Jeff Gerke
Author, Writer,
Fiction Expert, Editor
Jeff is himself a multi-published novelist and the founder and former owner of his own publishing house, which specialized in Christian fiction.
Novels Jeff has edited or acquired have won the Christy Award, the Carol Award, the EPIC Award, the Indie Award, and the Foreword Book of the Year Award, some of these multiple times.
Jeff is one of the nation’s top fiction experts, as his five craft books for Writers Digest Books attest. He is the author of The Irresistible Novel, The First 50 Pages, Plot Versus Character, Write Your Novel in a Month, and The Art & Craft of Writing Christian Fiction.
Authors he has edited include Ted Dekker, Nancy Moser, Kathy Tyers, Wayne Thomas Batson, and more than 100 others, including indie authors.
He is a frequent and popular faculty member at writers’ conferences across North America, always teaching on fiction topics, and every year he judges the final round of several fiction contests.
Jeff is sought after for his book doctoring skills, as he has the ability to evaluate a novel to see what’s working, what’s not working, and what exactly to do to make it sing. He’s a teaching editor, loving to equip the author to do it even better next time, but if push comes to shove, he can even do the writing himself.
But while Jeff is known for his fiction work, he is both equipped and experienced as a nonfiction editor. He got his start in the Christian publishing industry as a nonfiction editor for Multnomah Publishers, largely due to his Master of Divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Over the years, he’s edited scores of Christian living and theology books by authors such as Andy Stanley, Greg Smalley, Sheri Rose Shepherd, Mark Hitchcock, Janet Maccaro, Don Colbert, Gary Ezzo, and scores of indie authors.
Jeff is skilled as editor, writer, co-author, brainstorm partner, book doctor, and ghostwriter. He is also an experienced typesetter and cover designer.
He lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and three children.