WINONA LAKE – Darla McCammon is known for her love of the three “A’s” – art, animals and authoring. It’s that last one McCammon discussed during an interview Tuesday at The Boathouse Restaurant as she’s had a new book published, “Diamond Bait.” Unlike her 2012 book “Winona Lake,” which she collaborated with photographer Al Disbro on, “Diamond Bait” is fiction and the first of a trilogy. Part of the proceeds of “Diamond Bait” go to her other love – the Animal Welfare League of Kosciusko County, of which she is executive director. The main character in the 279-page book is Mattie. “Mattie is raised by a fairly indulgent father. He is indulgent in one sense, yet he’s very strict with her in another. They have a very good relationship,” McCammon explained. Mattie’s mother died when she was really young, so she’s very close to her dad. “But she disregards her dad when she meets a young man as she’s just gotten out of college. He sweeps her off her feet, and she completely disregards her father, who has bad misgivings about this young man from the beginning,” McCammon said. The story continues and Mattie makes a bad choice, getting herself deep into trouble. She winds up left for dead on an island in Canada. “The story gets extremely exciting from that point on,” McCammon stated. The start of the book is a bit of a backstory, she said, because she felt like the readers needed it in order to comprehend how Mattie got where she was and why she made the choices she did. “One of the main reasons I wrote this book was ... as a Christian, I find that – this happens to me and a lot of my friends – they’re reluctant to tell people about their Christianity. They’re reluctant to share it, they don’t want to be offensive and we all want to be politically correct nowadays. It sometimes can be very difficult to let people know your beliefs without offending them,” McCammon said. “And yet, I feel an obligation that people should know about it and hear about it and know your experience with it so they can make their own mind up. And it’s very difficult for people to do.” With that in mind, she wondered if it was possible to just hand people a book that wasn’t full of Christianity or full of religious messages, but has little “bits and pieces of information people may not ever have had, or known about, or why it’s good for your life to be a Christian,” she said. McCammon feels her book is that gentle approach to reach non-Christians while helping Christians affirm their beliefs. “Diamond Bait” is the first in the three-book series, with “The Lobstick Tree” and “Angel Bay” to follow. The second and third book are “pretty much” written, but she’s editing and rewriting them now. McCammon said she decided to do a trilogy because “mostly because the setting for all three is in the North Woods. I love that area. My husband (John) and I go up there fishing and we enjoy Canada, in particular. We like Maine, also, which is where the last book is set. We just really, really enjoy it up there. It’s a magnificent, beautiful country.” While up there, McCammon got to know more about the Ojibwa Indians. She got to meet some of the people at the Indian mission in Red Lake, Ontario. Fishing often up there, McCammon had a lot of time to think, dream and imagine. “My imagination just went wild up there and I kind of got the germ of this story,” she said. Westbow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan, is publishing McCammon’s books. “They have some really good editors, and I learned quite a bit through their helping with me editing. They did the editing,” she said. She worked one-on-one with one of Westbow’s editors, who provided McCammon with some “fantastic” ideas including changes. “Diamond Bait” is available now. It can be purchased at Tree of Life bookstore in Winona Lake, and McCammon said she’s hoping to make it available at other locations soon. Online, it can be purchased at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com or at Westbow’s website at westbowpress.com. McCammon has links to all the online locations on her own website at www.darlamc.com It’s in paperback, hardcover and eBook. McCammon hired a young marketing major from Grace College to help publicize her book. She’s working on setting up some book signings, and McCammon hopes to do an interview on the radio station WBCL. Dates and locations of the book signings will be announced on McCammon’s website. “There are some coming up,” she said. According to her provided biography, McCammon is a “well-traveled, award-winning artist, author and free-lance photojournalist. Her work has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers and periodicals. (She) authors two weekly newspaper columns and has been the editor of a number of publications.” Originally from Terre Haute, McCammon first came to the Warsaw area in 1986. She and her husband, John, live in a marshy area with a pond behind it that she uses for many of her paintings. They have five dogs and several barn cats. McCammon has four daughters and two stepchildren.
