WARNING TO WRITERS. WARNING...WARNING !!!

If you want to write fiction you have to adjust to the fact that all fiction is autobiographical…to a point. You’re going to bleed emotionally on the pages. You will need plenty of hankies near your computer.   

When I first started writing 15 years ago, I understood any non-fiction I hoped to write, especially the book on my birth-mother

experience, would be autobiographical. But later when it seemed that particular true-life account might never be published, I felt the Lord urge me to put the spiritual and emotional truths I’d learned into Christian Fiction.

Whew! This means I don’t have to bare my soul. I can hide behind my “untrue” historical epics with plenty of action and romance that God-willing might help readers think about the Lord while they’re being entertained.

Ah...but here’s the real scoop.

When people read Shadowed in Silk I don’t think they have a clue that I poured my own wounded heart and soul into my "bad-guy", the enemy of my heroine Abby Fraser. Much of my emotions (from a number of years ago) are seen in Tikah the woman who kidnaps Abby’s child.

The title Shadowed in Silk shows all characters feel invisible for their own reasons. The two women feel no one sees their heartaches or hears their cries in the night. As a woman who was hurting over the relinquishment of my firstborn to adoption, I felt like invisible Abby. But I also felt like Tikah who steals Abby’s little boy, because part of my heart longed to turn the clock back so that I’d never relinquished my child in the first place. 

I took the bare truth of my soul and painted that longing into my character Tikah as she does the reprehensible.    

Shocking, I know. I’m not saying my emotions were right or honorable. Emotions are emotions, but that’s what books are, a baring of the soul. 

Of course I didn’t take back my true-life child, and the Lord helped me through my heartache. Thankfully, God also didn’t leave me in my spiritual immaturity, and my second book Captured by Moonlight shows some of that spiritual growth.  

One of my heroines, the beautiful Indian woman Eshana is imprisoned in a ruined jungle palace by her fanatical uncle. Her head is shaved, her lovely saris taken away, and she's dressed in coarse white cotton like that of a Hindu widow. In this book Eshana says the following, straight from what I hope I will say the next time I go through a real life valley of suffering...

“I will sing your praises, Lord. Though you have dressed me in funeral clothes, I will sing your praises with joy.”  

I could go on and on—how Veiled at Midnight shows what I learned the 2 years my brother lived with my husband and me, as my brother went through rehab for his alcoholism. This book breathes the message that nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from the love of God.

The message of Londonderry Dreaming is to speak the truth in love, no matter how hard it hurts. And in the soon-to-be-released Sofi’s Bridge is about being true to the gifts God has placed in our souls, and to not try and save your loved ones on your own. All deep spiritual and emotional lessons that I have learned in my true life. 

God has done some amazing things for me.  Sure, I’ve suffered, who doesn’t, but I’ve experienced that scintillating feeling when 

God makes everything new. That’s why I always write happy endings.

That’s also why 15 years since I first starting writing, I’m seeing my original dream come to pass. Remember that non-fiction book on my birth-mother experience that started it all? Well, it too is soon-to-be-released. But in all honesty, there is just as much of me in my fictional novels as there is in this account.

Me and my birth-daughter Sarah. She too writes a piece for the book, including several other people from various adoption reunions.

No matter what emotional state you are currently in--hold tight to God, and believe in the ultimate happy ending for you through Jesus Christ. 

For more about Christine Lindsay and her books, go to www.ChristineLindsay.com