So why do I write?

Every once in a while (actually way more often than a while) I ask myself if my work has affected anyone in anyway. Sometimes I lie in bed and think of certain chapters in my stories. Thinking about them has something of the virtue of a prayer. I meditate on my scenes and dialogs and imagine their effect on others. All the time it's really me wondering if my life is worthwhile and what my writing will accomplish for God....and if I am on the way to doing the 6 great works God promised I would do.

I suspect I want Wind Follower to help folks see that marriage is a commitment. And for Black women to have a story where a guy sees them as beautiful. And for people to see the folkloric (in the truest sense) beauties of Christianity. The last reason is the most important. So many missionaries are so American/western in their ways. They go out with their Americanness to save tribes without understanding the power or the tradition of the myths these tribes believe in.

What does A Cry for Hire accomplish? What do I hope for it to accomplish. It will show forgiveness. It will show the patience of a long-suffering wife. It will show an imperfect priest, a good thing I think. It will show maternal longing (not shown a lot in today's stories.) It will show the love affair of a middle-age couple. It shows Christians as normal people, a thing that's needed nowadays, I think. Oh, yes, and it's a good story as well.

The Constant Tower is about child abuse at its core, and about a son wanting his father's love. It's about stasis and wanting to leave a place but being too powerless and too weak to do it. It's about princes who don't fit into the mold of what princes should be. It's about weakness, and disabilities. How will the story affect the world and its readers? Will it make someone understand weakness better? Will it make people read  Black women spec-fic writers? Will it make people believe Christian writers can write good spec-fic? Will it make people think about the silly conventions of fantasy and spec-fic? Sure, it's also about fantastical worlds...in which resources are sorely needed and war is everywhere but that isn't important to me. Writing about war has never stopped warfare. Why do writers and other artists think that art can save the world? It doesn't. It saves certain parts of certain people's soul..but that's it, I think.

In the very deepest part of my being, I'll say that I believe my writing is for countries such as Asia, India, Indonesia. Those are the places I believe God has appointed my writings to blossom. Will see, though.