When your novels have faith and romance and suspense, which of those elements is the easiest for you to write?
Faith is the easiest. Sometimes I have to sort of dial it back.
When I started writing Christian books, I didn’t really know anything about the market. At the time, there really weren’t suspense novels in the Christian market. I was coming from the romance market, and I was learning my way. But the one thing I did know is that I wanted the faith element to really have an impact on my readers.
In that that first book I wrote, I had my Christian character falling to her knees a lot and praying a lot. My editor had to show me, well, that may be what would happen in real life, but your readers may not buy that. They may not think that seems authentic. He kind of had to teach me how to restrain it a little bit and pull it back so that I’m not preachy.
Over the years, the faith element comes very naturally to me. I write about characters who don’t have it all together, who maybe are suffering in some way—or I put them through the suffering—and that makes it easy for me to get the faith element in. I think people who are reading my books are suffering in a lot of ways. They’re going through trials, and I want to show them that even though God doesn’t necessarily erase all our trials, He certainly is there for us through them. Romans 8:28 you know really applies.
As long as I kind of keep that in my mind as I’m writing, the faith element just weaves its way naturally through my plots.
How is faith generally reflected in your stories?
I first try to tell a great story, and my worldview naturally comes through. I think every writer has a specific worldview that works their way into their books. Mine happens to be a Christian worldview.
Faith is always a part of my plot. An example is my Cape Refuge series. That first book, Cape Refuge, opens with the murder of a beloved couple in town, and their daughters are determined to find the killer while they deal with their own grief.
The theme through those books is why God allows suffering. I have a character who wants to be as far removed from her parents’ ministry as she can get, because she’s outraged at God for letting them die that way. But over the course of four books, she comes to a better understanding of who they were and why they did what they did, and she begins to understand how God used what happened in their lives.
My Restoration series—beginning with Last Light—was about a massive global power outage, because of some electromagnetic pulses that knock civilization to its knees. My modern family who were addicted to technology now have to live without transportation, communication, currency, electricity or any technology. They come to the place where they have to decide whether to hoard the food they had left, or share with others—even if it means they risk starving themselves. They choose to put their Christianity into action and help the desperate neighbors around them.
While people are looting and killing to survive, this one family tries to be light in the darkness, even while they’re having to defend themselves from all the danger around them. They change in drastic ways that wouldn’t have been possible without the hardship. I take that family through some tough times before it’s all over.
So, the faith element is a critical aspect of the plot. It’s not just plugged in. I want to write page-turners that entertain my readers, but ideally, I’d also like to challenge them and encourage them before they get to the last page.
Visit Terri Blackstock’s author page here: https://www.familyfiction.com/authors/terri-blackstock
If I Live
If I Run #3
Terri Blackstock
Zondervan
The hunt is almost over…
Casey Cox is still on the run after being indicted for murder. The hunt that began with her bloody footprints escalates, and she’s running out of places to hide. Her face is all over the news, and her disguises are no longer enough. It’s only a matter of time before someone recognizes her.
Dylan Roberts, the investigator who once hunted her, is now her only hope. Terrifying attempts on Dylan’s life could force Casey out of hiding. The clock is ticking on both their lives, but exposing the real killers is more complicated than they knew. Amassing the evidence to convict their enemies draws Dylan and Casey together, but their relationship has consequences. Will one life have to be sacrificed to protect the other?
With If I Live, Terri Blackstock takes us on one more heart-stopping chase in the sensational conclusion to the If I Run series.