Holding to High Standards

Books are powerful instruments to entertain, teach, learn problem solving strategies and coping mechanisms. As a writer I cannot underestimate the impact my words can have on readers. Knowing this, I take being a Christian author very seriously.  

Before I began writing the Cries series, Cries of Innocence and Cries of Grace, I began to pray. My subject matter was hard—abuse, abandonment, and neglect. I was not foreign to the scope of the issues, having worked with women and children who lived under oppression and in wretched situations. Writing about evil is serious business. It’s not for the faint of heart or for those who want to over dramatize the subject matter.

Every writing session was prayed over. I had prayer partners praying for me, too. I endorsed pastors, Sunday School teachers, and avid readers to look over chapters I was struggling with. I wanted the material to show real-life conflict and demonstrate strategies to biblically maneuver through trials.

My journey proved to be a tremendous faith builder for me. The protagonist’s grandmother often said, “You’ve got a lot to learn.” Those words were the driving force behind the cries of those who wondered where God was in the struggle. In the middle of their learning, I learned exponentially. I felt accountable to God and my future readers to deliver a tough message while continually measuring myself against Scripture.

There were four questions I had written down on an index card to keep me focused. These questions established my writing each day.

1.     Prayer

2.     God’s Truth

3.     Stumbling Blocks to Faith

4.     Freedom Through Believing and Praying

Prayer. Begin every writing session in prayer. Pray for guidance over difficult scenes.

God’s truth. “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32 NIV) Stay centered on scriptural truths. When in doubt seek godly advice. I do this often when I am treading into difficult areas or situations. It is easy to get trapped within cultural mores and half-truths. Partner with people who keep you biblically accountable. Your goal is to lead your readers to higher grounds of understanding.

Stumbling blocks to faith can be indistinguishable from other forms of sin. We are desperate in the dark, knowing evil exists, but unable to figure out how to navigate the murky waters of its lies. Breaking strongholds is seeing different ways to approach the issues and problems life so generously delves out. As book characters learn biblical strategies to deal with their situation, it teaches readers that there are numerous options to break stumbling blocks in order to have a fuller life in Christ.

Freedom through believing and praying. We all have moments when we feel lost, alone, and stranded. Those are times when problems seem too big to handle. Offering readers Biblical ways to look beyond their crisis, beyond their limited view, and beyond their understanding offers hope to the hopeless. If offers the characters the courage to step beyond the dark wall into the light of God’s saving grace and redemption. Readers are given the opportunity to internalize coping mechanisms and strategies to grow as they become more and more aware of God’s presence.

I write with purpose, giving readers a chance to engage with the story’s multiethnic characters who find the end of the road is only the beginning of a new life in Christ Jesus. What more could an author demonstrate to readers than the love of the Father and the Truth that continues to free its victims.

God bless you all,

 

Emergence of the Cries Series

Months before I began writing Cries of Innocence, I was faced with many facets of evil and deception. For a relatively calm and gentle person, I can tell you that this was disconcerting to me.

For many years, God has led me into a ministry of mentoring and teaching His Word. During this time, I’ve dealt with issues of addiction, abuse, neglect, brokenness, and unforgivenes, scars that ran deep in God’s children. Scripture tells us that God uses His spiritual warriors in many ways, and He’s certainly had me on testing ground, preparing me for even more challenging circumstances.

God used our thirty years of moving all over the country to teach me. Every location brought new areas of ministry, mostly working with children. Children have been the gem of my life. Whether it was ministering to my own children or other people’s children or in a classroom or church setting or as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for abused, neglected, and abandoned children, children have been foremost in my life.

While working with children, God offered me the opportunity to work with their parents, especially their mothers. I’ve been police escorted into more homes than I care to remember. At this point in my life, I began to think that evil reigned. So many had no hope. So many lived lives standing on a time bomb, knowing it could explode any minute. I’ve been in hospital rooms and listened to horror tales of physical abuse. I’ve held hands of teens who had tried to commit suicide. I’ve wandered halls of court rooms and wondered where justice had fled.

Did I ever think I’d write a book about all that ugliness? No. And that’s because I could not see a happy ending to any of it. Then in 2014 on a trip across the United States, my husband and I witnessed a girl being attacked, openly and without recourse. At the time, I had just seen Christine Caine at a faith-based women’s conference, and she had talked about human trafficking, a ministry she is strongly engaged in. When I saw that man beat that girl, uncaring if anyone witnessed it, I knew in my heart this incident went beyond a man-woman disagreement. His dialect was European, and hers were screams of fright.

I’ve been told many times there is no evil. Oh how foolish! Evil is rampant, and we allow it to continue. We tie acceptable names to it and wear it like it was a disfigurement that is tolerated.

My life up to this point birthed Cries of Innocence.

I began having dreams, and I don’t dream much, about the protagonist in the book, Bren Parrot. I could see her. I began to know her heart. I also began to know her fear and hopelessness. When I began writing her story, it was to purge it from my subconscious. Then more and more of her story began to surface, and I would pen that. Before I knew it I was staring at 203 pages. And I thought it was over, but within weeks of publishing Cries of Innocence, the characters began throbbing in my head again.

For the past few months, God has been leading me to tell the rest of Bren’s story. And over this time, I realized there would be two more books that will come out of Bren’s life.

Cries of Grace will be about Bren and Joseph. It will be a Christian Fictional Romance. I am almost finished, but the last part, Part III, is going to be fun to write, but it will push me to make it something you will never want to forget. (I can’t believe I just said that. The pressure is on.)

Cries of Mercy will be . . . well, . . . God is still working on that one, only sharing images of what new and complex life issues Bren and Joseph will encounter. Evil does not rest. It stalks. It waits. And then . .  .

When the next book in the Cries series comes out, I hope you will be eager to read it. I’m praying God’s fingerprints will be all over it. For He is why I write. My Savior is why I put myself on the line, writing about His children who realize, “Not for a moment will You forsake me.”

Please listen to Meredith Andrews song, “Not For A Moment” to hear Bren’s heart announcing, “After all I’ve been through, You never forsake me.”

Link to You tube video: Meredith Andrews “Not for the Moment”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD0cvWImVjA

God bless you always,

Writing Addiction

My husband chides me, “Why are you always writing?”

I confess. I’m addicted to writing. It’s the same with reading. When I’m not writing, I’m reading. But, there’s never enough time to do all the writing and reading I want to do. I mean NEVER!

When I get to heaven, I want to be assigned to the journaling department with spirits of like ilk. What joy!!! Then on my days off, I can just sit on a cloud and write or read. Yep, one day you may look up and see a pair of feet dangling from a fluffy cloud and you can say with a lot of certainty, “That’s Angela!”

As soon as my teachers put a pencil in my hand, I wanted to write all the stories that were in my head. Most of those stories germinated from my Papa LeMaire who was a great storyteller. The more proficient I got, I wrote about everything. Nothing missed my observant eyes or emotional wrangling, and it all went down on paper.

When I got married, I left a few things in the closet in my bedroom. At nineteen you think you will have a residence with your parents forever. I could have never imagined my mother cleaning my room and throwing away the three boxes of potential manuscript material that I’d been working on. Well, in my mind it was manuscript, awarding material, and I was devastated. My mother said, “Good riddance!” Sometimes parents don’t realize how important your “stuff” can be!

My grandmother once asked me, “What kind of people do you write about?”

That was a hard question. I observe everyone – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sometimes, I add in all these traits to come up with some very unusual characters. I like to write about real people caught up in the act of living life small and large. People who struggle and find joy are amazing subjects. I want to crawl into the mind of the homeless, the psychotic, and the little old lady across the street and set them up as neighbors trying to get along. Oh, I forgot. I already did that one.

I think the whole idea of taking what you know and twisting it a quarter of a turn is exciting. You never know what’s going to come out of a situation of fate, promise, and determination. That’s writing for you!

So, for the next couple of blog posts, I’m going to write about what I’m writing about. I’m ninety percent finished with the sequel to Cries of Innocence. I’m so excited! It’s a new genre for me - Contemporary Christian Romance. Afterwards, I will head right into finishing up the Cries trilogy with Cries of Mercy.

I can’t wait to share with you what’s happening in my happy place – the writing happy place. In everything I write and do, I remain consistent in my desire to share Jesus and His love with everyone. Writing Bible studies or fictional novels, I want every word I pen to bring my King the honor and glory.

Blessings!