I’m truly honored to have a very special friend with me today, Melinda Priebe is a talented

Tell us a little about yourself and how you were raised.

I am an author and artist who lives in South Bend Indiana with a very supportive husband. I am also a mother and grandma.

  My writing ability as well as my artistic ability was taken away from me after a car accident. It was not just the car accident. I have had multiple head traumas. I was told that I probably would never regain those abilities. Father God promised that He would restore those abilities. I took steps of faith. I will share first about my steps of faith towards my reading and creative writing ability. One day I saw This thick book called The Oath by Frank Peretti. I knew the book had nothing to do with what I was going through, but the word oath symbolized to me the promise father God made to me about restoring my reading ability as well as my art and writing ability. As I step of faith, I bought that book and began reading it. God restored me and am now reading novels. I am not a speed reader. Actually, I am a lot slower, but I do read and can create books again. It also takes longer for me to get the words out on paper that I see in my head, but at least I finally get to see them in print. I have had other great losses in my life including the loss of my 13-year-old daughter in a house fire.  I briefly wrote about both losses and others in the short story/study called. My Inner Studio.

I was raised with Christian roots and a deep love for America. I also was taught to keep the heart of a child, the wisdom and knowledge of an adult, keep good work ethics, and always take time to smell the flowers and play in the puddles. My dad still splashed a foot in a puddle when he was 93 years old.

Who’s your favorite author?     

My most favorite are the ones that wrote the Bible, but the modern-day favorite author is Agatha Chisti. I started reading her books when I was in second grade. It was really hard to convince the library to approve a child to gain access to an adult library card, but I told them I did not like to read children’s books after being introduced to books like Agatha Christi.  I read every one of her books. To this day I prefer reading thrillers and good mysteries. Only I lean towards the Christian themed ones.

  At what age did you realize you loved books and when did you start writing?

I can never remember me not loving books. I started writing as soon as I learned how to write. Really, I was writing stories before that, but the words were scribbles and the ones that were listening to me could not understand most of the words because some were just baby talk.

I loved to write sentences for our spelling words. Only I wrote a story and used a page and used a spelling word listed and circled it showing that it was on the page. I wrote small so I had a real 20 or 30-page story in 1st grade.

 Is there a special place you like to write?

My favorite place to write is inside my Art/writing studio. I sit at my desktop and listen to my fish tank and sometimes some music. Then just let my fingers start moving along the keyboard.

What project are you working on now?

I have multiple projects I am working on right now. Project number one is to find out the best way to market my newest published books which are My Inner studio and Johnny’s safe place. I also illustrated Johnny’s Safe Place.  Project number two is finishing up another children’s story that I also illustrated and then starting on my third children’s story which my Aunt Joann did the illustrations for.

What was your inspiration for starting this book or series?

I believe Father God’s main reason for me to write My Inner Studio and expose some of my experiences to help others gain hope and healing. Suicide and other emotional disorders are at a high rate right now. I pray that My Inner Studio can help someone take the right steps towards finding help.

Stopping a child from getting hit as he ran into a parking lot, thinking his parents left him, after she got separated from them at the retail store I work at, is one of the main things that inspired me to write Johnny’s Safe Place. The second one inspiration is looking at all the photos of missing children.

What’s one thing you wish readers would take away from this book?

I pray that My Inner studio will give people hope, comfort, encouragement and courage, and the ability to forgive others even those who they should not have back into their lives. I also pray for those who have not received Jesus as Lord to do so. Those who do know Jesus to grow their relationship strong with father god.

It is my goal to have Johnny’s Safe Place to help keep children safe just in case they get separated from the adult they are within a public place. It is based on a true story. My motive for writing it is because I have seen scared children run into the parking lot thinking the adult they are with left them. After stopping a child from getting hit, I got to thinking about how I taught my son about his safe place could save a life

My Zoo book will be a fun way to learn about animals and also about zoos. I love teaching new things to children as well as to adults. So I hope that the children will learn facts about animals and see what the animals look like. I also hope it will encourage others to visit the Zoos and even become members.

What do you find to be the most challenging part of writing?

The traumatic brain injury still causes some vision trouble and sometimes I see double vision even with prism in my glasses. When I first started writing after regaining my ability after the head injury I’d forget my character’s names and what they looked like. I faced other challenges at that time which showed on paper. My published books still did okay back then, but I pulled them. After all. They needed to be error-free. So the biggest challenge now besides the vision problem is marketing

What advice would you give a new author?       

I would let them know to have fun writing, do research on what they are writing, read different books on that subject.

Reading books from different authors will help the new writer to develop or keep their own God-given writer’s voice without copying other authors. Save up for a good editor and or a book designer that can also edit. Learn how to get around in the technical world of things like websites, and Instagram, Learn how to market, get connected to Facebook writers groups,

Study up on things like body language and things like show and not tell. Sometimes you have to tell, but that is rare.

What project are you working on now?

I have multiple projects I am working on right now. Project number one is to find out the best way to market my newest published books which are My Inner studio and Johnny’s safe place. I also illustrated Johnny’s Safe Place.  Project number two is finishing up another children’s story that I also illustrated and then starting on my third children’s story which my Aunt Joann did the illustrations for.

About the Author
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Melinda Priebe

Melinda Priebe is an author, artist, and jewelry maker who lives in South Bend, Indiana, with her supportive husband. She works a full-time job and keeps busy with church, family, and friends. Melinda also painted and designed the book cover for My Inner Studio.

Melinda has overcome a lot of trauma in her life and hopes that her short story or should say memoir called My Inner Studio will continue encouraging others to move toward healing.

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