Hi! I’m Lauren.
I am the author of the Murders on Cripple Creek series, He Loved Her, Mondays are for Murder podcast/blog, and the owner at Woodland Heights Publishing – a small publishing house in Houston, Texas.
I have been writing books for over five years and founded WHP in January 2023 in the pursuit of publishing books that might at times feel controversial because they have my love for Jesus at the forefront. I believe that books help us experience and cultivate more empathy for others by understanding different cultures, perspectives, and relational challenges. I also believe we live in a culture that insists we curate our realities and our humanity. Books help us see we are all and have been deeply impacted by that modern movement.
All my books have deeper roots than simply historical fiction, love, and drama. Writing is a place where I process my emotional landscape and the richness of the introspection of patterns and people. It can be fatiguing and equally rewarding in the same breath. I enjoy writing male characters and exploring traditional masculinity. Culture now has attached a negative stereotype to “traditional masculinity”. I love to trudge in Colt Bradford’s boots through snow laid paths amid the Colorado mountains. His revolvers in hand and his love for Lark are extremely masculine yet tender.
My debut romance novel Love You, Always Forever, is a time bending romance set in the 1990s. I’m ready to have us both explore how powerful prayer is, the exploration of choice vs sovereignty, and how God plans things in advance for us without us always loving the path to get there.
Am I traditional “Christian Author”?
No. You might be surprised…
Many Christian authors would not be sharing dating stories in Love Ledger that contain sex, writing murder mysteries, or touching on anything that might be construed as hard to hear. I interpret my entire life through the lens of the Bible and so my writing also follows that trajectory. When I approach my writing, I ask myself not WWJD (though at times that is helpful ha!), but what is God’s perspective on this event and ultimately what does God want people to see?
My inspiration for my publishing company name, Woodland Heights, is from my life verse in Habakkuk 3:19. In it, I am always reminded of how God is my ultimate strength and that only through Him is my life’s work and my writing truly possible.
"The Sovereign Lord is my strength; He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights."
Beyond WHP, I am a single mom to my son and daughter. I love a really good coffee in the morning, a pink outfit, and a sunny patio or pool day. My favorite novels are ones set in historical time periods particularly either romance or murder mysteries. I fall in love with characters who are the underdog and get redeemed in the end.