When did you first start reading Christian fiction? What kept you reading? Here is my story . . .
I was a very rebellious kid in highschool. A Christian friend of my mom's loaned her some novels by Jeanette Oke. I was a big reader. I usually read stuff like Stephen King, but I LOVED those Jeanette Oke books. I read them over and over.
When I was 17 and pregnant out of wedlock, I gave my heart to the Lord. A few years later, when I was first married, I remember going to a Christian bookstore and glancing at their fiction section. We didn't have much money, and I only had enough for one novel. I was looking through a few and someone pointed me to Bodie Thoene. I picked up Vienna Prelude and LOVED it! (And amazingly, people often tell me that my books remind them of Bodie's.)
After that, I started reading more Christian fiction. And then I started writing it. (Although it took about nine years for me to have a novel published from the time I first started writing.)
To me Christian Fiction became light, hope, and peace to my soul. There was tension, intrigue, and conflict, but I felt good after reading those stories--unlike the agnst I felt after books like Pet Cementary!
Christian fiction shared good news to me when I wasn't looking for it or wanting it. Recently, I received an email from someone who said she read my novel, Night Song, and it was the first Christian novel she'd ever read. She was surprised she liked it!
It's my goal to share the hope I found.
So how about you?
AND...Don't forget to scoot on over and enter the The Biggest Book Give-away EVER!
3 comments:
This is a great question! I can't remember which was my very first Christian novel (I'd been reading some children's and YA titles when I was young), but my first adult Christian fiction novel was either Christy by Catherine Marshall or Piercing the Darkness by Frank Peretti. Here's how it happened with both.
I was bored. Really bored and looking for something to read. My Mom went down in the basement with me to help me find something, and she pulled Christy by Catherine Marshall out of a box. She's bought it used at one point, I guess waiting for my sister and I to get a little older. Well, I didn't know if I would like it, but I certainly did. I ended up reading Christy several times.
With Peretti my Dad was reading him first (the Darkness novels). I remember being a kid on a camping trip in the tent asking him what he was reading. He couldn't quite explain it, and now I understand why. He said I probably needed to be a little bit older before I read them. I ended up being thirteen or something when I finally did. I loved them, too!
Great question, indeed.
April of '07 I picked up "This Present Darkness" by Frank Peretti.
It rocked my world.
I started eating up the Christian Fiction novels (supernatural genre.) I fell in love with the "what if"...and the stories of redemption.
Before then I hadn't read anything but the Left Behind series. I wasn't much of a reader (was in Grad school...that's enough reading if you ask me**smile**)
Now, between writing supernatural fiction and reading it, I'm having a BLAST!
When I read my first Christian novel, I believe I was 13 or 14. I read Frank Peretti's "This Present Darkness" and I have been hooked ever since!
Wherever I could find one of his books, I quickly grabbed it up and read it immediately.
I have read many since then, but really find myself hooked on supernatural fiction and writing it too.
I was writing a book for about a year, then I did the foolish thing and threw it all away because I let it get to me, ya know thinking its too much to do for me; I also kept saying the writing wasn't good enough.
Now that I think about it, I just think I wasnt emotionally (or spiritually) ready to take up writing professionally.
Now I feel the Lord really tugging at my heart to do this. I am going to take that leap of faith and write!
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