About Marline

An unapologetic Jesus freak since 1971

In her pre-authorial existence, Marline Williams was an advertising copywriter and editor. Ideal for learning to craft fiction, really. But her authorial career started long before that. In third grade, in fact.

Her first historical fiction work—Christopher Columbus’ Ship’s Log—recorded the captain’s regrets about his superstitious sailors who, to appease a marauding sea serpent, toss a crewman overboard. Her classmates’ enthusiastic reception of this Bible-Jules Verne mashup encouraged her to keep writing. She drove her teachers nuts for decades with equally unlikely epics, inappropriate comic sketches, and iambic pentameter essays.

At the height of the Jesus Movement, Marline joyfully gave her heart and soul to Christ at a Young Life rally. Her impulsive, youthful marriage to a handsome fellow Jesus person promised a lifetime of bliss. Three kids, a cozy church life, and a Tasha Tudor-ish backyard arrived right on cue. What could be better?

Alas!

Disaster struck. No, not the sea serpent kind, but something just as scaly and unexpected.

Divorce.  

Taking a page from every Disney movie she ever loved, Marline returned to school in her forties to pursue a teaching career. Implausibly, she garnered two English Lit degrees. A bonus poetry award and a well-received Master’s thesis (a collision of Paradise Lost and Alice in Wonderland, in case you’re wondering) rounded out a solid-state academic career. Surely, professional success was right around the corner!

Alas, part two

Rats. The necessary PhD program was unavailable in Marline’s locale and she wouldn’t uproot her family to get her bona fides. So, she ditched her professorial dreams and embarked on another form of word-based persuasion, the aforementioned and delightfully lucrative world of advertising.  

Wait. Where’s the happy ending?

Don’t worry. Marline IS a romance author, after all.

After half a century of convincing consumers to buy things they don’t need with money they didn’t have, Marline retired. She tossed her snarky coffee mugs and returned to her first passion—writing crazy, wonderful stories.

She found her literary voice (right where she left it!) when she started penning 1960’s-70’s Christian romance. Big Publishing has deemed that era an unmarketable no-man’s-land because it’s not quite historical enough. But Marline continues to weave midcentury-modern nostalgia and Jesus Movement memories into offbeat love stories for women who aren’t sure they believe in happily-ever-afters anymore.

Her deep-not-dark unconventional romances are written expressly for smart Christian women with a ticklish funny bone. Women who know what it means to experience isolation, invisibility, abandonment–but want to focus their hearts and minds on positive, uplifting themes.

Women who want to laugh, not cry. To rekindle their first love of Jesus. Reconnect with their world-shaking youthful selves. And maybe reunite with their Lord between the lines.

If that’s you, you’re in the right place, sister.

Welcome home.

She laughs without fear at the future. Proverbs 31:25 (NLT)