Thank you for visiting the online home of Jan Elder and welcome to my little corner of the Web! Perhaps you would like to know something about me. I’ll start close to the beginning but I promise not to be too long.
At the impressionable age of five, two exciting events happened. First, I walked down the aisle at church with my mother and gave my heart to Jesus (thanks, Mom!), and second, my family acquired a beautiful (and fertile) longhaired cat named Snowball. Shortly after her arrival, our one-blue-eye, one-green-eye feline birthed a litter of mewling, squirmy kittens. Surprise! I loved them with a passion. Since I wasn’t allowed to cart them off to school with me (and believe me I would have), I wrote a poem about their arrival instead. My mother still has it in her box of memories.
At age twelve, I discovered the joys of writing books and penned my first “novella,” Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jive (okay, it was only 12 pages long, but it was a start!). During high school, instead of studying or paying attention in class, I whiled away the hours writing letters to friends and family. (I’m sure my teachers thought I was studiously taking notes.) I was never without a pen and paper, always writing something.
Today, I write Christian romance. My goal is to write stories other women can relate to and I strive to write the kind of book that will strengthen the reader’s faith, while also providing an entertaining and engrossing love story. God has been so good to me over the years I hope to point others to his mercy and grace.
Besides writing romance, I consume copious cups of tea and watch Turner Classic Movies with my husband. They say that a good writer should read to find out what works and what doesn’t. At any given time, I’ll be in the middle of a Christian romance, a self-help book of some kind, a devotional, and perhaps a Sci-Fi, suspense or fantasy. If I have a good book, I can plunk down anywhere. With a novel I can fall into, I am never bored and I devour books insatiably. And since it seems I was practically born a cat-lover, all future books will, no doubt, feature a feline in some way or another.
Happily married since 2003 to loving and supportive husband, Steve, we live in central Maryland along with Jamie (a tuxedo cat), and Shu-Shu (a tortoiseshell cat). On the weekends, my husband and I comb the nearby countryside in search of the perfect ice cream flavor.
Thanks for stopping by and I look forward to hearing from you!