You were created to create.
Not permitted. Not tolerated. Made for it. The impulse to write isn't vanity you need to apologize for — it's a bearing of the image of a God who creates.
About Jeremy Bouma
It started on Reformation Day, 2008.
I'm Jeremy Bouma. Former pastor, Capitol Hill minister, working novelist — and the guy who reads your manuscript and tells you the truth about it.
80+Client book projects
4–5Novels a year since 2018
52Short stories in 52 weeks
18+Years in Christian publishing
The start
October 31, not Halloween
I published my first book on October 31, 2008.
Not for Halloween. For Reformation Day — the day a rascally monk nailed ninety-five arguments to a church door and set five hundred years of history in motion because he believed words could ignite faith in his world.
That was the whole idea. I wanted to ignite faith in mine.
I had no publisher, no platform, and no particular reason to think anyone would read it. I wrote it anyway, because the conviction that I was supposed to wouldn't leave me alone.
Some of you know exactly what that feels like. It's probably why you're on this page.
Both sides of the desk
Then I spent a decade helping other people finish theirs
Somewhere in there I stopped being only a writer and became an editor too — without ever stopping the writing.
I've been involved in more than eighty book projects for other authors and for some of the most respected publishers in Christian publishing — writing, developmental editing, and marketing devotionals, Bible studies, and resources. Over a hundred published projects across eighteen years.
Which changed how I read. When you've watched a hundred manuscripts come apart in the same four or five places, you stop guessing about what's wrong with a book and start recognizing it.
It also changed what I think authors need. Not more inspiration. Not another course sitting unwatched in a dashboard. A structure, an honest reader, and someone who has finished the thing before.
Trusted by publishers across the Christian industry
The other half of it
And I kept writing my own — at volume
In June 2018 I went at fiction properly, releasing Holy Shroud and treating novel-writing as the job rather than the thing I got to after the job. Four to five novels a year since.
Then the pandemic hit and I set myself a challenge: a short story every week for a year. Fifty-two stories in fifty-two weeks. It was the single most useful thing I have ever done for my craft. You can't fake your way through a story a week — you either learn how structure actually works or you run out of road by about week nine.
That stretch built the readership, the business, and the storytelling instincts I now teach. Every framework here came out of writing on a deadline I set for myself, over and over, until the process was repeatable.
It also means the publishing and marketing side isn't theory to me. I've built the covers and blurbs and launch plans and ad campaigns for my own books, on my own money, and watched what worked and what quietly didn't. When I teach the Publishing and Marketing pillars, I'm teaching what I run.
The long way round
How I got here
Before the books
Pastor and Capitol Hill minister
Years spent doing ministry in a local church and in Washington, learning how to say true things to people who were only going to give me a few minutes of attention. It turns out that's most of what writing is.
October 31, 2008
The first self-published book
No publisher, no platform. Released on Reformation Day on purpose, because the symbolism was the only marketing plan I had.
The years after
The editor's desk
Eighty-plus client projects — developmental editing, content creation, and marketing for independent authors and for some of the biggest houses in Christian publishing. Devotionals, Bible studies, resources.
June 2018
Holy Shroud, and fiction goes full-time
I stopped treating novels as the thing I got to afterward. Four to five a year since — building a readership and an actual independent publishing business one release at a time.
The pandemic
52 short stories in 52 weeks
One story a week for a year, no exceptions. The hardest craft training I've ever put myself through, and the reason I can spot a structural problem in someone else's draft inside a chapter.
October 2025
FaiBoWriMo, and the room fills up
More than 380 Christian creatives signed up to draft together for a month. The next two rounds drew almost 900 each. That's when the tools became a studio.
Now
CROSS + PEN
Writing my own books, editing other people's, and building the training I wish somebody had handed me in 2008.
Why this exists
The gap I kept running into
Here's what I noticed after years on both sides.
Christian writers get offered two kinds of help, and neither one is whole. There's craft training that treats your book like any other product — sound advice, but it has nothing to say about calling, stewardship, or why you're doing this at all. And there's encouragement for Christian creatives that takes the calling seriously and never gets around to the hard, technical work of making the book actually good.
So writers end up either well-encouraged and structurally lost, or technically competent and quietly unsure whether any of it matters.
CROSS + PEN is my attempt at the whole thing.
The craft and the calling, from someone who takes both seriously enough to be demanding about both.
What I believe
A few convictions I work from
The craft is part of the calling.
Sloppy work isn't humble, it's just sloppy. Learning structure, revising honestly, and shipping something that holds together is a spiritual act, not a distraction from one.
Marketing is loving your neighbor.
Connecting a book to the reader who needs it is service, not self-promotion. You have permission — more than permission, an obligation — to make the connection.
Faithfulness over perfection.
The book doesn't have to be flawless. It has to be finished, honest, and put into the world. Perfectionism has killed more Christian books than bad writing ever has.
Stewardship, not building.
A book you were given is a thing to steward — shaped with care, handled responsibly, released well. That's why the line under everything I do is steward books that matter.
For God's glory and human flourishing.
Every project is measured against that, not against a sales rank. A book that serves one reader well has done its job.
Off the page
The rest of it
Because you should know who's reading your manuscript.
Proud husband and dad, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Vintage jazz vinyl enthusiast — the crackle is part of it.
Apple fanboy since before the cool kids were.
Too much black coffee. A manuscript on one screen, my own draft on the other.
What's here
Three ways in
Read
Articles, the Christian Author 2.0 podcast, and the GWA Insider newsletter — free, most weeks. The best place to start if you're still figuring out what you don't know.
Browse the articles →Learn
Tools, templates, courses, and live experiences at GospelWise Author — the StoryWise Formula and Framework, Camp FaiBoWriMo, the Academy, and FaiBoWriMo three times a year.
See the tools + training →Work with me
Manuscript assessment, developmental editing, and one-to-one coaching. For when you've got pages and you need honest eyes on them.
See how coaching works →Free, every week
The GWA Insider
One email a week — a story from the writing life, one useful idea you can actually apply, and whatever's being built at the moment. No formulas, no guru promises. Just the reminder and the nudge to keep going.
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Grand Rapids, Michigan
If you're writing something that matters, I'd like to hear about it.
All for God's glory and your neighbor's gospel good.