God Was My Agoraphobia Cure Says Author

Sheila Jacobs had been studying with London Bible College and felt God was calling her into Christian service, but she fell sick during her early 30s and was diagnosed with Ménière’s disease, a rare disorder that affects the inner ear. She became desperate to find an agoraphobia cure.

“Being stuck at home – I lived with my mum, couldn’t work, couldn’t do anything – I got more and more agoraphobic,” she explains. “I couldn’t go to church for a couple of years and when I did I’d have a panic attack. I could just about walk my dog to the fields, and actually Jesus became very real to me at that time.”

Sheila had always wanted to write novels, but although some of her non-fiction had been published, she had been unable to interest anyone in her fiction. “I’d actually failed a writing course and got my money back shortly before this,” she says.

"So I gave it up. Then three weeks later I saw an advert in a Christian magazine. They wanted new writers for Christian fiction. I had something in the drawer so I cobbled a couple of chapters together, sent them away and forgot about it. Then they wrote back and said they’d like to see the rest of the novel. That was a bit of a problem because I hadn’t actually written it!”

But within a few weeks, Aliens and Strangers was ready.

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