Introducing On-the-Edge Suspense

Jennifer HaynieWelcome to my first blog post of my newly renovated website.  I’m glad you’re here to check it out.  Let me introduce myself.  I’m Jennifer Haynie, worker at the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources by day, suspense novel writer by night.  In addition to these two jobs, I also am married to a wonderful husband and have two dogs as well as an active lifestyle. As shown in the tagline of my web page’s header, I’ll be writing about both on-the-edge suspense, the kind of writing I do, and on-the-edge living, the kind of life I live.  Roughly half of the blog posts I write will be dedicated to my writing.  The other half will be related to living a very finely balanced life.  I’ll post blogs twice a week, most likely going out the mornings of Tuesday and Friday. On-the-edge suspense.  It’s what I write, and my journey contains many twists and turns.  I didn’t become a writer in the traditional manner, which would be to love literature of all kinds, graduate from college with a major such as English or something similar, and then enter a profession like journalism or the law where writing makes up the majority of the work. I took a different path.  I enjoyed literature, but math and science appealed to me more.  When I went to college, I majored in physics and also received a certificate in applied mathematics.  In my one foray into a creative writing class, I was the only hard science major.  The way the professor ran the class (mostly poetry, a little fiction) would have destroyed many a writer’s desire to continue, but I was too stubborn to quit.  That’s when I discovered the persistence I needed to be a writer. My junior year in college, I took an English class about women in literature.  Most of the reading we did focused on women writers in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.  To my horror, I realized how many of the female protagonists either went crazy, killed themselves, or wound up diminished in some other form.  I know that the way a lot of these protagonists ended up reflected on women in that particular era.  I now had my purpose.  I wanted to write about women who were strong women, who, while facing difficulties, overcame.  I wanted to portray that there is hope.  More than that, the becoming a child of God gives not just hope but eternal hope through a Savior who knows them personally and loves them. My faith in Christ does inform my writing.  Still, I like to write on the edge, hence the first part of my tagline: On-the-Edge Suspense.  I like to say that my writing reflects a lot that happens in real life.  We all have strengths.  We all have weaknesses.  We mess up.  And for those of us who follow Jesus, we know why each and every day we cling to the promises of Jesus.  The gospel message runs subtly throughout my work, so if you’re not careful, you might miss it. Now, for the fun part.  Lots of things have happened this past summer related to my writing, many of which I’ll share.  I’ll also have a little fun with this portion of my blog.  As I roll out new books, you’ll hear not only from me but also from characters in the book.  You’ll hear their voices, and you’ll learn about their lives in unexpected ways.  For my next post about writing, you’ll learn about my upcoming book, Hunter Hunted. At the end of each post, I’ll also list a question.  I look forward to hearing from you by your replies.  And if you want to share this post, click on the share buttons below. Question:  Regarding writing, what would you want to know more about (e.g., plot, characters, my own writing)?

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