Tag: Christian fiction

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. 

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.

World mental health day

A drawing my daughter did this week for ‘Inktober’, which I felt beautifully encapsulated how fragile we can sometimes feel.

Today is World Mental Health Awareness day. It is great that we have such important issues flagged up on special days, but of course, whether they are dealing with short-term or severe, long-term mental ill-health, many face difficult realities day in, day out. They are the heroes. The ones who have to be brave each and every day – just to get out of bed at times. And not only do they have to face their own inner critic, but, sadly, there is still so much stigma surrounding mental health issues. That is why anything that raises awareness is to be welcomed.

As I was doing research for a piece on Christian fiction for Premier Christianity magazine, which is due to be published in November’s issue, I was, for example, surprised and extremely pleased to learn that there are a number of novelists out there tackling this subject in a sensitive manner in their work.

There has been a plethora of blogs and comments via social media today, much of it more eloquent than I could probably be. So I decided that today I would let a few of those authors speak on this subject themselves, as they seek to provide deeper understanding amongst us all, as well as championing those who are facing this reality each day. 

May I encourage you to take time to learn more about mental ill-health, as I can assure you that you will know people who are struggling right now – perhaps you are yourself. Take time to read – either the fiction the authors below have written or some of the helpful non-fiction that Christian writers and counsellors have put together. I’ve suggested a few of each at the end of this blog.

Firstly, Sharon Garlough Brown has written the hugely successful Sensible Shoes series, which I have mentioned many times here. Her latest book is about Wren, a social worker and person of faith who has her own struggles with mental ill-health. Here is what Sharon told me about why she wanted to write about this subject: “With so many people suffering from mental health issues, I wanted to explore with deep compassion the struggles, heartaches and sense of isolation experienced not only by those afflicted with depression and anxiety, but by those who love them and often feel powerless to help.” 

Angela Hobday (writing as Annie Try) centres her novels around characters living with or overcoming mental health problems – and usually solving a mystery too! With her background as a clinical psychologist she has “worked with clients whose lives are destroyed partly by their mental illness but also by the attitudes of those around them. In my eyes, those who find every day a struggle yet still achieve their goals, or even attempt to, are heroes. I want them to be viewed as such by my readership.”

Fiction:

Shades of Light by Sharon Garlough Brown

Red Cabbage Blue by Annie Try

Non-fiction:

Honesty Over Silence by Patrick Regan

Learning to Breathe by Rachael Newham

The Power of Belonging by Will van der Hart and Rob Waller

The Insight Guides are incredibly helpful on all sorts of subjects, many connected with mental health issues. Here are three that I have had the privilege of working with experts on:

An Insight into Self-acceptance
An Insight into Shame
Insight into Burnout

The long and winding road

I am delighted to welcome Fiona Lloyd, author of the intensely honest, moving and funny The Diary of a (Trying to be Holy) Mum to my blog. I had the pleasure of proofreading it, and can thoroughly recommend it. Here, she explains how writing has always been a part of her life – and details the journey towards becoming a published author…

I was 10 when I self-published my first book: a dozen or so of my own poems (written out in my best handwriting), with pencilled illustrations and a cover purloined from an old calendar. I was immensely proud of myself.

Fast-forward a few years into my teens, and I had titles in my head for several more books. Some even made it onto paper, although I never seemed to get much beyond the first page. As I grew up, my dreams faded: I got a sensible job (in teaching), and settled down to married life followed by – at a respectable interval – three children.

It wasn’t until I was in my mid-30s that the idea of writing began to niggle at me again. I started work on a non-fiction book, aimed at helping people to grow closer to God, but my prose was stilted and formal, and relied far too heavily on quotes from other books I had read.

Then one afternoon, while doing the school run, the phrase ‘the day it all went wrong’ drifted into my head. This triggered off all sorts of questions in my mind. Who was talking? What had happened to make it such a bad day? And what were the consequences? Gradually, the character of a flustered mum, trying to do her best (but often failing) formed in my head.

WRITING FROM EXPERIENCE

As a young mum, I frequently felt overwhelmed by the responsibility of looking after three small children (much as I loved them). It appeared as if everyone else knew exactly what to do: I thought I was the only one whose toddler had tantrums in the supermarket, and whose children who refused to eat more than one variety of vegetable. If I tried to set time aside to pray, it was pretty much guaranteed that I would be snoring 30 seconds later. Worse still, there always seemed to be plenty of people around to tell me I wasn’t doing it right.

By the time I got to child number three, I was older and maybe a little wiser. I could see that other mums often struggled with similar issues, leaving them lonely and discouraged. My book started to take shape, inspired by the things I knew that I and others had wrestled with. I hoped that if it ever got to the stage of being read by other young mums it would help them feel less isolated.

GAINING CONFIDENCE IN THE WRITING PROCESS

By now, I had plenty of ideas in my head, but lacked confidence to develop them into a full narrative. I tackled other (shorter) writing projects, with varying degrees of success. I joined the Association of Christian Writers, finding valuable advice and supportive friendships. Still – after several years – my words petered out around the 5,000 mark: I found I spent more time editing the work I’d already done than adding new material.

What eventually got things moving was my decision to take part in NaNoWriMo [National Novel Writing Month] in November 2014. I knew I was unlikely to hit their proposed target of 50,000 words in a month…but I did manage 20,000. I was delighted: I was also reinvigorated. I knew I needed a more defined story-arc, so I spent my work commutes having lengthy conversations with my protagonist, Becky, about what was going on in her life. My word count crept steadily up until August 2015, when – after much reworking and tea-drinking – my first draft was completed.

SUBMITTING MY WORK TO A PUBLISHER

One of the advantages of having spent such a long time on it was that I knew (from conversations with other writers) that several rewrites would be required before it was ready to go off to a publisher. I quite enjoy a bit of nit-picking, so I spent many happy hours deleting unnecessary or over-used words – ‘just’, ‘actually’ and ‘but’ were popular culprits. Over the next year I tweaked and re-tweaked. A few kind friends read the manuscript for me, resulting in yet more amendments. Even after I’d incorporated their suggestions, I agonised about whether I’d really got it to the point where it was ready for submission.

This raised another issue: where to send it? I’d written a clearly Christian work of fiction – because I wanted to encourage Christian mums – only to discover that there are very few publishers taking on such books nowadays. I wondered about going down the self-publishing route – and I have friends who’ve done this very successfully – but I wasn’t sure I felt able to take on such a huge task.

It was through a writing friend that I found out about Instant Apostle, a small – but growing – Christian publishing company. At the time, they’d just taken on a second novel from her, and she knew that they were looking to publish some more overtly Christian books. I did some last-minute fine-tuning, dithered for a few weeks, prayed like mad, and finally sent off my first three chapters plus synopsis to Instant Apostle.

BEING ENCOURAGED

A few weeks later, an email pinged into my in-box: they liked what they’d seen – could I send the rest of the manuscript? Could I? Could I?? I’d pressed ‘send’ almost before I’d finished reading the email. This time, the wait was much shorter. On 17 May 2017, I received a phone call: Instant Apostle wanted to publish my book! I’ve been very pleased with the support they’ve given me, and I think the finished product – now entitled The Diary of a (Trying to be Holy) Mum – looks amazing. I’m trying to keep both feet on the floor, and my prayer is still very much that young mums (and others) will be encouraged by it.

So, I’ll leave the closing thoughts to another friend who has just read the book.

‘It’s so reassuring,’ she told me, ‘to know that I’m not the only one who struggles.’

I can’t ask for more than that.

Fiona Lloyd is vice-chair of the Association of Christian Writers, and is married with three grown-up children. Her first novel, The Diary of a (trying to be holy) Mum, is being published by Instant Apostle on 18 January 2018. Fiona has also had short stories published in Woman Alive and Writers’ News, and has written articles for Christian Writer and Together Magazine. Fiona works part-time as a music teacher, and is a member of the worship-leading team at her local church. You can find her on Twitter: @FionaJLloyd & @FionaLloyd16

 

Author profile: Sue Russell

Sue Russell’s fascinating new book, A Vision of Locusts, has just been published. I asked her some questions about it – and about writing in general.

Could you briefly describe how you first started writing?
At some level I knew I wanted to be a writer from a very early age – maybe even 5! I was always reading and making up stories, and as time went on I branched out into children’s stories, poetry and other things. With work and family life writing got crowded out but it was always there, the quiet insistent voice, the unappeased itch. My complaints made a group of friends issue the challenge to pin down the first draft of the adult novel I had always wanted to write – before my 50th birthday. Leviathan with a Fish-hook was the result, but it took another 8 years of hiding it away, revising and editing, writing a sequel, submitting and being rejected, for it to appear in public.

You have written various books, which you would describe as all fitting into the genre of ‘realistic contemporary British Christian fiction for adults’. What do you mean by this, and would you say this latest book  fits into this category too?
‘Realistic contemporary British Christian fiction for adults’: it’s a bit of a mouthful but yes, I am aiming it at an adult audience (although arguably A Vision of Locusts, with its adolescent protagonist, could be read by young adults also). It is written openly from a Christian viewpoint with some Christian characters, but without, I hope, any in-your-face heavy sell or preaching. The backgrounds are British, a stumbling block for some, an attraction for others, or so I gather; the time-settings are recent – 1990s to 2011 so far. I tend to write stories that happened about 5 years before the time of writing!

As for realistic, my characters, whether Christian or not, are, I hope, real believable people, with doubts and fears and failures as well as delights and triumphs. I feel there’s a place for portraying Christians as normal people with recognisable life issues, and I like to think my clergy characters go some way to redressing the poor image of ministers in the media. The ones I know are self-sacrificing, genuine, hard-working, sometimes even saintly. They certainly aren’t weak-chinned buffoons.

The premise of the book is fascinating – could you give a brief description and explain where the inspiration came from?
To be honest with you, I don’t remember. Where do ideas come from? Where does inspiration spring? I suspect it all comes from several sources, among which may be one’s own particular leanings. I had the idea of a small Christian community threatened by a malevolent outside force. I’ve long been interested in the thin wall between what is deemed normal and what isn’t, in our own age. (In some of my other books mental illnesses are present.) I leave it to the reader to decide just what is the issue with Paul/Will. The idea of an unlikely heroine isn’t new, nor the idea that salvation may come out of left field. But as with most novels, I suspect, as the story unrolled  and the characters took on life,  a fair bit of my original concept altered.

Your characters are strong, and it is great to get an insight into their thoughts throughout the book – was that an intentional device to help the reader feel more connected to them?
I’m not sure whether the insights into the characters’ thoughts in Locusts was intentional or not – it seemed to be the best vehicle for understanding their private motivations. I have used internal monologue quite a lot in my books, and with the Christian characters in particular it’s a way of showing sincere faith struggles as well as how the characters cope with the general problems of life.

Could you give us an insight into your writing process? For instance, do you map out each story first or does it evolve over time? How immersed do you get into the characters and scenes – do you work for an extended period of time solely on the book or do you fit the writing around other things?
My writing process seems to have altered with each book. I am in some ways less confident now than I was all that time ago when I plunged blithely in and just wrote: perhaps because I know more now, and also because I dislike the prospect of major rewriting arising from gaping plot-holes! So I do a lot of research, note-taking, cogitating, making diagrams, reading how-to books (some more helpful than others) and conferring, before chapter one gets under way. Things can and do change en route – new ideas pop up – it’s just that with a plan these changes are less likely to derail the story! Once I hit my stride I can write very fast and for concentrated periods, but I will stop and do something else in between; otherwise (quite apart from the demands of normal life) I might just get a bit unhinged – it’s very easy for characters to take on more reality than perhaps is healthy!

Do you have another project you are thinking ahead to now?
My next project is in fact already well under way, although I haven’t yet written a single word of the story itself. After a lengthy period of thinking I’m beginning to understand how this story will pan out and what its intended payoff will be. Any more than that will be a spoiler!