Melanie Wells
Melanie Wells began her writing career by telling lies on the playground. An accomplished fiddle player (she went to SMU on a music scholarship), she is the author of the critically acclaimed Dylan Foster series of psychological thrillers: When the Day of Evil Comes, The Soul Hunter, and My Soul to Keep (Waterbrook/Multnomah, a Division of Random House). Melanie holds two masters degrees and is a licensed psychotherapist and licensed marriage and family therapist. She is the founder and director of The LifeWorks Group, P.A., a collaborative, creative community of psychotherapists (www.wefixbrains.com), with offices in Dallas and Ft. Worth. She lives in Dallas with her dog, Gunner, who wishes she would not spend so much time at her computer. Fun fact: Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen have both signed her fiddle case.
“I found it again at last! Page 156 - 157 of *My Soul to Keep* by Melanie Wells. Dr. Dylan Foster is thinking to herself while searching through literature on snake lore, "Then there was all the mystical stuff. Once again, the dearth of comparative religion in my theology training nearly skunked me. Four years of sod-busing in seminary had taught me exactly nothing more than what I already knew--in grander proportions, of course, and to near-microscopic levels of minutia. In the end, I got out of there with a solid hermeneutical method, an encyclopedic understanding of dispensational theology, and the ability to conjugate verbs and deconstruct participles in Greek and Hebrew--all notable skills--but without even passable knowledge of anything outside one extremely narrow strip of theological territory." "When it was all said and done, I'd spent four years and trainload of money to get indoctrinated, not educated. Lousy planning, if you ask me.”
“…I’d let those entering (grad) students in on my secret—higher education is all about perseverance. It has nothing to do with smarts or creativity or anything else. It’s about cultivating the willingness and stamina for hoop jumping. Jump through the hoops, I’d say. Do it well. Do it relentlessly. And in a few years you can join the elite of the American education system secure in the knowledge that you too can endure with the best of them.”