Category: On writing

On writing a memoir

Penelope Swithinbank has just had a week-long official blog tour to launch her new book Walking Back to Happiness. I am thrilled that she agreed to guest blog here to talk about what it was like to write the book…

“Good artists copy; great artists steal” Picasso.

Austin Kleon, the young American writer and artist, uses Picasso’s line to illustrate how we ‘steal’ ideas from everything around us, and advises us to focus on how to transform, remake, improve, thus unlocking our creativity. And, he warns, ‘computers have robbed us of the feeling that we are making things’ (steallikeanartist.com). Simply using pen and paper can help us to be more creative. 

You often don’t know what you think of something until you write it down and describe it. I discovered that as I sat and wrote my journal each evening after completing the daily steps of a long walk. We were backpacking across France, my husband and me, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, partly to celebrate our retirement and partly in an attempt to heal the pain of a broken marriage.  

Each evening, after a shower and change of clothes, and hopefully, tea or something stronger, I used a good pen and a beautiful journal to record the day’s experiences –  places, people, conversations, thoughts, feelings. Someone once said that genius can write on the back of an envelope but mere talent requires a fountain pen and excellent paper. It certainly helps.

Margot Asquith, a well-known hostess and socialite, as well as wife to a prime minister, published a work in the early 1920s, based on her extensive diaries. When complimented on it, she is said to have replied, ‘Keep a diary, my dear and later on, perhaps, the diary will keep you.’ 

It was not in my mind to keep a diary in order to write a book about the 330-mile walk. But when the God-given prompt came, the daily accounts were there to be enlarged and rewritten. And for the most part, I wrote it chronologically – it was, after all, an account of getting from A to B. 

Chronological seems easy and straightforward; but it can come over as dull and predictable. Sometimes it’s good to ask if there is some other way to write a memoir. For example, Penelope Lively’s autobiography, A House Unlocked, has the ‘umbrella’ of her grandparents’ house in Somerset, but her life story is told using different objects in the house. Rather than the ‘cradle to the grave’ autobiography, she has a more kaleidoscopic approach to time. In Moon Tiger Lively has Claudia say, ‘Chronology irritates me. Shake the tube and see what comes out.’  So there are some flashbacks in my book, and some pointers to what has gone before. 

I tried to remember to ‘show not tell’. Significant sounds or smells, or the response of the body – the ‘sand between the toes’ image where you make the reader actually feel what your words are bringing to mind.  Or describing the colour as if to a visually impaired person, and the sound to the deaf. Margaret Forster, writing about Daphne du Maurier’s father in Daphne du Maurier draws the reader in with noting that at a certain theatre, ‘Gerald du Maurier was scoring an immense success, the night his new daughter was born, in a light comedy entitled Brewster’s Millions.’ Much more interesting than merely ‘Daphne’s father was an actor.’

So I was noticing what had happened each day; I used the senses; I used the weather. I used people, conversations, a sense of time and place. I used my own reactions and feelings, because this is memoir, after all. And later, when I was writing the book, when there was a danger of it all becoming too serious, I added humour to lighten the touch. 

Morning by early morning, I sat up in bed, writing desk across my knees, and I typed my story. I made myself do it for a couple of hours every weekday for several months. Until it was done, and I’d reached nearly 60,000 words, and the story had reached the Atlantic. Then I sent it to my beta readers – a few good friends, some acquaintances who would be honest, my (grown-up) children – and a professional editor.

It cost £100 for that edit (www.thebooklab.co.uk). And it was worth every penny!  The editor divided the story into ‘blog size’ sections within chapters of different lengths. People have short attention spans, he said; people are busy. A short section can be read quickly without the need to concentrate for too long. 

Then he took out all my erudite words. He told me it read like something from Brideshead Revisited, the book I had been reading while in France. I took that as a compliment! But he reminded me that the majority of people are not going to plough through that style of writing. I had to remember my target audience, their likely preferred writing styles, their vocabulary. This was for the normal market, not professors of literature. Fewer adverbs, plain English, making every word earn its place. And he removed all the descriptive speech words, such as ’retorted’ or ‘cried’, and put back the basic ‘said’ or ‘says’.

Lytton Strachey, a great biographer of the early 20th century, advised the writer to ‘aim at a brevity which excludes everything which is redundant and nothing that is significant’. That much at least has not changed!

Eventually came the final edit. I found it helpful to print it in a different font and different colour, to trick the brain into being more objective. And then, I went to a writing day organised by the Association of Christian Writers, something I’d booked several months earlier, never guessing I would have a manuscript waiting to be revealed. The editor had recommended a particular publisher; to my surprise, the co-publisher was one of the speakers that day and I was able to talk with her, whereupon she asked me to send her my manuscript immediately. The rest, as they say (and you should never use clichés, of course) is history. And an answer to prayer.  

Penelope Swithinbank is an avid walker and spends a lot of her time stomping in the hills and valleys near her home outside Bath. She is a chaplain at Bath Abbey and a spiritual therapist and counsellor for clergy (and some normal people too). Since becoming a vicar nearly 20 years ago, she has worked in churches in the UK and the USA, and has led pilgrimages in the UK and in Europe. She and her husband Kim have been married for more than 40 years and have three children and six grandchildren. Penelope rarely sits down, loathes gardening and relaxes by walking,  reading, going to the theatre or playing the piano. She is the author of two books, Women by Design and Walking Back to Happiness and is currently working on her third, due out in 2020: Scent of Water, a devotional for times of spiritual bewilderment and grief, especially after bereavement. She also contributes to Bible reading notes for Scripture Union. https://penelopeswithinbank.com

A life well lived…

Firstly, I must apologise for the break in the weekly blog/devotional series. I know we had just started a new series on timing, which seems a little ironic as my life was turned upside down literally the following week when I got a call to say that my mum was in the final stages of her earthly life.

We had been expecting such a call for a few years; my mum was a strong lady and defied all the experts by living much longer with her degenerative, chronic illnesses than they thought was possible. But a fall a few days previously caused her body to grow even weaker, and she never recovered. 

I spent the next ten days or so sitting by her bedside, along with my dad, sister and nieces, reminiscing, reading to her, telling her how much we loved her – and playing a lot of card games! We laughed and cried, and held one another tightly as my mum made her final journey home to Jesus.

What seemed like terrible timing to me to begin with, began to reveal itself as a blessing in disguise; I was halfway through writing a devotional book on loss and disappointment. When I was first asked if I would write it, I had an inkling that God would walk me through this part of our family’s history and so much of me shrunk back from having to face that. But I knew, deep down, that He wanted me to write the book, and that He would help me do so whatever the circumstances. 

I certainly look back now she has gone and wonder how I managed to write sitting beside her as she slipped away; I know I couldn’t face writing it now as grief’s waves keep engulfing me. But, at the time, it seemed like a fitting tribute to her. She was hugely creative, and enormously encouraging to me with my editing and writing. Her own spiritual wrestlings and insights often made their way into beautifully expressive poetry; she often said that she felt compelled to sit down and write and it was almost like God was giving her a direct download that she was simply the conduit of. The experience of writing the devotional was a little like that – very different from my usual writing method.

So, today I want to honour my mum – over the coming months I may well share some of her poetry with you; for now the purpose of this post was simply to update you and ask for your patience as I process our loss and try to support the rest of my family. The weekly devotionals may or may not make it up – I’ll do my best, but rest assured I am thinking and praying for you all and will be posting whenever I can.

Tell a convincing story

It is my pleasure to introduce Chick Yuill to my blog today, sharing his thoughts on Christian fiction, and why he feels telling people compelling stories can lead them to an encounter with God.

Over the last thirty years I’ve written eight books on subjects such as discipleship, spiritual warfare, holiness, sexuality etc and published with IVP, Authentic and Monarch. I got weary of doing that and troubled by the increasing realisation that the only people who would ever read them would be committed Christians. 

I try not to write ‘Christian fiction’ with heavy moralising and glib easy endings.  But because I am a follower of Jesus, because my worldview is firmly in the Judeo-Christian tradition, that will be reflected in my writing. 

I think there are really only two kinds of novels  –  well-written novels and not so well-written novels.  I want to write stories that are accessible to Christians, to people of other faiths and people of no definite faith  –  stories that deal with the big issues of life, that face readers with the big questions, and that leave them free to make up their minds.  

Too much ‘Christian fiction’ in the past was really evangelistic tracts unconvincingly disguised as novels.  That was dishonest and artistically flawed.

My first aim is to tell a convincing story with believable characters who are dealing with credible and challenging situations and who are encountering truth. The highest compliment I receive from readers is that they couldn’t put the book down and that it made them laugh and cry.

When I start to write the first chapter of a novel I have no real idea of what’s going to happen.  I know that, as the author, ‘I’m making it all up’, but it really doesn’t feel like that. I follow the characters and get to know them as life happens to them. 

For example, in The Man who Broke into St Peter’s I didn’t set out to deal with the results of sexual abuse.  That’s just where the story took me.  In The Mystery of Matthew Gold I didn’t choose to deal with suicide and sudden death. Again, that’s just where the story took me.  

Three things drive me:

1) I get a little irritated at times by what I see as the glibness of too much evangelical thinking, although  I stand firmly in the evangelical tradition. Telling a convincing story means that you can’t get away with glib and easy answers.  Life just isn’t like that!  

2) My increasing conviction is that what we have to offer the world is not primarily a set of doctrinal propositions but a story  –  a messy story, with all kinds of loose ends and questions we can’t easily answer, but a story in which people encounter God – the only story that in the end makes sense of life. As I try to say in The Mystery of Matthew Gold, the story that takes them beyond the mystery of life not to a set of neat answers, but to the deeper mystery of grace and love and forgiveness.

3) Evangelism often focuses on telling people what they should believe and trying to get their agreement. And that approach, of course, has its place. Yet it seems to me that Jesus rarely did that. He told stories, most of which didn’t specifically mention God! They raised questions that settled like seeds deep in people’s minds.

I want my readers to enjoy a really good read, I want to move them emotionally, I want to stimulate their thinking, and I want to leave them with questions that will lead them to an encounter with the One who perfectly embodies grace, truth and love.

Chick Yuill has spent over 45 years in full-time ministry and church leadership, mostly leading and pastoring local congregations both in the UK and the USA. He is a passionate communicator and has appeared on national radio and television in the UK, as well as regularly been a speaker at major Christian conferences. Writing has been an intrinsic part of his ministry. His passion to engage with the wider culture beyond the walls of the church has stimulated his desire to write fiction. His stories include: Rooks at Dusk, The Man who Broke into St Peter’s and The Mystery of Matthew Gold.

A fascination with the macabre

While researching an article on Christian fiction, I came across many different authors with fascinating backgrounds – some quite unexpected. Peter Laws is one such writer. He is an ordained church minister who writes horror fiction. Here he talks about his journey to become a published author, why he writes horror and what he thinks of Christian fiction. While you may not agree with his conclusions, Peter certainly shares some interesting thoughts…

I’m an ordained church minister who had an idea for a novel about ten years ago. It was a horror thriller. I didn’t see it as a Christian book, but rather that I was simply a Christian who wrote a novel. So I sent it to secular literary agents, and was delighted to find a London agent who wanted to represent me. 

It actually took another five or six years to get a book deal. I’d write a novel, my agent would send it to all the big publishers, they would say they really liked it, but they weren’t sure how to market it. So I would just write another one, and try again. I got another agent, and she’s been great though there was still some rejection at first – par for the course in writing. In 2016 I was close to giving up on fiction, and so wrote a non-fiction proposal instead. Amazingly, my agent called to say that I’d been offered a two-book fiction deal by a publisher called Allison and Busby. Then, not long after, she called to say that I had also been offered the non-fiction deal from Icon Books. 

Since 2017, I’ve had four books out in shops (three in my fiction series and the non-fiction). My latest novel (Possessed) comes out in shops next February from (Allison and Busby). My books were released in Germany last year in translated editions. My non-fiction comes out in Taiwanese this year, and it also came out in hardback in American shops last Halloween, from a US publisher called Skyhorse. 

You don’t tend to find my books in Christian bookstores, but you will find them in Waitrose, at airports sometimes, in libraries etc. They’re out in audio, paperback, hardback, eBook. It’s been pretty exciting to find myself on trains or in random cities where strangers have come up to say they’ve read my stuff. I’ve spoken at various literary festivals, been a guest on a lot of radio, including Radio 4, discussing my books. So it’s been a real blessing and thrill.     

Why do I write horror stories? Because they interest me. I’m drawn to mystery, the supernatural and high-stakes drama. And there is little more high stakes than murder and death! My books are usually found in the Crime fiction section of Waterstones, even though I’m more of a horror guy. Crime fiction is the most popular of all genres in the UK, and so it makes sense for me to be pitched there, and my books certainly do belong on that shelf. However, I do thread themes of the supernatural into the books, and there’s a lot of exploration of religious ideas. 

I write what I think is relevant to not only me, but also to our world. I’m particularly interested in how evangelical Christians appear scary and deranged to many everyday people. It’s easy for us to see ourselves as normal everyday folk in the church, but for many, the idea of full-on Christians is terrifying. That is rich picking for writing scary novels. 

That’s why my novel series features a character called Matt Hunter. He’s an ex-vicar turned atheist professor who spends his time debunking the Christian faith, while also helping the police solve religiously motivated murder. In book one, Purged (Allison and Busby, 2017) he’s on the trail of a Christian serial killer who thinks the most effective way to evangelise is to baptise people then murder them immediately afterwards. That way they are fast tracked to heaven, with no risk of backsliding. 

I find such topics interesting, exciting, but they also give a lot of scope to ponder deep and profound issues, both theological and philosophical. My books are dark, but they also have a pretty strong sense of humour throughout, because I like to have a laugh in amongst scary things. 

What do I hope reader will glean from my books? First and foremost I want them to be entertained. There is something very noble about pure entertainment, and I think Christians can sometimes dismiss it as trivial when it’s not. I’ve even heard some preachers say that escapism is dangerous…I think that’s nuts. Escapism is an important way that human beings relax, but also how they assess some deep and profound ideas too. So while my books are designed to thrill, excite, scare and amuse (my stuff is classed as commercial fiction) it also raises some really deep ideas, especially about Christianity.

I’ve had a handful of Christian readers who struggle with the idea that the hero in my books is an atheist and the killers are often religious. They assume that Matt Hunter is going to drop to his knees and convert at some point. That is not my aim. I think as Christians we need to respect other worldviews, and atheism is perfectly reasonable, even though I don’t ascribe to it. Ironically, I get many messages from atheist readers, thanking me for respecting their view and giving it the space to be. They then seem really interested in my faith. However, that is not why I’m writing these books. It’s not a method of conversion in my mind, but a form of entertainment that may or may not provoke thought on all sides of faith and none. 

I don’t see myself as writing Christian fiction, because to me, and I might be wrong, that sounds like fiction that is aimed at Christians. I write for anyone and everyone, so it’s just plain old fiction to me. If people see Christian fiction as a glorified conversion tool, then that’s up to them, but that’s not where I’m coming from. Some people think I must be writing horror and crime thrillers as a way of swinging into the darkness, and scooping up lost souls. Then I’ll swing them back into the church world and will hopefully start reading nice stuff instead. That is totally not where I’m coming from. 

There is a value in the morbid and macabre: my non-fiction book The Frighteners: Why we love monsters, ghosts, death and gore makes this point. In that book I travelled around Transylvania, Rome and the UK meeting people who sleep on mortuary slabs, and self-proclaimed vampires, and I also went on werewolf hunts, stayed over in a haunted hotel, was blind driven to a remote mansion by the BBC where they threw spiders on me and put me in an electric chair. It was such fun. It was all to show that gritty or macabre subjects are an inherently human preoccupation, and that there are actually great benefits from pondering them. I think when the Church warns people off such things, they’re misunderstanding what it means to be human.

Peter Laws is an author, journalist, film critic and public speaker. He is the creator of the Matt Hunter novel series. He’s an ordained Reverend with a fascination for the macabre.  Peter writes a monthly column for the print magazine The Fortean Times and also hosts the popular podcast and YouTube show ‘The Flicks That Church Forgot’, which reviews scary culture from a theological perspective. His acclaimed non-fiction book The Frighteners was released in the UK and US in 2018. He also regularly speaks and preaches at churches and events.  Find out more at https://www.peterlaws.co.uk

Appealing to all…

Bobbie Ann Cole speaks to us about what she believes has changed in Christian Fiction, as well as explaining the inspiration behind her new book Being Lena Levi (shortlisted for the Eyelands Book Awards 2019).

Christian fiction is definitely changing. It was very clear to me at the Christian Resources Together event last year [Christian book trade event] that what was wanted by commissioning editors of Christian imprints was crossover material. By that I mean something that is perhaps less overtly Christian than in the past, to appeal to non-Christians as well as Christians. 

I see two drivers underpinning this. Firstly, many Christian bookshops, particularly independent Christian bookshops, have closed in recent years, so the market for books that are purely Christian has reduced. Secondly, and probably more importantly, is the realisation that a book can be a jolly good evangelical tool, if it can appeal to the non-Christian reader. 

I believe Being Lena Levi will appeal to non-Christians as well as Christians. It is the story of a young girl who discovers, in 1950, that she’s not the English Sunday Christian she thought, but the daughter of a Holocaust survivor now living on a kibbutz in Israel, ie she is Jewish. She sets out on a quest to find her true identity and, in the process, grows in her Christian faith. However, the tussle between one faith and the other – or none – is a legitimate part of Lena’s journey to work out who she is.

The book was inspired by the Bible story of King Solomon, who is presented with two mothers, both claiming the same child. He found in favour of the one who was willing to give up the child and deemed her the true mother. I wondered how it would be if both were willing to do that? And what would it take to make any mother give up a child? How would they react when that child subsequently rejected them? Because my heroine is furious with both mothers when she discovers the truth, which comes as a bombshell. The birth mother has waited five whole years since the end of the war to claim her daughter, while the adoptive one hasn’t told her she’s adopted. 

Being Lena Levi is set in Canterbury, where I now live. In 1950 it was still a mess of bomb sites. And it is also set in Israel, where I have previously lived. My own background is Jewish. I was claimed by Jesus 12 years ago, in a Jerusalem church where I thought I wasn’t supposed to be, while on a quest of my own for meaning and purpose. He picked me up, dusted me off and led me to meet and marry my Boaz of strong faith.  

In my book, I have highlighted the wonderful thing Britain did in bringing 10,000 Jewish children to live in England immediately before the war – the Kindertransport. They came on temporary visas, supposedly until things quietened down, when they would return to their families. Of course, it turned out that could never happen. By the end of the war, most of their families had been wiped out. 

In addition to my heroine’s quest for her true identity, I have intended through this book to subtly remind my readers – because many people today seem to have forgotten – why the United Nations created the State of Israel in 1948. Six million plus were murdered in the camps. The hatred shown to them in the countries they came from hardly incited the survivors to return there. The terrible abuse that they suffered was possible because Jews were stateless. It was vital they should have a place to call home…

Bobbie Ann Cole is the author of two Amazon No 1 bestselling Christian memoirs. Her debut novel, Being Lena Levi, was published in September on the  Instant Apostle imprint. She is available for talks and to teach Bible storying and creative writing: https://bobbieanncole.co.uk. 

Creativity: the Church’s stealth bomb

I am delighted to welcome Beth Moran onto my blog today. When researching the article on Christian fiction, I asked Beth for her thoughts and she gave me some really interesting comments on Christians and creativity. I’ve included them here as I think they give all writers (and other artists) food for thought…

As Christians, we are called the light of the world. Not the light to the Church. And as great as our sermons might be, when it comes to influence in our nation, most people are not listening. But if we really believe that words anointed by God are powerful, that they can heal or set free, releasing supernatural breakthrough, transforming an atmosphere, impacting a culture and changing the course of history, shouldn’t we be sharing words of life and truth in such a way that people will listen?

The Church was once the most influential cultural force in the world. To some extent, in recent times it has hunkered down into its own nice Christian world. We’ve created our own safe little culture, most of which will never grab the world’s attention. Not because it’s religious – that’s our fear, that the God bit will be the problem – but because it’s not good enough. 

But shouldn’t those who walk and talk with the creator be leading the way when it comes to culture and creativity? Shouldn’t our art be the most beautiful, because it speaks truth about how things should be, not just how they could be? It speaks the truer, better word – a word that brings hope and light into the darkness. 

We need to tell a better story, in a way that the world will bother to listen to. Because we are getting used to a lesser story – our culture these days is full of the anti-heroes, the stories that worship at the altar of self, science or a twisted view of success. 

People are interested in good art and great stories, irrespective of the subject matter. And that enables God to sow seeds, start conversations and get people thinking. To breathe life and bring change. Creativity moves and connects us in ways that teaching often can’t. Great art speaks to the longing of every soul – the hope that we are more than a bunch of cells firing off chemical reactions.

Before faith, does there need to be hope? Hope that there even could be something more, a better way, an answer. And to be able to hope in that something, we need to be able to imagine what it could be, to see a possibility that things could be different from how they are. 

If Jesus rated creative stories so highly as a way to speak to people, shouldn’t we? 

Jesus’ parables mostly weren’t even about God, on the surface. Why did Jesus tell stories? They were interesting, enjoyable and they got people’s attention. We love stories because they make us feel; they connect us to the people and world around us. We think – “yes, that’s me!” or “I know someone just like that”, so I can trust you, the storyteller. 

When we, as writers, describe things as they are we gain the reader’s trust. We can then lead them on a journey to resolution, to the world we were made for. When people read or hear a story, they use the same part of the brain as if they were experiencing those things for themselves. So when we point people to stories about hope and peace, joy and forgiveness, and love, they get to feel those things for themselves. And hopefully want more. 

Beauty moves us; beautiful words organised well inspire and heal us. This is what the psalms do, when we read them and think: “yes! That’s it! I too want my enemies to dissolve into slime like snails” (Psalm 58). We respond with: “That was what I needed to pray but couldn’t express.” Then, the psalm takes us on to that better reality, tells the better story (surely the righteous will be rewarded, there is a God who judges the earth). It takes us from where we are to how it should be, and so offers us the invitation to come too. 

Creativity – art, fiction, poetry – is the Church’s stealth bomb. People are drawn to a great and beautiful story, well told, no matter what the topic, but for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, there is treasure to be found. 

Another role of the creatives, in telling a better story and shaping culture, is to simply get God and faith back in the conversation. We want some portrayal of Christians in the media that are ‘normal’ people, as in not hypocrites or serial killers. We need art that is salty – I have never had a non-Christian write a review saying there is too much God or church in my books. I have had Christians, especially in the US, say there isn’t enough, and I want to ask them what they think about the parables, or the book of Esther. 

The power of words can change someone’s future. With words and stories, we can create a vision of how this world should be that is so irresistible, in its beautiful, glorious hope, that it touches the hearts of those who hear it like nothing has before. 

Beth Moran writes women’s fiction: her latest novel is Christmas Every Day.

If you want to read the article on Christian Fiction that appeared in November’s issue of Premier Christianity you can request a free copy here. It will be available for request until November 25.

The enduring draw of biblical fiction

Last week we heard from UK author Chris Aslan, about his experiences writing biblical fiction. It is an interesting and popular genre, and one that, while it has seen changes over the years, still draws readers around the world.

I had some other interesting comments on biblical fiction from my research for the recent article I wrote for Premier Christianity magazine (see the end of this article for more info on that), which means I’ve decided to focus on biblical fiction for another week. This gives you the chance to hear from a couple of other authors (this time from the US) about their experiences.

Historically, Christian fiction came from America and tended to focus on historical and biblical retellings. This sort of fiction was huge in the 1980s and 90s. And then Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker began producing ‘end times’ fiction, which, again, became enormously popular. More recently, Amish fiction has sat in the top spot in America for a good few decades.

Interestingly, Mesu Andrews, who writes biblical fiction, was told back in the 2000s by Christian publishers that ‘Christians don’t buy biblical fiction anymore. But there were many biblical novels published in the general market, so I began reading them – and was horrified at what was done to God’s truth. From that moment forward, my goal has been to keep truly biblical fiction alive through Christian authors’ hands. However, I’d love to see it cross over into the general market with powerful writing and complex story lines.

‘I signed a contract with Revell (a division of Baker Publishing) in 2008 soon after they acquired Jill Eileen Smith’s first biblical series, The Wives of King David. Hers was the breakthrough series that brought back a new wave of fabulous biblical fiction. Moody Publishers acquired Tessa Afshar’s Pearl in the Sand. NavPress published Tosca Lee’s Havah. 

‘A few years later, Angela Hunt returned to the genre, and Bethany House (a division of Baker Publishing) acquired Connilyn Cossette to join the ranks of top-notch authors. The floodgates of well-researched, engaging biblical novels has burst open, and readers are ravenous for it. It’s definitely an exciting time for everyone who loves God’s Word!

‘I generally choose stories about lesser-known female characters or try to write from a unique perspective on a familiar story. My debut novel, Love Amid the Ashes, places Jacob’s raped daughter Dinah with the Bible’s champion sufferer, Job. And my most recent release [Of Fire and Lions] explores the familiar character of Daniel through the eyes of his fictional wife. 

‘Only through intense research and a deep reverence for the truth of God’s Word do I make these story decisions, and then I offer explanations for those decisions in an Author’s Note at the end of my books. My main goal in writing biblical fiction is always to drive readers to the truth of the Bible. Fiction is a dream, but God’s truth offers real life.’

Tessa Afshar believes that the stories within the Bible hold a fascination that draws people in. She told me: ‘The people who inhabit the world of the Bible have managed to capture our hearts for thousands of years. In spite of the fact that their world is, in many ways, alien to us, their stories still captivate us. Most of these characters are flawed men and women through whom God fulfills his purposes.  In my experience, all of us struggle with various wounds. Soul wounds. Biblical stories show us how, in God’s hands, a broken person can live a healed and healing life. Our souls hunger for that truth regardless of the century we live in.’

As a reader, this is a genre that I have discovered in recent years – and I am thoroughly enjoying the books I have read by such thoughtful and innovative authors as Mesu, Tessa and Chris. If you have a particular title that you would recommend, do add a comment to this post – it would be great to help each other find good reads (and will encourage the authors too!).

If you want to read the article on Christian Fiction that appeared in November’s issue of Premier Christianity you can request a free copy here. It will be available for request until November 25.

Can we be honest about Christmas?

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I was thrilled to be asked to endorse Lucy Rycroft’s book Redeeming Advent earlier in the year. It was published in October and she is now in the throes of a blog tour – I am delighted to welcome her to my website today. And the fantastic news for you is that she has provided a free copy of the book for one of my regular readers to win! (Please see below for details of how to enter.)

It’s a privilege to be guest posting for Claire today. Her passion for honesty and authenticity has been inspiring and challenging me ever since I came across her writing.

Claire’s ministry is vital because, in real life and on social media, I’m increasingly noticing that people desire integrity over ‘relevance’. Once upon a time we all thought we had to dress a certain way, have a few piercings, act and speak ‘cool’ in order to draw others to Jesus.

But the gospel has always been, and will always be, more relevant than any of us could ever be. It doesn’t need glitz and glamour, it needs authentic people, sharing vulnerabilities and weaknesses, prepared to stand up and say ‘I struggle’ or, even, ‘I’m not very cool’.

This is the thinking behind my blog The Hope-Filled Family where I share the honest chaos (and believe me when I say it is chaos) of my family life. With four children aged 5–10, a clergy husband, an open home and a plethora of church and school commitments, we frequently boast laundry mountains, sinks full of dirty dishes, forgotten packed lunches and badly-dealt-with tantrums.

I mess up so much – and yet, in that mess, God affirms me as His daughter, Jesus redeems me from my failures and the Holy Spirit inhabits me with peace and joy.

THE BIRTH OF AN IDEA…

The blog is where my new book Redeeming Advent was birthed. In December 2017 I decided to write an Advent reflection for each day leading up to Christmas. This in itself could have been another item on my ‘failures’ list, but – by God’s grace – I made it to December 24th!

Each day I would take something that had happened that day – however mundane – or something ‘d been mulling over, and write what God might be teaching me through it. There was plenty of reality, honesty, humour and potential embarrassment, as I shared the highs and lows of our Advent that year.

Early in 2018 I found a publisher for these devotionals, so in the summer I found myself editing the whole lot, to tie them together in a way that would work for a book.

BEGINNING TO QUESTION MYSELF

During this editing process, as I read what I’d written the previous December, I started to think: Is anyone bothered about this? Do people care that I bought too much gift-wrap one year, or that I have a fear of under-catering, or that I don’t know how to use a real-life bookshop?

Of course all writers need to ask themselves questions as they write, challenging themselves to write deeper or more descriptively or in a more accessible style.

But the problem with the questions I was asking myself was that they were rooted in deep fear. Fear of what people would think of me. Fear of coming across like an idiot. Fear that literally no one would be able to relate to me. Fear that I was alone in my thoughts.

We read in 1 John 4:18 that ‘perfect love drives out fear’, and it can sound hollow to those of us whose fears are very real, very dominant and don’t look like they’re going anywhere. But I can tell you that it is only the love of God that made me confident to write openly and honestly about Advent: the fun traditions alongside the stresses and strains.

I have come to realise that I write for the people God puts in my path. That means it doesn’t matter if 99 people who read my writing think that I’m an idiot, if one person relates to what I’m saying so much that it draws them into closer connection with Jesus.

CULTURAL EXPECTATIONS

Letting go of the desire to meet others’ expectations as I write parallels the way I believe we need to let go of the cultural expectations of Christmas.

I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t decorate our trees, give presents or enjoy special meals – in fact, Redeeming Advent talks quite a bit about redeeming these ‘secular’ festivities to glorify God. 

But there are a lot of expectations around this time of year that weigh heavily on us, and these will be different for each one of us. 

Perhaps you are the person in the family who others expect to organise the Secret Santa/host Christmas/make travel plans – and it’s just draining all the joy out of you. 

Perhaps you’re a sucker for the John Lewis Christmas adverts, and feel you’ll never be able to meet this (unrealistic, by the way) cultural expectation of a beautiful Christmas from start to finish. 

Perhaps you feel the weight of your children’s expectations to provide elaborate presents, when you desperately want them to treasure Jesus first of all.

LET’S BE HONEST

This Advent, I want to plead with you: Can we be honest about Christmas? Please? Can we acknowledge the tricky family dynamics, the tight financial budget, the job uncertainty, the worry about our children, the state of our mental health, the marital difficulties, the grief, the loss, the sadness?

Because, if we do, I think we might discover better connection to others, as we share our burdens and empathise with the suffering of others.

And, even more importantly, I think we will discover more of the Jesus who came down to this damaged earth in a busy, messy way, who knew what it was like to be a refugee, an outcast, an oddball, a target of others’ attacks.

This, friends, is where we will find our perfect Christmas. Not in the perfectly arranged place settings at the Christmas table, nor in the perfectly coordinated baubles on our tree, but in the perfection of our Saviour, who endured the suffering caused by others, so that He might rescue us from ours.

Have a very blessed Christmas!

Lucy Rycroft blogs about parenting, adoption and faith at  The Hope-Filled Family. Her first book Redeeming Advent is an accessible 24-day Advent devotional and you can buy it here. Lucy lives in York with her husband Al and their four children.

BOOK GIVEAWAY!

Lucy has kindly provided a free copy for me to give away to one of my blog readers! To enter, please sign up to my mailing list below. If you are already signed up, simply make a comment about Lucy’s blog and I’ll include you in the draw. The deadline to sign up is Sunday 10 November – I’ll be choosing a winner on Monday 11 November.
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Chris Aslan on Christian fiction

I recently got in touch with many different Christian fiction authors, as I was preparing to write an article for Premier Christianity magazine entitled ‘The changing face of Christian fiction’. There was so much great material that we didn’t have room to include, so I’ve decided to create a mini-series with comments from authors that will hopefully give you an insight into their writing journey, why they write the type of books that they do and what they think of Christian fiction in general. 

We are kicking off this mini-series with Chris Aslan, author of Alabaster, Manacle (published by Lion Fiction) and new book Mosaic. So…over to Chris:

I probably shouldn’t admit this but I don’t tend to read ‘Christian fiction’ as published by Christian publishers, because I find it usually comes from America and tends to be either right-wing fear-mongering, too twee or with a heavy-handed message to which the story is subservient. I’d much rather read Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead trilogy or some Tolstoy. In fact, one of the reasons I wrote Alabaster, Manacle and Mosaic (Mosaic will be published next year or early 2021) is because of my frustration with not having anything to hand that I could give to my friends who aren’t Christians that wasn’t polemic. Where were the stories? 

My favourite writer in the Christian Fiction category is probably Patricia St. John. She wrote for children but tackled some tough issues and I wish she’d written for adults as well. Because she’d lived in the Middle East for many years, she was able to bring that world alive and her characters felt convincing and true. I wanted to write stories that wove in my own experiences of living for much of my life in rural traditional Muslim cultures. 

In Alabaster, the voice of Maryam came effortlessly to me because she’s a composite of some of the spirited and enterprising weavers who came to work in the carpet workshop I set up in a small desert oasis in Uzbekistan. Women outside the home were treated with suspicion and so these women put up with a lot. I longed for them to know how valued they were by God, even if they weren’t valued by their own community. 

I didn’t write Alabaster for Christians. I wrote it for Muslims and when I hear from Muslim women who’ve felt I’ve put into words some of their story, it’s better than any award! 

I’m reluctant to call my books Christian Fiction, much less a sub-genre of that. It’s not that I’m in any way ashamed of the truths within them, but that I want them read by people who don’t know Jesus and wouldn’t read stories with religious themes. 

In fact Philip Yancey kindly read both of them and sheepishly told me that it was only two thirds of the way through Alabaster that he suddenly realised what the story was really about. This was, of course, extremely gratifying as that was my intent. 

Sometimes stories have more resonance when they don’t lay everything out on the table in the first few pages. So, I avoid referring to the books as Biblical fiction, as to do so spoils the impact of suddenly realising that this is 1st-century Palestine.

As for Biblical fiction in general, I personally think it works best when compelling stories are told in which Jesus is key to the whole thing but not necessarily centre stage. Ben Hur is a classic example. I remember sitting on floor-mats with the Uzbek family I lived with watching it on TV. They loved it and were so moved when Jesus healed lepers. It wasn’t distributed by some kind of mission society but was broadcast in a majority Muslim country on national TV. 

That’s the power of a good story, well told, that’s got the salt in it that Jesus talked about, but isn’t over-salted and unpalatable. 

I wrote Alabaster fairly quickly and met the non-fiction editor for Lion Hudson at a writers’ event. I pitched Alabaster and asked her to read the first chapter and to keep going if she wanted to, and then maybe pass it on to whoever they were about to hire as fiction commissioning editor. She was really moved by it, as was the new editor, so it was a far easier journey than I’d expected. 

My challenge hasn’t been getting published but how to get these stories into the hands of people who don’t know Jesus yet. I figured that maybe the easiest way to do this is via the hands of people who do. 

If you would like to find out more about Chris’ books please click here.

And if you want to read the article on Christian Fiction that appeared in November’s issue of Premier Christianity you can request a free copy here. This particular issue will be available for request until November 25.

Chris was born in Turkey and spent his childhood there and in war-torn Beirut. After school, Chris spent two years at sea before studying media and journalism at Leicester University. He then moved to Khiva, a desert oasis in Uzbekistan, establishing a UNESCO workshop reviving 15th-century carpet designs and embroideries, creating income for women.

After a year in the UK writing his first (non-fiction) book, A Carpet Ride to Khiva, he moved to the Pamirs in Tajikistan, training yak herders to comb their yaks for their cashmere-like down, spending three years there. Next came two years in Kyrgyzstan living in the world’s largest natural walnut forest and establishing a wood-carving workshop. Chris has recently finished rowing and studying at Oxford and is now a curate at St. Barnabas, North Finchley, and author of Alabaster, Manacle and Mosaic. He returns to Central Asia whenever he can and conducts tours there.

How shame develops

An Insight into shame is published by CWR and can be purchased here.

It has been over a week since my latest book, An Insight into Shame, was published and so I felt it was about time I highlighted it in a blog post! Co-written with Heather Churchill, it looks at the difference between shame and guilt, how psychologists believe shame develops in each of us, various approaches to dealing with the threat of shame, understanding our own experiences with shame and finding healing from wounds from the past.

Heather is the Head of Counselling Training at Waverley Abbey College and has years of experience as a trainer, therapist and supervisor. It was a privilege to work on this book with her – I learned a great deal from her that has been so useful already.

We have included lots of real-life stories in the book, including our own. As I sometimes run an ‘unmasked: stories of authenticity’ blog on a Friday, I thought I’d share an extract that reveals how shame affected both of us right back in our childhoods.

There are a wide variety of theories that have been developed about shame, such as Jungian, Cognitive Behavioral, Psychodynamic etc. But, to simplify all their findings, it is probably accurate to say that the emotion of shame is believed by psychologists to be something that is formed early on in childhood. There is now almost universal agreement that the emotion of shame emerges during the toddler stage.[i]

Psychologists believe that shame plays a key role in the development of the self, impacting the way a person views and evaluates themselves. They recognise that children can evaluate from a surprisingly young age and form a ‘picture’ of themselves, which is basically an internalised view of who they are.[ii] Children also develop a view about how others perceive them. In many ways, psychologists would say that the only way a child can begin to know themselves is through the eyes of those who are closest to them – generally their parents or main early care givers.[iii]

Any difficulties in the relationships with care givers will have a huge impact at this stage, as high levels of shame are likely to develop. So we can see that shame is central to a person’s developing sense of self. 

Relationships with early care givers are not the only influences on the development of shame. Our early relationships with others can also be influential too, as our own memories of childhood interactions below illustrate.

Claire can still remember two instances at school in which she felt deep shame – just bringing them to mind causes the feelings to resurface. She moved around a lot as a child; having spent some time in America she stood in front of her new class back in England, a few days after a boy from Australia had started. She was greeted with a boy saying ‘not another one’ and felt such shame she wanted the ground to swallow her up. She continued to feel like an outsider much of the time. And, at the same school, she also regularly experienced the dreaded ‘walk of shame’ over to the PE team that had been forced to take her, as she was the only person not to have been picked to be on a team. 

Heather also has an early memory of when she was about four years old. Her class teacher was away so the headmaster was in charge of the class. She was asked to write something and Heather remembers trying really hard to write in her best handwriting. The headmaster walked around the class and stopped when he reached Heather’s work. He picked it up, tore it up and put it in the rubbish bin. Heather felt humiliated, embarrassed and ashamed, and picked up a belief that she was not good enough – even at the early age of four.

We go on to look at how these early experiences affect the way that we respond to the threat of shame even today.

An Insight into shame is published by CWR and can be purchased here.

[i]R.L. Mills, ‘Taking stock of the developmental literature on shame’, Developmental Review, Vol 25, Issue 1, 2005, pp26-63

[ii]R. Mills, P. Hastings, L. Serbib, D. Stack, J. Abela, K. Arbeau, and D. Lall, ‘Depressogenic Thinking and Shame Proneness in the Development of Internalisng Problems’, Child Psychiatry and Human Development, Vol 46, Issue 2, 2015, pp194–208

[iii]J. Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that binds you, (Florida: Health Communications, 2005), p8