Clarifying my genre change
As I mentioned in a previous blog, I am currently looking for a publisher for my young adult contemporary Christian novel. Truth be told, I have two novels completed in this genre, which ideally would both be accepted by the same publisher. As a general rule, publishers now days expect authors to have a web presence, including both a website and social media following. Thankfully, I established those when The Adventures of Mucus Phlegmball series was published. The potential problem I am facing is the change in genre, which on the surface seems to make little sense.
Any potential publisher who visits my website will no doubt wonder how I plan to bridge the gap between my current middle grade magical realism series and my latest novels. As such, I thought I’d explain this shift in focus which isn’t actually as random as it seems.
I’ve explained in the past that when my kids were young, I saw a need for more books that would appeal to a boy’s sense of humor. While the Captain Underpants series, and others like it, were great starters, they were relatively easy reads. Once a child moved past that reading level, there wasn’t much left to tempt the reluctant readers. My goal was to reach the kids who still wanted to laugh at the gross things they found amusing, while also challenging them to advance their reading skills. I always said if my books touched one kid who developed a love of reading at a crucial time of life, the years of work were worth it.
By the time The Adventures of Mucus Phlegmball series was published, my children were older and it became harder to garner inspiration from them. Without fresh ideas to continue the series, I found my focus shifting to something I had become more personally passionate about…faith. Just as the middle grade years are a crucial time for children to develop a love of reading, the teen years are a critical crossroads for many when it comes to their faith in Christ.
It isn’t uncommon for teenagers to begin to push back against the idea of attending church and without a proper understanding of the role Christ wants to play in their lives, they tend to drift away. I know this because it happened to me. I attended parochial school from kindergarten through 12th grade and attended church regularly. When I went off to college that church attendance stopped and I spent my post college years focused on myself and my own wants and needs, which didn’t include getting up on Sunday mornings to go listen to a sermon that would only repeat something I already knew. It wasn’t until I had kids of my own that I thought it was important to teach them too.
It was years later when my husband and I joined a couples Bible study that I realized how shallow my faith was. It is one thing to know about Jesus and believe he died on the cross to atone for the sins of the world. It is a completely different experience to have a relationship with Him and feel the weight of your personal sin that held Him on that cross. I think this is the missing piece for many people. Jesus didn’t take on flesh simply because he wanted to spend eternity with his followers. He did it so we could live THIS life with the support of the Holy Spirit, learning to love God and others deeply, preparing us for what is to come in eternity. He told the disciples in John 14:16, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.” If the Holy Spirit dwells within you, you have nothing to fear. It is only when the flesh takes hold that we succumb to doubt, anxiety and hopelessness. This is the lesson that teens need to hear.
My goal is to get these contemporary Christian books into the hands of teens who have a faith background, but still feel trapped by the cares of this world. I’ve developed a list of discussion questions that would then be used to dig deeper into how the lessons learned in the book can be applied to their lives to help them grow in their relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As with my first series of books, if I can influence one teen, my heart will be full.