Interview with Author Nike Chillemi

Hello Nike and welcome to Patti’s Porch. Tell us about your latest release, Perilous Shadows.

Patti, I'm thrilled to be here sitting on your porch talking with you about the third book in my series, Perilous Shadows. Like all of my novels, this romantic thriller is a sweet romance, but it also tackles complex issues and has sophisticated themes…but presents them in a tasteful manner. Just as in all of my stories, this one opens with a body. A coed from a prestigious women's college has been found dead at the local radio station where she was a summer intern. The story is well plotted and as it turns out several people had motives to killer her.

All of your novels are set in the 1940’s. What attracts you to this time period?


The fashion of the 1940s intrigues me. It's classic and chic. Some of my readers may not realize this, but I graduated college from The Fashion Institute of Technology and worked for several bridal gown manufacturers doing trades shows for a number of years. From a fashion point of view, this period fascinates me. The men were debonair. The women loved to dress up, despite shortages of rayon, nylon, wool, and leather due to WWII. Hollywood drove fashion trends. You had the great costume designer Edith Head designing for the stars and in effect, she became America's fashion designer. Many women knew how to sew and could duplicate what they saw on the silver screen.

However, there were many other things besides fashion that drew me to this time.  I'm fond of common courtesy and civility. This was the norm in the 1940s. Oh, you had your louts, but they were called a dolt or an oaf. No excuses were made for them. Most ordinary people in that time had dignity and class. Despite the great hardship and loss of life in WWII, America looked to go forward after the war. The nation was upbeat, had gumption. All this is attractive to me.

Newspaper woman and radio broadcaster are interesting professions for 1940’s characters. Is there a story behind this choice?

Well there was no TV or internet. So, radio was king. I did a lot of research on the impact of radio on American society in that time. In the 1940s newspaper reporting and radio broadcasting were exciting professions. Women were beginning to get into writing for publication. You had the emergence of women's magazines where the editors and writers were all women. Practically every newspaper had a gossip column and a fashion column written by a woman.

And that's exactly where Kiera Devane started out. As far back as Burning Hearts, book one of this series, we hear tiny snippets about Kiera doing society pieces at a newspaper in the neighboring county. Way back then I had the idea she was going to be the heroine of one of the novels in the series.

What has been the highest point in your writing journey? Lowest?


There have been several high points in my writing journey. The first was when I actually finished my first full length manuscript. It was awful. Got rejected a bunch of times. I'd say all those rejections were some low points. The next big high point was when I got my first contract, with Desert Breeze to release Burning Hearts in ebook format. Of course each contract has been a thrill. Another biggie was when Goodbye Noel won in the 2011 Grace Awards in the Mystery/Thriller/Romantic Suspense category and Burning Hearts finaled in the 2011 Grace Awards in the Romance/Historical Romance category.

What, in your opinion, is the primary element needed to create a great thriller?


There are several elements that must come together to make a great thriller. The reader may or may not know who the killer is. If the author is going to keep that a secret, it must be a well kept secret. I've been told by those who have read Perilous Shadows that the identity of the killer was a surprise. There must be great difficulty for the main characters. I like for my hero or heroine to get beaten up at least once. It's not a bad idea for the main characters to be dealing with several problems which may throw them into the path of the killer and put them at risk. In a standard murder mystery, there probably is no risk to the detective. In a thriller there should be risk.

Your blog is Nike Chillemi ~ Crime Fictionista. What does that signify?

As I mentioned before, in my life before fiction writing I worked in the bridal manufacturing industry. In that world, I'd hear the term fashionista bandied about. They'd say, "Oh, she's such a fashionista." So, I thought, why not crime fictionista? I did a little research and learned nobody had thought to use that term, so I took it as my moniker. I'm a crime fictionista all right because my passion is crime fiction. For me a good book starts out with a dead body and then the sleuth/detective character(s) with all their flaws showing must bring the killer to justice. In Perilous Shadows, what constitutes justice becomes a complicated subtheme.

Where can we purchase Perilous Shadows?


Amazon  (including Kindle) 

Barnes and Noble (including Nook)

Thank you so much for spending some time with us, Nike!





Nike Chillemi has been called a crime fictionista due to her passion for crime fiction. She was an Inspy Awards 2010 judge in the Suspense/Thriller/Mystery category and a judge in the 2011 and 2012 Carol Awards in the suspense, mystery, and romantic suspense categories. She is the founding board member of the Grace Awards and its Chairman, a reader's choice awards for excellence in Christian fiction. She writes book reviews for The Christian Pulse online magazine. BURNING HEARTS is the first book in the crime wave that is sweeping the south shore of Long Island in The Sanctuary Point series, published by Desert Breeze. GOODBYE NOEL, the second book in the series released in December, 2011 won the Grace Award 2011 in the Mystery/Romantic Suspense/Thriller category. PERILOUS SHADOWS, the third in the series released in July, 2012. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) and the Edgy Christian Fiction Lovers (Ning).

How To Tame a City-Slicker

I am pleased to welcome author Deb Elkink to Patti's Porch. Enjoy a cup of iced tea and relax as she shares an inspirational message spiced up with a generous helping of humor:



How to Tame a City-Slicker


I was born for uptown living.

True, the view from the maternity ward of the Mennonite village that first heard me squawk showed only flat Canadian prairie—not a mall in sight. But my parents soon moved me and my sibs to the big city, and, by the time I was a teen, I could shop nonstop from store opening to store closing. During senior high, my dramatic extroversion kicked into full force and I fought laryngitis from constant chattering. College years in Minneapolis put the polish on my love of metropolis and led to summer studies in Japan—Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka—where I gloried in the lights and crush and din of clustered humanity.

So I was totally unprepared when my cowboy groom swept me down a long gravel road to the vast and empty sand hills surrounding his secluded cattle ranch, where the ceaseless wind and the endless sky would bring me face to face with myself.

Only months into the marriage—before I’d yet learned to help round up the herd on horseback or cook for branding crews of a hundred—I experienced a pivotal moment, a tipping point in transition.

I was baptized into rural reality.

It was a blustery morning in April during my first calving season on the ranch. Not suspecting the crisis in store for me that day, I’d kissed my new husband goodbye at the door of our cozy bungalow as he set out for chores. I’d admired my choice of wedding stoneware as I washed up the few breakfast dishes, wearing rubber gloves to protect my delicate hands. I might even have perused the latest issue of the fashion magazine that was my connection to civilization. Now here I was in the bathroom, steam rising about me as I removed my elegant trousseau robe and dipped my pedicured toe into the tub full of fragrant bubbles.

Out of the blue, my husband started hammering on the bathroom door and yelling, “Open up!” I barely grabbed my wrap in time as he and his father broke in with a freezing newborn calf—slimy and shivering violently. “Oh, good!” they both exclaimed in surprised tones of approval, as though marveling that I demonstrated such foresight and rural mettle. “She’s got hot water all ready for us!” And then they plunged that filthy beast into my bridal bubble bath—and, oh, how that ghastly creature’s eyes rolled in ecstasy!

(Had it, in fact, lived, it might well have been tethered, bottle-fed, named “Pie,” and fattened for slaughter—as had Georgie, Porgie, and Puddin’ before it.)

This moment is symbolic of my own immersion into the grit and glory of cattle ranching, and the next two decades domesticated me out of my city ways. Sure, I longed for sophistication, fine dining, and foreign adventure (and in time my introverted, country-lovin’ husband—who’d never even eaten lasagna before meeting me—expanded his tastes to include classical music, foie gras, and international travel). But what I found during those years on the ranch I believe would have been lost to me had I remained a distracted city-dweller.

I was forced by the silence of the wilderness to listen for the voice of God.

Because of my upbringing, as a child I’d placed trust in Jesus Christ for the salvation of my soul. However, until my move to the ranch, my spirituality included a component of sociability: all my religious learning took place in a classroom or a pew or a youth group. Now my geographical isolation put most believers out of my reach. I managed to drive two hours on most Sundays for corporate worship, but I met God much more immediately and intimately through reading the Bible alone at the kitchen table, and raising my voice in prayer and song out in the wind among the sand dunes without another soul in sight.  

My conversion from the public to the pasture refined me.

Father, Son, and Spirit continue to transform me through Scripture by renewing my mind, taming my appetite for the constant stimulation of others, and testing me to develop my discernment and keenness in practicing God’s will (Rom. 12:2). I have no doubt that He would have effected this transformation even if I’d held on to my city-slicker status (2 Cor. 3:18; Phil. 1:6). And don’t get me wrong—I take every opportunity to shop for five-inch heels and silk scarves in Paris and Buenos Aires and Istanbul!  But I faced my “dark night of the soul” out on Canada’s western plains and grasslands, where I learned to embrace the holy loneliness necessary to true, communing fellowship with God and others.

Of course, there’s no sin in loving civilization (the Tower of Babel notwithstanding)! But to serve humanity properly, we must have our spirituality in order. To that end, you might want to follow these steps:

Step #1: Recognize your setting. I was predisposed to approach God through social relationships. Emotionally, where do you “live”? How do your lifestyle and friendships influence your spiritual outlook? What is your natural bent, and can you see the potential limitations of your viewpoint?

Step #2: Face your conflict. Admitting the profound difference between my life in the city and my life on the ranch helped me pinpoint my underlying problem: I can get side-tracked spiritually by an audience. What “calf in the bubble bath” are you facing right now? How are you reacting and responding to your circumstances? At what point has your one-on-one relationship with God broken down?

Step #3: Discover your resolution. Pastoral tranquility was just what I needed to shut out metropolitan noise and pay attention to the voice of God. What distracts you from listening to Him speak in Scripture? How can you adjust your lifestyle to hear Him better?  What will you do today to focus on your primary and foundational relationship with God?






Deb Elkink writes from her home on the banks of Ross Creek in southern Alberta, Canada—a stone’s throw from the Montana border. Her award-winning, debut novel, The Third Grace, is set in the cities of Paris and Denver, and on a farm in Nebraska’s sand hills, where her main character lives out some of Deb’s own urban/rural experiences. Visit the author at www.debelkink.com.      



Thank you, Deb, for spending some time with us!

Thanks for reading my blog!

Is God Mad?

These past few weeks in Colorado have been tough. In the latter part of June, what started out as smoke observed in the Waldo Canyon area west of Colorado Springs evolved over the ensuing days into the most expensive fire in state history. Close to 350 homes were lost and over 18,000 acres burned.


Yesterday morning, the nation awakened to the shocking report that 12 lives were lost and some 50+ others were victims of a random shooting at a movie theater in the Colorado city of Aurora. Within hours, the tragic news made headlines around the world.


It makes a person wonder if God is on a vendetta against our state and its residents. Is he mad at us? Have those who fell victim to either of these tragedies done something to incur His wrath?


To assume so would be highly presumptuous. I don't believe for a moment that God singled out those victims because he was "mad." If he's taking revenge on sinners with these tragedies, I probably should have been one of the victims. I'm ashamed to admit my list of sins stays pretty lengthy.


The cause of the Waldo Canyon fire remains under investigation. God could have easily whispered a word of warning into the ear of the person or persons who committed whatever act to ignite the fire. 


He could have jerked the weapons out of the hand of the gunman who spread panic, destruction, and death throughout a packed movie theater shortly after midnight on Saturday morning.


Yet, God doesn't work that way. I don't believe He targets individuals for tragedy, either, whether He is angry with our behavior or not. He gave us the laws, but He also gave us the freedom to choose to follow or disobey them.


I have no doubt He is angry with man's flagrant disregard for His laws. Yet, sometimes I wonder if that anger isn't more heartbreak, the heartbreak a parent feels when a child makes a decision the parent knows is detrimental to the child leading a productive and fulfilling life. 


I believe God is mad. He's mad, enraged in fact, at His eternal enemy, Satan. Just as a mom or dad would be enraged at someone who leads their child into addiction or abuse, God abhors the evil one who leads His children down a path to destruction. 


He hurts when we hurt. 


His heart breaks when ours breaks. 


The difference is that He has the power to take away the hurt and the heartbreak.


We can rest assured that no matter what losses we suffer, He will do just that.


Have you suffered loss in your life due to tragedy? What are your thoughts?


Thanks for reading my blog!

Interview with aspiring author Kristena Tunstall

Today, I am honored to host aspiring author Kristena Tunstall on Patti's Porch. Pull up a chair, grab a glass of lemonade, and join us as Kristena speaks from the heart about the way God used a tragedy to start her on her writing journey.

Welcome, Kristena!

I have been invited to guest blog here today and at first I really didn’t know what I’d write about. I put a little flag in my email to remind me I needed to write something but kept putting it off.

Then it struck me. How did I get to a place that I even have a writing journey to talk about? I am kind of dumbfounded sometimes as I can think back to high school and writing was the last thing on my mind. It was a chore to be precise. I could never envision myself as a writer as English was so hard for me. Getting a C was really good. It just never came easily as I also have a learning disability called Dyslexia (thank goodness for MS Word J).

Then on July 1, 2008, my one and only 8 ½ year old child came home early from her special needs summer school program with diarrhea. As a mom you think, “Oh, this is just a simple case of diarrhea. It’ll be gone in no time.”

Well, there wasn’t anything simple about it. Only fifteen days later on July 16, my husband and I had to make the hardest decision of our lives when we decided to take her off life support as we were told our little girl would never be the same and was forever gone.

It was during her time over that two weeks and two days (which included staying at four different hospitals, while having complete kidney failure, a stroke, cerebral hemorrhage and cardiac arrest) that I started to keep a daily journal of sorts online for my family and friends as to her current condition. This all started because somehow she contracted E. coli.

That daily journal is how my writing journey officially started. Then on October 21, 2008, I was sitting at home having all these thoughts swirling around that started with this, “The loss of a child, how deep it must go.” It just kept swirling and swirling and I knew right then I needed to get those words down so I sat at my dining room table and started to type on my laptop.

What I wrote that day ended up being the first post of a dedication website on behalf of my daughter. (To read that post in full, click here) What I didn’t know then but know do is that writing turned out to be an outlet, or cathartic, for myself. I could get out all the feelings into my writing and to share my journey with those that knew and loved me.

What has happened since is people I have never met before, and probably never will, find my website doing simple little searches for things. They then read her hospital story and are so touched they leave a comment. I am blessed to see the impact of how sharing my writing has been for others.

It has been through this journey that I have realized God has given me this gift of writing and that through it I have the ability to touch other people’s lives. People see a strength in me that I don’t see in myself. Somehow I am able to encourage others as they see I am making it through this tragedy and I am okay.

The blessings I’ve received through this loss never cease to amaze me. I am in the process of writing a book about my daughter. I’m also writing my first fiction book. I am able to use the experiences of my life and transform them in a way that may be able to touch other people’s lives in a positive way. If someone can look at me and see that I am okay and making it through that maybe they will be able to see the same thing in themselves.

So my writing journey has been a road of discovery and how God has showed me, with more blessings than I could have ever imagined, this is the path He wants me to take.

If you feel led,  please visit my daughter’s dedication website and even read about Her Hospital Story. If you leave a comment, I will personally answer it. I love to hear from anyone who has taken their own time to visit there.

If you would like to stay up to date with my latest fiction writing journey, please visit my author web site.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about my writing journey and how I have come to where I am today.


Kristena, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. 


Leave a comment by midnight July 30th about Kristena's post and you will be placed in a drawing to win a free copy of the new release from Bethany House Publishers Angels, Miracles, and Heavenly Encounters: Real-life Stories of Supernatural Events complied by James Stuart Bell.  Be sure to leave an email address!


Thanks for reading my blog!