The Story Behind the Story

     My mouth dropped open as fifteen-year-old Ariana giggled.

     "What did you say?" I asked, laughing myself.

     "Everyone born in the nineteen-hundreds is old."

     "Well," I chuckled back.  "Everyone born after 2000 is a baby."  She and the other students laughed good-naturedly.

     I am working with wonderful young people this summer, doing Bible clubs all over Sioux City, Iowa.  Ariana's statement brought to light just how young they all are.  All of the students were born between 2002 and 2004.  Wow!  I was in my twenties when they were born, driving, working, voting--a full-fledged member of society.  And I was their age in another century. 

    It's hard to believe I'm coming up on two decades out of high school.  several weeks ago marked eighteen years since the Class of 2000 walked across the stage to receive their diplomas, flipping their tassels on the way down.  Graduating in 2000 sounded so modern and space age at the time, especially since the fall of my senior year was still 1999.  Going into a year that was simply a two followed by three zeros was like going into uncharted waters.  Actually, most experts still consider 2000 to be the 20th century, not the 21st.  Now, 2000 sounds like a long time ago...which it is, really. It doesn't always seem like it, but it is.  

     So...what have I been up to since 2000?  Glad you asked!  I've done many things, such as mission trips, college, ministry, teaching, marriage.  It's been an adventure, and still is.  

     One thing I had been doing long before 2000, and continue to do, is writing.  I have had a passion for it as long as I can remember.  

     This weekend, a series I have written debuts on Amazon Kindle, the Riverside County Chronicles.  This series has been in the works since 2000, and there is an interesting story behind it.

     Inklings of this series had been in my heart since around 1992, when I envisioned a series about friends at a church, having adventures together.  Back in 1992, I was ten, and my idea of adventures involved mysteries, kidnapping, and secret rooms hidden in old houses.  I came up with some pretty convoluted plots and had a lot of fun.  A few of the characters I came up with at the time were the basis for the current characters.  Still, it was pretty rough stuff back in '92.  

     The story really started taking shape the summer of 2000.  Four days after my high school graduation, I left for a mission trip to Africa.  I have talked extensively about that in other posts.  Some very wonderful things happened on that trip, especially the many, many children who came to Christ.  I also enjoyed spending time in London on layovers.  I loved our interpreter in Zambia, and we are still friends today.  I met people I would never have otherwise met.  These were blessings.  There were also some refiners fires.  Very difficult experiences.  One of them was that I had a teammate (who was also my roommate all summer) who was impossible.  You can read about that whole experience in other posts, or in my book "Why I still Believe" (also available on Amazon Kindle).  But, that summer, I had a lot inside me.  A lot I needed to get out.  A lot I longed for.  I was in a foreign country with an abusive maniac.  There was no one to talk to, because she manipulated the whole trip, and everyone over there was on her side.  It wasn't worth if for me to even speak most of the time, unless I was teaching.  So, the only way to avoid losing my mind completely was to write.  I filled notebook after notebook.  I wrote journal entries about what was doing on daily, but I also had those old stories from 1992 come back to me.  

     I wanted to get to know these characters.  During this intense time of silence for me, these fictional characters were like real people to me.  They were my friends.  The only ones I had for almost ten thousand miles.  I really felt like I got to know them.  Story after story about them flowed into my heart and out my pen.  I even wrote down details about them that would never make it into the books, but just for my own reference, so I felt like I was working with real-live people.  I named the church King of Kings Baptist Church, and based it off of Corona Heights Baptist Church, the congregation I grew up in.  I wrote up a church directory, complete with everyone's address, phone number, and birthday.  I had a mental picture of exactly what everyone looked like, almost as if I could see them in front of me.  I wrote out their testimonies, how they came to faith.  

     These friends from King of Kings Baptist Church helped me battle culture shock, homesickness, and bitterness toward my roommate.  I could always retreat into my writing to be free from all of it.  I believe the very best of me went into this writing.  What's more, I don't think I could have come up with any of it under any other circumstances.  The heat had been turned up under me, and beauty came forth.  

     Although much more cohesive than my 1992 drafts, these stories from Africa weren't completely publishable.  In fact, I think their purpose was to introduce me to these friends.  Make them real to me.  When I arrived home and started taking classes at community college and working at a preschool, I would work on more stories about these friends.  These stories, from the fall of 2000, are incorporated into the series now.  They've been edited and revised here and there over the years.  

     Originally, there was one book.  But every now and then, new ideas would come to me.  I found I missed my friends.  I wondered how they were doing.  Something funny would happen in my life that would seem to fit perfectly into one of the stories.  I not only added to the original book, but wrote two more.  I had a trilogy.  And for several years, I sat on it, doing nothing else with it.  

     A little over two years ago, Walter and I were having dinner at a Sizzler.  Walter had gone to the restroom, and I was idly sitting, listening to the conversation of the family across the walkway from us.  

     "Did you know that if Star Wars hadn't made the prequels and now the sequels, my generation wouldn't be into it?" A thirteen-year-old boy was asking his parents.

     "Best idea, making those extra movies.  If the trilogy was good, having two additional trilogies is great." The father agreed.

     Hearing this struck a chord in me.  What if I wrote three prequels and three sequels?  I loved the challenge.  It wasn't hard.  These friends were practically begging to tell their stories.  

     As Walter and I got ready to move, I wrote a basic outline of my prequels.  I typed them up shortly after arriving in South Dakota.  They came from a deep part of my heart.  I even had dreams during this time that contributed.  I believe it was God's guidance in creativity.  

     So now I had six book.  What would the sequels be like?  I had great ideas from real life, and I plugged away writing.  Finally, as of a month ago, I have nine books.  They blend a little more specifically than the Star Wars movies, so they aren't really set up as three prequels, three "original" and three sequels.  They're just nine books that go together.  

     The whole series is deeply Christian, with biblical truths intermingled with humor, love, and plot twists.  Almost all aspects have some basis in real-life experience.  I set it in my home area of Riverside County, California.  I never specifically say what city the stories take place in, but I refer to many cities in the county.  In my heart, they live in Corona.  I grew up in Riverside (until age 7) and Corona (from 7 to adulthood, when I moved back to Riverside).  They're almost like one city, as they are right next to each other. If you live in one, you likely do a lot of errands in the other.  I consider both Riverside and Corona my hometown (too bad Facebook only lets me put one hometown!).  I came up with the title Riverside County Chronicles in 2010.  Until that point, I had referred to them as the Good Old Days Trilogy (It was only a trilogy at the time).  I was never happy with that title, and liked the current one much better.

      At the bottom, I have put some of the cover art used on the books.  If you are interested in looking them up on Amazon (each is only 99 cents), click on the following link--if it doesn't work, copy and paste it onto a web browser (my other two books, Why I Still Believe and The Last Resort are also at this site):   https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Janelle+Stoermer

Thank You Very Much, Mr. VIce-President!

     It was August of 2009.  A distraught woman in her late 20's sat at a corner booth in a Burger King in Riverside, California, sipping a Diet Coke.  Frustrated, she pushed a strand of her A-line cut auburn hair behind her ear.  She had to get to business.  On the table in front of her was a journal, and she began to write in it, fast and furious.  Anything that would come to her from the happenings of the last several years.  As the late morning hours passed into afternoon, she wrote on, oblivious to time and place.  She only occasionally took a sip of her Diet Coke, refilling it once.  By the end of the afternoon when she got up to drive back downtown, where she lived, her journal was filled with bridge-burning material.  Powerful stuff.

     I was that young woman.  At that time, I had every intention of burning bridges with what I had written.  I still have that written material today.  It is not bad.  It is not unkind.  It is true, the word of my testimony.  My heart had been hurt, and I still believe I had every right to shake the dust off my feet and turn away.  However...this was not what God had for me in this instance.

     No ministry is perfect.  Churches and para-church organizations are made up of Christians, who are forgiven, but still in the sanctification process.  That very much includes me.  

     As I have shared in other posts, I had been involved with that wonderful ministry since high school days in the 90's.  From that first time I attended Christian Youth in Action training and became a summer missionary to Riverside County at age fifteen, I had found my calling.  I loved (still love) this ministry.  I loved the way God used those of us who participated.  I loved seeing children (and sometimes even adults) give their lives to the Lord.  

     Over the years, I had experienced some disillusionment.  I had seen people allowed to serve on mission trips who had hurt me.  When I had tried to express what had happened, I was not listened to.  I was once told by a ministry superior, "If you had it your way, almost no one would be involved!"  I saw numbers become a priority at times.  One time, a young woman who had served on several of their trips confided in me that she didn't really know the Lord.  There was a lack of discernment that was causing harm.  I had also heard many praising the ministry to the point that they put down the effectiveness of other ministries.  I even heard one of my fellow workers wonder aloud of the organization would usher in the rapture.  

     My concerns weren't listened to, so I wrote.  I was going to get this information to the right person.  I didn't know who that was.  Back in 2009, I had felt led by God to step down from this ministry for a while, and work for my church.  I was entering a new phase in life, but I had to write about all that I had seen.  It was vital.  I still believe that.  God just had a different time, place, way and attitude for me to pursue this.

     It must be understood that I had no desire to hurt the ministry's effectiveness.  This organization was and still is an amazing children's ministry.  Many children receive Christ as Savior every year.  My goal was to make them aware of what was going on.  Things that could be improved.  That was my only objective.    

     I happened to be in a bookstore shortly after completing my writing.  A book stood out to me.  It was Standing Firm, by former Vice-President, Dan Quayle.  He had served under President George H.W. Bush from 1989-1993.  I always had a special place in my heart for those years, since I had largely grown up during that time.  I had been a young adolescent in 1992 when the Bush-Quayle ticket lost the election.  I had been too young to vote, but I had been for Bush-Quayle.  So, seeing this book by former Vice-President Quayle in 2009 intrigued me.  I picked it up and began to read.  I ended up buying it.  

     I could write a whole review on Standing Firm.  It is a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it.  One line at the very end stood out to me.  When talking about his disappointment at losing the 1992 election, Quayle says, "How you leave is as important is how you enter, especially if you think you might come back."  That struck me like a bolt of lightening on the road to Damascus!  God used that little quote to really hit me hard.  

     I had entered the ministry a joyful young girl, happily embracing whatever God had for me.  That was how I needed to go out of it.  I shouldn't burn bridges.  Especially since I might come back.  So, in spite of my feelings, I exited as sweetly as I had entered.  I kept my bridge-burning writing to myself, praying about the right time and way to share it.

     Much has changed over the past nine years.  I continued to do ministry, even volunteering with this organization from time to time.  I have gotten healing from my painful experiences.  I am married to a wonderful Christian man.  I have gotten more experience in the professional world.  This ministry has changed as well.  They run their mission trip programs vastly differently than they used to, and their current way is much more discerning.  Certain things have come to light, without my writing.  And their ministry continues on, as I always hoped it would!

     I rejoined that ministry this summer.  I work for the Iowa chapter.  Currently, it is only for summer, but I may have future involvement with them as we prepare to move to New Mexico.  That is in the works, actually.  I am so glad I heeded Dan Quayle's advice.  In a funny way, I owe my job to him.  Probably the most underestimated Vice-President in US history, and I owe my job to him (I also have the same birthday as him, but that is beside the point).  

     I am so thankful God used our former Vice-President to help me avoid burning bridges.  He (God, not Dan Quayle!) knew what He had in store for me, and for this ministry.  Also, as a side note, I did eventually write my memoirs, in a completely different point of view.  No bridge-burning.  You can read it for 99 cents on Amazon Kindle.  It is called "Why I Still Believe".  

     I am beyond blessed.