Felicia Bridges began her adventurous life as an Army brat, living in eight states and two foreign countries by the age of fifteen. Her nomadic childhood inspired novels which reflect God’s power in the lives of His children and inspire others to follow Christ with child-like abandon. Both CzechMate and BoliviaKnight in her International Mission Force series have won awards at the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference. Felicia’s non-fiction short stories have been included in Then Along Came an Angel, Messengers of Deliverance and God’s Provision in Tough Times.
Felicia is the rare extroverted writer. She enjoys meeting new people and loves sharing stories of her adventures following God, whether it is with a new acquaintance in line at the grocery store or an audience of hundreds. Her passion for missions, parenting, and seeking God first are contagious.
Visit Felicia Bridges online
Bolivia Knight
Peter, the oldest of seven children born to missionaries in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, resents the idea of leaving the only home he’s known to go to college in the States. His parents insist he needs to leave the shelter of the familiar in order to discover a real and vibrant faith of his own. When he stumbles on evidence of a murder and reports it to the police, he launches his family and his best friend, Kasey, into a world of drug smuggling and human trafficking which threatens the lives of everyone he loves. Peter’s temper lands eighteen-year-old Kasey in the hospital where they meet Esperanza, a sixteen-year-old victim of Hector, the same villain who threatens Peter and his family. The stakes are higher than ever. Esperanza is desperate to escape not only the vicious traffickers, but her own dependence on the drugs they used to control her. Peter confronts his own darkest emotions and the consequences of his choices. He must decide between defeating the cartel through powers darker than Hector himself or trusting God to provide victory through the love of Christ. They meet on the salt flats of Salar de Uyuni – where heaven meets earth – for the ultimate showdown between good and evil. But the greatest enemy he faces lurks within his own heart. Will Peter’s secondhand faith provide the courage to defeat a cartel, protect his family, and free the girl who has hijacked his heart?
- ISBN: 1542877660
- Publisher: Vinspire Publishing
Interview with Felicia Bridges
Imagine growing up in eight different states of the U.S. and two foreign countries before you became an adult. I’m certain anyone in a military family can relate to this. Some spend their lives bouncing from city to city and state to state. Others enjoy the global neighborhood as their back yard. That’s the reality FELICIA BRIDGES lived, and her foreign experiences included a trip to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea where tensions have been high for over sixty years.
Not many teens have the opportunity to travel the world as Felicia did. Like many of her characters, her teen years were characterized by rash and youthful decisions that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. Mix those erratic behaviors and choices with a variety of settings around the world, and the result is a bit of action and suspense, touched with just a kiss of romance.
Felicia’s goal is to create stories she would love to read, but she also wants to create a connection with missionary teens living in countries around the world, to help them form a community with each other through their shared experiences and perhaps even through the stories she writes. To help, Felicia has created a web site (www.internationalmissionforce.com) that serves as a place for those living on mission to connect, share their personal stories, and pray for one another.
But missionary teens aren’t the only audience for Felicia’s novels. Young adults as well as adults with teen children and beyond are all living the adventures right alongside the teen stars in the books who are facing the excitement and challenge. A lot of this is due to the amount of research that goes into each story. Felicia wants her readers to feel as if they’ve visited Prague, or Bolivia, or wherever the paths of her characters lead. She spends hours searching online for maps, pictures, news articles, local legends, and any other information to make the setting feel real and tangible to her audience.
It’s clear she’s hit her mark when she receives reader feedback like, “We absolutely loved it!” and “It made us laugh. It made us cry!” Moments like those are some of the greatest in an author’s life, and it’s no different for Felicia. She hopes she never gets over the thrill of having a reader connect with what she’s written and be moved by her story.
All of us are born with an innate desire to find hope in our lives, a reason for waking up each day, something that drives us to put one foot in front of the other and keep pressing forward. That’s why stories about recognizing our need for God, confessing our darkness, and allowing His light to shine on our hearts resonate so fully with so many readers. Even though the action and adventure Felicia writes will thrill readers, it’s the underlying message of the hope we have in Christ and the discovery of personal faith which draw readers to the books in the International Mission Force series, each one with its own story arc and ending with a ray of hope mirroring the hope we have in Christ.
As one who once compartmentalized her faith as only one facet of her life, Felicia has since realigned her life with her relationship with God as the center and everything else flowing from that, allowing her to discover peace, fulfillment, and success—even when things go horribly wrong. In her personal life, she sees a direct correlation between spending time with the Lord and seeing God open doors only He can open, providing success that is far beyond anything she could do in her own efforts. She enjoys telling stories where God is, in fact, the hero, because she believes that to be the case in her own life.
As Felicia tells it, God’s sovereignty is front and center along her own journey to publication, where she spent six years meandering through her first novel, discovering a plot which resembled a suburban neighborhood with a zillion little cul-de-sacs impeding the flow of the story. Through attendance at writer’s conferences, as well as the strong encouragement of a friend who wouldn’t let her quit, Felicia learned how to reduce the time it takes to complete a novel, wrote two nonfiction stories about deliverance and God’s provision for two different anthologies, then landed an agent and signed her first fiction contract within months.
That friend, Daphne Woodall, has been by Felicia’s side every step of the way. Felicia believes everyone needs at least one cheerleader to keep us pressing on when the road gets difficult. When her deadline for book two was set, only to be interrupted by the planning of weddings for her two daughters, plus the release of her first novel, the support of that cheerleader was critical. Looking back on that time is, as Felicia puts it, “a beautiful reminder that God does not bring us to something without providing all we need to bring us through it. If I had it to do over, I would not change a moment because reaching the end of my own abilities is the best way to see God in action.”
As a mother of four, working full-time in the public sector, and volunteering with the ministries in her church, writing consumes any free time Felicia has. She cannot stress enough how important conferences are in developing a writer’s skill and craft and building relationships with others in the industry. The most important lesson she’s learned on her writing journey is “when we offer our best to the Lord—whatever that is—He is able to multiply it and provide far beyond our imagination.”
So, wherever you are in your own journey, make sure you always offer your best, and God will bless it.
Thanks for sharing with us today, Felicia!
______________________________________
Tiffany Amber Stockton has been crafting and embellishing stories since childhood. Today, she has honed those skills to become an award-winning author and speaker who lives with her husband and author, Stuart Vaughn Stockton, in Colorado. They have a daughter and son, and a Retriever-mix named Roxie. She has sold 20 books so far, three of which have won annual reader’s choice awards. She is represented by Tamela Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. www.amberstockton.com.
Not many teens have the opportunity to travel the world as Felicia did. Like many of her characters, her teen years were characterized by rash and youthful decisions that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. Mix those erratic behaviors and choices with a variety of settings around the world, and the result is a bit of action and suspense, touched with just a kiss of romance.
Felicia’s goal is to create stories she would love to read, but she also wants to create a connection with missionary teens living in countries around the world, to help them form a community with each other through their shared experiences and perhaps even through the stories she writes. To help, Felicia has created a web site (www.internationalmissionforce.com) that serves as a place for those living on mission to connect, share their personal stories, and pray for one another.
But missionary teens aren’t the only audience for Felicia’s novels. Young adults as well as adults with teen children and beyond are all living the adventures right alongside the teen stars in the books who are facing the excitement and challenge. A lot of this is due to the amount of research that goes into each story. Felicia wants her readers to feel as if they’ve visited Prague, or Bolivia, or wherever the paths of her characters lead. She spends hours searching online for maps, pictures, news articles, local legends, and any other information to make the setting feel real and tangible to her audience.
It’s clear she’s hit her mark when she receives reader feedback like, “We absolutely loved it!” and “It made us laugh. It made us cry!” Moments like those are some of the greatest in an author’s life, and it’s no different for Felicia. She hopes she never gets over the thrill of having a reader connect with what she’s written and be moved by her story.
All of us are born with an innate desire to find hope in our lives, a reason for waking up each day, something that drives us to put one foot in front of the other and keep pressing forward. That’s why stories about recognizing our need for God, confessing our darkness, and allowing His light to shine on our hearts resonate so fully with so many readers. Even though the action and adventure Felicia writes will thrill readers, it’s the underlying message of the hope we have in Christ and the discovery of personal faith which draw readers to the books in the International Mission Force series, each one with its own story arc and ending with a ray of hope mirroring the hope we have in Christ.
As one who once compartmentalized her faith as only one facet of her life, Felicia has since realigned her life with her relationship with God as the center and everything else flowing from that, allowing her to discover peace, fulfillment, and success—even when things go horribly wrong. In her personal life, she sees a direct correlation between spending time with the Lord and seeing God open doors only He can open, providing success that is far beyond anything she could do in her own efforts. She enjoys telling stories where God is, in fact, the hero, because she believes that to be the case in her own life.
As Felicia tells it, God’s sovereignty is front and center along her own journey to publication, where she spent six years meandering through her first novel, discovering a plot which resembled a suburban neighborhood with a zillion little cul-de-sacs impeding the flow of the story. Through attendance at writer’s conferences, as well as the strong encouragement of a friend who wouldn’t let her quit, Felicia learned how to reduce the time it takes to complete a novel, wrote two nonfiction stories about deliverance and God’s provision for two different anthologies, then landed an agent and signed her first fiction contract within months.
That friend, Daphne Woodall, has been by Felicia’s side every step of the way. Felicia believes everyone needs at least one cheerleader to keep us pressing on when the road gets difficult. When her deadline for book two was set, only to be interrupted by the planning of weddings for her two daughters, plus the release of her first novel, the support of that cheerleader was critical. Looking back on that time is, as Felicia puts it, “a beautiful reminder that God does not bring us to something without providing all we need to bring us through it. If I had it to do over, I would not change a moment because reaching the end of my own abilities is the best way to see God in action.”
As a mother of four, working full-time in the public sector, and volunteering with the ministries in her church, writing consumes any free time Felicia has. She cannot stress enough how important conferences are in developing a writer’s skill and craft and building relationships with others in the industry. The most important lesson she’s learned on her writing journey is “when we offer our best to the Lord—whatever that is—He is able to multiply it and provide far beyond our imagination.”
So, wherever you are in your own journey, make sure you always offer your best, and God will bless it.
Thanks for sharing with us today, Felicia!
______________________________________
Tiffany Amber Stockton has been crafting and embellishing stories since childhood. Today, she has honed those skills to become an award-winning author and speaker who lives with her husband and author, Stuart Vaughn Stockton, in Colorado. They have a daughter and son, and a Retriever-mix named Roxie. She has sold 20 books so far, three of which have won annual reader’s choice awards. She is represented by Tamela Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. www.amberstockton.com.
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