My college sojourn lasted only a year and a half. By that time I was given a new respect and love for the Scriptures. God’s Word was imbedded in my heart and a hunger was birthed to know His Word deeply and intimately. I had learned what God sought to teach me, to know His Word intimately and see the people presented in the Scriptures for the human beings they were. I had spent hours studying, taking notes, taking tests, and hardly seeing my husband as I immersed myself in studies. Finally He released me from college studies to begin writing again.
As I began to write other books (six were Biblical Fiction, and I am working on my seventh) and delve into the Scriptures for insight into the women I was writing about, research became a joy. I promised myself, and God, that while I had poetic license to add characters and dialogue, my stories would be true to incidents actually spoken of in the Bible. I felt the burden God had put on my heart was to take women who had been maligned, either in Scripture or in the well-meaning pulpits of the world, and show them as God saw them, with love and understanding. I saw the woman at the well in the Gospel of John not as a prostitute or loose woman, but as someone who was a victim of the circumstances and times she lived in. She was an overcomer, as Jesus urges us all to be. Martha, a mover and shaker, was also a woman with a heart; Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute, the Scriptures never say that about her. I had to then create the circumstances whereby Satan had access to her life—the seven demons. Claudia is mentioned in the Bible in only one paragraph, but her background in history was fascinating and the story emerged. Ruth was a joy to write and research, with a slightly unusual portrayal. The Lord, who in a way I could not miss, put the subject of Mary, the mother of Jesus, firmly on my heart as my next book. With some reluctance in regard to the subject, I obeyed. Mary, Chosen of God, was challenging, enlightening and written with reverence.
