfuls. She has a large folder where, for posterity's sake, she has kept these to this day. She has also kept the letter from Harlequin Books she received, which invited her to submit a complete manuscript but warned her that Harlequin did not want books about cowboys, airline pilots, guest ranches or Texans. Deborah laughs now when she tells the story. Her manuscript was the story of "a woman who marries an airline pilot in Texas. Then, when he dies in a plane crash, she runs away to a guest ranch and falls in love with a cowboy." When she showed her husband, Jack, the letter, he said, "Honey, you've managed to write a manuscript that has everything in it they don't want." Harlequin bought the manuscript five short weeks after she submitted it. At that time, her editor told her, "This book isn't a romance, but we're going to publish it, anyway." When Debbi Bedford's first book, Touch the Sky, was released by the Harlequin Superromance line, its sales topped every Harlequin record for a first-time author. It earned rave reviews and a Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice award. During the next seven years, she published six more books for the Harlequin Superromance series and a historical novel, Blessing, before signing a contract with HarperCollins Publishers. This paved the way for her to move on to write mass-market mainstream women's fiction, where her work garnered numerous awards and appeared on the USA TODAY bestseller list. The word she uses to describe her career is "beguiling." Whenever she wrote words about Jesus or God in her stories, those spiritual overtones were never touched, edited or omitted. But, along with those words, she admits that she was writing steamy scenes. "I wanted all the reward that the world would give me," she says. "I wanted all the fame, and all the status. But I realized that I was giving away lentils in the Lord's battlefield. That's when I became convicted. The time had come for a change." What surprises Deborah the most, she says, is the freedom she now finds in writing for her Heavenly Father. "It feels like gloriously falling forward and wondrously coming home, all at the same time," she says. The Story Jar (March 2001) written with Angela Elwell Hunt and Robin Lee Hatcher and including pieces from Left Behind author Jerry B. Jenkins, Francine Rivers, Debbie Macomber and Lori Copeland, marked Deborah Bedford's writing debut for the inspirational market. It held a spot on the CBA Bestseller list for three consecutive months. While still shopping for the right publisher for her novel-length fiction, she had the opportunity to stand up at the Jackson Hole Writers' Conference, read an excerpt from The Story Jar, and explain to conference attendees about the call she felt to leave mass-market fiction and follow the Lord. In the audience that evening was Jamie Raab, publisher of Warner Books. The rest, as everyone says, felt like stars moving into place. When You Believe was named a finalist in the Romance Writers of America's RITA Award for Best Inspirational Romance. That same book has also been named a finalist for best fiction of the year by Christianity Today magazine. A Rose by the Door was a finalist in the National Readers' Choice Awards. Versions of the novels she wrote earlier were "revised and redeemed" for the secular market.
Books
Family matters
Homecoming
Blessing
Though the secret beneath Uley Kirkland's cap and mining togs is unsuspected in 1880s Tin Cup, Colorado, she longs to shed the clothing of deception...especially when handsome stranger Aaron Brown awakens her woman's heart. But while Uley dreams of being fitted for a wedding gown, the man she loves is being fitted for a hangman's noose, and she's the inadvertent cause of his troubles. The truth will set him free, and Uley will do whatever it takes to save Aaron's life—even risk her own.
Just Between Us
When Mallory, Layla, Reilly and Jack became best friends, the three women agreed that their tall, gorgeous male buddy was offlimits. Only, Mallory ended up toppling into bed with Jack that very night. And she hasn't been able to keep her eyes—or hands—off him since. But little does she realize that their blazing secret love affair is quickly burning out of control....Nothing can describe how good Jack feels with Mallory hot and wanting in his arms. But illicit sex just isn't cutting it for him anymore. Jack wants to bring their relationship out from under the covers. Mallory, however, likes keeping him—and everybody else—in the dark. Still, with the heat the two of them generate, something is bound to be exposed soon. And Jack can only hope it's Mallory....
Harvest Dance
He appears during the harvest dance, a tall, lean stranger fallen on hard times. A man like none Meredith has known before, this loner in her midst is a force to be reckoned with--a man who cannot be ignored. To do so could put a rich and enduring love in terrible danger. If Meredith only knew, it is the kind of love that might sustain a woman until the end of her days.
Only You (Steeple Hill)
Climbing the corporate ladder had been Emily Lattrell's way to forget her troubled childhood. Her alcoholic mother's rejection of her had made Emily determined to protect her heart. But after meeting Philip Manning, she did the unthinkable--she quit her job to care for his brother's children while their mother lay in a coma.Pouring herself into the children's lives energized Emily in a way that corporate America couldn't. And spending time with Philip made her long to take the greatest chance of all--risking her heart by revealing secrets she'd fought to conceal.
Mothers and Daughters: An Anthology
The Hair Ribbons by Deborah BedfordThe blue hair ribbons her mother gave her as a child saw Theia Harkin McKinnis through hard times. Now, facing the illness that took her mother, Theia longs to find the missing ribbons for her own daughters. Where Theia finds themand with whatwill change her forever.Unforgettable by Linda GoodnightCarrie Martin has a wonderful lifea loving husband, a sweet daughter and a feisty mother. But suddenly her mom can't remember little things...then big things. Shaken by the loss of family memories, Carrie turns to the Lord. And discovers what can't be forgotten.
A Child's Promise
Marrying the ex-marine who knows her only through her letters, Lisa Jo anticipates a rocky time when Johnny discovers that she is not the woman he thinks she is, and Johnny finds himself fighting for a future he never knew he wanted.
Remember Me
Family Matters (Steeple Hill Women's Fiction #56)
FOR A CHILD'S SAKE A child lay gravely ill, his parents praying for a miracle. But on opposite sides of the hospital bed. Jennie and Michael Stratton's marriage had fallen apart, leaving them both devastated and alone. Yet now, as Michael sat holding his son's small hand, he finally knew what it meant to believe. Jennie struggled to resolve her feelings for the stubborn man she'd married. But their brave little boy needed the strength of their united love. They had to forget their past and focus on the here and now. And then a marriage that had been put asunder might begin to heal, too.
Any minute
Sarah Harper is driven to achieve success no matter what the cost. She wants to do good and not hurt the people she loves--especially children and her husband, Joe--but her desire to succeed in her career too often leaves little time for family. One cold, autumn afternoon, all of that changes when Sarah's car plunges off a bridge and into a river. She is presumed dead by those on the "outside," but Sarah's spirit is still very much alive. What she discovers on the other side transforms everything about Sarah's view of life--past, present, and future. When Sarah is revived, she is a changed woman. And the unsuspecting world around her will never be the same again.
Only you
Matt "Reno" Moran should never have trusted wily cardsharp Evelyn Starr Johnson, but she has enflamed his passions as no woman has before -- and she has Moran's map to a lost gold mine. Read all of Elizabeth Lowell's historical novels of the American West: Only His; Only Mine; Only You; Only Love.
The Penny
Jenny Blake has a theory about life: big decisions often don'tamount to much, but little decisions sometimes transformeverything. Her theory proves true the summer she's 14,when she makes the decision to pick up a penny embeddedin asphalt and consequently ends up stopping a robbery,getting a job, and meeting someone who changes herlife forever--Miss Shaw. Together they form a friendshipthat dares both of them to confront secrets in theirpasts--secrets that threaten to destroy them. Jenny helpsMiss Shaw open up to the community around her, whileMiss Shaw teaches Jenny to meet even life's most painfulchallenges with confidence and faith. This unexpectedrelationship transforms them both in ways neithercould have anticipated, and the ripple effect that beginsthat summer goes on to bring new life to the peoplearound them, revealing how God works in the smallestdetails--even in something as small as THE PENNY.