This is where I’m supposed to write about myself. A task that makes me feel like a frozen popsicle melting under a hot glaring spotlight. I have a similar reaction to small talk. However, when prompted by a topic that’s deep and engaging, my mouth will trip over my heart trying to keep up with it. I’ll attempt to share the heart of my life story in a reasonable word count.
I’m a logical empath. I’ve spent my life studying the Word of God in the hope of reaching the hearts of wounded children who all struggle with life to varying degrees. None struggle more than those abandoned at some level by one or both parents. The idea of Warrior of the Dragon Fields literally materialized in my head when having a conversation with one of these abandoned children. I visualized a dragon holding captive a child so wounded by life their goal was to, “…not be my parent”. I listened with pained empathy as this teenager tried to escape a life they were being held hostage to by making the same decisions the parent they didn’t want to be had made. My heartfelt message then and now is still the same—the Word of God is the Word of Life. It gives life, explains life, solves life, and is the path of life to all wounded children.
The earliest memories of my own childhood, stored on my logical left brain, contain the deep and lasting imprint the Word of God has made on me. I escaped into and lived in the stories I learned in Sunday school. They shaped me. Everything I ever learned about right and wrong, I learned from Jesus Christ.
I picked up the Bible and started reading it when I was nineteen and never put it down. I loved stringing together Bible themes and digging for those golden nuggets of universal truth with all the eureka enthusiasm of a feverish gold-digging miner. My goal for Warrior of the Dragon Fields is to take that knowledge and begin where I began—escaping into and living in those Bible stories.
L.J. Beene the Author
L.J. Beene the Illustrator
Then there’s the illustrator’s side of my brain—the right brain counterpart of my paradoxical persona. The creative side where logic merges with imagination, where my serious side meets quirky, where thoughts are expressed in poetry, where reason is brought to life with feeling and intuition, and where my inquisitive observation of people drags the sensitive introvert into social interaction. Basically, I’m a walking contradiction.
As a child even though I loved learning and was a good student, school gave me anxiety. I treasured knowledge but hated testing and grading. It would take Jesus a while to teach me the difference between reproof for my profit and criticism that made every mistake I made feel like a denunciation of failure. The things I loved to learn when I wasn’t living in an alternate reality or outdoors rescuing birds from my cat were drawing, reading, writing poetry, sewing, baking, and any kind of crafting. A large part of what I learned in childhood I figured out on my own because I couldn’t risk the exposure of asking a teacher a question. I am still a self-learner.
After I wrote The Beginning during the pandemic, I needed illustrations but didn’t feel qualified and doing them myself felt like a lot of pressure. However, since I didn’t know any illustrators or how else to proceed, I finally decided “to do what I can do” and just see how it turns out. It was the right decision for me. The words begin the story, but the illustrations complete it.