The Quill & The Cross

Today I am SO excited to feature another one of my good friends and fellow writers, Paige Malick! Paige is a Christian homeschooled teen, who switched from writing primarily fantasy to now historical fiction and clean romances. Here’s a bit more about her in her own words!

“For a long time, I have only ever written fantasy books. Actually, I first started writing in September of 2020 (yes, that unspeakable year). I was eleven at the time and really adored stories and creating. I wasn’t much of a reader for a while until I read The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. This opened a whole new world to me and I wrote my first ever book, a portal fantasy called The Lost Forest which is quite inspired by The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (bk #2 of The Narnia series). It was the first thing I ever really wrote and finished, I still have the original handwritten yellow notebook. This first story brought on a whole new world for me (literally) . I wrote up to 12-15 books in one series (which really weren’t that long). All the characters and storylines were entwined together and I had this huge map and everything. 

After a while, this series kinda just faded from my writing. It was 2024 I believe when I moved on from it, knowing that I would probably never publish these books that had come up as a hobby. I joined a writing club in my new homeschool co-op and was challenged with something called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in the month of November by my new friend. Before then I had never ever written anything longer than notebook pages with messy and large handwriting. The goal for NaNoWriMo was to write at least 50,000 words in one month. Well, I took up the challenge and started plotting a new story that I knew had to be long. 50,000 words is a lot to think about after only writing in yellow notebooks for so long! But it was a good thing I tried this out even though it was quite a struggle at first (who am I kidding, it was CRAZY the entire way through). My goal was to write 2,000 words every single day with some break days. There were days where I did not meet my goal, but I still remember the last day of November when I typed the last word and the count hit 50,000…I will never forget my joy. 

I feel like this was a good challenge for me, possibly set up by God. I would not be where I am today if I had not pushed through that month of blood, sweat, and tears. Completing my goal makes me feel like I can literally do anything, especially with my Savior. 

NaNoWriMo made me realize that I was straight up serious about pursuing my writing as a career. I am sixteen now and still going strong, though I have moved on from writing fantasy.

Fantasy was all I wrote up until about half a year ago or so. I started ANOTHER fantasy series, the first one with a word count of 56,055 and the second one counting, 80,929 (and at the time this was the longest novel I had ever written) but slowly I got tired of writing fantasy, I was so sure that this series would be what I publish in the future, but no, after writing fantasy for nearly 5 or 6 years, I finally found my dream genre.

Enter historical fiction. 

My first ever historical fiction novel is what I have set my sights on. I am positive that I will work on this with all my might and publish it. The name of this book is The Ones Who Stayed, a World War One historical romance that I love with everything in me. 

This all came about because I wanted to write something for my younger sister. Something that was meant for her and not just something that I was writing for myself to read to her. Ideas kept coming, names popped into my head that fit the characters so well it’s crazy. At the time I was starting to write a research paper on WW1 and I wondered if I could try my hand at writing a historical fiction/romance novel. Who knew that I would become so obsessed with writing it, and the characters make me so happy. The first draft ended with 81,482 words! I hope to eventually send this out to the world because I have finally found my passion. Writing about something that I love with good morals that is entertaining but clean with a dash of Christianity.

I am so glad that God put me through this journey in my writing. I’ve been in highs and lows, I’ve hit writer’s block that I thought I would never get out of, and I’ve wondered if I should just quit altogether. 

But knowing that I write for God and the entertainment and good of others, I am inspired to bring this dark world light in the form of a good book. Because who doesn’t love a good book?”

Here is a blurb for Paige’s first historical fiction/romance! 

Born in the farmlands of Ohio, 1900, Malachi Kittle grows up with a terrible limp in his right leg after contracting polio as a baby; this causes him to walk with a cane for his entire life. Bullied at school and sidelined at home, he finds an unlikely protector in Charlotte Reese, a girl with a stutter but the courage that he’s never had. As the years pass, their bond deepens into something tender and unspoken. In 1917, when war calls the able-bodied to fight, Malachi answers with hope, only to be rejected by the very country he longs to serve. Broken and ashamed, he watches his brother and classmates march off to glory while he’s left behind. But Charlotte stays. Through dust and heartbreak, through whispered dreams and shared silence, she shows him that love is not earned through battlefields, but through the courage to stay, to teach, and to heal.