Jeanette Windle Interview

Q: Let me start with asking you to tell us a little bit about yourself. 

A. As daughter of missionary parents, I grew up in the rural villages, jungles, and mountains of Colombia, now guerrilla hot zones. I married another missionary kid, and we have been in full-time international ministry ever since. Currently based in Lancaster, PA, I’ve lived to date in six countries and traveled in more than thirty on five continents. Those experiences have birthed 16 international intrigue titles, including bestselling Tyndale House Publishers release Veiled Freedom, a 2010 Christian Book Award and Christy Award finalist and sequel Freedom’s Stand, a 2012 Christian Book Award and Carol Award finalist and 2011 Golden Scroll Novel of the Year finalist.

Q: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

A. Writing has always been such a part of my life, I can’t remember ever consciously wanting to write. Our missionary kids boarding school had a heavy emphasis on writing and literature; we thought doing full term papers with footnotes in junior high was normal. I wrote one story for publication in college, then became a pastor’s wife and missionary. I never really thought again about writing for publication until I was stuck down in a small town in southern Bolivia with three preschoolers, no transport, phone, radio, or TV, and my husband gone for two weeks at a time to teach in jungle and mountain churches. By the time I’d read my few English books until I had them memorized, I was so bored I wrote my first book in the evenings after the babies were asleep. That became Kathy and the Redhead, a children’s novel based on my growing-up years at an American missionary kid boarding school in the Andes mountains.  From there, I began writing as a missions journalist, then sixteen more fiction novels, and somehow never quit since.

Q: Could you give us the highlights of your professional writing career including how you got your first writing break?  

A. Like much in my writing career, my first writing break as a novelist fits no industry norm. After writing Kathy and the Redhead, I began a juvenile international mystery series. I’d bought a Sally Stuart’s Christian Writers Market Guide and was working my way through publishers (no email submissions then; hard copy sent to the U.S. with travelers). I’d received some encouragement and far more rejections when our family flew north for a three month ministry trip in the U.S. By then I’d gone through every publisher on the list and was truly ready to give up. I can remembering praying and asking God to either open a door or close it completely if my writing was not His will so I would not waste more time that could go into other ministry.

Shortly before we headed back to Bolivia, we were at a missions conference in Wenatchee, WA, when I was informed I had a call. To my astonishment, it was the editor of a new juvenile department for Multnomah (then Questar) Press. Multnomah had already sent me a rejection, saying they didn’t publish juvenile, but would be interested if I ever wrote a teen novel (which became my one teen novel, Jana’s Journal). The editor informed me that when Questar had merged with Multnomah, they’d found some wonderful children’s mystery chapters tucked away in a drawer. The phone number of my husband’s parents was on the proposal as our USA contact. My in-laws had passed on our current location at the conference. Would I possibly still have the books available for publishing?

Would I! The manuscript was in the mail the next day. The contract arrived just as we headed back to Bolivia, the first of six mysteries in The Parker Twins Adventure Series and the beginning of my CBA career. That out-of-the-blue phone call at a missions conference would be too improbable for fiction. Which simply goes to show that one can follow every guideline, jump through every hoop, but in the end, delightfully, unexpectedly, there is always the ‘But God’ factor that turns all our own plans and efforts on end.

Q: Would you tell us about your current book release Congo Dawn?  

If absolute power breeds absolute corruption, what happens when a multinational corporation with unlimited funds hires on a private military company with unbridled power? Especially in a Congolese rainforest where governmental accountability is only too cheaply for sale and the ultimate ‘conflict mineral’ is up for grabs?

Set in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s war-torn eastern Ituri rainforest zone, Congo Dawn confronts former Marine lieutenant Robin Duncan with just that question. A veteran in handling corruption and conspiracy, Robin has never had any trouble  discerning good guys from bad. But as her private security team tries to track down an insurgent killer, Robin faces a man who broke her trust years ago and discovers that gray areas extend deeper into the jungle than she anticipated.

As a vicious global conspiracy emerges, run by brutal men who don’t leave witnesses alive, Robin must decide if there is anyone left she can trust. And where is God in the suffering and injustice? How is it followers of Yesu (Jesus) caught in the crossfire can still rejoice when everything they hold dear is ripped away?

Q: Where did you get your inspiration for Congo Dawn?

A: For the story’s actual suspense thread, I’ve had opportunity to witness what a multinational corporation is capable of in dark corners of the Third World when no one is watching (a personal experience in itself too unbelievable to write up as fiction). In Africa as elsewhere, both the protective and striking arm of such corporations has historically been hired foreign mercenaries (the British East India Company’s conquest of India is the ultimate example).

But today’s post-9/11 private military corporations are vastly different than their predecessors, possessing more fire power than the average country. What struck me was the lack of accountability to any outside oversight beyond whichever paid-off regional warlord currently holds power. Just how far might a multinational corporation with the striking force of a private army be willing to go with the planet’s ultimate “conflict mineral” up for grabs? Coming up with one very plausible possibility birthed Congo Dawn

On a deeper spiritual level, Congo Dawn addresses the age-old question of how a world filled with such darkness, injustice and pain can possibly be the creation of a God of love. How can followers of Yesu [Jesus]  in the bleakness of an Ituri rainforest conflict zone or any other dark corner of this planet take seriously a Scriptural mandate to rejoice in their suffering [James 1:2; I Peter 4:13]? What value beyond our own comprehension might human suffering possibly hold that a loving Creator God permits it to continue?

Q: What is the main thing you hope readers remember from this story?

A: The same simple, yet profound realization to which Congo Dawn‘s main protagonists are ultimately drawn. The coexistence of a loving Creator with human suffering is no oxymoron, but a divine paradox those refined in the fires of adversity are best equipped to understand. The smallest flames of love and faith shine most brightly against the darkest night. Our heavenly Father really does know what He’s doing, and His ultimate plans for our lives and all His creation will not be thwarted.

Q: What is your favorite scene/chapter from the book?

A: That is like asking which is my favorite child. But one high point to me in the book is the discussion between main protagonist Robin Duncan and the Congolese doctor’s wife Miriam on just why God permits suffering on this planet and in our lives.

Q: What inspires you to write?  

A. I write because I am a story teller.We serve a wildly creative God who painted the skies and flowers, put music in the bird’s song and rivers, created universes of places and peoples. And just as God gave artists and musicians the ability to create with color and sound, so a story-teller’s ability to create worlds and characters and drama of their own imagining is a small reflection of God’s own creative powers, one of the ways we were made in His image. God created me to be a story teller, and I simply can’t not do so.

What I love about writing fiction is the tapestry it offers to weave together countless scattered threads—historical, political, social, spiritual—and the very real people involved, to create out of a vastly complicated situation a single focused story and spiritual theme. While the books I write are fiction, the peoples and places and issues they bring to life are only all too true, and I love the feedback I get from readers who say they now understand the news and international issues after having read one of my books.

Q: How has being a published novelist differed from your expectations of the profession?  

A: I can honestly say I had no expectations, especially since I wrote my first books overseas far away from the world of North American publishing. But one byproduct I didn’t expect was the doors that being a published novelist has opened to train and mentor other Christian writers in two languages (English and Spanish) on five continents to date. It is a ministry I love, and I feel so blessed and privileged at the talented Christian writers I’ve been able to work with around the world. 

Q: What advice or tips do you have for writers who are just getting started?

A: Read, read, read and write, write, write. It is the saturation of mind and heart with good literature and prose that creates good writers as well as the practice of the craft. Any would-be writer who cannot tell me what they are currently reading or say they don’t care for reading but just want to write are immediately crossed off my list as serious potential writers.

Also, writing is hard work, not just inspiration. It is, in fact, a mind-numbing, hair-pulling, excruciating process of creation to which the birthing of ones own children pales. I always tell want-to-be writers, if you can keep from writing, do! It’s a hard, unforgiving field. If you have to write, whether it’s published or not, then you’re a writer, and like a musician or artist, you can’t be anything but. And it does feel wonderful after all the work of birthing the world and characters and message of a new book to hold it in your hands and see the finished product.

Q: Would you share with us what you are working on now?  

A. After seven consecutive international intrigue titles, I am actually buried currently in a project that is very much outside that box, more Michael Crichton’s Timeline meets The DaVinci Code than anything I’ve written to date. It is a story that has been bubbling for years, and I am excited about where it is going. But I hope I won’t be leaving you in too much suspense if I reserve the details until I am much further along.

Q: When you’re not writing what do you like to do?  

A. Outside of writing, I’ve been in full-time ministry for thirty years now as a missionary, missions journalist, speaker, and trainer/writer for indigenous Christian writers on four continents.  Traveling to new corners of the planet and meeting new people is one wonderful byproduct I really enjoy. And when I do have spare time, I’ll admit you can usually find me with my nose in a good book.

Q: Where can readers find you on the internet? 

A. Check out my website at: www.jeanettewindle.com. Or follow me on FaceBook; I am always delighted to meet readers there.

Q: Anything else you’d like to tell or share with us?  

A. I think I’ve said enough. 🙂