About -

A Little Somethin’ About Melinda And Her Website

I started writing stories when I was six years old, and I’ve been truckin’ on ever since. The tales I wrote in the ’70s involved Mr. and Mrs. Pancake and their scheme to get off the breakfast plate before someone ate them. Some years passed, and when I was 10 years old I penned “Walking Beans”– my first poem. In fifth grade, I tried my hand at personal essays; my favorite piece was about my former cop dad “making meatloaf” out of bad guys.

My first copyright page as a kid. — Ha! Guess as a little kid someone told me about plagiarism and I was pretty worried about it!

Pancakes, beans, and meatloaf … wait, there seems to be a theme going on here. As soon as I entered junior high, writing about food became a thing of my “dark past.”

During high school, I filled multiple spiral notebooks with diary entries and poems, based on the hurts and joys only a teen seems to experience with such intensity. When I started college, my focus switched from me to “them” as I chronicled the lives of other people while I obtained my degree in journalism. After I graduated, I continued writing nonfiction while in my position as a newspaper reporter.

My mom printed and laminated my first poem. Here it is pictured next to several of my poem books.

Fortunately, I’m at a point in my life where I can concentrate on fiction once again, and launch a serious pursuit of fulfilling my life-long dream of becoming a multi-published novelist.

I turned 45 in March 2017, so of course characters and situations I write about now are much more exciting and complex than those I created as a first-grader! Now, Melinda Freeland is writing “Christian Contemporary Fiction You Can Relate To.”

Yes, you guessed it! I just worked my tagline into this “About” page. Please memorize it and associate it forever more with AUTHOR Melinda Freeland.

Writing Christian novels makes use of the Bible quite frequently! This is one of my favs to use, the Life Application Study Bible (NLT).

My story peeps are your closest friends, your neighbors, your fellow church attendees, your family members or your boyfriends over the years—people you can relate to. Individuals in my novels will undergo emotions that you’ve endured, or someone you know has experienced, and they’ll face challenges and conflicts based on real-life situations that a reader might have already dealt with or could realistically encounter at one point in her life.

Let me emphasize my books will contain 100% human characters who live in either the present-day, or in settings no further back in history than my lifetime. So … I will not write about aliens, or zombies, or vampires, or talking animals. I won’t write about Egyptian pyramids or Medieval knights or petticoats or anything even remotely associated with intergalactic travel.

This doesn’t mean I don’t read or like some of those types of stories. In fact, some of my favorite “other genre” novels are John Jakes’ The North and South, and Jean Auel’s The Clan of the Cave Bear.

Some of my favorite books displayed on one of my many bookshelves.

So, I do read various genres, but the books I will write are CONTEMPORARY Christian romance novels and women’s fiction.

I may write about the life of “today’s woman,” but she won’t be a female who lives in some exotic land where few, if any, of us have ever visited, or who carries some elite job title that we readers have to guess what kind of duties she might perform in that career field. Most of us can’t relate to those women—and remember I’m all about writing “Christian Contemporary Fiction You Can Relate To.” Okay, I promise I won’t mention my tagline again on this page.

This website will take you with me on my voyage from “writer” to “multi-published novelist.” Hopefully you’ll stay aboard long after I reach my first destination, and you’ll continue the dynamic ride with me throughout my writing career.

From my blog, you’ll learn about my struggles during the process of completing a novel and about the joy and challenges I experience on my faith journey. You’ll be “let in” on the inner details of a writer’s life. You’ll find out all the things that provide food to get this writer’s creative juices flowing and keep her story ideas growing—such as my entertaining family, my deepening friendship with Jesus, the music I love, my interesting friends, and the current events and other happenings that rock my world.

One of the subjects I’ll talk about will be my interesting friends and family, and how I add them or things they’ve done into my novels. My family likes to take yearly, week-long vacations. Pictured above is a cruise trip we took to the Cayman Islands — and yes, that’s a sting ray we’re petting.

Another fun family trip to the Grand Canyon. (My son today is taller than his dad — 6’2″!)

Music really contributes to my writing. I listen to all genres, but country is one of my favorites. Hmh, I wonder who is one of my favorite male country singers?

If you’re a fellow writer, you can follow my story and discover that you’re not alone in the questions you may have or the frustrating issues you must tackle.

If you’re not a writer, don’t fear! I won’t just cover things that only other writers can relate to, but melindafreeland.com is also for people who enjoy connecting with other Christians.

Of course, this website is most definitely for readers—and more readers! One example of how it’s for readers is about once a month, I’ll write and share a review about “a really good book.” I won’t waste a reader’s time or hurt any author’s feelings by posting negative critiques. This is only one example of whether you write, or just love to read, you’re bound to find something intriguing here!

Thanks for taking the time to read a little (did I say little?) somethin’ about me and my website.

You can keep up to date on the most recent entries to my blog by signing up to get notifications sent to your email. Go to the top right of any page on this website, and enter your email address and name in the “Follow Blog via Email” box.

To find out more about my first novel, Love, Texas – Population 2, check out my BOOKS tab.

Want to know even more about me or are you looking for Press Kit usable photos or info? Click on the PRESS / MEDIA tab.

To ask me a question or send me a comment, fill out the form on the CONTACT tab. I promise to reply quickly!

We can also connect via multiple social media websites. You can go to the top right corner of my website, then click on one of the social media icons.

Many blessings and much laughter!