Today, all my subscribers can get a free book by me. Plus, posting a comment to this Book Blast will enter you into my giveaway of the book A Fool and His Monet by Sandra Orchard. See details at the end of this Book Blast.

Q: Have you ever had vandals spray graffiti on your property? How did it make you feel? Probably annoyed that you had to paint over it. Perhaps ticked off that some vandal had the audacity to damage your property.

But imagine that you are an artist, looking for recognition in the art world. You enter your best work in a prestigious art contest. And you lose the award you crave. To an anonymous “artist.” For nothing more than graffiti!

In Broken Windows, the first book in my Art Spotlight series, graffiti becomes personal to Jordan.

Zaxx, a Banksy copycat in Denver, paints graffiti that gets entered in a legitimate art contest. If it’s not bad enough that Zaxx damages someone else’s property, that piece of “art” snatches a trophy from Jordan. When Jordan is falsely accused of a crime, he moves from the area, but the graffiti guy seems to follow him, creating new havoc in Boise. Adding insult to injury, many people find Zaxx’s spray painting endearing. Zaxx becomes a hero who steals attention from legitimate artists who work hard to perfect their craft.

I’m not an artist, but I could feel Jordan’s pain at the unfairness Zaxx inflicted on him in Broken Windows. I think artists and authors must share a similar creative process as they breathe life into a fictional world. Both learn to love the world they create, but ache when the real world doesn’t appreciate their work. Still, creating a fiction world and sharing it with others drives them to continue their craft in a way a non-storyteller can seldom understand.

Today, I’m going to give you a glimpse into the world of an author who lives her fiction before she writes it. On the outside I’m a mild mannered recently-retired missionary, but I have a secret alter-ego who designs art, concocts recipes, and creates worlds that only exist in fiction. My “Art Spotlight Mysteries” took me into parts of the art world that I had never explored before. For the first time, I felt the sting of injustice that a true artist feels when art shows an evil side.

Early in the plotting process for Broken Windows, I chose graffiti as the predominant art form. I figured graffiti would be the ultimate insult to any serious artist. For inspiration, I studied the work of Banksy, the foremost graffiti artist on the planet. Then I designed a character named Zaxx, a Banksy copycat, to make Jordan’s life miserable.

Now, even though I gravitate easily to crafts, I’m definitely not an artist. Still, I needed to come up with fictional art to go with my fictional character. I needed very specific graffiti to fit the plot of Broken Windows. Not content to just to describe the images, I wanted to include real images in my book for the reader to see. Starting with silhouettes I downloaded from the internet, I doctored some images and crafted others, cutting them out of red and black paper. The result was six graffiti images which you can view in the book. Though my images are real, the prizes for them are fictional. I used my real images to become a copycat artist telling the story of a fictional copycat. J

 You can see all the graffiti images on my Pinterest Board. (The image of the girl with the heart shaped balloon is by Banksy. The other graffiti images are mine.) Plus, a great Michelangelo cartoon, and some real Boise art mentioned in Broken Windows.  

Not all of the art in the book is fictional, however. As I sat at my desk in New Zealand, I took a desk chair journey to Boise, Idaho to search for art Jordan would love. It didn’t take me long to find gorgeous sculptures of children by Ann LaRose. I contacted the artist and received her permission to include her pictures of them in my book. After the book was complete (but before an extensive revision), I returned to the States for a furlough. In 2011, I actually saw the real statue with my own eyes. I borrowed a broom from a nearby Subway, brushed the leaves from “Keepsies,” and snapped photo after photo of it.

My research had turned into writing and, in the end, actual on-site experience. It’s sort of a backwards way to experience art, but it makes writing possible from a distant location. Recently, I re-read Broken Windows and was repeatedly surprised by things my reader-self had forgotten that my writer-self had written.

Q: Have you ever lost an honor or a prize because of an unfair situation? How did you get past that unfair situation? I’d love to hear about it. Just leave a comment below to go into the draw for my free giveaway.

Enter the draw for a free giveaway of A Fool and His Monet by Sandra Orchard. All you have to do to enter is to leave a comment to any questions in this Book Blast in a comment box below.

Serena Jones has a passion for recovering lost and stolen art–one that’s surpassed only by her zeal to uncover the truth about the art thief who murdered her grandfather. She’s joined the FBI Art Crime Team with the secret hope that one of her cases will lead to his killer. Now, despite her mother’s pleas to do something safer–like get married–Serena’s learning how to go undercover to catch thieves and black-market traders.

Deb says: A Fool and His Monet was a fun read with realistic characters to care about and shake your head at. It was lightly Christian with very light romance. I love the titles in this series: 1. A Fool and His Monet 2. Another Day, Another Dali 3. Over Maya Dead Body

Every subscriber gets my free ebook, Broken Windows, here. Bear in mind, this offer is only good from now through next Monday, May 18 and is meant to be free for subscribers only.

Q: Still looking for a question to comment on? What is your favorite genre of Christian fiction? Historical or Contemporary? Mystery or suspense? Romance or Western? Anything else? Just leave a comment below to go into the draw for my free giveaway.