The truth is, like most other Christian writers, I feel called to write what I write. And I do it with what I hope is a sensitive ear to God’s prompting.
Yes, the rise of supernatural romance, urban fantasy, and “dark romance” got my attention. I read a few and found things I liked and things I didn’t. But mostly what those books stirred in me was a desire to use the genre to explore elements of The Love that we as Christians believe is the source of all romance.
This subject has already been discussed with insight and finesse by several other bloggers this month. Suffice it to say, God’s love for his children is the basis for all our understanding of love. Jesus’s sacrifice for his bride, the church, is the love story—the one we echo again and again.
I figured, if we can use the romance genre to reflect the love of God in the relationship between a man and a woman, how much more can we do that with supernatural characters?
This is simply another outlet for metaphor and allegory. Just as Donita K. Paul uses the fantasy world of Amara to present an allegory of the Christian walk in The DragonKeeper Chronicles, and Tracey Bateman uses vampirism as a metaphor for alcoholism in Thirsty, so I use a brounie to explore one aspect of love.
A brounie (brownie) is a house spirit or faerie who does chores, cleans up, plows fields, and in one legend, even fetches a doctor for an ailing family member. Maybe you can see why I chose this particular mythical creature to examine the idea that to love is to serve.
Sure, I could do something similar with a self-sacrificing human, but I enjoyed both the challenge and the freedom of developing a character whose very make-up included a totally unselfish desire to love and serve.
Who knows if my novel will go anywhere? Maybe all the viewpoints I mentioned at the start of this entry will negate my chances. But I learned something about the heart of God as I wrote this book. I had the opportunity to study one tiny piece of His great love and that was more than worth all the effort.
Evangeline Denmark has storytelling on her heart and in her
blood. The daughter of novelist, Donita K. Paul, Evangeline grew up
living and breathing good stories. Now she enjoys creating stories of her own. She has co-authored two children's books that are under contract with Waterbrook Press and writes novels as well.
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2 comments:
Reading the draft of your manuscript--oh lucky me!--provided glimpses of God's grace and love in ways I hadn't seen them before.
Thanks for a thought-provoking post.
Evangeline - I think it sounds like a truly brilliant concept, and I'm sure it's "well-wrote."
Can't wait to read it - I believe that fairy tales (in their great variety across genres) aren't just a "nice alternative" to "normal" stories about heaven, they are a uniquely mortal "proof" to our broken minds of the promise of a living place of eternal fellowship with our Maker.
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