Meet Our Team

OUR FOUNDERS

Deep River Books was founded by Bill and Nancie Carmichael. When it comes to publishing and writing, the Carmichaels are veterans. The Carmichaels are the founding publishers of Good Family Magazines, which included Christian Parenting Today, Virtue, and Parents of Teenagers magazines, with a combined readership of over one million.

In 2001, they started Deep River Books as a way to mentor new authors. They are not only publishers, but bestselling authors. Bill and Nancie are the authors of 15 books, including Seven Habits of a Healthy Home, Lord, Bless My Child, Lord, Bless This Marriage, Desperate for God, Praying For Rain, Selah, and Your Life, God’s Home. Their newest releases are The Unexpected power of Home by Nancie and The Missionary, coauthored by Bill and David Lambert. Their books have been published by Howard Books, Moody, Tyndale, Thomas Nelson, Harvest House, Revell-Baker, Crossway Books, and more.

Bill has a Master’s degree in Education from the University of Santa Clara, and Nancie has her Master’s degree in Spiritual Formation from George Fox Evangelical Seminary. Both Bill and Nancie have been given honorary doctorates by Corban University, recognizing their contributions to Christian publishing. Recently, they were also given a Lifetime Achievement Award from Vanguard University, where they did undergraduate work. In addition, Bill has served on the board of directors of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association and Nancie is on the Board of Regents for George Fox University/Seminary.

Bill’s and Nancie’s greatest delight is their family. They have five married children and fourteen grandchildren. They make their home in the Cascade Mountains near Sisters, Oregon.

Andy Carmichael — Publisher

Andy “Roo” Carmichael is a graduate of Corban University with a degree in Education. He started out writing humor/comedy spec and commercial work for a variety of platforms. His work with Deep River Books began in the design department, coordinating cover designs for authors. He and his wife, Michelle, along with their two children, moved back to Central Oregon to take the position of Associate Publisher. As of January 1st, 2019 Andy has stepped into the role of Publisher for Deep River Books.

Andy has many creative gifts. His book, Mr. Nary, the Story of How Grady Thoms Got Published is a hilarious book about a novice author. It originally started out as a prank to annoy his father (Bill) who had just published his first work of fiction, The Missionary. As it turned out, it became the most entertaining teaching tool on what not to do as an author and is a top seller for Deep River Books. You can find it here.

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 Tamara Barnet — Associate Director/Senior Editor

Tamara considers herself a native Central Oregonian, because she has very little recollection of life prior to moving to Central Oregon at age 3. She finds the Cascade Mountain range to be a source of inspiration and relaxation—a marvel of God’s majestic creation in her own backyard. She has earned a BS in Psychology, with a human development emphasis, and a Masters in Teaching, with a language arts emphasis. She is an honored and devoted wife to a US Navy veteran and a mother to many children, both biological and spiritual.

Our editing team has decades of extensive and varied publishing experience with such companies as Thomas Nelson, Intel Press, Multnomah Books, WaterBrook, and Barbour. This diversity allows us to pair a manuscript with an editor with experience in a specific genre like fiction, business strategy, theology, or personal narrative.

 Our team of editors includes:

Rachel Starr Thomson: Rachel Starr Thomson works with words from both sides of the desk—as both an editor and writer, she loves to explore the intersections of faith and the written word. She’s the author of The Oneness Cycle, The Seventh World Trilogy, and many other books. Rachel dwells in southern Canada but regularly travels all over North America, writing, speaking, and singing. She’s a homeschool graduate, a lover of long walks, good books, and hot tea, and a counter-cultural revolutionary who thinks we’d all be much better off if we pitched our television sets out the nearest window.

Kathryn Deering: Kathy freelances from Michigan, specializing in ghostwriting, developmental editing, manuscript evaluation, compilation and many other editorial tasks for a variety of authors and publishers, most in the Christian market. Over the years, she has worked for stretches of time as an in-house editor for book and magazine publishers and has managed parachurch/church ministries as a volunteer.

Barbara Scott: Barbara has more than twenty years of book publishing experience in the Christian market. As a senior acquisitions editor, she is credited for kicking off a well-rounded series of bestselling YA novels at Zondervan and quality, highly reviewed novels at Abingdon Press. Barbara worked with both fiction and non-fiction authors and sold their work to numerous publishers while acting as a literary agent for WordServe Literary Group. She also is a published author, and her educational background includes a MA and a BA in English. Currently, she is writing and editing under the banner of her company Heartland Editorial Services.

Jason Enterline, Enterline Design Services: Jason earned his bachelor of fine arts degree from Shepherd University and has primarily designed within the publishing industry for over thirteen years. He has worked on thousands of book covers and interiors, bringing a keen eye for design, typography, and detail to each creative project. Jason is currently the principal designer at Enterline Design Services LLC, where he creates print and digital media for a wide variety of clients around the world.

Robin Black, Inspirio Design: Robin is a graduate of Parsons School of Design, Robin Black has worked for publishers including Thomas Nelson, Zondervan, Waterbrook/Multnomah, Guideposts, Rodale, and Deep River Books, for over 25 years. Specializing in book design and typesetting, she has worked on a wide variety of books, from simple non-fiction to visually stimulating full-color gift books. Robin feels blessed to have a career that combines her two of her favorite things . . . books and creative design.

Joe Bailen, Contajus Designs: Joe has been doing creative design work for over seventeen years. His customer base has been built on word of mouth only – no promotions, no advertising – just people referring people because they were pleased with his work… his name being passed on as if it were something “contagious.” Joe started out doing drawings and designs on the side and slowly moved up to creating company logos and product-labeling designs while working for several years in the printing industry. He has been creating cover designs for Deep River Books since 2007, and some of the most creative covers in our catalog were created by Joe. Contajus Designs is built on Joe’s creativity and lifelong drive to produce the best work possible.