I just spent Friday night and Saturday at the Orange Country Christian Writers Conference. I have to say, what a great group of people. And, as at the other writer conferences I’ve gone to, the majority of attendees were women, though there were men, as well. I was there in the guise of Editor for Restorative Press, a publishing company I am helping to get started for a dear friend, the Rev. Carmen Warner-Robbins. She is the Publisher, I am the Editor, and Leslie Emmanuel is the Marketing Guru. We will publish books about people who have suffered trauma and successfully overcome it, as a means of encouraging others to work for healing in their lives.

It’s an offshoot of Carmen’s Welcome Home Ministries, which works with women in jail and prison and gives them a hand when they get out, so that they don’t fall into the same spiral that landed them in jail or prison in the first place. When these women successfully turn their lives around, they become peer mentors and reach out to other women whose lives have landed them behind bars. For the majority of these women, prison is simply the last step in a life of abuse, degradation, and hopelessness. Welcome Home Ministries offers these women something they’ve never had before: hope and a helping hand.
We have high hopes for Restorative Press as an avenue for publication of books of hope and healing. I’m proud to be part of the enterprise.