Mesu Andrews was living in Indiana, writing daily emails about Bible study and working as a speaker both locally and nationally in 2001 when she attended her first writing conference.
It did not go well.
“One of the people there told me to stick to speaking,” Andrews said. “She told me I’d never get published.”
Now, Andrews, 51, lives in Vancouver and is less than a week away from the release of “The Pharaoh’s Daughter,” her fifth novel.
“The Pharaoh’s Daughter” is a retelling of the story of Moses, told through the eyes of Anippe, the princess who discovers Moses in a basket near a river. The book comes out March 17. While Andrews has published one book a year since 2011, it took her some time to get back on track toward writing a novel.
The woman at the writing conference’s “advice” stung quite a bit, and Andrews didn’t think about writing a book for four years. Instead, she continued writing her daily devotionals. She also had to give up most of her speaking engagements due to illness.
In 2002, Andrews woke up one morning with discomfort in her chest, and she found it difficult to move her arms and legs. She stayed in bed for about six months while her symptoms and tests just didn’t add up. She was eventually diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, a form of dysautonomia.
Even through illness, Andrews continued to send out her daily Bible study emails, and the list of recipients grew from 10 to a few hundred. She also worked up the courage to attend another writers conference in 2005. That one went a bit better, as she got an agent. In 2008, she signed her first book deal, a two-book contract. The manuscript she submitted to get her book deal followed the story of King Solomon, and her publisher, Revell, had a trilogy of books scheduled for release on a similar topic.
“Even though we signed the contract in 2008, my book wasn’t going to be released until 2011,” Andrews said. “They gave me a year to write another book to come out before the one I originally submitted. I took the full year. I needed to learn how to write a book.”
Andrews has a process now, spending three to six months researching her topic, and another three to six months writing the book. All of Andrews’ novels are retellings of Bible stories, typically focusing on a side character.
“I think readers appreciate seeing a more human side of these smaller characters,” said Roy Andrews, Mesu’s husband and dean at the Multnomah Biblical Seminary in Portland.
Mesu Andrews said she starts with a Bible story she thinks will work for a full novel and layers in historical data from her research. She connects the two with fiction writing.
“I make it all fit together,” she said. “The creative fiction is the mortar that holds together Biblical truth and historical fact.”
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