BECOME A FICTION WRITER AND THANK THE GOOD LORD FOR YOUR LOUSY CHILDHOOD

This article was originally published on Novel Rocket April 2015 by Christine Lindsay.

You Cannot Write Unless You’ve suffered

Ouch! These days I thank the good Lord for my lousy childhood. But it wasn’t until I became a fiction writer that I could say this. Before that I suffered the same battles with bitterness as the next person, as the grown child of an alcoholic. Not to say that your novel can wallow in self-pity—how boring stories like that are. Same can be said for fictional novels with an agenda. Stories with a heavy line to preach are an easy turnoff to readers. So, it’s true, a lousy childhood is a great place to start as a writer, but unless you’ve reached the stages of healing you have nothing to offer your readers. 

What would the shadows in a painting be without the sunshine—only a dark painting.

Good Paintings Have Shadows

Have you ever noticed that the best paintings have shadows? The shadows are a foil for the sunshine. Often when I view a painting it’s the dim corners that intrigue me, because I want to know what’s down that murky trail or around that shadowy alley.

Remember---the Resurrection came after the Crucifixion.

The same with writing. I love to read short pieces on humor, but after a while if the stakes aren’t raised, if danger isn’t imminent, if there’s not a chance the hero or heroine will have their heart broken, I’m bored. Stories that keep me rapidly turning the pages are those filled with the pain of suffering, but with the hint of hope on each page, leading to a climax of joy.

Reach Down Deep into Your Gut to Remember what that Hurt Feels Like

• In a romance we need to know what it feels like to be lonely, dumped, forgotten, a wall-flower.
• In a mystery we need to know what it feels like to be scared, our heart pounding, have secrets kept from us.
• In writing a drama we need to know what it feels like to be abused, poor, sick, neglected, etc., etc.

Tap Into Feelings that are Similar

Now granted we don’t all need to know what it feels like to be attacked, or God-forbid—raped, or live through a war or a kidnapping, but we can tap into feelings that are similar.

I remember the day my middle son disappeared. All the neighbors were out looking for him, people were praying. An hour later, he waltzed home, smiling to beat the band, and clutching a posy of dandelions in his grubby little hand for me. Thank the Lord I do not know what it feels like to have my child kidnapped, but I can tap into those feelings of the “Day of the Dandelions” as it is known in our family for all perpetuity now.

The dark shadows of my fear for my little boy only made the sunshine of our reunion all the brighter.

Tapping Into My Lousy Childhood

Memories of my alcoholic father inspired portions of my multi-award-winning historical series Twilight of the British Raj. But it only works because I reached healing a number of years ago. I have something to offer my readers.

If you have not reached emotional healing--you have nothing to offer your readers. 

HEAL FIRST, WRITE AFTERWARD. 

My entire series Twilight of the British Raj shows the healing of a family first tainted by a father’s alcoholism. In book 1 Shadowed in Silk, my heroine Abby Fraser stands up to her drunken and abusive husband. 

In book 2 Captured by Moonlight my Indian heroine Eshana stands up to her fanatical Hindu uncle who won’t allow her to live as a Christian. 

And in the final book 3 Veiled at Midnight my character Cam (who was a boy in book 1) and is now a man, faces his inner demons that he has inherited his father’s addiction to alcohol.

All that trauma and what I call Big Love Stories too.

A dark childhood can be changed into a bright and beautiful life. Mine was. And I promise my readers a happy ending in all my books because I’ve seen happy endings in my own life through my faith.  

In triumph I write not about drunkenness, but the tingling feeling of when God makes everything thing new.

Veiled at Midnight is Book 3 the Explosive and Passionate Finale to my multi-award-winning series Twilight of the British Raj.

As the British Empire comes to an end, millions flee to the roads. Caught up in the turbulent wake is Captain Cam Fraser, his sister Miriam, and the beautiful Indian Dassah.

Cam has never been able to put Dassah from his mind, ever since the days when he played with the orphans at the mission as a boy. But a British officer and the aide to the last viceroy cannot marry a poor Indian woman, can he?

As this becomes clear to Dassah, she has no option but to run. Cam may hold her heart—but she cannot let him break it again.

Miriam rails against the separation of the land of her birth, but is Lieutenant Colonel Jack Sunderland her soulmate or a distraction from what God has called her to do?

The 1947 Partition has separated the country these three love…but can they find their true homes before it separates them forever?

READ THE FIRST TWO CHAPTERS FREE—click here Chapters one & two of VEILED AT MIDNIGHT

CONNECT WITH CHRISTINE LINDSAY on her website http://www.christinelindsay.com/ follow her on Twitter and be her friend on Pinterest , “Like” her Facebook Page, and  Goodreads

HISTORY THAT GRABS YOU BY THE THROAT

In my latest novel Veiled at Midnight, the research on Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last British Viceroy to Colonial India, swept me away. 

Mountbatten was Queen Elizabeth’s older cousin, a great favorite of the Royal Family.  Here’s an excerpt from Veiled at Midnight as seen through the eyes of my fictional character Captain Cam Fraser, when Lord Mountbatten is sworn in as the last Viceroy. 

~*~

A signal from the head Aide-de-Camp let Cam know that the Viceroy and his wife had arrived, and waited outside the closed bronze doors.

Inside, the marble Durbar Hall echoed with the buzz of hundreds of hushed human voices. British in impeccable suits, dignitaries from around the world, Sikh leaders in European suits with silk turbans, Indians in Rajput coats, Gandhi hats, Muslim prayer caps, all seated on plush velvet and gilded chairs. Gandhi was not in attendance, being unwilling to leave Calcutta where his presence kept some peace. As for the rest, whatever their religion they all seemed to hold their breath, waiting for the man they hoped, they prayed, would guide India to self-government without them tearing themselves apart.

 From the top of the roof outside the palace, came the shattering blare of trumpets.

The doors of the Durbar Hall opened and the tall, elegant form of Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma began to walk up the carpeted aisle, his wife at his side. Cam’s throat closed with pride. The last Viceroy, wearing his dress naval whites, his dark blue ribbon designating him as a Knight of the Garter, and his array of orders and decorations covering his chest was something, someone, to be proud of. Nehru himself had requested Mountbatten for his diplomacy and personal knowledge of India.

Lady Mountbatten matched her husband’s stride, in her long simple gown of white silk. She wore a tiara and a ribbon crossed from shoulder to waist that held the New Order of the Crown of India, and her own array of medals earned during the war for her humanitarian work.

The two walked side by side up the aisle toward the gilded thrones waiting on a low dais. Behind the thrones, rich red hangings hid lighting that cast the hall in superb dignity. This was British India. The country Cam called home. Not that small green island—England—thousands of miles to the north, but this massive dusty, vibrant mosaic of a subcontinent.

The Durbar throne room.

~*~

Lady Mountbatten also captured my fascination. An English heiress, a socialite, this woman of dubious moral fiber started her married life wasting years in frivolity and a long string of lovers. It wasn’t until WW2 that she started making her mark on the world with humanitarian aid. For that, I came to respect her. 

Lady Mountbatten worked tirelessly for St. John’s Ambulance and the Red Cross. In Veiled at Midnight I focus on the charitable work she did during the traumatic Partition of India in 1947 when India was torn apart as Britain handed over independence.

Here is a short excerpt. 

~*~

In conjunction with her husband, Lady Mountbatten began to issue sharp orders as she conferred with local civil servants. Standing in the midst of the charred remains of this village, she arranged for medical help for those few who had escaped the slaughter, and though terribly wounded, still breathed. Food would be flown in, outdoor kitchens set up to feed the multitudes of displaced people trickling in from other villages.

While it was true that in only one month the new Viceroy had done what previous Viceroy’s had been unable to do—break the deadlock between the two main political parties—Partition, now with a capital P was becoming a reality. Bloodshed in the north had escalated to a pitch Cam had seen only in war. The word Pakistan was slashed in green paint on the doors of houses of unearthly quiet towns with its lives and voices snuffed out.

Like the mother and child half buried beneath that pile of blackened bricks two feet away from Cam. A few clay toys strewn around, close to the child’s hand where her rag doll lay filthy in the ashes.

That image, not the sun bearing down on Cam’s cap, brought a wave of sickness. His own wife could be in any small town like this. He could only pray with heat-scorched breath that she was safe in some quiet backwater, if there was such a thing in India these days. Or that she wore a cross around her neck. Some said that pretending to be a Christian might save an Indian’s life right now. Dear God, let that be true. But then, so small a part of the population, the Christians and other minorities were just pushed aside by the greater swell of hatred. With only a year to go, everyone worried what side of the new borders their town or city would lie. What will Pakistan look like? What will be the shape of India when all is said and done?

Lady Mountbatten picked her way through the rubble beside her husband and their entourage of ADC’s, bodyguards, soldiers, the governor of the province, and various military and political personnel. Ahead of Cam, the Mountbattens were doing what they could for this town. Refugee camps were springing up everywhere you looked…camps already with thousands…staring with wild eyes…as if the world was coming to an end.  

Veiled at Midnight is a novel brimming with exciting history, and a big love story between the two main characters, Captain Cam Fraser and the Indian girl he loves. But it is also a story about Cam's sister Miriam, who wants to remain in India. During the turbulent Partition of India Miriam discovers what God wants her to do. 

Here is my fictional Miriam in conjunction with Lady Edwina Mountbatten's humanitarian work. 

Click here to read the first chapter of Veiled at Midnight.

Complete series Twilight of the British Raj, Shadowed in Silk, Captured by Moonlight, and the explosive and passionate finale Veiled at Midnight.

For more information about Christine Lindsay's novels drop by her blogsite www.christinelindsay.org

Romance and Suspense in Historic India

“I believe in happy endings,” writes Christine Lindsay. “I believe in love and family and friendship. I believe in all of these things because I believe in a benevolent heavenly Father who wrote the wonderful story of salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ, for all mankind.”

Christine’s story, Veiled at Midnight, the last in her Twilight of the Raj series, celebrates all those things in the midst of one of the most tragic periods of modern history. India is falling into violence as the Muslim League and Hindu Congress fight for separate states, massacring one another in the process. Miriam Fraser’s students at Kinaird College for Women in Lahore come from a variety of religious communities. Can they model unity in the confusion? Will her passion for teaching them stand as a dashing English officer begs her to return with him to the safety of British colonial rule? Her brother, Captain Cameron Fraser has fallen in love with an Indian orphan girl they were raised with at the mission where their parents served, but his estranged childhood friend, another orphan, loves her too and will do anything to keep them apart.

Filled with romance, suspense, history and spiritual insight, this book swept me up from its opening rail disaster to its final escape amidst the murderous mobs. Christine’s writing brings to life the Indian subcontinent with its sights, smells and rich cultures. She portrays both English and Indian characters with amazing authenticity.

Christine is a regular writer on this blog and I was eager to talk to her about her book.

Christine, I understand you had never been to India when you wrote the first book in this series, Shadowed in Silk (about Cam’s parents). What drew you to India and the Indian people in the first place?

Christine Lindsay: When I was about twelve I read a true-life book about a young girl in India who was studying to be a doctor at Dr. Ida Scudder’s hospital in the south of India. This girl was highly intelligent, but imprisoned by her poverty she would never have been able to study if not for missionary organizations. I felt so much for this girl. Later in my life at church prayer meetings here in Canada, I learned about other caring organizations such as the Ramabai Mukti Mission close to Bombay. These stories inspired me so that when I started writing historical fiction, it was India that held my heart and interest.

LH: What was the biggest challenge of writing about a place you had never been?

CL: The tremendous amount of research. I must have read close to 100 books: auto-biographies of British and American people who went to live in India, missionaries, wives of political leaders, soldier’s wives, Indian politics, religions, Indian women, travel books, etc.  Even parts of my own ancestry since several relatives served in the British military in India, including a great uncle at the time of Lord Mountbatten.

LH: You visited India between that book and the next. Tell us a little about your trip and how it enriched your writing.

CL: My visit in 2010 was a highlight of my life. I hope to visit again one day as my birth-daughter serves in an administrative role with Global Aid Network and the Mukti Mission that I mentioned. But in 2010, on a missionary trip with Children’s Camps International I observed their wonderful program that teaches children about Christ through fun and songs. My fascination with India grew into genuine love for the people.

LH: Many of your major characters are Indian, not English, and yet you manage to portray them with great sensitivity. What do you think enabled you to do that?

CL: I learned a great deal about Indian character from the block-buster novelist MM Kaye. She didn’t write Christian fiction, but she wrote fantastic historical novels set in British India. But I also live in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia Canada, home to a large Indian community. Eating Indian food, seeing their gorgeous culture has allowed me to see the Indian people as my neighbours, as friends, and dearly beloved people of God.

LH: Your characters have a deep love for India and commitment to serving the Lord there. Where did you see that in your own experience?

CL: Sadly, I still see a lot of distrust of Indian people in the community. It is changing, but in the younger generations, and from Christians. It has been from Christian missionaries that I’ve seen the greatest love shown to Indian people. I’m not sure why, but somehow the Lord instilled in me an intense anger when I hear about or see racial bias. I suppose I write my stories as a way of saying, “Hey there! God loves these people; He sent His son to die for them same as He died for you, so you should love them too.”

LH: Most of your readers are neither Muslim nor Hindu. What would you like us to take away from your story?

CL: We Christians especially must realize how much the Lord Jesus loves these people who are so diligently searching for God. But, we see so much mistrust of Muslims and Hindus today. I can understand that fear when I watch the atrocities on the news. ISIS freezes my blood. But I remind myself that these terrorists are just as merciless to their own people, especially to their women. This was true in history and is true today.

I’m not a missionary, only a writer, but I think we should all try to care and do what we can through organizations that are working to help people who are being downtrodden by fanaticism.

LH: This is the last of your Twilight of the Raj series. What are you working on now?

CL: I’m trying to finish the true-life story of my relinquishment of my first child to adoption. I was unmarried when I became pregnant,  and made the painful decision to give her up.

The Lord used that heart-breaking decision to teach me so much about Himself. Sarah and I were reunited 20 years later, and today we have a wonderful relationship. God used each of our passions—hers to be a missionary nurse to widows and children around the world, and mine to write about suffering women and children around the world—to draw our hearts into a very special birth-mom and birth-daughter relationship.

LH: We will look forward to hearing your personal story. Thank you so much for sharing with us here today.

___

LeAnne Hardy's first international experience was a visit to India and Pakistan as a child. Since then she lived in six countries on four continents. Her fiction reflects her faith, her passion for storytelling that stretches the mind and soul, and the cultures she has lived in. Learn more at www.leannehardy.net .

  

LORD…THIS WRITING BUSINESS IS DRIVING ME CRAZY—By Christine Lindsay

Author Christine Lindsay with her husband David and all four of her children.

When I first started writing I had no idea how time consuming it would be, how many incredibly long hours…years…a decade and a half, that it would take to become an author with a nice tidy little line of published books.

1999 seems so long ago when the emotional breakdown that I was experiencing at the time became the catalyst to start me writing in the first place. It was just after I'd reunited with my birthdaughter, the child I'd relinquished to adoption 20 years prior. God brought peace and healing to my heart and life, and as the years past so too did a ministry as a writer and speaker grow.

For the last two years I’ve blogged a bit on the weariness that comes to writers and speakers. Ask anyone of us and we’ll say how tired we are, how much work there is to do, and how the to-do-list never seems to whittle down. There have been many times I’ve tried to stop. Last summer the need—or what I considered the need—to market my books became overwhelming.

I simply had to stop writing. Permanently. I couldn't do it anymore.

And I told the Lord so.

My precious God gave me the rest I needed, several months of not even looking at my computer. I loved it. And how surprised I was to be willingly giving up my drive to write. For years I’d wondered if my desire to write Christian novels was just a tiny bit self-driven, and not entirely the Lord’s plan for my life. How often have I wondered if I had been fooling myself.

Yep, I thought, God wants me to focus on Him, be the wife, mother, and grandmother that I am supposed to be.

Then, just as I thought I’d figured it all out, another contract to write my non-fiction story was offered—the story of relinquishing my first child to adoption and our painful reunion 20 years later.

Then another contract was offered me for a fictional novel I’d written  several years ago. Then six more speaking engagements were offered to me. All without me asking. The writing/speaking ministry was growing organically. I was no longer striving for these things, and there it was, the thing I’d been fretting for so hard for, for years.

I felt the Lord’s smile. I wasn’t off the writing hook yet. Maybe I just needed a refresher course in the fact that I CANNOT DO IT ON MY OWN.

“Stop striving, child.” I thought I heard God say. “You cannot do this work on your own, but you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.”

So this past Christmas, I focused on my family and enjoyed what Christmas means. I look forward to 2015 with the renewed attitude that I will be that warm wife and mother and not the busy writer glued to the laptop. God will take care of the details. This is especially real to me as I look at the family photo of this past Christmas which includes myself, my husband, our three children and my birth-daughter whom the Lord has lovingly entwined in our lives and us in hers.

If God can do that, He can take care of a writing and speaking ministry.

Christine Lindsay is the author of the multi-award-winning series Twilight of the British Raj. Book 1 Shadowed in Silk, Book 2 Captured by Moonlight, and recently released Veiled at Midnight. Also by Christine is the romantic novella Londonderry Dreaming, and soon to be released Sofi's Bridge. 

Drop by Christine's website www.ChristineLindsay.com to learn more about her books and speaking ministry.

A COVER IS DESIGNED

As an international author, I am continually amazed at the covers by WhiteFire Publishing. I simply had to share the design process from Roseanna White's own blog on how she created these breathtaking covers showing exotic India. Thank you so much Roseanna White.

Remember When . . . The Series Was Complete? By Roseanna White as previously published on Writing Roseanna

WhiteFire's first series to be contracted and completed just got its final cover. The Twilight of the British Raj has won some awards and garnered a lot of very well-deserved praise. And when Christine Lindsay (the author) and I started chatting covers for the final installment, Veiled at Midnight, I think we were both rubbing our hands together in delight.

The first book of the series took place in British India of 1919. It was one of WhiteFire's first two titles other than mine, and at that point, I was not designing covers. We hired the amazing George of Tekeme Studios, and he blew us away with this fabulous cover for Shadowed in Silk.

By the time book 2, Captured by Moonlight, rolled around, I had wet my feet in the design world, and Christine and I discussed it and agreed I'd try my hand at mimicking the style of the first with the images we had in mind for the second.

This third book jumps a generation. Set during the tumultuous partitioning of India and Pakistan in the 1940s, our hero and heroine are Cam, the little boy from the first book, and Dassah, who was a baby in the first book. I haven't yet gotten my hands on the MS, but I know what an amazing writer Christine is, and I know we're in for another sweeping saga of romance and suspense!

Christine started a Pinterest page for the book, which is where our idea-gathering began. She wanted gold on the cover, to represent the joy of a new dawn. Though "midnight" is in the title (the Partition took effect at midnight), she wanted the images to represent a new day. (Not to mention we already had a night scene on cover 2...)

Our first thought was to use green and gold, to represent the Pakistan flag. The most compelling images we found were of a night sky, and my (very very very very very sloppy) playing around led to this.

Not bad. The lighting in that sky is amazing. But the original image of the model had her in a red sari, and changing red to gold is T-O-U-G-H. I managed a fair imitation with the low-resolution comp I downloaded from Shutterstock, but I knew it would be much harder with the real photo. So I was pretty happy when Christine emailed and said that her critique partner convinced her that red might  be okay. It was a color Dassah had shied away from in the earlier part of the book, because it reminded her too much of all the blood that had been spilt. But they decided that later in the book, she could instead realize it also represented the blood of salvation.

So we began with this model picture from Shutterstock. We both loved the pose, and I especially loved the motion in the sari.

Obviously, next we take out the background.

Now, you'll notice that in this traditional sari, the belly is showing. This is accurate, both today and historically, but we decided that for a CBA book, we probably shouldn't have the bare flesh. So I inserted a semi-transparent layer to mimic sheer fabric there.

Now it was time for the background. There are some absolutely GORGEOUS images of India that we considered. I knew the characters spend some time at a mountain lake, and I knew we wanted gold tones, so I decided to try out this one.

Plopping Dassah in front of it, I got this.

A good start. I liked the colors together, and the water. But I wasn't wild about how distinct that building is in the back. And Christine pointed out (later, but let's show the change now, LOL), that the light is hitting her on the wrong side. So I flipped her.

To blur the background in the distance, but not the water up close--because I LOVE that reflection--I duplicated the layer, blurred the top one, and then applied a layer mask and faded the top image from the bottom of the screen upward--that way, the bottom layer comes through in its non-blurred glory toward the lower portion and fades into the blurred image at the top.

Pretty, yes? But not there yet. The covers for this series are rich with texture layers. So to get the full effect and really see if it was going to give me the look I was going for, I first added in the elements that would stay the same as the first books (but with color changes)--the one I call "the lotus thingy" and the "banner thingy" that goes behind the title.

Oo, I was starting to like how this was coming together! I went ahead and added the title. Which, for these books, includes the title itself, then the last word faded out behind it in an exotic looking font.

Okay, so now I had a great base. I loved where it was going, I loved the way the red and the gold worked together. But now I needed to add some texture.

In the first cover, Tekeme had used a flower overlay that I liked but couldn't match exactly. So for book 2, I used a paisley design. For this one, I wanted something altogether different. So I did a search for "photoshop texture lotus gold" (don't you love the random words you can put together for searches? LOL) and I found this one.

It just felt promising from the get-go, LOL. So I plopped it down on the top, set the layer opacity way down, and used my fade-out gradient to make the middle of the layer completely transparent.

Oh my. Yes. This was the point where my breath got all knotted up in my throat, and I knew I'd found my look. I went ahead and added the layer with Christine's name, making it red. But that layer is also always textured, so I duplicated my texture layer, shrank it down, and this time didn't fade it out. The result was this, and I gotta say, silly as it is, that's it's one of my favorite elements on this whole cover, LOL.

So I added that, and also the series name where it belonged. And I was happy. Almost. Mostly.

There was just one thing missing--a border. Each of the other two covers have a border, just a slightly-darker version of itself. I needed something like that here, but I didn't want to mess with what I had already, so I nearly left it off.

Then I looked at the original texture layer again. And I noticed that it had really cool sides that were not on my cover because I wanted the lotus part to extend off in both directions. How to get those on as the border, without interfering with the nice transparency of the original texture layer? Well, I fiddled with it until I figured out the obvious answer. I pasted it on, narrowed it to fit the width of the book, and then deleted everything accept that border part that I wanted. And voila!

And there we have it. The real, honest-to-goodness finished version of the front. (Haven't created the back yet.) I was fairly giddy with it, so showed it to hubby/publisher David, who said, "Wow. Yeah. That's it."

So I emailed it to Christine, who said, "CAN I SHOW THIS OFF?" ;-)

I emailed it to best friend/crit partner Stephanie, who said, "I think this might be my favorite of all your designs!"

I don't pick favorites, LOL. But I do adore this cover. I like the continuity with the other books in the series, but I also like where it's different. I feel like this one was somehow more my design and less trying to mimic that first cover. And I just adore those colors together. So overall, we're all very pleased. =) The Twilight of the British Raj will finish up in style!

CONNECT WITH AUTHOR CHRISTINE LINDSAY ON Facebook,  Twitter,  Pinterest,  Goodreads,   or on her blog www.christinelindsay.org