Please give a warm welcome to Robin.
Robin
Helm has published the first two volumes of a trilogy (The Guardian Trilogy), Guardian and SoulFire, and is presently writing Legacy, the third and final volume, posting as a work in progress
on four different forums. She has also published two Regency short stories.
She and
her husband have two daughters, the elder a Navy nurse stationed in Guam, and
the younger a university senior. They live in South Carolina with their
Yorkie-Poo, Tobey.
Ms. Helm
graduated with a BA from Piedmont Baptist College. She is a member of the Delta
Epsilon Chi honor society, the American Legion Auxiliary, and the scholarship
faculty of the United States Achievement Academy.
Q: Welcome to my blog, Robin! Tell us a little bit about
yourself. When did you start writing?
I have always loved to read. I was the baby in a family of
six, and there was always plenty to do in the way of cleaning, cooking,
gardening, and yard work. I remember hiding in a closet to read quite often,
because if my mother saw me, she would immediately make me put down the book
and get to work. I think I bought the house we live in because it has walk-in
closets.
After twenty-five years of teaching, mainly high school
English and music, I left full-time teaching to take three part-time jobs. I
began to “beta,” or edit for other writers. Before that time, the idea of
writing a book had been too daunting to me. A year ago, I was intimidated by
the idea. Now, I have written and self-published two books in The Guardian
Trilogy, Guardian and SoulFire, and I am nearly a third of the
way through writing the third book in the series, Legacy.
Q: Tell us about your inspiration for: Guardian (Volume I) and SoulFire (Volume
II), from The Guardian Trilogy. What is the true essence of these books?
I confess to being a TwiMom. As a high school English
teacher, I wondered why my students would stay up all night reading the books
of The Twilight Saga, but they would not read the classics. I read the books
several times, and I tried to analyze their appeal. Edward, the protagonist,
was a natural bad guy fighting his own nature to be good. He was willing to
sacrifice his own desires for Bella, an average human girl, because he loved
her. I decided to write the flip side of that – an angel, a being who is
totally good, who must battle against his nature and be willing to take a
lesser form to love Elizabeth, a supernaturally gifted human. Xander, my angel,
wishes to become human to be with Elizabeth. He makes a tremendous sacrifice
and accepts mortality, aging, and death in order to be able to love her without
sinning. In addition, he makes this
choice not knowing whether or not she will love him in return. He loves her,
and she does not know of his existence.
Just as Edward fights his enemies who wish to kill Bella in
The Twilight Saga, Xander battles with demonic forces who are intent on
destroying Elizabeth in The Guardian Trilogy. Lucifer knows that Xander, the
Chief Guardian, would not have been assigned to guard Elizabeth had she not
been extremely important in God’s plan, so he sets out to destroy her from the
moment of her conception. The Guardian Trilogy delves into spiritual warfare,
drawing aside the veil to allow the reader to see parallel dimensions: the
physical and the spiritual. Readers are shown what happens around humans all
the time without their knowledge as light forces battle dark ones.
On Fanfiction.net I have many crossover teen fans from Twilight, Harry Potter, and Airbender.
I have been amazed by that. On that site, I have about two thousand readers
from more than eighty countries. Nothing has surprised me as much as the warm
reception the books have received from agnostics, atheists, and seekers.
Q: Have you always had an interest in spiritual warfare?
Yes, I have. I always taught in religious schools, and
assigned reading for my students included Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness, Piercing
the Darkness, and The Oath, as
well as Larry Burkett’s The Illuminati.
Peretti made me think in a different way; his books showed me the spiritual
dimension, and I was fascinated.Having said that, my angels, demons, and plot
are very different from Peretti’s.
Q: Jane Austen has quite a devoted following - How has your
story taken the beloved characters of Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett,
and brought a new perspective to their classic love story? What will Austen
fans love most about The Guardian Trilogy?
The authors for whom I edited wrote Jane Austen fan fiction,
and I had been reading the genre for several years before I began to beta. Jane
Austen has long been my favorite author, and Pride and Prejudice is my favorite among her works. The Guardian
Trilogy is very loosely related to Pride and Prejudice. Xander, the main
character, uses the name Darcy when he assumes human form. Elizabeth is his
love interest, born to David and Lynne Bennet. Though The Guardian Series does
not closely follow Austen’s plot, the characters behave much as their Austen
counterparts would in a modern, religious setting. For instance, Xander/Darcy
is a protector, much like Austen’s Darcy protected Lydia, Elizabeth’s sister,
as well as Elizabeth, by helping Lydia. He has a higher standing than
Elizabeth, because he is an angel and she is human. As an angel, Xander is
remote and free from strong emotions. He is distant, like Austen’s Darcy.
Elizabeth does reject Darcy at one point, much the P & P Elizabeth and Darcy have their Hunsford debacle. Austen
fans also require a happy ending for the couple, and they will have it.
Q: If you had to narrow it down to one thing, what would your readers find most
enjoyable about your books?
One aspect of the books that has received much comment is
the banter between the angels behind the scenes. I give them distinct
personalities and some of them are quite humorous and witty.
Q: When will we see your next book in print and where can we find it?
I hope to publish
Legacy
in late April or early May. Like
Guardian
and
SoulFire, it will be available on
Amazon in paperback and on Kindle, and on Nook and paperback through Barnes and
Noble. For those with iPhones or iPads, downloading the Kindle application will
give readers access to Kindle books.
Guardian begins with a prologue, the fall of Lucifer from heaven.
The main body of the work concentrates on the years beginning just prior to
Elizabeth’s conception in 1989 and ends in the fall of 2007 as she begins her
junior year in college and Xander is summoned before God to make a momentous
decision.
The powerful and imposing
Xander/Darcy, Chief of all guardian angels, has protected exceptional humans
from demonic forces over the course of ten millennia without losing a single
battle. In 1989, he receives an unusual assignment which will forever change
his ordered existence and alter the course of human history. Will he lose the
battle for his own heart while guarding supernaturally gifted Elizabeth Bennet
from the evil which surrounds her? Will he be strong enough to resist her as
she grows from a precocious child into a beautiful, intelligent woman? The veil
dividing the physical and spiritual planes is drawn aside to reveal warfare on
an unprecedented scale as Elizabeth develops her gifts and her guardian
discovers his emotions.
SoulFire, Volume II of the trilogy, continues the story, picking up
January, 2008 and ending in August of the same year. Xander is in human form,
using the name Fitzwilliam Darcy.
SoulFire develops the actual meeting, ministry, and romance of Elizabeth
and Darcy.
In the
second volume of The Guardian Trilogy, Fitzwilliam Alexander Darcy, powerful
Chief of all guardian angels, adjusts to life with a dual nature. An
angel/human, Darcy seeks to win the love of his beautiful partner in SoulFire
Ministries, Elizabeth Bennet, as they travel together across the globe. While
keeping his true identity hidden, Darcy joins archangels Michael and Gabriel in
defending and protecting Elizabeth from the schemes and trickery of Gregory,
the Dark Prince, and Lucifer, his father.
Though
the supernaturally gifted team of Darcy and Elizabeth is tremendously
successful in their joint mission as they partner with evangelist Jonathan
Edwards, the question remains, will Elizabeth find the strength within herself
to forgive Darcy for his secrecy after she accidentally discovers the truth,
that he was her guardian angel, or will Gregory be ultimately successful in
separating this match made in heaven?
The Guardian Trilogy is a Christian
fantasy fiction which loosely incorporates elements of Jane Austen’s
masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice,
into a Christian story line. Mrs. Helm is presently writing the third book in
the series, Legacy.
Robin Helm taught
school for twenty-five years in Florida and South Carolina - mainly high school
English, music, and Bible. She now teaches elementary school music part-time
for Discovery School in Lancaster, serves as Associate in Music and the Music
Academy Director for Second Baptist Church, and teaches piano in the academy. Guardian is her first book, as well as
the first book in The Darcy/Guardian Trilogy. The second in the series, SoulFire, is completed and should be
self-published in December. She also "betas," or edits, for other
authors.
She and her husband Larry have two grown daughters. One is currently serving as
a nurse in the U.S. Navy in Guam, and the other is a senior at Anderson
University majoring in Early Childhood/Elementary education.
