I was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but moved to Columbus, Ohio, when I was nearly five. That’s when my mother remarried – four years after my father was killed in Vietnam – and my new step-dad, a six-foot-seven-inch, southern gentleman and surgeon, had just joined a practice here.

I worked a couple summers in his office during college, and let me tell you how much fun that was. He was a colon-rectal surgeon. On my fourth day on the job, I had such a fit of nervous laughter on the phone – having to use the word enema three times in a scripted response to new patients – that I got booted from the receptionist’s desk to the insurance office where I just typed forms for weeks on end.

Enema. Who can say enema without giggling?!

What else? I transferred undergrad so many times I lost count, but spent my best collegiate years at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and Capital University here in Columbus, where I still live. I graduated from Cap with a degree in something. Professional Writing, I think it was called. And I ended up with a religion minor because of one completely fascinating professor. I just kept taking his classes. He literally was one of those bearded, old-Volvo-driving, hang-out-for-hours-with-students kind of profs who really did change lives.

He changed mine.

I ended up going to seminary because of him, mostly studied Hebrew and Greek and loved it, but never felt terribly rooted there -- or anywhere until I met this great guy named Tim -- so I left and wrote freelance articles for a while. Somehow, accidentally, actually, I ended up as a youth minister. Mostly, I didn't have the heart to say no to the minister when she offered me the job on a Thursday, saying, "I need someone who can start Sunday." Only after I accepted did she tell me I was in charge of 12- to 18-year-olds.

Turns out I loved it. Did that for ten years, all the while writing in semi-secret, and like most writers I know, my path to publication was long, crooked and filled with the standard miseries of rejection and discouragement. But it’s all part of the process, one thing leading to another if you don’t quit – and I didn’t – and I found an agent, who sold my manuscript, and here I am an author, something I knew I wanted to be as far back as third grade.

Oh, and that great guy named Tim? I married him. He’s one of the reasons I never quit writing, telling me once to “write until you run out of pens.” I believe I was sitting on the kitchen floor crying at the time, holding my latest rejection letter and muttering something about just getting a job at J. Crew. (It would be nice to have the discount.) His enduring support and belief in my ability everlastingly overwhelm me. That's why, no matter what it says on the dedication page, all my books will always be for him first.