Jeannie launched her writing career in 1998 with a co-authored children’s book
from Multnomah Press that was a finalist for the Gold Medallion Award. Since its release, she has signed contracts with eight publishers, and her writing has appeared in several magazines and short story collections. You can find fourteen books by her – adult-level books on the subject of prayer, children’s picture books, and a youth novel – in bookstores around the world. Three more books are already completed and waiting at the publisher for a 2006 release and she is currently preparing to fulfill another six book contracts.
In 2003 Jeannie’s focus took an unexpected turn when two publishers asked her to illustrate for them. Her first written and illustrated children’s book Am I Praying?, Kregel, August 2003, was a finalist for the 2004 Gold Medallion Award. Kregel featured a miniature golf course based on the book’s characters at the 2004 Christian Booksellers Convention in Atlanta. Jeannie has illustrated eleven books and is currently working on her twelfth.
Early in 2004, a series of brief radio spots on prayer that Jeannie wrote and recorded began airing on an American Family Radio station in Dothan, Alabama.
Gifts she designs for Mt. Baker Trading Company can be found in Christian bookstores and on the Internet. Her Prayer Stones have been reordered several times and all royalties from them go to an orphanage in Mexico.
In February 2006 she wrote and illustrated No Ordinary Woman, a make-you-cry booklet intended to convince women of their incredible value. Because she self-published it to keep costs low, it is available only by contacting her directly.
A professional artist as well as a writer, illustrator, and teacher, Jeannie’s paintings have hung in several galleries in Oregon and even traveled to Texas for a special museum show. Jeannie travels around the states speaking to women’s groups and schools. She also teaches at writers’ conferences and works as a freelance editor -- most recently editing eight books for Kregel and a two fantasy novels for AMG Publishers. In her spare time, she works as a private investigator for Taylor Made Financial Investigations, a company owned by her husband Ray, a retired Federal Criminal Investigator.
Born and raised in the Midwest, Jeannie earned a degree in Elementary Education from Olivet Nazarene University in Illinois, then moved to Oregon to teach art and English in the small town of Yamhill. Jeannie’s education continued in Portland, Oregon with a Masters Degree from Lewis and Clark College as well as an extra year of art credits from Portland Community College and Portland State University. She lives with her husband of twenty-nine years, ten minutes from downtown Portland, Oregon on a five-acre cattle farm surrounded by subdivisions. She and Ray have three grown children.
