Bestselling author Robin Jones Gunn’s love for storytelling began long before her official writing career. Even in the first grade, she was captivating classmates with imaginative tales during rug time. Since then, she’s written more than 100 books, such as the beloved Christy Miller series, which she originally created to provide the Christian teen girls she knew with wholesome, value-driven content to enjoy. As her audience grew older, she expanded into contemporary women’s fiction with series like Glenbrooke, Sisterchicks and Suitcase Sisters.

With honesty and grace, Robin is opening up today about how feeling the warm (or sometimes freezing) earth beneath her feet each morning draws her closer to Jesus, the challenge of loving an unloving parent, and the books and relationships that have empowered her spiritual and creative growth over the years.

QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT

Food is always about more than food; it’s also about home and people and love. So how does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?

My husband and I lived on Maui for 10 years. Ten wonderful years.

He developed some serious health issues, so we moved to Southern California to be near family and medical specialists. (It’s been four years, and he’s doing much better now, thank you for asking.)

Our go-to food on Maui was a grilled mahi-mahi fish plate from a food truck parked across from Kam III beach in Kihei. The paper plate came loaded with fresh fish, rice, mixed greens and a scrumptious dressing we called “the secret sauce.” We poured the sauce over all of it. So good. With a can of cold POG (pineapple/orange/guava juice — if you know, you know), and toting our Tommy Bahama low beach chairs on our backs, we’d settle in the sand and watch the sunset while filling our bellies with the meal that tasted like home. Sometimes we’d pick up a slice of Haupia Sweet Potato Pie from Da Kitchen a few blocks away.

Every Friday night, we gathered at the beach with friends for what the locals know as “pau hana,” which means “done work.” We weren’t the only ones who stopped at the food truck for the mahi-mahi plate before getting together to “talk story.” And laugh. We were very good at making each other laugh.

Now that we live near Newport Beach, we have a wide selection of authentic tacos. We both grew up in the area, so our favorite childhood tastes have come back into play. Imagine our happiness the day we tried Baja Fish Tacos and found they served fresh poke on certain days and the taco at the top of their menu was grilled mahi-mahi. A taste of home with a touch of childhood.

The bonus is that Baja Fish Tacos knows how to make guacamole. We wouldn’t be surprised if the avocados were picked fresh from a tree in a local backyard.

When friends come to visit, I don’t cook. Instead, we make a run to Baja Fish Tacos, buy a couple of their daily specials and an assortment of various tacos and spread it all out on the counter. It’s our new Southern California version of a luau.

rainy forest in Portland, Oregon — Sonia Kardash; Unsplash

QUESTION #2: REVEAL

What “nonspiritual” activity have you found to be quite spiritual after all? What quirky proclivity, out-of-the-way interest or unexpected pursuit refreshes your soul?

We lived in the Great Northwest near Portland, Oregon, for 16 years. Our son and daughter grew up there in our two-story house with a backyard, a nearby woods to explore and the world’s best golden retriever named Hula.

I planted tulips and daffodils, which the deer enjoyed as their midnight snack. My office had a view of the gazebo in the park across the street. Yes, it rained all the time. Yes, we became coffee snobs due to the abundance of single-origin-crafted-and-rated-above-80 options. And yes, every season was green and lush.

Our backyard became a specific sort of haven for me. Nine months of the year, my usual cozy corner was by the living room fireplace. But for a dozen or so weeks, the weather was warm enough to go barefoot. Those were the mornings I would stand in the backyard when I let Hula out and luxuriate in the feeling of the grass on my soles. I’d breathe deeply, gaze up into the blue sky and whisper the kind of first-light prayers that are 90% gratitude for the new day.

One year, when the birch trees began to shimmy their gold doubloons, I continued my barefoot habit on the cold grass and kept doing so through fall into winter. Some mornings, it rained. Twice I stood barefoot in the snow. When spring returned, the dewy green grass began to feel familiar once again.

And so it went. For years. We moved to Maui, and I continued my morning rhythm, standing barefoot in the warm grass, gazing at the ocean through our peek-a-boo opening between the royal palms and sending my morning vespers to the heavens on the trade winds.

A friend recently told me I was “grounding.” All I know is that the concrete balcony of the second-floor apartment where we now live feels cold and hollow to my bare feet.

QUESTION #3: CONFESS

Every superhero has a weakness; every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you confront its power head-on?

My mom is 97. I help care for her. She was never a cheerleader-type mom, nor did she enter into my happiness when I became a published author and a career grew from my writing. She said I was full of myself. The older she got, the meaner she became. She made it a point to tell me she’d never read any of my books and that she’d never watched the four Hallmark Christmas movies made from my books.

In my early 40s, I knew she wasn’t going to change. I knew God’s command is to honor my mother. I asked him to show me how. After an especially hurtful visit, it occurred to me that if she were in a wheelchair, I wouldn’t keep expecting her to one day see me, stand and run to embrace me. Some never-revealed deep wound must have put her in an emotional wheelchair. She couldn’t come to me. But I could go to her. I could be the one who chose to love her even if she never loved me.

When we moved to California, I took over my sister’s role with Mom, and at every visit to her Assisted Living room, I was told to go away. One week, I took her supplies, along with flowers and cookies. When I left, I brushed off her sharp comments, went to her, looked her in the eye, told her I loved her and kissed her on the cheek. She said nothing.

I couldn’t remember hearing the words “I love you” before, so I didn’t expect that. But what I also didn’t expect was how empowered and whole I felt. The choice to extend extravagant forgiveness freed me. Her option didn’t matter. She couldn’t hurt me. I had control. I could decide. And I chose love. Every time I went to her, I repeated my familiar exit routine, leaving her with a blessing in response to her curses.

One day, almost four years into my regular visits, before I even got to her recliner to kiss her good-bye, she said in a high voice, “I love you so, so much.” My throat tightened. I blinked and realized that for the first time in my life, I was able to add the tiny word “too” to the sweet words a daughter should grow up saying to her mother.

“I love you, too, Mom.”

QUESTION #4: FIRE UP

Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?

Here’s something that feels unreal to state: My 108th book was released last week.

“By the Sea” is a gift book, and I love how it turned out. The little hardback cutie became a collaborative effort with the publisher as we blended my original essays with beautiful ocean images, poems and quotes to make something that feels special. According to the contract, it was categorized as a coffee-table book. Instead, it became a devotional gift book that fits nicely on a bedside table to provide short, calming bedtime stories. Dreams of happy times spent on the beach are practically guaranteed.

My usual genre is fiction. Contemporary novels for women, to be specific. I’m working on the third novel in the “Suitcase Sisters” collection. This series focuses on two women who are close friends and the current issues they’re struggling with. The women head off for some interesting corner of the world, where their lives are changed in the swirl of the adventure.

The first novel of this series, “Tea With Elephants,” is set in Kenya. I drew inspiration from my two trips to Africa that included a safari with some much-loved girlfriends and morning strolls through the tea fields. We stayed in a hotel in the treetops where we looked down on a watering hole and indeed, had tea with elephants, giraffes and warthogs.

A different pair of pals go to Italy for a cooking class in the second book in the series. “Gelato at the Villa” addresses the challenge of what it’s like when your closest friend has stepped away from the table, so to speak, and has deconstructed her faith. How does your friendship flourish when you’re not coming from the same place?

This summer, I’m headed to Brazil for an international book fair since my books that have been translated into Portuguese are doing well there. Every week, I co-host a podcast called “Women Worth Knowing,” where we talk about hidden, ordinary women through whom God accomplished extraordinary things.

The final current project to mention is the production of a movie and/or streaming series based on the “Christy Miller” series of YA novels. The executive producers told me they are getting closer and closer to that project becoming a reality.

QUESTION #5: BOOST

Whether we’re cashiers or CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need God’s love flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?

When your 40-year career is the solitary craft of writing books, and when sometimes you feel closer to your imaginary friends than to humans, reader mail is a valuable plumb line.

Over the decades, I’ve heard, “Your book really touched my heart. You wrote about something I’ve been struggling with. How did you know? Your stories feel so real. This book made me want to draw closer to God.”

Writing has become an act of acquiescence. The process includes an eagerness as well as a battle against doubt. I gladly receive the creativity and inspiration needed to begin a project while also doing the work of a lion tamer to keep the claws attached to the threatening roars locked in the cage.

Each book is a different journey, and all of them are difficult for me. Exerting so much effort to birth a book is painful. Every time. And yet, in keeping with the birthing analogy, the agony doesn’t stop a mom or a writer from doing it all over again.

Prayer has become the essential starting point before every book I write. My ritual is to make a pot of tea, find a quiet hour, sit on the couch and handwrite a prayer of dedication for the project before I begin. I pray for myself and for the future readers. I ask God to once again do what he’s done so many times, as evidenced in the responses. I ask him to bless the work of my hands and use the book to draw the readers’ hearts closer to his.

I always feel inadequate. I often tell the Lord that I don’t know what I’m doing, as if he didn’t know. I never know how I can possibly hit the deadline. Then, before the lions can break out and completely maul my inspiration and confidence, I ask God’s Spirit to lead me.

He always does — rarely in the direction I thought he would lead and often in ways that make me laugh and cry and sit back in amazement because when I read the words I just typed, they seem to be a secret message for me. For my heart. That’s when writing feels like a conversation with the Spirit of God who dwells in me and can do exceedingly abundantly more than I could ever imagine.

QUESTION #6: inspire

Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?

I learn from readers. They nudge me. God uses their comments and insights to lead me. Writing is a ministry, and ministry means people. Seeing them and speaking to them and receiving from them.

The way this has become a rhythm in my life is through responding. For years, I wrote replies to every letter I received. I still do, but now it’s postcards instead of letterhead note cards. I have become skilled at sincere yet brief email replies. Social media provides interaction every single day.

For a long time, it bothered me that I couldn’t give new writers what they continually ask for: “Robin, I want to be a writer. Tell me how. Can I call you and pick your brain? Could you read my book? Would you mind introducing me to your agent? I can’t pay you, but would you mentor me?”

I asked the Lord to show me how to best respond, and I love the solution that’s been in place now for over five years. I say with a clear conscience, “That’s not something I’m able to do.” Then I tell them that I keep a prayer journal for beginning writers and that their name is now written in my book.

On the first Saturday of every month, I set the alarm for 7 a.m. and make strong coffee. I pull my prayer journal from the bookshelf and say the name of every person listed as I pray that God would bless the work of their hands and lead them. There are hundreds of names. It takes a while because sometimes when my fingers touch a name, I sense something specific to pray about for them. I pause and pray and then move on.

My favorite updates are from those whose names are listed in my book. They tell me they finished their article. They found a publisher for their children’s book. They joined a critique group or registered for a writers conference.

The community of writers, editors, teachers, agents and publishers are being to them what they asked me to be. This feels right.

It’s something Peter advised 30 years after he met Jesus when he wrote, “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Pet. 5:2,3, ESV).

QUESTION #7: FOCUS

Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and your heart?

My husband signed me up for my first writers conference, and I was so mad at him. I wasn’t a writer! How could I go spend a weekend with professionals? I came home thanking him for introducing me to my people.

Over the years, I’ve attended, taught and keynoted at many writers conferences. My new favorite is the Vision Writers Conference held at Mount Hermon, California, every spring.

Years ago, at the Mount Hermon conference, I struck up a conversation with Ethel Herr. She’d written three books and was so kind. I lived less than an hour from her home, and she invited me to join her critique group on the first Wednesday of every month. For six years, I found someone to watch my little ones so I could go “put my feet beneath her kitchen table,” as she said in her Dutch heritage way. From 9 to 3, we read our work to each other, made suggestions and always closed in prayer.

Her example showed me the beautiful ebb and flow of the writing life. Pour out all that is on your heart, receive all that those in your closest inner circle have to give back in advice and praise. This is the only way I was able to flourish in those early years. I always urge beginning writers to attend a writers conference and find a critique group if they’re serious about growing as a writer.

May I also recommend a little-known movie based on a book written by Isak Dinesen, the author of “Out of Africa?” This movie changed me. It showed me what it means to present your gift to people who don’t fully appreciate what you’re giving them or take into consideration what it cost you to prepare the gift. And yet those who receive your gift are changed. The movie is “Babette’s Feast.”

Certain things can be godsends, helping us survive, even thrive, in our fast-paced world. Does technology ever help you this way? Has an app ever boosted your spiritual growth? If so, how?

My common love-hate relationship with social media led me to a daily task. I use the word “task” because I told myself I needed to do this first on my phone before checking texts, email or any social media.

I open my Bible Gateway app and search for a Scripture by simply typing in a word or two. It could be part of a verse that’s floating in my morning brain, or I could be curious to find a verse about something such as “hope.” The search provides me with every place that word appears in Scripture and gives me the option of seeing it in over a dozen translations.

I read all the verses, select one and copy-paste it to my X account. That’s all. Just the verse and the reference. No added comments, devotional thought or particular emphasis. Just a daily declaration of what I sipped from the well of God’s Word that new day.

This practice allows me to feel like my feet are on solid ground before I step into the fray of all the voices online. And the thousands of followers have an opportunity to drink from the same well if they stop scrolling and read my post. The news changes continually. Opinions change. Disasters strike. God’s Word stands true and solid through all of it.

QUESTION #8: dream

God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?

Earlier, I mentioned the production of the “Christy Miller” series in either a film or a streaming series. The pieces are coming together, and that will be a happy day when the cameras start rolling.

In July, I’ll be speaking in Brazil and keynoting at the American Christian Fiction Writers Conference in September 2025.

I’ll be teaching a Major Morning Workshop at Vision Christian Writers Conference at Mount Hermon in the spring of 2026. The topic is “The Spiritual Life of a Writer,” and I’m looking forward to putting together the pieces. It will undoubtedly be repurposed into a book.

My friend, Cheryl Brodersen, invited me to co-host her “Women Worth Knowing” podcast three years ago. Her dad, Chuck Smith, founded Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, and we have a widespread audience. It’s something she and I love to do — research and talk about ordinary women God used in extraordinary ways. We both volunteer, and the podcast is now on several radio stations. As the audience keeps growing, we’re evaluating what’s next. How can we best manage this unique opportunity that we stumbled into and how much “free time” can we devote to it?

Another “Suitcase Sisters” novel will be released in 2026, and I have several contracts for other projects that I’m finishing up.

These upcoming adventures are all words written on my calendar. How my Good Shepherd leads remains to be seen. It will be different from my predictions, of course, but it will, as always, be good because he is good.

May the Lord accomplish his purposes in our lives.

When talking about her kryptonite, Robin shared about her mother, who never celebrated her wins, rarely said, “I love you,” and even went out of her way to say she hadn’t watched any of the movies based on Robin’s books.

Some of us might read that in shock and near disbelief. Others of us might simply nod our heads sadly and say, “I get it.”

The truth is, most, if not all, of us have been failed by other people — people who were supposed to love us and be there for us. But, as Robin discovered, even when others fail us, we can still rise up and forgive and heal. Because Jesus, the One who says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” is our Helper, Defender, and true Father (see Heb. 13:5, ESV). And his love is more than enough.

🎉 Easter Egg Activated!

Robin Jones Gunn