The Back Story

I’m so blessed to be a member of the Storyteller Squad. Here’s how it happened:

Over the course of my kids’ middle and high school years, they barely raised their heads from the captivating series of books spotlighting witches, vampires and, get this, animals that morphed into humans. While thrilled that they were reading, I felt the novels were unbalanced—too much spiritual darkness and not enough light.

I set out on a quest to buy them some clean teen fiction, thinking it would be a quick trip. After all, my hometown of Atlanta is a spectacular mecca of shopping malls. Three bookstores later, I returned home empty-handed. I was both surprised and disappointed. One shop, billed as Christian, only carried children’s books for the under-18 crowd. What?!

That’s when I remembered I wrote for a living. Of course, my experience to date involved newspaper articles, press releases, speeches and scripts. Seriously, though, how hard could writing teen fiction be after dealing with the media and corporate CEOs?

Pretty stinking hard.

I soon discovered I needed a support system. On September 2, 2016, I joined the American Christian Fiction Writers, an awesome association that supports budding writers. I hopped onto the online critique group and delighted in receiving glowing feedback. It didn’t take long before I realized the majority of my “critters” were romance writers and didn’t understand the young adult genre. Their critiques, while motivating, weren’t helpful.

I contacted our gracious moderator, Gail Sattler, and asked if she could create a young adult critique sub-group. She happily complied. On February 16, 2017, I was the first to submit a chapter of my book to Scribes209, composed of 10 serious writers of fiction for readers under 18. I moderated this group through the end of the year, when Victoria Kimble took over the job.

On September 24, Victoria and Michelle McCorkle (writer AND web designer) launched our group into a public online presence. While we still critique each other weekly through the private assigned Scribes209 handle, we’ve joined together on the internet as the Storyteller Squad. Our website offers book buyers a Christ-centered place to easily find clean reads and maybe even learn a little something positive through our blogs.

Our prayer is that we may bring the light of Jesus to those who read our work. We hope you find our site useful and look forward to your feedback.