I grew up as a preacher’s kid

I grew up as a preacher’s kid

I grew up as a preacher’s kid, moving from town to town, watching how different communities lived, believed, struggled, and held themselves together. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those early years were teaching me how people carry their stories — how they inherit wounds, how they cling to hope, how they shape their own meaning inside the worlds they’re given.

That curiosity eventually led me to study History and American Studies, where I learned to see the long arc of cultures, the way ideas drift across generations, and how the past never really stays in the past. Later, my work as a mental health professional taught me the quieter truths: how people break, how they heal, and how every choice leaves a mark on the heart.

All the while, I was gathering fragments.

A line of dialogue.

A moment I didn’t understand yet.

A scene with no home.

A feeling that stayed with me long after it should have faded.

I carried these pieces for decades without knowing what they were becoming.

I didn’t publish my first novel until I was 70. But the truth is, the world behind it had been forming for most of my life — shaped by the communities I lived in, the histories I studied, the people I counseled, and the quiet observations that never let me go.

The Eldriko trilogy grew out of that long journey.

It’s a world built from memory, history, humanity, and the small truths gathered along the way.

Some stories take years to ripen.

Some voices arrive late.

Mine did.

And I’m grateful for the long road that brought me here.