Vonda Skelton - Christian Speaker, Author, and Funny Lady

Hello, friends. Well, it’s the 2nd Tuesday and that means it’s time to read about another writing success. Today’s guest is my friend, Rebecca Davis. I met her several years ago through her husband, Tim Davis, who is not only a successful writer, but a sought-after illustrator as well. Talk about a talented family!

I’m thrilled to share Rebecca’s writing journey, as well as a new fork in her writing path. Be sure to leave a comment for Rebecca and you’ll be in the running for your choice of one of her missionary books!

Welcome, Rebecca. First of all, please introduce yourself and tell us how you got started in writing.

I’m a wife and mother of four. I wrote my first book, With Daring Faith: A Biography of Amy Carmichael, about 28 years ago. Then I raised and homeschooled my four children. Now that the youngest is finished with homeschooling, I have more time for writing and speaking.

I started writing as soon as I could write—I’ve always loved writing stories. I began writing professionally when the Lord opened the door for me to work for a Christian publisher. That was about thirty years ago.

Tell us about the Hidden Heroes series of true missionary stories that you’re writing.

The series is published by Christian Focus Publications; the first one came out in 2010, and I’ve done an average of one a year since then. The sixth one, based in Iran, is scheduled to come out this fall. As far as I know, this is the only series of its kind in publication. Each book is set in a different location, and for each one I gather true stories from that location. I’m looking for amazing stories that aren’t well known—many of them have been hidden away for decades in old newsletters or magazines or out-of-print books. On my website, I tell the story of how I began writing the first Hidden Heroes book, With Two Hands: Stories of God at Work in Ethiopia.

I remember announcing the release of that book back in 2010, and now look at what God’s done! Where can we find out more about the rest of your books?

At the website, you can see a synopsis of each of my books and read a sample chapter of each one. You can also find reader reviews and teacher helps, and find out more about me and the dramatic storytelling presentations I do in schools and churches.

We also have a Facebook page called Hidden Heroes Missionary Stories where I post up-to-date information about what’s going on with my books, other mission projects I’m working on, and other pertinent information. When I finish a draft of a book, I ask for volunteers to be reader families for me—to read the book out loud to their children and make suggestions as to how to improve it. Reviewers win a free copy of the book they’re reviewing.

You said these are true stories. Are these books straight nonfiction?

No, they fit in the genre of creative nonfiction or narrative nonfiction, the genre that memoirs would fit in, basically factual, but with details put in to help it come alive. I love including conversations and sensory details to help the readers feel as if they’re there in the middle of the scene.

But actually, I want so much to maintain accuracy in my stories that I do my best to find the missionaries I write about and ask them to read their chapters and give me corrections. The book that came out last fall was Hidden Heroes #5, Lights in a Dark Place: True Stories of God at Work in Colombia, and I needed to find six different missionaries that I had written about in that area. I succeeded in finding five of them (the earliest was no longer living). One of them was David Howard, Elisabeth Elliot’s brother, and when he sent me all his corrections, he said that he appreciated my desire to show him what I was writing, because others had written about the work in Colombia and hadn’t always gotten it accurate.

So when people say, “But you included conversation!” I can tell them that the missionaries themselves read these stories and agreed that the conversation accurately represents what really happened.

I like that idea. Tell us more about other books you’ve written.

I already mentioned that I wrote the first children’s biography of Amy Carmichael, who was a missionary to India. That one was With Daring Faith, and it won the CS Lewis Award for Outstanding Christian Juvenile Literature. I also have a new series of biographies for the lower elementary grades, called Potter’s Wheel Books: Showing Children the Master Potter at Work. Fanny Crosby: Queen of Gospel Songs is the first book in that series, and Joy Ridderhof: Voice Catcher Around the World is the second. The third should be coming out this year.

You told me in our email conversation that God has recently led you into a different area of writing. Tell us more about that.

Yes, that’s the book Tear Down This Wall of Silence: Dealing with Sexual Abuse in Our Churches (an introduction for those who will hear), published by Ambassador International, and in fact it came out just a few days ago. It’s a very different area of writing, for sure! Here’s the story of how God brought that about:

God has allowed me to be the friend of several women who confided in me about sexual abuse in their past. Then last year, I went to a writing conference and came away longing to be a ghost writer, helping other people tell their stories. I figured it wasn’t that different from doing the kind of writing I had been doing with the missionary books.

Shortly after that, the Lord brought me in contact with Dale Ingraham, a pastor whose wife was an incest survivor, who had self-published a book about sexual abuse. I saw that his heart about the issue and mine were the same. So among other things, I helped him get the book organized, added voices of many experts in the field, added voices of abuse survivors, and changed the story of his and his wife’s journey into memoir form. I had thought it would be a ghost writing effort, but the publisher wanted my name to be on the cover as well, so it’s considered a collaborative work. Dale is the primary author, and I have “with” billing. You can see more about the book at This was a labor of love, and I truly loved doing it. We’re praying that it will help open the eyes and ears and hearts of ones who love Jesus to hear and see and embrace the 20-25% of people in our churches who have been sexually abused. We believe that something beautiful will happen when we do.

Within the next few days I’ll be attending the MK Safety Net Conference in Atlanta, where I’ll have the privilege of meeting several wonderful people who were abused in missionary boarding schools, during some of the same eras I’ve written about in my missionary books. It’s an odd juxtaposition of the stark nature of truth, but I know that God is at work in all of it.

Thank you for an insightful interview, Rebecca. And readers, don’t forget to leave a comment for Rebecca and you could win a free book. Be sure to return next week to see if you’re the winner!

Bio: Besides always loving to write, Rebecca has also always loved to teach, and knew from a young age that she wanted to be a teacher. This desire, however, conflicted with the desire to stay home with her children—that is, until she heard about homeschooling. Now, more than a quarter century after obtaining her master’s degree in education, Rebecca has the amazing homeschooling journey. She and her husband, Tim, are eager to see how the Lord will use their four grown children for His Kingdom.

Thanks for Tweeting!

Writing takes varied paths. Interview & Book GiveAway w/@RebeccaJoyDavis #amwriting via @vondaskelton (Click to Tweet!)

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I can’t believe it, but we had no kudos or MoGo7000 reports for this month, so that does it for another Christian Writer’s Den gathering. Be sure to return next week when I’ll have a list of writing opportunities collected just for you!

Happy writing!

Vonda

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