So, here I am, looking for cool people to follow on Twitter, and I come across a woman, J.D. Watts, who is writing angel books. And I pause. Oh yes, I pause. And I realize, I should ask her to guest blog. But she doesn’t know me. I could be Lucifer, trying to tempt her (who says I’m not, bwa-ha-ha), but I want to live a life of courage and risk, so I emailed and asked her to guest blog. She agreed. And the rest is this blog right here, right now.

J.D. has always been a writer, always dreaming and thinking of ideas for stories or plotlines, she just never sat down and put pen to paper until the fall of 2008. Eventually she gathered her courage to enter the first part of her original novel into the 2010 Original Fiction Contest at The Writer’s Coffee Shop. That story won the young adult category and led to her contract for the first novel in her Children of Creation series: Convergence.

I was raised in church and reading the Bible, so I was always curious about angels. To be honest though, what really piqued my interest was an event that happened when I was young. It’s practically family legend now. I’ve heard the story so many times that I feel like I remember it, but I don’t have a first-hand memory of the event since I was only two. The little details of the story, however, are at the heart and soul of the concepts of angels, fallen angels, and guardian angels that I used in my Children of Creation book series.

Even to this day, 31 years later, my mom still shivers a little when she tells the story.

When I was little, my dad was an over-the-road truck driver and was gone more than he was home. Mom and I got used to being on our own and handling most situations. One day, we were getting ready to run errands. Mom was rushing me to put on my shoes and head out when I stopped. I kept staring at this one corner of our living room. There was nothing of interest there to stare at, and yet I seemed spellbound.

My mom called for me to stop messing around and get in the car, but I wouldn’t budge. Finally, she walked over to me and asked me what I was staring at and I pointed and said, “The man in the corner.”

My Mom looked in the corner and saw nothing. “What are you talking about? There’s nothing there, baby.”

As serious as could be, I looked up at her and said. “Yes there is, Mommy. Can’t you see him? He’s all white.”

Mom said chills went down her spine and she just couldn’t really deal with what I was saying. She just sort of made a joke of it. She told me to stop being so silly and pulled me by the hand out the door, but it really disturbed her. She kept thinking about everything that happened and how serious I was, and yet I wasn’t frightened at all. We really don’t know for sure, especially since I don’t remember it happening at all, but we’ve often wondered if I wasn’t seeing an angel in our midst. Every night in our prayers, Mom always asked God to send his angels to watch over us. Maybe, just maybe, he’d answered her…

With a story like this in my history, not to mention my upbringing, I don’t think it’s all that surprising that once I sat down to write a story of my own design it ended up being about a teenager who could see angels when others couldn’t. I really enjoyed making my lead character, Dani, an embodiment of that little girl who saw someone in our house that nobody else could see…only, unlike two-year-old me, she was charged with a mission.

J.D’s website
On twitter
On Goodreads
Buy Convergence on Amazon