Into the Fire

My new novel, my WIP (to the writing crowd), is turning out to be enormously fun to write. My last three novels produced some tough transitions. First, Race became strenuously tricky to compose. Even with the superlative help from a wonderful LEO, I froze up on the story so many times I could've produced a writing glacier. What resulted from those frigid writing interruptions was the beginning of the novel Seeing . . . and then, surprising to me, another start of a novel which developed into . . . in a love song. All three novels finally made it into publication but it proved to be a genuine struggle to get them finished. Considering I enjoyed the way all three of them survived and turned out in spite of the challenges, it's sometimes amazing to me that I did in fact complete them successfully – and by "successfully" I mean I truly loved the stories/characters/plots. You gotta love your stories or why write them?

So here's the "conundrum" for my new one. As you know, I write Christian fiction, love stories with the exception of Race, my solo mystery/police procedural which of course included a slim romantic thread in it. The tagline for my fiction is Raw Romantic Redemptive. "Raw" is the first word of the three because as those of you who've read my work know, my books are not your typical Christian fiction fare. 

The reason I use the words "not your typical" is because I deal honestly with sexual tension, temptation, attraction, desire, and in some cases sexual sin. I stress that my novels are not graphic, no soft porn, but they are realistic in every aspect of male/female sexual concerns. Secondly, you will find the occasional words used which are not swear/cuss words although come Christian readers believe them to be: i. e. hell, damn, ass (slang usage). There are sentences which point out a character cussing but the word is not written. There is an occasional reference to the "f-word" being used by a character but it also is not written out. This is why I have chosen "Raw" to be the first word used to describe my stories. All of those choices are absolutely considered to be irreverent, wrong, "un-Christian" to some readers. Fortunately, the whole gamut of romance novels from Bethany House and other Christian publishers are available to those readers. 

The last two words of my tagline are self-explanatory. Romantic is real and evident and Redemptive is clear, available, and present  in each story. There's a choice to be made. The contrasts are obvious. 

In my stories the worldly lifestyle is accurately portrayed just as the contrasting lifestyle of living for God is exemplified. 

So what's the conundrum? I don't enjoy the thought of offending readers or potential readers. I know that some readers are not my "audience". Yes, it would be "easy" to eliminate those simple words, but, for me, it would not demonstrate authentic characters or environments for my stories. Reality isn't always "clean" even for Christians – even when it appears to be. My goal is to portray life in this world with its challenges, temptations, failures, and successes. Reality. Christians struggle in spite of having the right answers. Life's often hard. The wonderful solution is holding onto God's Truth in all things and seeking forgiveness for those failures with heartfelt repentance. Jesus longs to forgive. The Holy Spirit counsels and comforts. 

It's a conundrum, but I know what the answer is for me. 

Father, please help me to write the stories you've given me with all the honesty and reality you've chosen for me to communicate. May my stories give you pleasure. I thank you for each one. Apart from you, I can do nothing. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.