*falls through the ceiling*
Greetings! it’s been a long time since I’ve been around here…
Oh good grief.
So yeah, it’s been a while. I wanted to start blogging again in August, but I also started a new job and besides that… I couldn’t figure out anything to say. All of my brain cells were going into working on DOTA, but more importantly, I was figuring out some Things about where I want to go in my career.
Because with this new stage of life comes a new reality… publishing.
Yes, I am actually on the track towards publishing. It feels crazy to even say it, but I have a developmental edit scheduled for Dust of the Arena in January 2027. I have no other confirmed publishing dates, but hopefully, Dust of the Arena will grace the world in late 2027/early 2028.
This summer was full of connections and new experiences… and a lot of questions. I got to meet some of my favorite authors in person, attend a conference full of Christian creatives, hang out for a week with young adults striving for the kingdom. Helped out at a camp serving kids from broken homes. Working a job that serves the community healthy food in a town living under the middle class line.
But really, what stood out to me was this question of who I was going to be, when I officially introduced myself to the world. What kind of author I wanted to grow into. What kind of books I would write and publish, after DOTA.
And… not all the answers were what I expected.
I’ve gained a lot of takeaways about who I want to be as a Christian indie author, and I thought, what better way to kick off my return to blogging than with a takeaway post?
So without further ado… here’s three things I’ve learned this summer.
The Deep Need For Explicitly Christian Books
If you read my previous post, you might have heard that this was a subject I was deep diving into. I really struggled with this topic this summer, more so in previous years. My whole writing life, I had been placated with the articles telling me to write virtues. To write Christian themes. If I was a being created in the image of God, my work would always bring glory to Him and always point to him, and that was enough. Right?
But that… answer hasn’t always felt enough. It felt like a cop-out. Like it was really something else holding me back, something more sinister.
And surprisingly… I found it at the conferences I went to.
The first one I went to was an… interesting experience. I honestly was in a sort of a mental funk, really high anxiety around it… I couldn’t lock in, and thus probably sabotaged some of my enjoyment potential. I was in between weeks working at camp and I think I needed another week for my brain to reset from the huge change I’d just experienced living away from home for three weeks.
But anyway, for being a Christian conference, it was… odd.
From day one, keynote speakers started making jokes at the expense of conservative Christians– you know, the type that think Pokemon has demonic inspirations and that Dungeons and Dragons has spells from cults? Yeah, those people.
People like me.
And some of the jokes were meant in good humor, sure. But there was a bitter edge to them. Sharpness. People laughed, and laughed again as various jabs were made, all under the guise of mirth. But sitting in the corner, watching the room, felt terribly… isolating. And such feelings were exacerbated as I strode through halls of fantasy tables adorned by D&D dice and stories with mythos that felt a bit too… edgy for Christian fiction.
And again, I’m not trying to hate on any specific people here. I am deeply uncomfortable with D&D. I’m deeply uncomfortable with Harry Potter. I have a vast knowledge about the reality of occult and it makes me more hesitant to indulge in certain types of fictional magic systems.
But the jabs got harsher over the days, until the final speaker (whom I will not name) dared to call Thomas Kinkaide “unChristian” for not wanting to paint darkness in his artwork. His entire speech was a rant against contemporary Christian art.
What?
Mind you, this is coming from the same people who spoke about being judged for liking Star Wars. They praise the community for being accepting.
And yet I’m watching this man slander another artist.
Does the speaker represent the whole conference? No.
But… it wasn’t just him who gave the vibe. Among a lot of the main faculty was the feeling that there was a chip on the shoulder, some deep hurt they never let go. Just covered with sarcasm.
I left the conference feeling very confused.
I had arrived hoping to learn some things about writing as a Christian creative in speculative circles… and all I came away with was a reflection of deep bitterness for explicitly Christian work, and conservative Christian circles.
Needless to say, it was confusing, and disheartening.
Because I still wasn’t satisfied.
Their arguments for why themes got across better didn’t make sense to me. People claim the book of Esther or the story of Paul preaching to the Greeks as to why we can still preach God in our stories without mentioning his name. And I’m not saying that all Christian fiction has to have explicitly Christian themes. But times have changed. We live in an age where God is a name that is used in cursewords, a faceless being who maybe created the world but has nothing to do with the humans in it.
God is not reverent in our times. People do not know him in these times. They think they can be their own gods, be good enough to live in eternity.
And no one will answer my questions on how Christian “themes” help them see the light.
Fast forward to APEX, a kickoff event created by the college alternative program Unbound. This was my second year going, and it was so lifegiving. I got to hang out with other young adults who wanted to further the kingdom of God in whatever area of life they were in— but also, I got to hear from speakers on how to do that.
It was at that conference that I had some hard talks with God.
What was holding me back from writing explicitly Christian fiction?
It came down to fear. I want to write for general markets. I want to write explicitly Christian stories for general markets— literally the thing everybody says you shouldn’t do. It’s what drops ratings, brings hate reviews, and confuses readers.
But I was holding back because of fear. Fear of being rejected by people I never met. Fear of failing.
Fear of a one star review that didn’t exist.
It was at Unbound that I learned that there was no way that I was going to write about true hope and truth… unless I pointed to where that truth was coming from. Unless I put a name and a person to the cause.
I had to be bold again.
I used to be a very bold evangelizer as a kid. Somewhere along the way, fear and anxiety took that.
I want to be that bold evangelizer again with my fiction. And I want to do it well.
Whether or not all my books WILL have explicit Christianity is still going to depend. I know DOTA is. I expect that a vast majority will involve a hybrid of the characters being Christians and having an expressed Christian worldview but the arcs don’t necessarily revolve around specifically Christian elements.
But I don’t want to hold back because I’m afraid of offending people or ruffling feathers. That’s not what Jesus did.
However…
There’s a Difference Between Boldness and Judgement
This is the second Very Hard Lesson I’ve had to learn this summer.
I tend to have a very black and white mind in some aspects, and I am a Very Passionate Person when it comes to books.
As such… I can also get very snarky about literature. Especially Christian literature (or movies).
I fear this is in part the kind of reviews I consume… I mostly read negative reviews because I find the negative reviews to be more honest about the content in the book. But sometimes, people can be Very Unkind in their reviews.
Sometimes, when I’m mad about something the author did, I can be one of those people.
So I’m trying to find a balance in my reviews. I would like to write book reviews that can still be honest about the mishaps in a book… but still be gentle about it. I’m still figuring out that balance. I don’t want to be known as the author who rants angrily against other peoples’ books, that’s not nice.
I won’t be editing my past reviews because… honestly some of the books I ranted the most about were rather upsetting in their content and I have no desire to drag myself through that again. But for future reviews, I will try to be less critical of books and movies I consume.
Because in the end, these are still creatives, humans made in the image of God.
It’s Okay to Be The Square Peg In the Round Hole
I feel like as writers, once we start getting into marketing it’s heavily drilled into us to find our people. Find our tribe. Find our niche. Find where we… fit.
And despite my best efforts to follow that advice to a T… I still feel like a square peg in a round hole sometimes. I still feel like my project doesn’t “fit” my brand, “fit” the market, “fit” the genre.
But I think it’s okay to be the square peg in the round hole— if that’s where Christ wants you to be. Jesus was definitely a square-peg-in-a-round-hole in his time (or maybe a round peg in a square hole?…). And sometimes… we’re not all called to write stories that fit neatly within this buzzword or that niche or the market over there or even that publishing process. Sometimes, it’s okay to let go of keywords and tags and titles in the name of following the path Christ set out.
And sometimes it means you’re gonna be the fish swimming upstream. Sometimes it means you’re the odd duck in the group.
But our friend groups and our brands and our niches don’t define who we are as writers. Being a writer doesn’t even really define who we are. We are simply created and loved by Christ, given a mission to glorify Him further the Good News.
If that’s all we do, it is enough. Or dayenu, in Hebrew. Sometimes, I think writers need to hear dayenu more. It is enough. If you are loving people as Christ loved them, telling them about Christ’s love, and serving him with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind… dayenu. It is enough.
It’s okay if you don’t check all the boxes, you’re not doing everything the writing gurus tell you to.
You follow Christ and you follow the steps He tells you to take.
Dayenu.
It is enough.
And that leads into a final, bonus point that’s sort of a subset of this.
You are allowed to make mistakes.
You are allowed to be imperfect.
You are allowed to have that one typo in that post from years ago.
You are allowed to write that first, second, third draft badly.
You are allowed to grow, and learn.
Mistakes can be corrected later.
Debuts can be republished (not ideal, but they can be).
You do not have to do this all on your own. You have someone out there who loves you, even if no one on earth does.
“But He said to me; My Grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.”
1 Corinthians 12:9
Jesus’s power is made perfect. In weakness.
Sit on that for a bit.
Let me know what you learn from it ;).
***
I will be blogging once a month for now, in the latter half of the month since I post my email newsletter at the beginning of the month. If you are not signed up for that, you can find a signup here or at the very bottom of the site. I hope that the school year (for those of you in school) is an easy retransition, and I can’t wait to see what will be coming next in this new season of EquineontheMind.
Le chaim, my friends. Have a blessed week <3.