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By Precarious Yates

“You pay more attention to your work than you do to your family.” This scathing rebuke from my husband was spot on. And I needed it pointed out to me.

I had some troubles in family life, and while I prayed and cried out to God, I saw no relief or end in sight to these troubles. So I sank into my work and blocked it all out. (Trust me, this doesn’t feel very good to confess, but I think it’s important.)

During this time, I could edit and I could polish up work, but I couldn’t write anything new. Here’s why:

Everything I write is about people who are fully alive or people who are struggling toward wakefulness. I couldn’t write it if I wasn’t living it. I could edit it, or polish up the style, but I couldn’t write it if I wasn’t practicing it.

In the midst of crying out to God, He answered with the strangest answer I could have imagined. I felt called to write romance.

WHAT???

I’m a YA sci-fi/fantasy author! The romance parts of my books are so minimal it’s as if they hardly exist. There was no way I could write romance.

Instead of arguing with God, I prayed. I didn’t beg Him to let me off the hook, I asked Him to unfold His plan through me. So I wrote. (At least two of these books will be released this year, one this month.) And He unfolded His plan.

I began to practice what I wrote and to be fully alive in my marriage. My husband is much happier, I can tell you that!

But the journey didn’t end there. I also felt called to write a series of children’s stories. Through writing these stories, some of the major troubles in my family life began to heal.

Many say that a writer needs to choose a genre to build up a “brand”, but I’ve learned that I need to write what the Lord calls me to write. He’s been healing my heart through what I put on the page, but especially when I begin to walk it out in my life.

So let’s be fully alive! Not just on the page, not just in our work, but in every aspect of our lives!

Precarious Yates lives in Texas with husband, daughter, dogs, chickens, rabbit, lizard and by the time you read this some other exotic creature her husband or daughter has brought home. She had studied the plight of and worked toward the abolition of modern slavery for over a decade before sitting down to write Revelation Special Ops. She was further inspired by the work of her sister-in-law, who helped to found Love146, an organization that works to raise awareness about human trafficking and builds safe homes in vulnerable regions. Yates spent several years overseas as a missionary in Ireland, and also did missions work in India and the Philippines. Her passion for literature has become her means of further educating young adults of the realities of modern slavery, while producing hope through the power of Christ Jesus in us.