Guest Post by J. Grace Pennington

I have the extreme pleasure and honour of sharing with you today a post written by my dear friend Gracie whom I met through HolyWorlds. She has recently published her book Radialloy, the first in her "Firmament" sci-fi series of books, which is available for purchase through Amazon. I'm highly excited about getting my hands on it! You can read more about her book (and Gracie!) at this link. Be sure to check it out; if you don't, I will hunt you down and bombard you with threats and bribes of cupcakes until you do. (This is no idle warning, at the very least, I will be doing it telepathically...)

So, without further ado, may I present the lovely J. Grace Pennington!


I'm a Star Trek fan.  The Original Series, mostly--I dabble in The Next Generation, but The Original Series is really where it's at.  TOS, as us Trekkies call it.  I love the mysterious sci-fi situations, I love the veiled political and philosophical messages, and most of all I love the characters.  And my favorite character is Doctor "Bones" McCoy.


When I watched the third Star Trek movie, The Search for Spock, I was gripped by the good doctor's mysterious insanity.  He was acting in strange ways, forgetting things, acting like someone else; and his friends were entirely perplexed.  I was on the edge of my seat.  What had they done to my doctor?

Of course, I can't tell you what happened, because that would ruin the movie for you!  But that night, I had a dream.  I dreamed the doctor's daughter (not a character in the series) came to him in the night and sang to him, worried for his sanity and his life.


It was such a vivid, emotional dream, that I wrote it down when I woke up.  Then I pondered it.  It was a good scene, and I was determined to find a way to make it into its own story.


I thought about it all day, and as I went about my chores, a story grew in my mind.  Of a young girl, Andi, who was a doctor's daughter and lived on a starship, helping her father.  I came up with my own reasons for the doctor?s insanity, I tied it into Andi's past, I invented new characters, I created something called radialloy.


That night, I wrote more.  I wrote the beginning, starting with the line "He always said that I had the measles when he found me on his doorstep back in 2299."  I kept writing.  I wrote and wrote and wrote, every day, until it grew into 60,000 words at the end of sixty-six days.  And then it was done.


It was my second novel, and I absolutely couldn't believe how much fun it had been.  How real the characters and their problems were to me.  How much I wanted to visit their world again.


I presented the book to my daddy, a huge fan of all things sci-fi, for his birthday that month, and long before the dust had settled, I'd come up with twenty-three more ideas for novels in the series.  I?ve since whittled this down to a more attainable eighteen novels in all, of which the first is published, the second is awaiting revision, and the third is in the middle of being drafted.


To me, there's only one explanation for the excitement and passion I have for these books, for how smoothly they've gone, for all the help I've had at just the right times along the way.  God put this world and its stories in my heart.  He gave me the strength to keep writing at a good pace when I was tired, He gave me the humility to accept hard criticisms, and He gave me the dream that began it all.


And I know He'll see me through to the last word of the last page of the last book.


J. Grace Pennington has been telling stories since she could talk, and writing them down since age five.  Now she lives in the Texas Hill Country with her parents, her eight younger siblings, and her horse, Pioneer.  When she's not writing, she enjoys reading good books, playing movie soundtracks on the piano, and looking up at the stars.  You can find out more about her writing, including the Firmament series, at www.jgracepennington.com