Meet Colleen Coble

I can still remember the first story I ever wrote. It was in first grade and was about twin colts. My teacher praised my writing, and the seed was planted. Someday I would have a book in a library! Libraries are hallowed places to me, so that was my goal. That was it—just a single book in a library somewhere. This is me at that age.

The seed lay dormant through the early years of marriage and raising a family. We women often put our dreams aside to focus on our families, and that’s what I did. “Someday” I was going to write. I devoured books by the armloads from the library, and it bothered me to read the hopelessness in them that assumed there was no God. I wanted to write a story with hope in it—not preachy, but hopeful. But nothing came.

August 28, 1990 changed everything. The phone rang late that night with the news that the oldest  of my three younger brothers, Randy, had been killed by lightning in a freak farm accident. In the coming months, as I emerged from the storm of grief, I realized that if I was ever going to follow my dream, I needed to get started. I was approaching my fortieth birthday, and time was marching on. This is my brother, Randy. He was a year younger than me.

As part of the grieving process, my husband and I made a trip out to Wyoming to see where Randy had lived with his family for a few years. As I stood on the parade ground at Fort Laramie, the first idea took root and sprouted. The fire of grief and adversity had finally cracked open the seed that had lain dormant in my heart all those years.

I went home and started to write. It took a year to write that first book. I was sure there would be a bidding war! Not so much.  It took SIX years of rejections before the call came from Barbour that they were going to publish my first book, Where Leads the Heart. I screamed so loudly the cat hid under the bed and wouldn’t come out for hours. I called my pastor to tell him the news, but I got his answering machine. I cried and babbled out what was happening. When he listened to the message, he thought someone had died, and he didn’t know who to call back. True stories!

It was a lonely journey at that time too. I knew no other writers and talking about wanting to write a novel felt so presumptuous—I was just a farm girl from a small Indiana town. But I discovered when you have a dream, you need to pursue it. You never know what doors God will open for you. When you struggle to do something bigger than you, it strengthens and molds you. And here I am, twenty-nine years after blowing the dust off that dream. I have four million books in print and a host of books in libraries all over the world which constantly astonishes me. Until you try, you don’t know what God has in store for that dream He gave you.

And because of the loneliness of those early years (I’m a major extrovert) I’m especially delighted to be part of a group like Suspense Sisters. I love hearing from readers and encouraging other writers!

I look forward to getting to know all of you better! And to celebrate being part of Suspense Sisters, I'm giving away a $10 Amazon gift card! Make sure you post to be part of the drawing, and I will need your email.

Colleen Coble, USA Today bestselling author
CEO of American Christian Fiction Writers
http://colleencoble.com
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