The Diamond Mine of Christian Fiction: Interview with Christian Women's Fiction author Joy Melville

Join me in welcoming friend and fellow Christian women's fiction author, Joy Melville, to the Diamond Mine! Joy is the talented, award-winning author of the 'Intended for Her" series, the first book of which I was lucky enough to win (and enjoy). If you haven't tried out her books yet, definitely give them a try. Without further ado, here's Joy!

Joy Avery Melville’s heart’s desire is to be the author God has called her to be by sharing Him with readers in such a way they long to have a deeply committed personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord.

Fully intending to write Historical Romance—had in fact— she didn’t want to deviate from that. God had different plans for that ‘call’ He’d made on her life back in 1967. A mere eighth grader at the time, she had no clue about the topics she’d be drawn to write about.

Surrendering to the genre God placed on her heart has given Joy new insight into the hearts and lives of those who too often hurt in silence.

The settings of Joy’s books are near where she lives in Schoolcraft, Michigan with her husband of 47 years and their almost 4-year-old Yorkie, Is-A-Bella Bindi, (Is-a-beautiful little girl) who thinks she’s a much larger breed with tomboy tendencies.

First let’s learn a little about you. Can you share a few things about yourself that have nothing to do with writing?

I am 72 plus years old, I am first, a born again Christian, having been saved at the age of 7 or 8 in a Vacation Bible School at the small country church we attended. Since then, I have experienced a LOT of life. At the age of 8 and 9, I contracted what is now known as Guillain Barre Syndrome. It’s similar to polio, which is what the emergency room staff first thought I had. At the age of 13, they found a double goiter had grown across the artery to my brain having connected to my thyroid gland. Let’s just say, that experience leading up to it after the residual effects of the ascending/descending paralysis of GBS, were no laughing matter, although my classmates seemed to find laughing at me a favorite pastime. Those challenges as pre adolescent was far from pleasant. I became an introvert and did a lot of reading! I found fictional stories were way better than the story I was living at the time.

One of my elder sisters taught me how to knit, and that grew to a love of textures, colors, and sweaters to give as gifts. I’ve lost count of the amount of baby blankets and afghans I’ve knitted over the years. Since May of 2024, I’ve knitted six oversized baby blankets (babies grow so fast and cannot have blankets in their cribs for at least their first year) and one afghan for one of the mothers, as well as a large afghan for a granddaughter. I have another underway for a different granddaughter at this time.

My husband and I met in September of 1973, married November 30, 1973 (not a typo). Our first move into home ownership was a house we built when we established a mini farm, and I took a whirlwind home design and decorating course to help with the room arrangement, and finally, the decorating. Since, we’ve built and renovated houses, and finally settled in a rural part of Schoolcraft, Michigan nearly twenty-two years ago. Definitely the longest we’ve lived in a single one of our homes.

I’m in the process of making our little house more of a cabin… we both love the northern woods of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Since we cannot afford a home there and here both, we’re using the pines and spruce woods at the north end of our house as a backdrop to ‘my cabin in the northwoods’. If we could afford it, the style of our home would get log siding, but as close as we are to retirement, I don’t see that happening. The inside is coming right along, though.

Wow, Joy! What an amazing life story you have. What drew you to write?

In 8th grade my dad took a new job, and we moved from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Constantine, Michigan – a very small village in Southwest Lower part of the state. It was just shy of school letting out for the year, and my English teacher had no idea how to give me the final exam, so she told me to write a short story for her. I went home, got out notebook paper, and wrote forty pages in long hand on both sides of the paper, equaling a eighty-page short story. It had a beginning, a non-sagging middle, (something I didn’t know was so important at the time), and an end that all seemed to come together as I wrote. She had me meet her after school the last day of classes, and handed me my paper which had a BIG A+ on it. She advised me to seek every creative writing class and English classes in my last years of high school and college, if I went on to further my education. That same weekend, a missionary spoke at our church, and he made it a point to talk to the youth at one of our meetings. He told us we were not too young to seek God’s will in what we should be preparing ourselves for in service to the Lord. It was like a clanging bell went off in my brain. I’d really enjoyed writing that story for Mrs. Brown, and it had whetted an appetite to do more of those.

The summer between my Freshman and Sophomore year, one of the upcoming seniors approached me, another gal in my class, and one who was going to be a Junior and asked us to join her in writing a musical to present to the choir and band directors in September. The four of us collaborated through the summer, writing for two or three weeks between meetings. We each wrote lyrics to the songs as well as musical score, although I had to have help from my pastor’s wife when it came to doing the arrangement with the melody I’d written. I learned two things; I am not interested in writing music, lyrics or scores, but I was even more enamored with story-writing. Then, in the first week of school, we talked to the two music directors. When we showed them the script and musical score, they were impressed enough to take it to the powers-that-be for approval. We got it, and we put “In the Shadows of War’ on for the Spring Musical my Sophomore year. The senior and myself acted in the Civil War Era play. She was the heroine, and I was the mother of a soldier. Because of the advice of that English teacher, Mrs. Brown, I took Basic Composition, Advanced Composition, Short Story Writing, Journalism, Creative Writing in my Freshman, Sophmore, and Junior year. My family moved back to Grand Rapids my Senior year, and I had enough credits to go to school half-days. I enrolled in a college Creative Writing class, and later, a college course in Business Communication Through Writing.

It seems you've had the writing bug for quite some time. How do you come up with your story ideas?

I wrote an Historical Romance, but it never sold. After joining ACFW in 2009, I attended a conference and had two agents and an editor suggest I bring that same story into a Contemporary Romance. It didn’t work, because the tension and conflict was lost with technology changes in the eras. Cell phones would have ruined one of the heavy instances. The summer of 2011, God used a newscast that grabbed my heart and my prayers for a family I didn’t even know. It was on my way home from the conference God again brought the August newscast to my mind. I couldn’t shake it. I did not want to write Women’s Fiction. It usually starts dark and often ends too dark. It took about three months of God’s nudging to change my mind, but I begged Him to allow me a Romance thread with the Women’s Fiction Genre and to always have a Happy Ever After, or at the very least, a Hopeful Ever After.

The first story of every series has come from a newscast. Book One of the Intended For Her Series, Meant For Her, came out of the August 2011 news story, but with a happier ending.

Book One of the Operation Return To Peace Series, Sown In Peace, came from a news story that talked about a soldier returning to the US with severe PTSD. It touched my heart, and another book was born.

Book One of an upcoming series (no title yet) came from a newscast. That is the first of my books that has a made-up name of a village, and I got it from a street name.

How interesting! What’s your writing process?

You know, I haven’t really established a process. Crazy, huh? Every time, it seems I get into a routine of research and writing, or I set hours to work, LIFE HAPPENS. It’s usually in an unpleasant sort of way.

Journey To Peace’s rough draft was targeted to be finished August 1, 2025, but my husband and I decided we had to do some major clearing out of the house, and it got pushed back to October 1. The basement wasn’t fully cleaned out, and our Yorkie disappeared on October 1. We haven’t found her or had her returned to us, and it has been like losing a family member. A seven-year-old family member.

I’ve gained new perspective on what people go through when there is no closure. I could not focus or concentrate on creative writing. I have had squirrel-brain on steroids in rush-hour traffic since that day. Add in the holidays? It’s been unreal.

When I wrote Meant For Her, I did all the research first and wrote the actual 105,000 word book in under three weeks. The following year, I wrote my current story, Kept For Her at 120,000 words also in under three weeks. Since, that one had to be rewritten due to all the changes I made in editing Meant For Her, it turned into a lot longer book to fit the series. I decided then that I will not write a second or third book until the previous one is fully edited.

Sown In Peace was researched while writing, as I have been doing with Journey To Peace. Some of those things I’m getting for Journey are going to also be used in Book Three, In Perfect Peace.

My desire in 2026 is to write from 9am -3 or 4pm four days a week, since I also do editing for other authors and will probably still have regular appointments to deal with.

I can certainly understand about "life" happening! It's great you're so adaptable. Tell us about your most recent book.

Book Two of the Intended for Her Series takes place in two of our local areas. Schoolcraft and Portage, Michigan. I could have called this series a Trilogy, but my editor advised against it, since there may be a book four coming along. In this series, so far, there are three doctors in a family medical practice. Each has their story, but they are great friends outside of the practice. Kept For Her follows Meant For Her within two or three months of that first book’s ending.

BCB:

Secrets ~ Had they truly been KEPT FOR HER?

Dr. Cameron (Cam) Reynolds fears the secrets he keeps tucked inside will silence his sister’s laughter. His life revolves around his extended family, the OB/GYN medical practice, and the horse breeding enterprise he is building to honor his parents. Cam feels no woman will want him, and he has no need for one in his very busy life.

Dr. Georgianna (George) Zeller fears the secret she keeps tucked inside will taint how others view her. Living in a small Michigan village, she works with her veterinarian uncle to pacify her aspiration to practice equine medicine on a Kentucky horse farm.

Holding onto their secrets, Cam’s plans take a detour while George’s go awry again. Is it possible they might find a God-purposed way of releasing those secrets, allowing Him to lead them to joy in their journeys?

Are there certain themes explored in the story?

When I wrote Meant For Her, I had no idea what God was leading me into as far as themes. So far, PTSD in one of its forms and causes has been a theme in each of my books, teaching me far more than I’d ever intended. Some of it is stranger than fiction and would never pass the readers’ BELIEVEABILITY test.

Do you have any favorite characters in your books?

My favorite character started out being the brother of the heroine in Meant For Her, until I wrote his best friend, Mack. That hero turned my heart inside out and warmed me to my toes. I got to write the brother, Cam, in Kept For Her, giving him his own story, and he became a second favorite hero. I love strong heroes of faith, convictions, and compassion but with their own quirks and personalities. I do not like heroes to all sound alike except for hair color and/or eye color. They need to be real to the reader. So far, readers are saying my characters are very real people to them. PTL.

What are you working on now?

Book Two of the Operation Return To Peace Series. Journey To Peace covers a couple of tense issues, one of which a woman from church asked me to write about after she read Meant For Her, and came back after she read Sown In Peace and asked again.

The heroine, who is the Physical Therapist and Psychologist at the therapy dog farm faces a life-altering challenge, and the other is something a wounded soldier, the hero, goes through. Each were introduced in Sown In Peace as secondary characters.

Sounds like it'll be a great read when you're finished! When you’re not writing, what do you enjoy doing?

Knitting while listening to Audible books, and redecorating the house, which has sadly needed it for several years.

Baking yeast breads or rolls. While kneading, I work out scenes or rework scenes in my mind.

My husband, Jerry, turned a guest room into a great office for me, and I think that’s given me the bug to get the rest of the house refreshed! Might be it also scratches a procrastination itch in me when I hit a tough spot in my current story, too.

Thanks for joining us, Joy!

Joy shared about "Kept for Her" Check out the book below.