The Book I Never Thought Anyone Would Read

Christine with three-month-old-Jessie

For most of my professional life, I've written stories for other people.

I've written articles, marketing materials, website copy, speeches, newsletters, nonfiction books, and screenplays. I've helped organizations find their voice and authors tell their stories. Writing has been the one constant throughout my life, even when the projects themselves changed.

And I loved much of that work.

But Raising Artemis was different.

This wasn't a story I was hired to write. It wasn't a story designed to fit a market or solve a business problem. It wasn't a story shaped by someone else's goals, expectations, or vision.

It was mine.

The truth is that Raising Artemis didn't begin as a novel at all. It began in journals.

For years, I filled notebooks with stories about my animals. Things we had done together. Adventures we shared. Lessons they taught me. I wrote about the joy they brought into my life, but also about the deeper connection I felt with them—a connection that shaped how I understood the world and my place in it.

Looking back, I can see that I wasn't really writing about animals. I was trying to understand why they mattered so much.

Animals have always been more than pets to me. They have been companions, teachers, guides, and, at times, mirrors reflecting back truths about myself that I wasn't yet ready to see. Some of my earliest memories involve animals, and some of the most important lessons of my life came from them as well.

As a child, I was fascinated by a story my mother told me about how animals talked on Christmas Eve. Most children stay awake waiting for Santa Claus. I stayed awake waiting for the animals. Year after year, I listened and waited, hoping I might finally hear their secret conversations.

Eventually, it dawned on me that perhaps I already knew what they were saying.

Not in words, of course. Not literally. But in all the ways that mattered: through their loyalty, their presence, their intuition, their ability to love without conditions, and their remarkable capacity to show up exactly when they were needed most.

Over time, I came to believe that the bond we share with animals contains something sacred. Not religious, necessarily, but something deeper and more personal. A connection that helped me make sense of the world and why I was here.

Looking back, I think Raising Artemis grew out of my lifelong attempt to understand that connection.

I've written many things over the years. I've written professionally. I've written nonfiction. I've written screenplays. I've written for clients and for audiences. But this book is different. This is the most authentic thing I have ever written because it reflects how I have always understood life.

At its heart, Raising Artemis asks the questions I've been exploring for most of my life. Why do animals affect us so deeply? Why do some connections feel larger than logic can explain? Can love survive loss? And what if the things we feel but cannot prove are every bit as important as the things we can?

Somewhere along the way, I stopped thinking of the manuscript as a project and started thinking of it as a calling. I was put here to tell this story. That much felt certain. Whether anyone else would ever read it was an entirely different question.

For a long time, I hoped they would.

Then, gradually, I stopped hoping.

Not in a bitter way. Not in a defeated way. More in the way you finally set down something you've been carrying for a very long time.

I had queried agents. Collected rejections. Wondered whether the story was simply too unusual to find a home. Was it literary fiction? Magical realism? Animal fiction? Women's fiction? The truth was that I never really cared about the label. I only cared about the story.

Eventually, I reached a place of peace. I had written the book I wanted to write. The book I needed to write.

I assumed it would live on my desk, on my bookshelf, and perhaps in the hands of a few close friends and family members who understood why it mattered so much to me. And honestly, I was okay with that.

The story had already given me its gift.

Then something magical happened.

And yes, I still believe in magic.

Not necessarily the kind with wands and spells. The quieter kind. The kind that arrives when you least expect it. The kind that appears after you've finally stopped trying to control the outcome.

Shortly after I made peace with the possibility that Raising Artemis might never be published, I received word from my publisher that they were interested.

I remember staring at the email, then reading it again, and then reading it a third time because I was convinced I must have misunderstood something.

After all those years, after all those doubts, after all the times I wondered whether this dream had quietly passed me by, the story was suddenly finding its way into the world.

Not on my timeline.

But perhaps on its own.

That's one of the reasons I believe so deeply in the message at the heart of Raising Artemis. Sometimes life unfolds in ways we cannot predict or explain. Sometimes the things meant for us arrive long after we've stopped expecting them. Sometimes we have to let go before they can find their way to us.

I don't know whether that is fate, grace, coincidence, or something else entirely.

I only know that a story I once believed would never travel beyond my desk is now preparing to meet readers. And for a woman who spent years waiting to hear animals talk on Christmas Eve, that feels a little bit like magic.