Allia Zobel Nolan is an internationally-published, award-winning author of over 170 children’s and adult trade titles with close to three million books in print. Her books reflect her two main passions, God and cats, and include such varied titles as Cat Confessions: A Kitty-Come-Clean Tell-All Book, The Ten Commandments for Little Ones, and The Worrywart’s Prayer Book

A former journalist and columnist, Nolan held the position of senior editor at Reader’s Digest Children’s Publishing for nine years.  She currently writes both religious and trade books for various houses.

Zobel Nolan lives and writes in Connecticut with her husband, Desmond Finbarr Nolan, and their three feline children, Sinead, McDuff, and Angela.

Leave a comment and I’ll draw a winner on Monday for the Whatever Teen Devotional

 Welcome to Writer…Interrupted!

You have an interesting story about how your first devotional came about which eventually led to your teen devotional. Tell us about it. 

I had written a book called, THE WORRYWART’S PRAYER BOOK, which was my first devotional; it was for adults. And that book came as the result of a promise I made to God.  I had broken my wrist and developed a syndrome, much like shingles, called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, and my hand, was for all intents and purposes useless.  I had pain, burning, and stiffness in it for about six months, during which time, I got depressed, and I worried all the time that I would lose my faith, my husband, my friends, my career, and started to give up hope as I was in pain 24/7.  I did all the therapy I was supposed to and it didn’t get better; and I kept praying to God to help me.  Finally, in frustration, I just let out a scream: “God, you have got to help me because I can’t do this by myself, and I can’t take this anymore.”  People kept on reassuring me it takes time. But I still continued to worry. Then I made a bargain with God; get me out of this and I will praise your name high and low, and to boot, I’ll write a book about worry.  Long and short of it was: He did and I did.

So that’s how I got into the devotional format.

As for WHATEVER; I didn’t originally propose it as a devotional; it actually went through about four different formats; first, it was to be a children’s book, with a bracelet attached; then some of the editors thought it would make a great diary, journal type book, similar to Wimpy Kid…so I tried that.  But I think in my heart I always knew it would wind up something bigger.  I wanted it to be like the start of a movement…you know, like WWJD, What Would Jesus Do? ….. only WHATEVER: change your thoughts; change your life.  Finally, the publishers said they didn’t want to nix it completely, but asked me to hold off, because they did like it.  And it landed under the FaithGirlz umbrella, which is where it finally – two years afterwards – ended up.

What was the hardest part of writing this book?

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