Author Spotlight: Tessa Stockton - From the Ground Up

It is my distinct pleasure to welcome Political Intrigue Author Tessa Stockton to the At Split Ends Blog today. I hope if you are floundering or struggling to be content in your current place as I feel sometimes that you'll sit down a moment and read Tessa's post for today. I pray it will refresh and inspire you to keep working toward your dreams.......... Here's Tessa:

If someone had told me it would take years of practice and loads of networking to become a professional dancer, would I still have pursued that dream…? I sometimes ponder the question.

Likewise, if someone had told me that it would take years of practice and loads of networking to become a professional writer, would I still have pursued that…? I sometimes ponder…

When I started out training in the discipline of dance, working my way up the levels, I often wanted to see instant success. However, it took years to get to the place of actual employment. I had to grow seasoned, coursing through the ranks. I had to get good enough, building from the ground up. During periods of hard labor it’s easy to burn out, but I stayed after it—even through the transition of working in theater and the secular environment to accepting the call to utilize dance in missionary service, in ministry. After over twenty years dancing, that chapter closed, and I experienced the stirring to begin another chapter as a writer.

I had always written on and off throughout my life, even filling the role of writer and editor for the quarterly newsletter in which the ministry I served with produced. But as a lover of fiction, I wanted to write novels—didn’t have the time, though, until my dance world started to wind down.

Embarking on the novelist’s journey, I wished to see instant success. Yeah, I know, that didn’t work the first time. Yet, because it didn’t work the first time I somehow expected it to the second time around. Wow, was I in for a sharp disappointment! It took ten years of rejections to get to that publishing contract. Now, I realize it takes a lot of building blocks to market and sell a book effectively. It’s truly a journey. Few in life are instant successes. Like dance, I had to learn how to do it from the ground up. The good thing about that proves the solid base from which we launch. If the ground we start on is solid, we have a foundation for everything else—we are surefooted.

If you want to do something bad enough, start somewhere. “Somewhere” will lead you “elsewhere.” It might take a while, but you’ll eventually reach a golden plateau, enabling you the opportunity to look back and see how far you’ve climbed and how much you’ve learned.

Really, the only pondering I do on the subject consists of how I would have enjoyed the journey a little more instead of focusing so hard on getting to Point B from Point A. I may have missed some of the joy during the process—but I’m learning. It’s a Romans 8:28 kind of thing: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

While I’ve seen abundant blessings worldwide in my life as a dancer, I’m now celebrating the pinnacle of a writer’s life, the release of my debut novel, The Unforgivable. Through the variances of life and experience—God is good, all the time. From the ground up, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”

A former contemporary dancer, Tessa Stockton, who was also active in politics and human rights groups, now writes Christian political intrigue novels.

The Unforgivable is her first book in the Wounds of South America series. Set against the backdrop of Argentina’s Dirty War, a Christian woman falls in love with a man accused of war crimes in The Unforgivable. www.Tessa Stockton.com