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About Author and Speaker
Joanne K. Hill
As a preschooler I'd scribble "words"
on a piece of paper so I could "read" them to others. My mother,
a poet, always expressed pleasure in my stories, little brother wasn’t
as interested.
I married right out of high school and became the
mother of four daughters and one son. Although I thought the opportunity
for college and a writing career was gone, I never gave up the desire.
Journals, letters to friends, families and newspaper
editorial pages kept the creative juices flowing. Soon I discovered magazines
and books on writing at the library. Occasionally I was able to attend
workshops, and finally a correspondence course. With a growing family
to care for, along with occasional “real” jobs to help supplement
our income, snatching bits and pieces of writing time wasn’t easy,
Yet, I managed to fill dozens of notebooks with ideas and rough drafts.
Once the children were all in school full time,
I decided to get serious about a writing career. The professor of an adult
education class suggested we offer to write for some charity for the experience
and to build a portfolio. News releases, grant proposals and procedures
manuals, plus a ten-year stint in crisis intervention services was that
venture’s outcome.
I think that’s when I began to realize how
amazingly God works in our lives. Working with people in crisis taught
me much about my own life. Before long, the truth that Jesus taught, “what
we sow, we also reap,” became a basis for what I began to call “crisis
prevention.” Now my next writing was poured into self-help, how-to
and inspirational articles. I also enjoy writing about creativity. Our
Creator has given each of us many talents and when those are put to use
in positive ways, everyone benefits.
For a number of years I wrote articles on marketing of handmade crafts.
Some of these articles appeared in Crafters’ Link Newsletter, and some
in "Crafting for Cash," a weekly newspaper column. (I shall soon be updating
the information and adding it to this web site. The first article is
Crafting for Cash.)
Then came a four-year period in my life when twelve
family members died. Along with the sicknesses and other crises that accompany
those times of plague, came an overwhelming sense of oneness with God.
Now, more than ever, I knew I had to write a book. That’s when I
happened across the Writer’s Conference at Bethel College, which
led to my Associates Degree. There, under the guidance of my favorite
teacher, Kim Peterson, I wrote the first draft of Rainbow Remedies
for Life’s Stormy Times. On September 11, 2001, the first copies
of the first printing arrived on my doorstep.
Looking back, it’s easy to see how God plants
the seeds and helps us to make them grow.
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