Faith

Image: The Northern Lights over Ohio during the summer of 2024.

With Easter approaching it seemed like a good time to address the intersection of faith and writing. For me writing is an act of faith. When I think about the thousands of hours invested in a manuscript without knowing if it will ever be published, let alone read by anyone, if I did not have faith, I could not do it. The interesting thing is that this act of faith is not about getting the book published or about writing a bestseller. I have faith that the work I put in on the story is worth it, regardless of what happens to the manuscript once I'm finished. That is my approach to life. Outcomes cannot be guaranteed. The work is the reward.

All of my novels are about faith, in one way or another. I know that statement surprises some people. My characters would never be described as paragons of virtue. My response would be to read the bible. I view the bible as a library of God stories. Many of the men and women in the bible rebel against what is asked of them before they finally take that leap of faith and do as directed. The were not 'born holy' as it were, as least not in their own minds, but they do act on faith. That is what I like to explore: what brings people to faith? What brings them to act--they may never see it as an act of faith--for something bigger than themselves, something that they have resisted all of their lives up until this moment? If I can capture that, I have written something powerful.

My main characters--an orphan who has no place in his society, a concentration camp guard forgiven by an inmate, a mob enforcer trying to protect the people he cares about, a widower dealing with the daughter of the drunk driver who killed his wife--all find themselves asked to do things that seem foreign to them. Their success or failure drives the narrative of their novel.

Since I'm here, I'll also address the conflict between faith and science. There is no conflict. Science is about building knowledge through testing and experimentation, i.e. proving things. Faith is the belief in something unseen or not proven. Science and faith operate in different provenances of knowledge and cannot interact. In fact, if science could prove the existence of God, it would destroy faith. This world needs both faith and science, and each should respect the provenance of the other.

We must not abide cruelty.

Win a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire: I work with Reader's Favorite on the Kindle book giveaway. If you go to https://readersfavorite.com/book-giveaway/love/1 you can sign up for the monthly giveaway. You can scroll through the list of giveaways (over 500 each month) or sort the list by title or author to find Love: a novel of grief and desire and put your name in for this month's drawing. Good luck!