Author Interview ~ Randy Alcorn, Part I

Randy Alcorn is the founder and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries (EPM), and the best-selling author of twenty-seven books (over three million in print), including fourteen non-fiction works, and the novels Deadline, Dominion, Lord Foulgrin’s Letters, the Gold Medallion winner Safely Home, and Wait Until Then.

Tell Me About Heaven (picture book illustrated by Ron DiCianni) will be released in July 2007.

Randy has written for many magazines and produces the popular periodical Eternal Perspectives. He’s been a guest on over 500 radio and television programs.

The father of two married daughters, Randy lives in Gresham, Oregon, with his wife and best friend, Nanci. They are the proud grandparents of three grandsons, Jacob, Matthew and Tyler and expecting their fourth grandchild in August. Randy enjoys hanging out with his family, biking, tennis, research and reading.

What book or project is coming out or has come out that you’d like to tell us about?

Deception, a murder mystery. It isn’t a strict sequel to my first two novels Deadline and Dominion, but a spin-off. It can be read before the others.

While writing other fiction and lots of nonfiction over the last decade, I’ve never lost sight of Deadline and Dominion. I’ve always hoped to go back and pick up where I left off. I’ve thought there needed to be a third book, a different story with a different viewpoint character.

Jake Woods was the main character in Deadline, with fellow-journalist Clarence Abernathy and homicide detective Ollie Chandler in support roles. Clarence, an African American, was the main character in Dominion, with Jake and Ollie supporting him. But in certain ways the most interesting character—and I do mean character—is Ollie Chandler, who can be funny and cynical and outrageous. Writing Deception fulfilled my desire to go back to Ollie and give him a shot at his own book, this time with Jake and Clarence in support roles.

~CLick here to read a review of DECEPTION~

Tell us about your journey to publication.

Sometimes I say at writers’ conferences that while many people think they want to write a book, what they really want is to have written a book. It’s sort of like wanting to be thin without exercising or eating right. It’s fun to hold in your hand a book you wrote, but good writing, like good farming and good bricklaying, takes real work.

Since I wrote my first book 25 years ago, I’ve written 26 more. Each one is different.

Deception has been on my mind, off and on the back burner, for ten years. It was fun—but a lot of hard work—to finally write it. The many letters I got from those who’d read Deadline and Dominion served as a big encouragement to write this semi-sequel. It’s really fun to have the end product now, and to feel good about it.

You write best-selling and award-winning fiction and non-fiction. Which do you enjoy the most and why?

I enjoy most whichever I’m currently writing. But after I’ve finished a novel, I’m always ready to do some nonfiction, then after two or three nonfiction books I’m eager to do a novel again.

Not many writers go back and forth from fiction to non-fiction, and I’ve been told it muddies the waters in terms of how people perceive you as a writer. Honestly, I’m not really concerned about the waters and the perceptions. I ask God each time to direct me toward what He wants me to do next. I think He has, and I’m grateful to be able to write both fiction and nonfiction, and I hope to do both as long as He gives me strength.

Fiction and nonfiction, of course, are very different. In nonfiction, you can directly say whatever you want to. You don’t have to be subtle; in fact too much subtlety makes it obscure. You can tell, you don't have to just show.

But in fiction, the rule is “show, don’t tell.” Fiction allows the imagination to soar.

If only one of your books could survive the next century, which would you choose?

Of my novels, though in some ways I think Deception is the most fun and maybe the best written, I’d have to say Safely Home. The number of lives I’ve been told about that have changed through reading that novel amazes me.

Of my nonfiction, it’s a tough call, so I’ll cheat and say The Grace and Truth Paradox and Heaven. The Heaven book has been a real surprise, with 400,000 in print just two and a half years after it was released. We get an amazing number of letters from people who say they now look forward to Heaven and are excited about the New Earth, and that they’ve received great joy and comfort from the book. Churches and small groups everywhere are studying it, which blows me away.

Okay, I’ll also mention The Treasure Principle, which has now sold about one million copies, and which God has graciously used to transform the way countless people give. It’s another book that no one would have guessed would find eager readers. No publisher was saying a few years ago, “Hey, to sell a million copies we need somebody to write a book about the joy of becoming a radical giver.”

What do you say to the folks who think as Christians we shouldn’t be writing or reading fiction?

First, that writing fiction is not synonymous with telling lies!

There’s a great deal of untruth being passed off in the form of nonfiction. And some of the greatest truths are found in novels. When Jesus spoke in parables, he wasn’t lying or misleading, but telling stories with great spiritual impact.

As long as people know that fiction is fiction, we shouldn’t apologize for using our God-given imaginations to create worlds for characters to inhabit, and for readers to enjoy and learn from.

There are many non-believers and there are many nominal Christians who will read fiction who wouldn’t read spiritually oriented non-fiction. Readers become open to certain truths and realities in a fiction form that they’re not open to in a frontal, direct, non-fiction form. You hand your readers a story, and if it's engaging, you've earned access to their minds, and you can influence their worldview through it. It’s a kind of "Trojan horse" effect. I mean, people open the gates of their minds and you come in, but they don't notice everything you’re bringing with you.

My purpose as a writer is the same in fiction or nonfiction. I want to communicate in such a way as to challenge the thinking of readers and touch their hearts. I want to draw them into the story (fiction) or the subject matter (nonfiction) in a way that influences their perspective and worldview. I want to entertain, but also educate.

While telling an entertaining story, I hope to shift readers to a more biblical worldview, partly by showing the positive consequences of right thinking and choices, and the negative consequences of wrong thinking and choices.

Everything I write is intended to further an eternal perspective: "We look not at the things which are seen, but the things which are unseen; for the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are unseen are eternal" (2 Cor.
4:18).

Do you think Christians have a moral obligation to present the gospel in the novels we write or can we relax and just pen a good yarn?

I’m all for a good yarn. But a good yarn doesn’t have to be just a good yarn.

I don’t think the gospel always has to be fully presented in our novels, and certainly it will emerge in a variety of ways in different stories, but I think each novelist needs to ask God for direction. I suspect that if we listen to God, and if our lives are sufficiently captivated by the good news of Jesus, then that good news will inevitably inhabit our writing and make itself evident to readers.

Christian novelists are often warned against writing fiction that’s thinly veiled propaganda. Of course, I’m opposed to propaganda. But I’m convinced it’s possible to artfully present a story that contains significant spiritual themes.

I try to earn the right to integrate eternal themes into my stories by writing them well. I hope I’ve done that in Deception. If a story is poorly written or comes across as a sermon, then obviously it won’t reach people. They’ll be aware that you’re using your novel as a means to an end, or forcing something on them. But in a good story, the spiritual component is so woven into it, so inseparable from it, that it has credibility and lasting impact.

I think the fear of being perceived as preachy and heavy-handed has become so heightened now that some Christian novelists have become gun-shy about including any spiritual content. Experience has shown them that even Christian reviewers are quick to call a story “preachy” if it has substantial spiritual content, even when it’s an integral part of the story and true-to-life.

The result is that “Christian fiction” is now for many people just “clean
fiction,” defined by the absence of profanity, explicit sex and gratuitous
violence.

I think a Christian novel is better understood not by the absence of the unspiritual, but by the presence of the spiritual. Of course, that does not mean a novel is merely a lengthy gospel tract! But it does mean it offers more than the mere lack of offensiveness. In fact, a truly Christian novel may be spiritually offensive to some readers, both believers and unbelievers.

Walking with God, praying, church, and discussions about the Bible and spiritual longing, are in fact a real part of life. So it’s not being “unreal” to integrate these things into a story. It just needs to be done thoughtfully and skillfully, making sure it comes from inside the story, not outside it. Fiction should be art, but art is certainly not devoid of spiritual meaning.

Every author—whether atheist, agnostic, Hindu, New Age or Christian—has a worldview. And every author’s worldview is evident in a storyline, with varying degrees of explicitness. While not every writer is called to include the same degree of spiritual content, I find it ironic that some Christians are pulling back from letting their worldview emerge in the course of a storyline. The result may appease some critics. But it will leave many readers—who in real life long for meaning and eternal perspective—feeling mildly entertained but ultimately unchallenged and unchanged.


Describe what you believe is the role of writing and reading in the Christian life.

To be continued Tuesday ...