Espionage Blog Tour: Author Guest Post + Giveaway Info

 Welcome to Day 3 of the Espionage Blog Tour!

Before we get to the post for today, I just wanted to remind you of the Espionage giveaway going on now through April 30. Enter to win your very own copy of Espionage! And click here for a full blog tour schedule.

Today I have a special guest post from the author of Espionage. But first, a little about her:

A.L. Sowards is a graduate of Moses Lake High School and Brigham Young University. She swam competitively for sixteen years, including while she was in college. She found it more entertaining to think of plot ideas while following the black line up and down the bottom of the pool than having a song in her head that restarted with every flip turn. Sowards currently lives along the Wasatch front with her amazing husband and her adorable twin toddlers.

And now here is her post about "the deeper meaning of Carmen and Espionage".

Once upon a date night I went to see the opera Carmen with my husband. We were chatting on the way home and my husband said something like “the moral of the story is: don’t trust women.” I can see why he picked that out, but that’s not what I got from Carmen. My thoughts: If your boyfriend dumps you for a women of questionable morals, don’t despair. He’s probably a psycho and you’re better off without him. 

Two different people, two very different takes.

 As a writer, I’m often asked what my book is about. I usually say something about how it’s a WWII spy novel and it takes place right before D-day. If whoever is asking still seems interested, I’ll go into more details about how the main characters are trying to figure out which of three French agents is really working for the Nazis and about how their mission is part of a huge deception scheme to convince the German Army that the big D-day invasion will take place in the Calais area instead of in Normandy. But sometimes that’s not what people want. Sometimes, they don’t want to know about the plot, they want to know about the theme. 

You don’t go to Carmen for the “moral of the story”—you go for the music. And I didn’t write Espionage to preach a lesson—I wrote it to entertain. But yes, like most stories, you can learn something from my novel. And what you learn could vary depending on who you are. Here are four examples.

1. Wear your seat belt. Seriously, it’s the smart thing to do. If you don’t, not only could you receive an expensive ticket, you’re also more likely to be seriously injured if you’re in an automobile accident. I have friends who are alive only because they were wearing their seat belts.
2. If you’re a boy and you want to impress a girl, you should help her with her housework.  I’ll be honest; Peter discovers this by accident. He has to get hit over the head (really, he gets whacked a few times) before he figures out the whole romance thing.
3. It’s never too late to change. Whether you’ve become a little lazy with the important things, or you’ve gone a great distance down the wrong road, it’s always possible to turn around. That’s the miracle of redemption. It’s real. It happens. And it doesn’t just happen in fiction—it’s an important part of all our lives.
4. Life is hard, but if you look carefully, even when you’re going through a really hard time, you will see the hand of the Lord in your life. It could be a friend who’s there when needed, a righteous example when you aren’t sure you can avoid whatever it is that’s tempting you, or a simple moment of clear thinking. Tender mercies are everywhere, if you can train yourself to look for them. The truth is, life is often difficult. But it’s also good. Usually it’s both, all at the same time.

            About the Book

France, 1944: Nobody expects Peter Eddy to survive his first commando mission—to retrieve a code book stolen by the Nazis—so when he does come back alive, his success is rewarded with an even more daunting assignment. Partnered with French Resistance leader Jacques Olivier, Eddy must identify which of three Allied contacts in Calais is a double agent and use the traitor to help implement a strategic Allied diversion that might win the war. Eddy and Olivier secretly cross the English Channel to confront their suspects one at a time, but what appears to be a clean assignment soon turns disastrous, and a shocking betrayal leaves Eddy in the grip of the Gestapo. With the courageous aid of Olivier and his sister, Genevieve, Eddy evades his captors with a dangerous escape plan. But as the Allied invasion approaches, treachery in the least likely places leads to fresh graves in the bloodied European soil—and only the power of loyalty and love can transform tragic endings into new beginnings.

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