You might say that free-lance writer Michelle "Missy" Adams is "higher-powered." The 32-year-old Bedford-born wife and mother has just sold her third children's inspirational book; is in negotiations to sell her woman's devotional book; regularly publishes her magazine articles; and writes and edits copy for a Texas travel book series.

She still manages to find time to be a room mother and to work in the library of the Forth Worth school that her daughters, Abby, 8, and Allyson, 6, attend.

Adams says she has help.

God just takes whatever you have and works with it. I am amazed every time I get a call from an editor who wants to buy something. It's really an honor to be able to work like this and in the industry I love, and be able to write something that might change someone's life."

Not that she takes any credit.

"God wanted that message out there, and I just happened to be available," she says.

Missy and Jeff Adams and their daughters share their home with two long-haired dachshunds, Miller and Maddie, a pet lizard named Rocky, and two gerbils, Bubba and Tanner.

"I'm going to open a petting zoo if the free-lance stuff doesn't pick up" Adams quipped, but the truth is her free-lance work is going well.

Except the creative process itself can become a bit crowded physically. Anytime she sits down to write, Maddie curls up on her lap.

Adams, the daughter of Marian and Walter Medlock, graduated from Bedford North Lawrence High School in 1987 and Indiana University in 1991. She was a staff writer at the Times-Mail from 1992 to 1996.

She left to pursue a free-lance writing career.

The Adams family moved to Fort Worth in May 1998 so she could take a full-time job with Kenneth Copeland Ministries writing for The Believer's Voice of Victory.

She wrote for that monthly magazine, which has a worldwide circulation of 550,000, for a couple of years.

"When I wanted to go home and free-lance full time, they asked me if I would continue to write features for them, and I do and it's wonderful. It enables me to be a mom. I'm a room mom at Allie and Abby's school. I work in the library. That puts me around kids, my favorite audience, the people I love to write for."

She writes for a host of Christian magazines.

She has worked as an editor on A Lady's Day Out In Texas, a series of books about attractions of interest to women in the Lone Star state. She edits and writes copy for the books.

Her latest children's book, Sister For Sale, will be published early in 2002 by Zonderkidz, the children's division of Zondervan Christian book publishers.

The idea for the book came from something that happened between her daughters.

"Allyson, the younger one, adores her older sister, but she loves her so much she drives her about half nuts at times," Adams said. "One day Abby had just had it and she looked at me and said, 'Mom can we just sell Allyson?'

"I laughed and said, 'No I think we need to keep her.' "

From that exchange came the idea for her picture book for children ages 4 to 6. This is her third book for children.

Her second, Why I Love You, God, a board book for 2-to-5 year-olds, will be published in January 2002 by Concordia Publishing, a St. Louis-based Lutheran publishing firm.

Because of an unsigned contract, she can't talk about her other children's book.

And she is working with two publishers on her woman's devotional, Little Lessons from a Big God. Adams has sold excerpts from this volume to magazines.

She writes for secular publications as well. Her profile of Scott Jacobson, who designs movie sets for Disney, was published in Design Times, a Boston-based publication about interior design.

"Some days I am doing work for secular magazines and sometimes I am doing things that I hope some kid will pick up and find Jesus. But it's all exciting, and I'm very blest to be able to write from home. My dream always was to write things that make a difference.

"Bedford shaped who I am," Adams said. "I keep in touch with several of my elementary teachers, including Mr. Greg Ralston, my sixth-grade teacher at Parkview."

When she got older and was trying to decide whether to go into teaching or pursue a writing career, Ralston helped her decide.

"He said, 'You need to follow your heart and follow your dream. You have a gift.'

"And then when I came to work at the paper, I worked alongside Bob Bridge. I graduated from IU. I got a degree on paper, but I learned to write from Bob Bridge."

She said she really doesn't know what her next writing assignment will be.

"Every day when I wake up and after I get the kids off to school and have my devotional time, I sit in front of the blank computer screen and say, 'What do you want to write today God?' "