As far back as she can remember, Ann has struggled with fears and anxieties. Ongoing nightmares and panic attacks prompted her to get counseling years after she was married, and at that time, she was diagnosed with PTSD.
Days are better now. Armed with strategies to combat her nemesis, Ann is less afraid of the “dark” and relegates her hyper sense of foreboding to story tensions in a book.
As far as her real-life story goes, Ann says this.
“It’s crazy what terrors the mind can conjure, but one thing that calms my spirit is knowing God. I have raged at him and turned my back on him for the trauma that occurred. He created life to exist in perfection, but why was my life so broken?
Over time, I’ve learned to look for God’s hand in the brokenness. I still struggle with questions about why bad things happen, but through it all, incredibly, bad events have proven to me all the more that good exists. The opposite force against evil designed the world to be perfect and good, but this same power declined to make us robots and allowed us freewill instead.
The architect force I’m talking about is God, and I see his hand constantly in my life now. I am comforted that the one who intended perfection will someday restore perfect wholeness back to me.
Until that day, I will wait and write my stories about the future of science and spirit and the contrasting ways of darkness and light.”
Ann Clark McFarland
Ann was born in New York and raised in a Chicago suburb, but Texas is now her home. She writes futuristic adult novels about science and spirit.
The science part comes from her nurse’s training and the fact that she married a physician. Shop talk at her family table is often about technology and medicine.
The spiritual and writing influence comes from her parents who met in a shared baby carriage in Quito Ecuador where they grew up together as missionary’s kids. Ann’s father went on to become a Spanish Language professor and often shared written stories of his experiences in Ecuador with his college students. Ann spent early days perched near her father’s study table surrounded by books while he wrote.
Ann’s exposure to medicine and missions is not the reason she writes. There is a secret motivation. She writes because she is often afraid, and writing has proven to be the perfect exercise to redirect her fears and anxiety. The overwhelming “what ifs” that clamor for her attention are useful fodder for book plot catastrophes.
