Greetings!

[Mark Evand]

Hello! I'm in Oklahoma, after spending most of my life in eastern Missouri. I was a volunteer youth director most of the 1990s, then somehow got out of church for a few years before the Lord got my attention following a stroke in 2008. One of my biggest desires is to write Christian fiction.

 

[InTheLight]

Welcome to the forum, Mark.

I'm an avid reader of novels, and I've read my share of Christian fiction. Some of my favorite authors are Chris Walley, Randy Singer, Shane Johnson, James Beau Seigneur, Alton Gansky, Randy Ingermanson. Obviously I like sci-fi, adventure, and legal thrillers. I've toyed with the idea of writing a Christian novel, even went so far as doing an outline, some character sketches, and writing a couple of scenes, but have never sat down and hammered it out.

What genre of Christian fiction are you interested in pursuing?

 

[Mark Evand]

Welcome to the forum, Mark.

I'm an avid reader of novels, and I've read my share of Christian fiction. Some of my favorite authors are Chris Walley, Randy Singer, Shane Johnson, James Beau Seigneur, Alton Gansky, Randy Ingermanson. Obviously I like sci-fi, adventure, and legal thrillers. I've toyed with the idea of writing a Christian novel, even went so far as doing an outline, some character sketches, and writing a couple of scenes, but have never sat down and hammered it out.

What genre of Christian fiction are you interested in pursuing?

My problem is, I've spent 25 years bouncing around from genre to genre, both Christian & secular. In '91 I came very close to launching a YA detective series with Bethany House. Now I think I've found my sub-genre, men's Christian fiction -- which I didn't even know existed until a couple of years ago! (You usually have a hero & a love interest, but their romance is secondary to whatever action is going on around them.)

I'm working on a novel set in a small Mo. town in 1927, with the high school football coach as the hero. He gradually falls for a first-year English teacher. He is a widower who lost his faith after his wife died while he was away in WWI, but he is about as color(race)-blind as a man of that time & place could be. She leads him back to faith & he makes her re-evaluate her Confederate heritage-based racial ideas WHILE they run afoul of the Al Capone of St. Louis & his hit men!

 

[InTheLight]

My problem is, I've spent 25 years bouncing around from genre to genre, both Christian & secular. In '91 I came very close to launching a YA detective series with Bethany House. Now I think I've found my sub-genre, men's Christian fiction -- which I didn't even know existed until a couple of years ago! (You usually have a hero & a love interest, but their romance is secondary to whatever action is going on around them.)

I had no idea there was a men's Christian fiction genre. Can you give me some titles of some of the better selling books?

I'm working on a novel set in a small Mo. town in 1927, with the high school football coach as the hero. He gradually falls for a first-year English teacher. He is a widower who lost his faith after his wife died while he was away in WWI, but he is about as color(race)-blind as a man of that time & place could be. She leads him back to faith & he makes her re-evaluate her Confederate heritage-based racial ideas WHILE they run afoul of the Al Capone of St. Louis & his hit men!

Hmmm...sounds like a lot of historical research is in the works. I get the theme you're going after, but why 1927?

 

[Mark Evand]

I had no idea there was a men's Christian fiction genre. Can you give me some titles of some of the better selling books?



Hmmm...sounds like a lot of historical research is in the works. I get the theme you're going after, but why 1927?

It's a time period generally and a year specifically that have long fascinated me. 19th-Century America meets modern-day America. So much going on: first real modern media icon that summer in Lindbergh, sports now BIG, with Babe Ruth, Red Grange, Dempsey & Tunney HUGE icons themselves; Lincoln Highway opened in 1926, roads improving all the time, travel by car has become open to the average family; Silent movie industry at its ZENITH (with the first dialogue film coming out that fall, about to change everything!), women doing considerable writing/directing in Hollywood, brief period where a happy ending wasn't required to be the heroine getting married (Incidentally, one of the VERY FEW apparently legit salvation experiences in a non-Christian feature film that year in Sadie Thompson!); U.S. enjoying financial/credit boom, with radio becoming big, other gadgets ... just on the bring of the bubble bursting. Battles over traditional beliefs/behavior going on; etc.

 

[InTheLight]

Yes, I can see the reasoning behind why you picked that era.

One thing I've noticed about Christian Fiction romance novels - - probably 99% of them have one of the main characters as having a deceased spouse. I think I know the reasons behind this. Why did you decide to have your main character be a widower?

Sent from my Motorola Droid Turbo using Tapatalk.

 

[Mark Evand]

Yes, I can see the reasoning behind why you picked that era.

One thing I've noticed about Christian Fiction romance novels - - probably 99% of them have one of the main characters as having a deceased spouse. I think I know the reasons behind this. Why did you decide to have your main character be a widower?

Sent from my Motorola Droid Turbo using Tapatalk.

By the way, I wasn't intentionally avoiding your other question. I haven't read a lot in this sub-genre. My first ones were by Paul Meier. I actually read the second one first, then found the first one. One was The Skeleton in God's Closet, where a noted archeologist harbored such hatred against Christianity that he went to tremendous lengths to plant a phony letter from Joseph of Arimathia to Nicodimus, confessing to being part of a plot to fake the Resurrection -- even using a scrap of papyrus from the right era to do it on, with appropriate ink, so that it would carbon testing would verify it. Some 25 years later he leads a dig in which it is unearthed. The hero, an archeologist/author who is in love with this guy's daughter, has to put the pieces together & prove it was faked before mass chaos erupts, world-wide. The other I read, The Constantine Codex, he has later married this gal (also a top researcher) & she finds what turns out to be the missing ending from Mark. Those two were enjoyable, even though his hero was Greek Orthodox. By the third one of his I started, his anti-evangelical viewpoint had become too pronounced to ignore & I put it down after a couple of chapters.
Another in the genre I read was Deepest Waters by Dan Walsh, about a newlywed couple heading back from California with a nice little cache of gold, when their ship sinks (based on the SS Central America), she is rescued & he is (wrongly) presumed dead. Always, a little romance, but when the 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through plot complication arises it's usually a grave physical danger, not a misunderstanding between the main characters, like in virtually all romances.

 

[Mark Evand]

Yes, I can see the reasoning behind why you picked that era.

One thing I've noticed about Christian Fiction romance novels - - probably 99% of them have one of the main characters as having a deceased spouse. I think I know the reasons behind this. Why did you decide to have your main character be a widower?

Sent from my Motorola Droid Turbo using Tapatalk.

On the widow question: It just works well. No tiptoeing around divorce, etc. In this case, he had been saved as a teen & had been very active in church through college. I needed something earthshaking enough to have temporarily broken his faith. He was away on the battleship Texas when she miscarried & still there when she died during the flu pandemic -- helpless to anything but write letters.

 

[InTheLight]

By the way, I wasn't intentionally avoiding your other question. I haven't read a lot in this sub-genre. My first ones were by Paul Meier. I actually read the second one first, then found the first one. One was The Skeleton in God's Closet, where a noted archeologist harbored such hatred against Christianity that he went to tremendous lengths to plant a phony letter from Joseph of Arimathia to Nicodimus, confessing to being part of a plot to fake the Resurrection -- even using a scrap of papyrus from the right era to do it on, with appropriate ink, so that it would carbon testing would verify it. Some 25 years later he leads a dig in which it is unearthed. The hero, an archeologist/author who is in love with this guy's daughter, has to put the pieces together & prove it was faked before mass chaos erupts, world-wide. The other I read, The Constantine Codex, he has later married this gal (also a top researcher) & she finds what turns out to be the missing ending from Mark. Those two were enjoyable, even though his hero was Greek Orthodox. By the third one of his I started, his anti-evangelical viewpoint had become too pronounced to ignore & I put it down after a couple of chapters.

I have read the Skeleton in God's Closet and thought it was good but the more I read, the less I liked it. I still thought it was pretty good. One scene that bugged me was the world wide ecumenical communion service. I'm sorry, I just can't see that happening. (Or am I thinking of something else I've read?) Also, IIRC there was some glaring fact the author kept ignoring in the effort to cast doubt on the resurrection. Can't remember what it was though. If I remember the book ended by pointing out

Spoiler: Spoiler for Ending.

that the grave where they allegedly found Jesus' bones could not have been his grave.

Perhaps that was the glaring thing that diminished my enjoyment of it.

I think Maier's background is Lutheran. Is that correct?

I remember starting a book about finding the ending of Mark but I think it was a different title. I stopped reading that about a third of the way through because it was downright boring. Can't remember the name of that one, or the author.

Another in the genre I read was Deepest Waters by Dan Walsh, about a newlywed couple heading back from California with a nice little cache of gold, when their ship sinks (based on the SS Central America), she is rescued & he is (wrongly) presumed dead. Always, a little romance, but when the 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through plot complication arises it's usually a grave physical danger, not a misunderstanding between the main characters, like in virtually all romances.

I'll check that one out on Amazon.

 

[InTheLight]

On the widow question: It just works well. No tiptoeing around divorce, etc. In this case, he had been saved as a teen & had been very active in church through college. I needed something earthshaking enough to have temporarily broken his faith. He was away on the battleship Texas when she miscarried & still there when she died during the flu pandemic -- helpless to anything but write letters.

Yes, the fact that there is no divorce issues is the primary reason, IMO. Another reason is that it tells the reader that the character is not a virgin, thus is s&xually experienced, and may have, shall we say, longings? All of this is unspoken, of course.

 

[righteousdude2]

Hello! I'm in Oklahoma, after spending most of my life in eastern Missouri. I was a volunteer youth director most of the 1990s, then somehow got out of church for a few years before the Lord got my attention following a stroke in 2008. One of my biggest desires is to write Christian fiction.

Glad you're here ....

 

[Mark Evand]

Glad you're here ....

Thanks! Good to be here.