How I Started Writing Christian Fiction: My Writing Journey

My writing journey

As a young girl, growing up on the edge of my grandparents' farm in Southeastern Pennsylvania, I found myself surrounded by story-evoking settings. I loved to read, and my earliest novels (if you could call them that), were written out by me on college-ruled notebook paper and then painstakingly copied by my best friend in her best cursive penmanship.

Why her penmanship?

She got an A every year in Handwriting, and I was a B, tops. It was the one class where I literally could not pull up my grade to an A. I don't know why, because I now have very pretty handwriting when I wish to, but back then it was mediocre.

My stories had an avid audience... of about 20 other girls in my middle school. Her copies got passed around and borrowed and returned like a library book. In case you are wondering, they were not worthy of that. I can barely even remember what they were about.

Homeschoolers have an advantage when it comes to writing

When I was entering 11th grade, my parents decided to homeschool.

These days, especially after all the Covid-related homeschool conversions, that sounds normal. But in the early 90s, it was still a little radical. My parents were educators by nature. My dad was a Christian school administrator for years, in at least three different schools. My mom taught Kindergarten, and once she started having a lot of babies, she also taught us all to read, at very young ages. I was reading very well already before entering K-5.

The thing is, at the point when they began homeschooling, my mother had ten children, and my older brother was just entering college. The other nine of us were all still at home, and in addition to school age children, my mother had a baby and a toddler. And my mom couldn't personally teach all of us.

So my parents decided on my curriculum, handed me a stack of textbooks at the beginning of the year, and occasionally passed me a test to do. My mother was very occupied teaching the younger children, so I was pretty much on the self-study track. But my curriculum was also massively self-oriented, thanks to a gracious mother, who knew my love for English and writing and my lack of love for anything math-y or science-y.

I still had to math and science, but I got to do much more Englishing and Writing. In fact, she scheduled a whole school hour for English, another for literature, and another for Writing. English, basically, became three separate subjects for me, and I didn't complain. Not having to go to school and waste time on things like PE and Study Hall and Recess and Lunch meant that I had lots of time to write!

In college, I majored in creative writing, and I had amazing teachers (like Jamie Langston Turner and Dawn Watkins) who inspired and taught me. Novel writing class was my favorite class, although the words I wrote for it will likely never see the light of day, and for two very good reasons:

1. It was horrible, and I had no actual story that would hold together.

2. They were typed on a word processor, because laptops weren't a thing for college students yet. So there's no record of just how bad they were, and I'm grateful.

I stepped right into grad school after college, turning my focus to my seminary classes and my biblical counseling degree. Although I didn't have much time to write outside of my papers and my writing responsibilities for my work at our college library, I did have time to meet my future husband. Our romance blossomed in the library where he was my boss. (Yes, you heard that right: I joke that I liked having him as my boss so much, I decided to keep him as my boss the rest of my life.)

Our workplace romance followed a three-act structure, complete with a meet cute (2 of them, actually), an all-is-lost dark night of the soul, and a happily ever after ending. Also, the setting was a library. How fitting is that?

But as you know, every good love story has an epilogue. My epilogue included a baby... or six, to be honest. And then it included many years as a missionary wife, following my Bible Professor husband all over the globe so he could teach in Bible colleges and seminaries in various countries. There was a lot of picking up and packing up and moving, and although at some point I found myself writing fiction again, I also discovered my love of non-fiction. Nonfiction allowed me to use both my writing and my counseling education to help people.

And then, on one fateful December day while I was living in the Philippines, I decided to write a short story. It was supposed to be 15,000 words, but it ended up a novella. If you've read my books, you know it as Just One Day... the first Just Molly book.

My readership (again, very small) demanded more. I hadn't finished the story, they said. And although it was unplanned, I had already worked out far more of Aaron and Molly's storyline, so I decided to write them a book 2. Then a book 3. Then a book 4, 5, 6, 7...

They aren't all published yet. It's 2026 as I write this, and Book 5 is being edited. Book 6 is written, in line for editing. Book 7 is in the middle of being written.

I didn't really set out to write a series, but I'm having a lot of fun. I've already started writing several other books in the same world. Will they ever be finished and published? Well, it depends on how many days God has given me, how disciplined I am, and how much food my kids want to eat, because cooking takes a lot of time at my house.

Also, I still travel with my husband and although he doesn't teach full time anymore because he has taken on a leadership role at our mission board, I am still heavily involved in helping him with his work. (I love that we still have that workplace romance going on!)

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Well, enough about me. If you've read this far, you deserve a reward. Maybe an amazing chocolate chip cookie or a cup of coffee, tea, or hot carob.

And now that I've told you about me, please feel free to drop me an email telling me a little bit about you, or connect with me on Pinterest, Facebook, or Instagram.