The Plot Thickens | Dave & Neta Jackson

Each Sunday “Inspired by Life…and Fiction” shares a Christian novelist’s newest book and the garden spots where they find inspiration.

Dave & Neta Jackson—husband-and-wife, best friends, and writing team—may be familiar from their series of 40 Trailblazer Books, historical novels for young readers about Christian heroes, or from Neta’s Yada Yada Prayer Group series of women’s fiction. In recent years they’ve tried something new: “parallel novels,” two stories taking place in the same time frame, same neighborhood, involving some of the same characters living through their own dramas, but interacting with and affecting one another…just the way it happens in real life.
Neta’s Where Do I Go? is the first book in the Yada Yada House of Hope series, and Dave’s Harry Bentley’s Second Chance is a Yada Yada Brothers Novel. Their new Windy City Neighbors series draws on their own experience living in Chicago. Dave—who grew up in the country—especially enjoys his vegetable garden in the city, working on it with his grandson, and having space for neighbors to gather under the trees in their side yard. Find out more about Dave and Neta at www.daveneta.com

Dave and Neta enjoying a Virginia mountain stream.

Dave and Neta share a sunny office that overlooks their Chicago neighborhood.

For more “novel gardens” like this, visit The Plot Thickens.

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Deborah Raney

DEBORAH RANEY's first novel, A Vow to Cherish, inspired the World Wide Pictures film of the same title and launched Deb’s writing career. Forty books later, she's still creating stories that touch hearts and lives. Her novels have won RWA's RITA Award, the ACFW Carol Award, the National Readers Choice Award, and the HOLT Medallion. She is also a three-time Christy Award finalist. Deb is on faculty for several national writers’ conferences and served on the executive board of the 2,500-member American Christian Fiction Writers organization for 18 years before retiring in 2022. She is a recent transplant to Missouri, having moved with her husband, Ken Raney, from their native Kansas to be closer to kids and grandkids. They love road trips, e-biking, Friday garage sale dates, and breakfast on the screened porch overlooking their wooded backyard.

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