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What do you want to be when you grow up? 

My kid-self would always answer with gusto, “a writer!” I don’t remember wanting to be anything else--except maybe an astronaut. I was making up stories before I knew the alphabet, and one of the earliest stories I wrote down was in my first-grade journal. I’ve always had so much fun with writing and it was my lifelong dream to become a published author.  

Writing helps me think. It helps me to process and understand our world, our creator, and our relationship to both. So my main goal with my novel and all my writing is to help others think about the world in a new and different way.  

I get ideas for my books usually by thinking over something that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. As I work on the book or writing project I’m reasoning through whatever mystery has turned up in my mind. Currently, I’m wondering about what happened to the shepherds who were told about Jesus’s birth? We never are told about them again. And so begins the next writing project.  

What part of my book was the most fun to write? 

The ending is always the most fun. It is what I’m working toward during the whole process, and when I see everything come together--it is exciting.  

I relate the most to Melinda in this novel. I think most writers are writing about themselves in some way or another, and for me, Melinda captures a lot of my own thoughts and experiences. You will soon discover that is not at all a compliment to me.  

My inspiration for this book was from reading 1 Corinthians 1:18: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” This verse got me thinking about how there can be such a discrepancy when both “the perishing” and “those who are being saved” are looking at the same cross and the same Jesus. Why do they see it so completely differently? This question I pondered as I wrote The Girl and the Stolen Fiddle.