Clay Renick

Why I Started Writing:

I've been telling stories for a long time.

Before teaching, I worked as a feature writer. Later, I spent a year traveling on a communications tour, writing about people whose lives had been changed through faith and service. What I discovered was simple: people rarely remember lectures, but they often remember stories.

After teaching for thirty-four years, I saw the same thing in the classroom. Facts matter. Information matters. But stories have a way of slipping past our defenses and helping us see ourselves more clearly.

Most of my writing begins with a question. Why do people believe things that aren't true about themselves? What happens when those beliefs collide with reality? How do faith, loss, love, and disappointment change us?

I don't write because I have all the answers. I write because I'm still looking for them.

Authors Who Have Influenced Me:

The writer who has influenced me most is E. B. White.

White could take an ordinary moment and uncover something deeper beneath it. His writing was simple without being simplistic, thoughtful without being preachy. That's harder to do than most people realize.

I've also been influenced by John Steinbeck and William Least Heat-Moon. Steinbeck had great compassion for people who were struggling. Least Heat-Moon taught me that every place and every person has a story worth discovering if we're willing to slow down and pay attention.

The books I return to are usually the ones that tell the truth about life without leaving us there. They acknowledge pain, failure, and loss, but they also leave room for grace.

Books I Have Written:

My published novels include Remember That Summer, a Christian romance, and Always, a story centered on hospice care, love, and loss.

Other novels include Winds That Pass, Next to Never, and Oregon Re-Released. I've also written the short story collections Angel Steps and Chainsaw Love.

Most recently, I completed The Faith Between Us, a young adult series set in a Catholic high school. The story follows students as they wrestle with friendship, faith, family expectations, and the sometimes-confusing process of figuring out who they are becoming.

At its heart, the series asks a question that interests me in all my writing: What happens when the stories we tell ourselves are challenged by the truth?

What I'm Working On Now:

I recently completed The Faith Between Us series and am working through revisions and submission opportunities.

As for what's next, I'm not entirely sure yet.

The themes that continue to pull me back are faith, relationships, grief, healing, and the search for purpose. I'm interested in characters who discover that the biggest obstacles in life are often not the problems around them but the assumptions within them.

At eighty, Michelangelo reportedly said, "I am still learning."

That seems like a good place to be.