For best-selling author Carleen Brice, having a big-name superstar cast in the movie adaptation of her debut novel, 'Orange, Mint & Honey,' is a dream come true.

Jill Scott -- along with newcomer Nicole Beharie -- stars in 'Sins of the Mother,' a Lifetime Movie Network adaptation of Brice's story about a graduate student named Shay Hunter (Beharie) who finds herself in desperate need of a break from her current life. With no place left to go, she returns home to Tacoma, Wash., to face her estranged alcoholic mother, Nona (Scott) who is now sober and with a 5-year old daughter named Sunshine.

"I always wanted to write a mother-daughter story," Brice confided to BV Newswire this week. "My mom was only 16 when she had me, so she was more like an older sister than like a mom, and in some cases, like a younger sister. So in some sense, we raised each other."

The Denver native thinks the movie producers did a fantastic job casting the film and really bringing to life the characters she envisioned in her Essence magazine favorite book club read.

"I was just thunderstruck, and I still am," she shared. "I have seen the movie. I was on the set, and I met the producers and directors and the cast, and I'm so in shock that it really happened. It's just a wonderful, amazing thing."

She continued, "When I got the e-mail saying that Jill Scott was going to play the role of Nona , I just started screaming and e-mailing everybody I know."

For the author, who resides in Colorado, she hopes people who see the drama understand the central theme of forgiveness.

"I think at the root the book, the movie, is a story about forgiveness. What does it look like to forgive someone?" she said.

Brice wanted to show that both Nona and Shay have to learn what forgiveness is to move along in their relationship.

"In the story, the mom has to forgive herself, and that's a huge part of her recovery process, and the daughter has to forgive her mother and forgive herself for some things, too. One of the things that I hope peopCarleen Bricele walk away with is if you just loosen that grip that you carry around, [or that] grudge, that's the beginning of forgiveness."

One thing, however, that she was a little disappointed about was the change of title.

"I still prefer the book title 'Orange, Mint and Honey,'" she revealed. "I understand Lifetime does this with almost all of the books they do. They like the 'high-concept titles' -- they are easier for someone flipping channels to get what the movie is about. But I would have preferred something that didn't have the word 'sin' in the movie because the mom doesn't really sin. It's not quite what the story is about, but I understand why they did it."

As a colossal consolation, Brice makes a cameo in the film's big church scene. That's when she got to experience how the movie-making experience firsthand.

"It made me feel very secure that my story was in good hands and that everybody wanted it to be really good," she said.

"Sometimes people think you write your story, and if Hollywood takes it over ... they are gonna ruin it, but I had the opposite experience. Once it was in Hollywood's hands, they cared for it just as much as I did, and I feel very lucky and fortunate and really blessed that it went that way."

Brice, whose second novel, 'Children of the Waters,' was released last year, is working on her third tome, which she said is a story about the relationship between a woman who reconnects with her stepmother after her father's death. She hopes to release that in 2012.

'Sins of the Mother' premieres on the Lifetime Movie Network on Feb. 21 at 8 p.m. EST. It will reair on Feb. 24 and Feb. 27 at 8 p.m. EST.