John McKissack writes for the dreamers, the seekers, the builders, the passionate—and for anyone who suspects the human story is far greater than the small piece of it we can see.
His books may look very different from one another. One story may carry readers across the red landscape of Mars. Another may wrestle with prophecy and the return of Christ. Another may lead them down the muddy streets of colonial Savannah into a love story buried beneath nearly three centuries of history.
But beneath them all are the same three passions.
The Stars Above Us.
John grew up fascinated by the possibilities beyond our world—the vastness of space, the future of humanity, and the question that has driven generations of explorers and storytellers: What’s out there?
That fascination fuels his science fiction, including The Price of Mars and The Areion Project, where technology and exploration provide the landscape, but human beings remain at the center of the story.
Eternity Beyond Us.
As a pastor and lifelong student of Scripture, John has spent decades thinking about the questions that don't disappear when the book is closed: God, faith, death, judgment, hope, prophecy, and eternity.
Those questions shape stories such as Caught Up in the Tribulation and The Day Jesus Returned. They are written not simply to tell readers what to think, but to make them wonder, question, open the Bible, and explore for themselves.
The Human Heart Within Us.
And then there is the greatest frontier of all.
The human heart.
Love and loss. Courage and weakness. Faith and doubt. Desire and restraint. Loyalty and betrayal. The desperate need to belong. The people we choose, the people we lose, and the things we're willing to sacrifice for them.
John believes those mysteries can be every bit as vast as space and every bit as profound as eternity.
That fascination led him deep into eighteenth-century Georgia while researching Sophia of Savannah, a historical Christian romance inspired by the complicated relationship between Sophia Hopkey and John Wesley. Rather than treating Sophia as a footnote in someone else's story, John wanted to understand the woman herself—and the very human people behind the history.
Story Comes First
John doesn't believe genre should be a fence.
Science fiction, historical romance, Christian fiction, devotionals, children's stories, and books about discipleship may occupy different shelves, but they can all explore the same fundamental questions:
What drives us? What do we believe? Whom do we love? What are we afraid of? What are we willing to sacrifice? And what might we become?
Pastor. Storyteller. Explorer.
John serves as a Global Methodist pastor in Louisiana, where preaching, teaching, ministry, and ordinary conversations with people continually remind him that real life contains stories every bit as complicated as fiction.
His pastoral background naturally shapes his writing, but he doesn't write only for pastors—or only for Christians.
He writes for curious people.
For readers willing to wrestle with big questions.
For people who still look toward the stars with wonder, toward eternity with questions, and inward toward that strange and beautiful mystery we call the human heart.
And he's still exploring all three.
Per Aspera Ad Astra
For John, it's more than an old Latin phrase.
It's a pretty good description of the human story.