My Writing Background

As a newlywed and a full-time employee of a major healthcare software company, and a parent of two fur-babies, I’ve had to be intentional to carve out time in my schedule to write. At this point, I’ve completed the first two books, “Declaration” and “Infiltration”, of my Sci-Fi/Adventure trilogy, The Freedom Protocols. I’m also in the process of publishing the first book and writing the first draft to the final book, “Restoration”. But that’s doesn’t speak to how I got to this point…

Looking back, I’d say my writing career started over 25 years ago. My dad purchased a 386 computer for work, but as it aged, my dad started letting me use it more and more. Apart from playing some basic video games on it, I also used a word processing program to write some short stories when I was in middle school. Most of my early writings focused on what I was most interested in at the time: Star Trek – The Next Generation!

Moving into high school, my pleasure writing slowly petered out. I started getting involved in sports (especially Track & Field), and I also dabbled in theater. I spent a lot of time and energy in my studies, and I graduated in the top 10% of my high school class. I exercised my writing skills during my junior year, as I joined the staff of my high school newspaper. I also enjoyed my creative writing assignments in my Honors English classes, but that was pretty much the extent of my fiction writing in high school.

I subsequently attended Iowa State University, majoring in Chemical Engineering. As you might imagine, this required a substantial amount of time to complete my classwork! None of my courses involved fiction writing, but throughout my college career, I was required to complete several written reports. I also happened to be in college when The Lord of the Rings movies came out. The final chapter of the series, “The Return of the King”, was released during finals week of my final semester. These movies helped renew my interests in reading in my spare time, but they didn’t quite move me to restart my writing efforts.

After graduating from college, I started my professional career working for a leading healthcare software company in the Madison, Wisconsin area. Once I completed the first couple of years working at my job, I gradually became more comfortable in my position and began to branch out in my non-work-related activities. I started reading more, including The Inheritance Cycle (beginning with “Eragon”) by Christopher Paolini. If you aren’t familiar with the author, Christopher Paolini finished writing “Eragon” while he was still a teenager. After I finished reading the first couple of books in the series, I began to wonder… if he could finish writing his first book as early as he did, could I possibly write a novel myself?

I thought about what type of book I might like to write, and I drifted back toward the Sci-Fi genre of my childhood. I then tried to piece together different possibilities for a plot for my novel. I kept those ideas in the back of my mind for a long time, eventually assembling a storyline that seemed very compelling to me. But coming up with a storyline and writing a novel are two completely different beasts. I prayed about whether it would be worth my while to invest so much time in writing a full-length novel. God responded by inspiring me to get started and to see where it would take me. So, I decided to take a couple of days off from work, rented a cabin up north for a long weekend, and began writing!

Since then, it hasn’t been easy, but I’ve been able to stay focused on my task at hand. Amidst plenty of distractions, I plugged away and eventually reached my goal! Along the way, I was constantly being encouraged by God and never doubted that He wanted me to complete my first novel. The end result is “Declaration”, the first of three books in my planned trilogy. I really feel inspired by God to complete this series, even though I’m not altogether sure why God wants me to continue writing. At this point, I’m staying faithful and seeing where God wants to take me!