Interview with Leah E. Good

Leah, welcome to Homeschool Authors! Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Hi there! I’m a 19 year old daughter of God and a homeschool graduate. I finished a bachelor’s degree in Marketing several months ago, and now I’m taking some time to focus on my writing. My two passions are writing and orphan care. You can find out more about me and both these passions on my two blogs, Leah’s Bookshelf and Teens Interceding for Orphans.

Everyone’s homeshooling experience is different. What do you think made yours unique?

This kind of makes me chuckle because my homeschooling experience has become quite unique over the past few years. My kindergarten through junior high years followed a pretty normal homeschool pattern, complete with grade levels that confused the rest of the world and the typical barrage of questions concerning “socialization.” Things started getting different when Mom read College Without Compromise. At age 13, I took my first CLEP and things progressed from there. I got to be the guinea pig in our circle of friends and acquaintances for doing college from home. I love talking about the experience if anyone has questions!

How did being homeschooled prepare you to write?

I remember crying endlessly during Grammar lessons when I was in grade school. Diagramming sentences and learning about pronouns seemed like a waste of time. However, at the same time, I was writing (really bad!) stories about horses, dogs, and homeschooled kids. When I was fourteen, my parents read some of my stories and decided to let me write a novel for English class that year. Enter One Year Adventure Novel, aka OYAN. The freedom of homeschooling to do OYAN gave me the boost I needed to get serious about my writing.

What caused you to start writing?

An active imagination. My brother and I entertained ourselves endlessly by making up stories together when we were little. I’ve always loved to read and my parents read us lots of books while we were growing up. As I mentioned above, the One Year Adventure Novel writing course is what got me serious about writing.

What inspired  Stories for God's Glory?

I wanted to tutor someone in writing, so I started creating lesson plans. As I was doing that, an opportunity came up for teens to sell their products at our local homeschool convention. I wrote more lessons and put them into a self-directed curriculum format. Since then, it’s undergone some major revisions to help it fill a need in the homeschool market.

Would you give us a synopsis?

Most creative writing/story writing curriculums are written by people who specialize in essays. The rules of fiction are completely different than the rules of essay writing, but this often isn’t recognized. Stories for God’s Glory gives students a chance to learn the foundational elements of writing fiction. It’s written for homeschool students by a homeschool graduate, and for hopeful fiction writes from a fiction writer. Lessons include easy-to-understand explanations about important elements of fiction writing, stories that illustrate those elements, work-sheets to help students analyze the example stories, and outlining sheets to help students plan their own stories.

Who will enjoy  Stories for God's Glory?

Homeschool moms and their junior high students. There is some wiggle room on the grade range. Some younger students who want to write stories may enjoy Stories for God’s Glory and high schoolers who have never learned the rules of fiction writing will find it a good way to learn the basics. Mom’s will like it because it’s self-guided and includes a teacher key.

Do you plan to write more books?

Yes! I’m currently editing a futuristic story about the persecuted church. When I finish that, I’m looking forward to combining my love of writing and orphan care into a contemporary story about an orphan. 

Do you have any final thoughts?

Don’t ever take the privilege of being homeschooled or the ability to read good, God-honoring books for granted. I know homeschoolers sometimes envy the perks of going to public school, but the perks of having our parents investing into our lives in a godly manner will last for eternity. And who knows how long we will have the freedom to read and publish God-honoring books. Be grateful for all of it!