There are authors out there who can write what a publisher tells them to write. God bless them. I so wish I was one of them, but my brain just rebels. I think I'm kind of Aspergery, because my head just says, "NO, that's not what the book is about!"
I've tried. I mean, good girls do as they're told, right? And in the Christian market, we want to be good girls. But I feel like the ideas fall flat and so do the books because they're not authentic.
Being a Christian in California is a weird entity. I was very surprised to learn that so many of my readers for the Ashley Stockingdale novels were missionaries. Wha? Good girl missionaries don't read about spoiled Christians who can't physically bring themselves to shop at K-Mart and must carry a designer handbag.
But I learned something about missionaries. They actually deal with the REAL world everyday. They are not protected by how life SHOULD be or what the thin line of thinking may be in the church. And that really bolstered my confidence. For awhile.
Until the ugly letters came. So I went back to being the nice girl. To writing the sweet, sappy heroines and you know what? I feel like I lost my voice in the process and my drive for what God set me upon this earth for. If there are readers who want to hear really sweet heroines get into trouble and have God fix it for them, there are SOOOOO many writers like that. They're everywhere. That's not me.
But if you're a person who struggles with how unfair life can be. How the cute, sweet Christian girl who does everything right doesn't always get the guy -- he bounces off with some bimbo who comes to church once -- then you get how I write.
I want to reiterate, I don't think that makes me special. Honestly, I could sell a lot more books if I could do it the "right" way, but I can't. I have to ask the questions that have HARD answers. Questions like why do I know MORE THAN A FEW Christian women whose husbands have left them for other men -- while those men were simultaneously protesting the gay agenda?
http://www.amazon.com/Swimming-Surface-Kristin-Billerbeck/dp/1481175769/
See, I want that girl to find love. I don't think she deserves to be punished for the rest of her life for someone else's mistake. Maybe you do. Maybe you think divorce is wrong in all circumstances. You're not my reader.
I believe in God's grace. I believe that He didn't set us on earth here to suffer and be martyrs (unless that's why He did set us here!) but I believe that we're to love one another and show that God's love is infinite. I have yet to meet the person judged into their faith.
It's kind of like scarcity thinking. Some people believe in scarcity, that there isn't enough to go around and if I take something, it steals it from someone else. Then, there is abundance thinking. I happen to believe God has enough love for all of us to go around and He rejoices when His children come to Him in faith. It really doesn't seem all that defiant to me, but apparently...
