Meeting Inspiring Authors: Laura Bartnick

I was recently able to catch up with a managing partner from Capture Me Books, Laura Bartnick. She has been developing a small publishing company into a top-notch company with wonderful authors. Meet author Laura Bartnick.

Cyndi Kay: Please give us a brief introduction and a little background information such as family, children, career, hobbies, where you are from etc.
Laura Bartnick: Thank you for offering me an interview, Cyndi. My career as a paralegal prior to becoming a content editor for Capture Books (www.CaptureMeBooks.com), was thrilling for the stories and for the results-oriented tasks I was able to do. I am married to a wonderful man. I have a terrifically fit and talented stepson who lives with his lovely wife and child, our grandchild, in Australia.

CK: Give us a summary on your journey with Christ — from the time you accepted Christ, to how you started in ministry.
LB: I was raised in my faith by a Bible believing pastor and two youth workers and also a Christian camp director and his wife who loved me and helped to explain God’s love for me. During my youth, they each helped to equip me to serve others with my gifts and young skills.

Later, I was nurtured in my faith and talents at Montana Bible College by excellent teachers who got personally involved with the student body. I really believe that personal involvement is the hook that snags anyone’s personal relationship with their Maker best, and it is the thread that helps to knit a person’s belief system together. If you feel secure in telling someone your story and feel that they can be trusted and understand you, then you will listen to their story, their reasoning, and their beliefs. Thankfully, God put me in touch with some honest and caring people in my youth.

I had always admired writers from the time I read my first Curious George book, the Nancy Drew series, and Where the Wild Fern Grows. Being a paralegal did not help my style of writing much for contemporary fiction and I’ve had to learn to modify it to be more stylistically approachable, but I always enjoyed writing life-style essays and poetry.

For three years after college, I wrote and edited a network zine for Christian musicians throughout Colorado called, The Front Window. It was there that I realized the task of finding journalists, editors, interviewers, booking interviews, and then laying out the paper. Back then, it was copied, cut outs, and pasted clip art!

After a year of marriage, I began hosting a writers’ group from interested people in my church at our home. Many years later, some of the same people were still attending, but the industry had changed significantly. Big publishing houses were crumbling or being absorbed by other entities, and no one in my writers’ group understood the concept of being accepted not on the value of your writing but on the value of your fame or platform or the endorsements a potential author was able to offer the publishing group.
One writer, who formed our group, actually got her fiction book accepted and published by the same group as published Frank Peretti’s series. In fact, his books came out the same year. Cheryl had a terrible shock to realize that all the money would be filtered towards Frank Peretti and that she and her very entertaining and well-written book were basically kicked to the curb. Circumstances being what they were, it was a hard pill to swallow.

Finally, the newest member of our group recommended strongly that we begin our own publishing group, and we voted on a name in short order. Tonya Blessing is a woman of vision, but she was also flying directly to South Africa. The others in our group did not have the time, and so it fell to me to get our group incorporated and follow through with learning the ropes of finding editors, book designers, and formatters, and getting our books published. We didn’t even know that we were considered a hybrid publishing company. We stumbled along and figured things out as we fell and caught onto the next railing.
Seven years later, I’m still walking with a much better understanding of this entrepreneurial system to offer to new authors who hope to be published and marketed by Capture Books.

CK: Tell us about your books and what was the inspiration for them.
LB: I’ve written something part memoir, part theology called Welcome to the Shivoo! Creatives Mimicking the Creator for many of the reasons explained to answer your second question. Trusted people who have walked the road before you both spiritually and practically can be just the inspiration an author needs to write and create. A “shivoo” is basically a huge party. It’s an Australian term. I’ve adapted the idea of our lives being a grand party, and that our Creator is welcoming us to show up at this party in a big way. Throughout the book, readers get inspired by glimpsing God’s own enormous creativity in science and theology and history. Throughout the book, I ask the reader questions to help them think through their own system of faith and theology and their relationship with the Lord related to their most creative and driven selves. I’m not sure that a vein of theology has been attempted for human creativity, but the whole experience of writing that book and then reading it again from time to time is thrilling to me.

CK: How is Books for Bonding Hearts connected to Capture Me Books?
LB: Books for Bonding Hearts.com is the publicity agency for the Capture Books authors. We each offer content marketing through this agency and we offer our book launch tours and landing pages as well as pillows, greeting cards, T-shirts, ball caps, and other gifts related to our books there. Books for Bonding Hearts does significant networking on the part of the authors to help them succeed and to build entrepreneurial skills.

CK: Tell us about a time that God directly answered a prayer.
I think that every time a book gets published, the book is a landmark, like a pile of stones commemorating all of the prayers and pleadings we’ve placed before God. There is so much work to do, so much crow to eat, and so much expense to publishing a book, that the real miracle is seen in the growth of the writer who becomes an author for the first time. I never discount the personal growth and growth in the Lord as anything other than the miracles He performs in us when we are willing.

I have also had miraculous answers to prayer for healing. Once for myself when I cried out to God that I couldn’t go on unless He either healed me or removed the level of pressure I was having. Once for a friend who was a highly respected inner-city youth director who got cancer. As soon as I heard about his situation in church, I left the auditorium and cried out to God for his life. He was healed of cancer.
You know? I think that our prayers are answered every day and that is why we don’t seem to notice. We have a flicker of recognition that maybe God worked on our behalf, and sometimes, we don’t even notice how life was rearranged to give us whatever it was we needed. We take it for granted. In my book, I write about being grateful and thankful and giving thanks to whom it is due. Gratitude is a mind-opening experience.

CK: Can you recall a time when you know that God was the only way you had a provision through a certain situation?
LB: Breathing. God is the only way I can take another breath. God has provided me a way of salvati9on, and that only comes through Jesus Christ’s payment for my sin, and His power of resurrection, so for this life and the next, God is the only way. When I remember to start here, the pieces have a much better opportunity to fall into their proper places.

CK: Tell us about a time you had a measurable impact on someone through your personal ministry or through your organized ministry.
LB: I’m actually glad that we forget these things, or usually have no way of knowing them, but there was a time when I felt my life was full of dead ends and purposelessness. A Christian friend who was now a teacher in Thailand came to visit me and as we were reminiscing about our Christian camping days where we loved singing together. Suddenly, she told me that she’d learned to play the guitar from me that summer, and that opening class with a song every day was the way in which her students began to focus and pay attention. They loved singing together, they loved her, and their lives were changed because of the education they were receiving. Additionally, many of them became Christians over the years. I’d completely forgotten that I’d taught Becky to play the guitar! With my soul being squeezed so tightly for so long, this news broke the dam and I wept with joy. I believe that God uses His own in a myriad of ways because He says we are the salt and light. Often, we don’t even know the width or breadth of influence we have.

CK: What is the most challenging aspect of getting a book published in the Christian genre?
LB: Wow, that’s a huge subject. I guess almost anyone who is willing to do some research can publish their own writing in some form or another on Amazon or through Kinkos for that matter. But, how embarrassed would we be a year down the road? Someone just sent me a “book” with a fine title, but a terrible subtitle. It was bound with a fine front cover picture for non-fiction, but a terrible format and size for the targeted audience. There were good how-to pictures, but no copyright release and all proposed in color. No copyright page with the critical information needed for librarians and booksellers was found. The traditional parts of a published book were missing. The headings were bolded correctly, but they were not headings at all, instead they were comments and euphemisms that the author thought were cute to emphasize.

He was writing to me to ask if I would help him market his book.

He had no idea that his book was no real book by any traditional standards at all. There would be no way that I could help him market that kind of bound writing.
Christians, like anyone, can do this kind of thing themselves, but it is no compliment to the Lord or to themselves or to other talented and serious author, and it just serves to clutter and confuse the marketplace. I believe that every writer has some aspects in which they shine, but the whole publishing and marketing experience really does take professional help just like building a house would or learning the law would.

CK: What are some of the biggest challenges facing women today — and women ministries?
LB: I don’t think there are many of us who can change the cultural boundaries we are born into, but we can trust the Lord as much as any man can to open doors for us. I’ve seen Him open doors where there were none, and I’ve grown more savvy about the barriers and behaviors of sinful people. Sometimes, I’ve seen women being their own worst enemy by assuming they will know the answer and so they don’t speak the truth or act gracefully and assume the best of someone who says “no”.

CK: I believe that God is a remarkably interesting and creative God! Tell me about a time when you were uncertain or unaware of a provision from God but later realized that it was all a part of His plan.
LB: I love to travel, but because of circumstances, I felt that I had to choose between the high life and marriage to the man I loved. I didn’t think I would be able to travel when I chose to marry. Instead, God surprised me. His parents underwrote vacations for us in our first years of marriage. We found our favorite haunt exploring the coast of Canada several times, landing in the Gulf Islands, where our lives were enlarged by experiencing all manner of colorful sea stars, seaweed types, sea urchins, sea otters, seals, jellyfish and phosphorescence of the sea. Phosphorescence of the sea is a luminous glow from minute marine organisms known as Noctiluca miliaris. It is seen mostly in coastal waters. We learned to Kayak among the islands, and each of our vacations have been filled with the awe of God’s creation and his particular love for us.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a musician would start playing a flute or a lute (yes, once, really) in the twilight on the coastline. Happening to be there, we could prop ourselves on a rocky pinnacle or a park bench and enjoy the sunset to incredible music as though the great Conductor had orchestrated the moment for us. That happened once while we were riding our bicycles in our neighborhood too. We were sneaking through parking lots of factories and railway buildings when we heard a piper playing his bagpipes. This is my husband’s favorite instrument, so we stopped our bikes and wept for the poignancy of it. If a vacation is an ordinary cup of water, I’d say that music makes an ordinary cup of water into a peppermint tea, or orange spice, or a hot cocoa with a gingersnap garnish.

My husband and I love to explore Colorado, too. Since I’m a big picture taker, I’ve been able to use my pictures and short videos to help promote my authors’ books on social media. We’ve found extraordinary mansions and bargained for the bell tower accommodations or for off-season accommodations and been treated like royalty many times.

CK: What inspires you?
LB: I have a few things that inspire me. People telling their testimonies about how the Lord has redeemed them or shown up in their life and reading God’s Word or singing the Psalms. I also find myself inspired by travel and excellent books.

CK: What has been the most interesting book that you have read as an adult?
LB: All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C.S. Lewis 1922 -1927, and also The Mystery of Marriage by Mike Mason (ECPA Gold Award) and two other favorites I have are Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God: The Life Story of the Author of My Utmost for His Highest by David McCasland and Anne Rice’s Called Out of Darkness, a Spiritual Confession. Each of these books have taught me about the purpose of God’s creativity in each of these author’s lives.

CK: What has been the most interesting book that you have read as a child?
LB: There was an older girl in elementary school named Renee Reed. She was writing books about horses. I read one of them and was so taken by the fact that she could craft a story at her age that I became instantly intimidated about writing my own story, but it also created such a wonder and desire to write inside that I have never escaped.

CK: How do unwind after a busy day?
LB: All my creative energy is spent early in the day or in the wee hours of the morning. So, by the time my husband comes home after work, I’m ready to watch my favorite foreign show, Escape to the Country. We also like to take naps together and sometimes take a bike ride or go out to eat at a local favorite café.

CK: What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
LB: “There is no such thing as a mistake in art.” I’m not sure that I believe it, but it is something that has given me grace and hope and fortitude since my first-grade art teach told me so.

CK: Is there anything else you would like to say?
LB: I love coaching new authors and providing the opportunity to step into their future. Although this position is the most difficult job I’ve ever done, it is also the most fulfilling. I do believe that it is a calling from the Lord; our hybrid publishing/marketing group, Capture Books, inspires me all day long. I work for some incredible authors each who delight me and each, I deeply respect.

When I get really bothered and low by the difficult race, I have only to rest up a bit, talk to Tonya, Kathy Joy, Charmayne, Diane, Denise, Auralee, Lynn, Connie or GK, and the desire to continue the race comes flooding back.

I am happy to consider new manuscripts from Christians who are willing to look at their writing endeavors as at least a part-time job or a means of developing their voice for further ministry. Please check out our author blogs and book tours at www.BooksForBondingHearts.com or share your favorite of our pins on Pinterest. On Instagram, find me at laura.bartnick.7. Tweet to us on Twitter @CaptureBooks or message me personally and find Capture Books on LinkedIn.