Author: Carmen Bronston
Located in: Flower Mound, Texas
Submitted: December 19, 2022
Tell us a little about yourself. I enjoy learning about the journeys people have walked in life and also walking alongside those given to me, whether family or friends, as we each move through our own special 'plight' in this world. I believe it's in building others up and encouraging them towards becoming who they are meant to be that we find the most reward.
I currently reside in Flower Mound, Texas with my husband and our young son--we recently relocated from my hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada, and although we're still getting settled, we love are loving Texas! My hobbies include reading (mostly fiction), finding interesting new recipes, spending time with family, and staying abreast on current events around the world. My passions include praying, dancing, being creative and people! I love to travel and see new cultures and countries, even though I haven't come close to exhausting the bucket list of places I want to explore and gather inspiration from.
My love of storytelling has been with me as long as I can remember, having written little picture book stories on lined paper as a little girl. I look forward to taking more time to create and tell interesting stories about the lessons, journeys, and relationships people experience as they move through the various seasons life.
What was your motivation behind this project? Call of the Song Sparrow began as a small seed of an idea centered around one of the main characters--Ida and the backstory of how and why she decided to give up her bi-racial daughter, Tia, shortly after she was born. I have met many women, some young, some not so young, who have had to make some really tough decisions about their lives and the lives of their children/families. What I have learned is that the influences and environment that we grow up in and/or have around us can play a huge part in how we choose to live out our stories. I think that Ida and her daughter, Tia, are a conglomeration of many women I've come across who have not had a platform with which to tell their stories, but whose voices are strong and need to be realized, nonetheless.
What do you hope folks will gain from this project? When people read Call of the Song Sparrow, I hope that they find healing, reconciliation, courage, and even epiphany within its pages. My desire is for them to be able to see a part of themselves and relate to various aspects of the characters. I hope they are challenged in some way and touched by the relational dynamics depicted in the story, so that they walk away having gained some insight that they need, some greater depth of forgiveness within themselves and even within the strained relationships they might have with others.
How were you personally impacted by working on this project? Writing this project stretched me in many ways, and strangely enough, I felt that I was being pulled along by the characters--sucked in somehow by their personal experiences, relationships and emotions. I prayed as I moved forward each day with the storyline, and I feel that there was an unspoken inspiration from above also guiding me. As a writer, I always aspire to create characters who are real and authentically layered because in order to honestly invest in them, I need to truly believe in them; otherwise, there's no way I'll be able to move the storyline and plot forward. With Call of the Song Sparrow, this was the case, and I found myself riveted by the creative process and the characters in order to set the stage and tell the story I felt needed to be articulated and expressed.
Who are your influences, sources of inspiration or favorite authors / artists? In the past year I've read several works (mostly fiction)--a few historical, a few fantasy, but those that I take the most from carry some level of depth both in the style of writing and in the character/plotline. A few that I've read that have accomplished this for me are: A More Perfect Union by Tammye Huf, the Harbinger Series by Jeff Wheeler, The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier, and The Books of Babel by Josiah Bancroft (which I am currently in the midst of reading).
