I do two-part posts more often than I intend. Because fairly often I get to working a line of thought out in a post, to the extent that I lose track of the original point I wanted to make.
And so it is with this topic.
The thing I was actually excited to say (in the beginning) was this.
Sometimes people react to my novels with the comment, “Well, there’s too much violence and weird stuff in them.”
I have no objection to this (OK, I have a small emotional objection, but nothing I take seriously). This person is clearly not part of my intended audience, and I wish them well in their preferred style and genre, if any.
Because I didn’t write my books for them.
My books are written–primarily–for Christians who struggle with the questions of suffering and evil, and for non-Christians who might possibly be open to considering a Christian perspective on the Great Problem.
That’s why Pastor Harry Gunderson in Wolf Time is crippled, and has lost his wife. That’s why Father Aillil in the Erling books watched his sister raped and taken into slavery, and has never been able to find her again. That’s why he struggles with his own guilt for a crime of his youth.
I don’t say this is the only legitimate moral reason for writing a novel.
But it’s mine.
Out of town this weekend, and then Norway Day at Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis on Sunday.
Oh, and check my book trailer if you haven’t yet experienced its awesomeality.
The world isn’t pretty. God does not give us a pass once we become Christians. And though He forgives us, we still struggle.
We each have to write what we are called to. Some people like “bonnet and buggy” fiction.
My own fiction has things that make people squirm. When the pagan protagonist attends a human sacrifice is one of them. A reviewer said this about it:
That’s a review to be proud of.