How I Got the Idea for TBAD.

If you’ve read my post on why I no longer write spice, you know I used to include smut in my earlier unpublished works. I was a week away from self-publishing a spicy dark romance when God gave me a serious case of cold feet. I was in a spiritual revelation of sorts, deep in a Bible study and trying to incorporate more godly materials into my daily life, and it was during an Ally Yost podcast on fasting that I decided that skipping a few meals might be exactly what I needed to get reassurance.

How wrong I was.

It’s safe to say my first fasting experience was far from magical. Though given Miss Yost’s warning about spiritual warfare in fasting, I should’ve been more prepared.

Something you must know before this story begins is that I am terrified of spiders. Absolutely petrified. I’m talking about waking up covered in bruises from beating phantom spiders in my sleep after one played peek-a-boo a little too closely. And at the time of this fasting, I lived in Florida, and my husband worked for a pest-control company, so he sprayed our house quite often. We rarely had issues, save for a few harmless bug. But not an hour into fasting, I went to the refrigerator to refill my water, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a Carolina wolf spider. If you are not familiar, I will spare you the visual by telling you they are the size of my palm. Literally.

My baby was sleeping on the couch, so I ran to my brother’s room and woke him from a dead sleep. 

Just thinking about it now makes me want to throw up.

Anyway, after that ordeal, I settled in on the couch and started watching a Bible archaeology show. I couldn’t take my mind off the idea that it wasn’t a coincidence—the enemy has used my greatest fears against me since childhood—but I am far too competitive to let him get to me, so I pushed down my fears and put on my bravest face. But then a feeling I can’t explain made me get off the couch. I turned to see yet ANOTHER Carolina wolf spider crouched on the wall just above my baby’s head. I am not exaggerating when I say this thing had stoplights for eyes. They glowed. Red.

Like a fricken demon.

Cue the nausea.

I fought a scream, crouched as low as I could in case it decided to run, and yanked my son off the couch by his foot. (Not my proudest mom moment, I know, but to his credit, he didn’t even cry.) With him upright in my arms, I ran to my brother’s room and woke him again.

He complained, of course. “Why can’t you kill it? I doubt it’s even that big.”

But after he dragged himself from his bedroom and looked at the spider, my brother, who is the family’s spider-assassin, turned as white as me.

“What the heck? Why is it so huge?” His words exactly.

He retrieved a metal bowl from the room and, with his gym-rat strength, smacked the spider with. This thing dented our bowl, and it was still alive. No broken legs—not even phased. Thankfully, it barely moved before he hit it again. This time, it died.

I almost gave up on fasting, if I’m honest. The devil could’ve put anything against me—demons, teething, illness—and none of it would’ve broken me as quickly as giant spiders. Still, I was determined, and I saw it as a sign that I was closing in on something important.

Not eager to run into any more eight-legged demons, I set myself up on the chair in the middle of the room and started listening to a podcast on proof of dragons in the Bible. The possibility intrigued me. After four episodes, the storyline of To Be a Divine hit me like a bus. It was these questions that prompted the idea behind it: What if God didn’t just hide Eden, but moved it to an entirely new realm? And what if it wasn’t guarded by angels, but divine dragons known as the drakos who held the flaming sword with each breath?

The idea came out of nowhere, and I got so excited that I immediately shut off the podcast and began planning it out.

And guess what?

Spice, something that guided my writing from the beginning, didn’t have a home in this story. I’d never felt so strongly—so compelled by a concept that I couldn’t do anything else until I got it out of my head. I couldn’t even breathe through the excitement. And for over two years, as I read through the Bible, I planned every aspect of the TBAD series, the second interconnected series, and two standalones. All inspired by biblical lore, including angels, demons, dragons, pillars of smoke and clouds, and the intended magic of love. It’s a fantasy that draws you into God’s arms instead of further away. And I have never been more proud of my work.

If you’re interested to know more, check out the blurb for To Be a Divine. 

Eighteen years ago, Gabriella killed her father. 

After spending years believing she was crazy, the last thing haunted introvert Gabriella Sinclair expects is to discover that the realm from her visions is real. Especially after spending her life on the run with divine powers she can’t control. 

But just as Gabriella’s life begins to feel semi-normal after finding work at a nightclub in the lower slums of New NYC, a chance encounter with a fear-possessed woman and a pointy-eared stranger puts her in the crosshairs of an assassin and lands Gabriella in a strangely familiar world. 

Nadaari, a realm of fae once protected by the great drakos, now faces extinction. Its guardians are being hunted by Chaos, a dark fae who wishes to seize their power in order to bring ruin to the four high realms. Unable to return home, Gabriella quickly learns her arrival leads to the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy, and she is forced to navigate a series of challenges: a dangerous game of friendship with an impulsive demon; the agents of Chaos who will stop at nothing to end the prophecy; the malevolent being who terrorizes her visions and spreads paralyzing fear throughout the land; and the choice she must make between two forbidden men of power.

With the fate of the four high realms now lying in her hands, Gabriella must not fail. For if Nadaari falls, the rest of the realms will surely follow.