Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be one of those angsty metaphysical posts. I just thought that, since I’m going to be posting here every other Wednesday, some of you might like to know who I am.

Ahem. Hi, I’m Rachel. I love God, I love words, I love people to the best of my ability, and I have a long-standing relationship with speculative fiction. Sometimes it seems to me that I have been spinning stories of the fantasy variety since I came forth from my mother’s womb, but the truth is probably more that I’ve been doing it since my dad first read The Chronicles of Narnia to my sisters and I when we were very young. (He also read us  a lot of poetry by A.A. Milne . . . I can’t help it if certain phrases stick!)

Over the years speculative fiction has done a lot for me. It has given me a place of escape when I needed that place (a shelter in the storm, if you will). It’s renewed my courage and sometimes restored my innocence. It’s helped me feel longing and see the righteousness of God with greater clarity. It has even, by the grace of God, strengthened my relationship with Him.

All of that is why I’m here, why I care about what spec-fic authors are writing these days, and why I want to help those authors be read.

It’s also why I write.  I have the great fun and privilege of making a living through words — I’m a freelance writer, editor, and writing coach, and I’ve independently published six (soon to be seven) books. My favourites of these are a fantasy trilogy called The Seventh World Trilogy, which you can explore here.

On the “Apologetic” page of that site, I wrote,

There is a chance that when readers escape into a speculative world designed by someone who is immersed in truth and relationship with God, they might just experience truth or encounter God in a way they have not done before — in a way they can bring back out into the “real world” to make an objective difference. Aslan has truly deepened readers’ worship of Jesus. Middle-Earth has really made us long for heaven.

No fiction is real. But all fiction can help us encounter and understand what is real in ourselves and in God and in the world around us. Speculative fiction, because it takes us into worlds so very different from our own, does this particularly well.

And that is why I — we — write it.

Thanks for bringing me on board. I’m looking forward to many more posts, discussions, and world-bending books.