What is the inspiration that started you writing?
Have you been a storyteller since your youth, or did you write your first novel as an older adult with many years of life perspective?
How does our history influence the kind of stories that play in our minds before we turn them into words on screen or paper?
Many have felt the call to write stories for most of their lives, but I only started writing fiction ten years ago. If someone had told me a few months before that first chapter that I would be working on my fourteenth novel ten years later and that many thousands would have read my books, I would have rolled my eyes and said, “Yeah, sure.”
But sometimes God has better plans for us than what we expected. For several months, I’d been thinking about the parallels between the Christians being martyred as ISIS took control and what had happened to Christians during the periods of Roman persecution. Thinking about their dedication to Jesus and the courage of those who refused to deny him, even when that denial might spare their lives.
I learned about a group that helped underground house churches in Iraq and other countries where becoming a Christian would at the least lead to the loss of friends and family and at the worst lead to death. With funding from that group (RUN Ministries), those house churches were setting up refugee camps for the thousands of people, mostly Muslim, who were fleeing ISIS-controlled areas.
They were modern-day Good Samaritans, doing what they could to help even though many they were helping would have despised them for their faith in Jesus. In those camps, many were coming to faith in Jesus themselves after seeing the love of His people in action and learning about the Jesus they serve. The Holy Spirit opened hearts and minds to new life as followers of Christ. I was touched by the story of a former ISIS jihadi who had a vision of Jesus and became a Christian security guard at one of the camps.
As I wondered at this, a story came to me. What if the man in charge of arresting and executing Christians was injured and left for dead? What if a Christian woman came across him and took him home to care for him, knowing full well he might arrest her and her family and have them all killed if he recovered? How would a man like that react when the people he’d believed to be enemies and deserving of death cared for him like a member of their family because they claimed the Christian god had told them to?
That story became Blind Ambition, the first novel I ever wrote and the second one published in the Light in the Empire series. Since then, I’ve been inspired to write thirteen more stand-alone stories set around the Roman Empire between AD 106 and 129 where being a Christian is illegal and pagans with Christian friends wrestle with whether accepting the Truth is worth the risk of dying for it.
I don’t know how long I’ll keep writing these stories. I don’t know if God has a plan for me to take a different direction in my writing or to focus my energy on something that isn’t fiction at all. I do love doing the historical research to immerse readers in my story world and writing articles about topics in Roman history, so I’ll keep doing that. But I do know how grateful I am that he’s used me to share these stories with others who’ve told me how the stories have challenged and encouraged them in their own faith. As is most fitting for a Roman-era story, I end each dedication with “Soli Deo gloria.”
We’ve just completed our annual celebration of Jesus’s sacrifice to pay for our sins and his resurrection that was proof he had conquered death for those who believe in him. May we all keep our focus on the great gift of salvation and find true joy in sharing what we know with others, whether that’s dangerous or not!
Hi Carol, I loved reading about your journey and inspiration for writing your Roman era books. I’ve always been an avid reader and my desire to write fiction books started in my 20’s – before I knew the Christian contemporary romance genre existed. I discovered Love Inspired books in the late 1990’s at a romance book store in Sydney and that’s when I seriously started learning how to write a novel. It was a long process – with years away from the keyboard when my children were young – but the book I started writing last century was a contest finalist in 2007 and published in 2014. All in God’s timing. 😊
All in God’s timing is so true!
Your first novel published when I was still a newbie writing omniscient narrator POV that no publisher would have been interested in. I learned from my first Genesis contest that I needed to make the change to 3rd person limited and embarked on serious studying of today’s writing craft. Was that final in Genesis?
I’ve always been an avid reader, too, devouring fiction in a range of genres when in middle school and high school (mystery and especially Ngaio Marsh, scifi, Western US like Louis L’Amour that weren’t romances, Regency and especially Georgette Heyer). But starting in college I mostly read nonfiction except for Frank Peretti in the 90s. I started reading and enjoying many genres of Christian fiction when I started writing in 2013.
My first final was in the Touched by Love Award with FHLCW. We’re now spoilt for choice with Christian fiction genres and the availability of books. 😊
We are, and I like being spoiled.