Camy writes Regency romance as USA Today bestselling author Camille Elliot and Christian romantic suspense as Camy Tang. She grew up in Hawaii, where she started reading Regency romances when she was thirteen years old. Now she lives in northern California with her engineer husband and rambunctious dog.

She graduated from Stanford University in psychology with a focus on biology, and for nine years she worked as a biologist researcher. Then God guided her path in a completely different direction and now she’s writing full time, using her original psychology degree as she creates the characters in her novels.

In her free time, she’s a staff worker for her church youth group and leads one of her church’s Sunday worship teams. She also loves to knit Victorian and vintage patterns, spin wool into yarn, and is training to (very slowly) run a marathon.

What do you believe about God, the universe, and everything in between? How strongly do you believe it? Does it impact and influence your life?

I’ve known people who try to shove their faith down my throat. I’m not here to do that. Give me a minute to tell you my experience with Jesus Christ.

In school, I was an outcast and I would have done almost anything to fit in, to be acknowledged as someone worth knowing. I thought I was a Christian but I wanted to do things my own way, and I did some horribly selfish things to other people, making Christians seem like hypocrites.

God didn’t strike me down with lightning. He sent real Christians into my life to make me realize that their faith gave them a confidence and stability I didn’t have. He showed me that if I surrendered control of my life to Christ, I could cast aside my old life—the old me—and gain a new life, a new me, someone I’d like much better.

I always regret that it took me so long to find this kind of freedom. That’s why I work with teenagers in my church youth group—to help them discover this kind of supernatural love and inner peace while they’re still young, before they make stupid decisions like I did.

God didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do. Instead, He opened doors for my greatest dream and desire, my writing. His Spirit guides me and molds me in ways that are too weird and mysterious to describe, but very cool to experience.

It isn’t hard and it isn’t a cosmic killjoy. It can be a little scary, but He loves you so much, the fear melts away. If you earnestly search for God, He has promised that you’ll find Him—undeniably, irrevocably. So don’t take my word for it—look for Him yourself. Find a Bible and start reading the Gospel of John.