Guest, Amber Mae Weston

Hi! My name is Amber Mae Weston. I’m a wife to Earl and a mother to four amazing kids. I have a bachelor’s degree in communications and a background in journalism, but for the past decade, my main job has been chaos coordination, as I do my best to raise my children in a loving way.

Some days I succeed; some days I have to rely on my Father in Heaven to make up the difference. As my children have grown, I’ve found writing to be a wonderful support to my primary goals as a mother. It gives me an outlet that can bend around my family life, and not the other way around.

My latest release is called The Baron and the Ballerina. It’s a clean and wholesome Regency romance with sprinkles of faith and an enemies-to-lovers storyline.

This is my first published full-length novel, and it is truly a labor of love. I began writing it because I had read so many Cinderella-style Regency books where a poor woman ended up with a rich man. I wanted to create a believable version of that trope.

So I researched and learned that though these “sideways marriages” were rare, they did occur from time to time, and the woman was almost always associated with the stage.

Thus, my ballerina was born. She is a single mother, desperate to remove her daughter from the dangers of the stage, even if it means marrying a man she doesn’t love. Colonel John Cooper, a well-respected patron of the arts, is the perfect target.

Unfortunately for her, there is a baron who promised his late father that his sister would be wed to that very same colonel. Sparks fly as the ballerina and the baron compete for the colonel’s attentions, and the more they get in each other’s way, the more difficult it becomes to see anyone but each other.

In researching this book, I learned many sordid details about the stage and the toll it took on women specifically. Whether or not my books would be “clean” was never in question. I’m very careful about what I read and always knew I would strive for that in my writing, but I am not afraid to tackle difficult subjects. Thus, my ballerina became a single mother with a painful past. As I wrote her, I felt impressed to help her move from a place of shame to a place of redemption.

Though I didn’t begin with the intention of writing religious books, I found that a thread of faith naturally wove its way into my story. Every one of my mentors advised that I cut it out. Not because they were against religion, but because they were practical. “If you want to make a profit, you need to give your books broad appeal.”

But when I went to remove the faith, I froze.

How could I take away what had felt God-given?

And so I left it in and pressed forward, trusting that God will help my books land where they are meant to be.

My hope is that someone will read this book and see themselves in Allegra and Ben. They will recognize that though our sins be as scarlet, they shall be made white as snow through the blood of Christ.

Don’t think this means my book is a sermon presented with a pretty cover. It’s not. I simply allowed faith to be present when I felt prompted. It was never forced, but instead sprinkled into moments, just as I find God sprinkled into my own life.

Thus, my motto was born: Romance that pierces the heart and protects the spirit. My books overflow with emotion, but are presented in a way that protects the most sensitive of spirits. If this speaks to you, I hope you’ll take a chance on my work. And when you do, I hope you come away feeling refreshed and better prepared to tackle the challenges of life. Because isn’t that the purpose of art? It’s scaffolding to support a life that was never meant to be easy.

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