Edited By: Arlene Uslander & Brenda Warneka 

Publisher:  iUniverse, Inc.

ISBN:  0-595-30283-1

The following interview was conducted by:    Jennifer Brown & Click Here To View Jennifer Brown's Reviews 

To read Jennifer's review of the book CLICK HERE

Q:  Thank you, Ms. Uslander and Ms. Warneka, for agreeing to participate in an interview for Bookpleasures.  Please tell us a little bit about yourselves.

Arlene: I am the author of a number of non-fiction books, am an award winning journalist and a professional editor. I live in Glenview, Illinois, with my husband, Ira. I have two grown sons and three wonderful grandchildren.

Brenda:  I’m a lawyer by profession, but I write on the side. I live with my husband, Dick, and two standard poodles in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, with parents, children, and grandchildren nearby.  Dick and I also have a second home in Coronado, California.

Q:  You obviously believe that some of life’s decisions are clearly out of our hands.  Tell us, what exactly is your philosophy about fate?

Brenda: Yes, I absolutely believe that many of life’s decisions are out of our hands, if only because we never know what is going to happen next. A simple, seemingly unimportant, decision can have unexpected consequences that change your whole life. I am fascinated by the way events come together at a particular point in time to make whatever happens happen. An example is the story in The Simple Touch of Fate about the saving of NASCAR racing team owner Jack Roush’s life by retired Marine Sergeant Major Larry Hicks. Roush, who had drowned when his airplane crashed upside down in a lake in Alabama, was saved through a series of extraordinary events that seem impossible to attribute to mere coincidence. 

Q:  Is fate something that can be fought, or ignored?

Brenda: It made a better story in Oedipus Rex to say no. However, I think it depends upon the facts. To continue with the example from the Jack Roush story, if Larry Hicks had failed to rise to the occasion, Roush’s life would have been lost in spite of the fateful sequence of events that placed Hicks at the scene of the disaster. It is often only in retrospect that people recognize fate, and know whether or not they fought or ignored it. In Renie Burghardt’s bittersweet story in The Simple Touch of Fate called "The Train Not Taken," her grandfather seemed to fight fate by making a last minute decision to change plans that saved him and his family from death in wartime Hungary, whereas his brother and his family did not change their plans and died in the bombing of the train on which they were traveling.      

Q:  Do you believe that fate is present in everyone’s lives or do you think there are simply a handful of “touched” individuals?

Brenda:  I think fate is present in everyone’s lives, but I also think there are some individuals who are more intuitive, or more in tune with what is going on in their surroundings and relationships, and thus more prone to recognize the part that fate plays in their lives. Many people have told us that they have become much more aware of the role of fate in their lives as a result of reading The Simple Touch of Fate. 

Q:  How can someone recognize the hand of fate when it’s reaching out to them?

Brenda: I think by paying attention to their feelings and what is going on around them. I mentioned Renie Burghardt’s grandfather previously. He paid attention to ominous feelings he had about taking the train and changed his plans. He tried his hardest to get his brother to change his plans, but the brother refused and met with disaster.  

Q:  You have spoken with a great many people regarding fate in their lives.  What would you say is the most common manifestation of fate?

Brenda and Arlene: Perhaps the most common manifestation we have heard about is how people met their spouse or mate.  We included some of these stories in The Simple Touch of Fate, and since then, at our book signings around the country, we have heard many other wonderful stories from members of our audiences about how “the hand of fate touched their lives” to get them together with their life companion.

Arlene:  One of our “fate-mate” stories, “The Sapphire Ring,” by Katherine O’Neal Kimsey, who just happens to be Brenda’s mother, has proven to be a favorite with readers, and has recently been reprinted in Nostalgia magazine. 

Q: You worked very hard to validate every story that you include in The Simple Touch of Fate.  Did you uncover many false claims?

Brenda: Not many, but, unfortunately, a few. Most of the writers understood our guidelines, but we lost a couple of stories that we had wished to include in the book because of validation problems. One was fiction by a writer who misunderstood the guidelines; another turned out to be a “composite,” which is not what we were looking for.  We required that something be taken out of one story because we could not validate it, although the story was even better with it in. Of course, there were some stories about things impossible to validate that we had to take “on faith” or the writer’s word, such as the disappearance of the car in Ann Lucas Peter’s story, “The Curve,” or  the facts surrounding Garnet Hunt White’s near accident in “Mother’s Voice.”  

Q:  What gave you the idea to write The Simple Touch of Fate?

Arlene: I got the idea when I found out that a young man by the name of Darryl Didier, whose book I edited, would have died if his sister had not had a strong premonition that something was wrong at home, and rushed there just in time to take him to the hospital. His inspirational story was published in a book called Force a Miracle.   An excerpt, “My Brother’s Keeper,” appears in The Simple Touch of Fate.” Darryl’s story started me thinking of other incidents, both in my own life, and the lives of friends and relatives, that seemed to me to be more than random coincidences. I was interested in exploring this theme and how people felt about such experiences. Many of our authors attributed what happened to them to the intervention of a Higher Power.  

Q:  Are there more Fate books in the works for you?

Arlene: Yes, a number of people have told us they enjoyed the fate stories so much, that they can’t wait until there is a sequel. Quite a few readers seem to enjoy reading a story or two every night before bedtime! And, by the way, we are looking for more stories, so if you contact us through our website, we will send you the guidelines.

 We were very pleased and HONORED by what you wrote, Jennifer, in your review of The Simple Touch of Fate for Bookpleasure.com. You said: “It is impossible to put down this book without feeling a glimmer of inspiration and a reason to explore your own faith in whom exactly is the director of our lives.  Painstakingly chosen and carefully edited, the stories in The Simple Touch of Fate are just a scratch on the surface of what wonderment may exist in this world.  It is my prediction that Uslander and Warneka are onto something glorious with this endeavor – something that will turn into volumes upon volumes of people reaching out with their incredible tales – perhaps in doing so, extending their own hands of fate.”  

Q:  Where can readers buy your book 

 It can be ordered directly through our website: www.thefatesite.com that links to Amazon.com; through other online bookstores, as well as from the publisher, iUniverse: 1-800- 288-4677; international phone number:1-402-323-7800.