Many of you know her as the site coordinator for Harcum College @ Deliverance Church. The leader of the largest partnership site, Ms. Celeste Atkins manages an average of 100 active students each semester and shepherded upwards of 250 community members through to earning their associate degree. In addition, she is the Dean of Administration of the Deliverance Bible Institute. As if that’s not enough to keep her busy, Celeste has achieved her PhD in Management and Leadership. In her spare time during the pandemic, Celeste has also written eight books! With an eye toward restoring romance in popular fiction, here Celeste tells us more about the inspiration behind her writing.
What was your motive for writing these series of books? I have always been an avid reader and watcher of romance books and movies. When I became a Christian, I stopped reading romance novels because they were too descriptive of things I feel couples should share in private; that is why I do not title my books as romance, but rather A Love Story or A Story. I believe love is clean, pure, and real. In a world where so much hatred, meanness, and sexual exploitation is taking place I wanted to remind people that true love, pure love, and the beauty of love still exist.
How do you make time to write? The truth? I would go to bed and dream my stories. I jumped up between 2:00 AM and 4:00 AM daily and typed what I would dream. When I got home from work, I sat at my laptop and the stories would just flow. The stories were coming so fast, sometimes I would not go to bed until 2:00 AM. Before I could finish one book, I would know the title of the next book and begin dreaming the next story. It wasn’t until I joined a book club on Facebook that I realized I had awakened the writer in me. One of the members who has been a writer by profession for fifteen years shared that his stories come to him in his dreams as well. I call the process supernatural because I began writing in March 2020 and by August 2020, I have completed eight books. Readers of the first two tell me they cannot put them down. Therefore, I have to attribute my work to the writer that was laying dormant in me because I was too busy with a lot of other things. COVID-19 caused me to slow down and my books are the result.
What words of encouragement would you give to aspiring writers? I am not going to say ‘just write.’ However, when you get the inspiration, the nudge, or the inkling to write in whatever genre you like, get to it and write.
Books by Celeste Atkins: