Killing Them Softly… or Not So Softly

As a devotions writer, I look for crumbs of insight into God’s glory and the promise of the Resurrection to share with readers.

As a fiction writer, I kill people.

No, I’m not a mystery or action-adventure writer. Some call what I do “edgy Christian fiction”; others, contemporary women’s fiction with an edge. Not that I’m a big name in the field by any means. I’ve placed in some decent contests and had a short story published in an online literary magazine. My quick hit/elevator pitch is that I write about people yearning for redemption and their own resurrection.

But it occurred to me last night that I also kill people who might mess up what my characters want and need to do.

Take my first, unpublished novel, the story of a couple long married in name only. The male protagonist, when he was in his teens, killed his father in a hunting accident. His mother died during childbirth when he was a toddler. One of his best friends conveniently succumbed to cancer before the book began.

I love the character. It’s not like he doesn’t have other people in his life, including a Christ-like father substitute who helps him find his way back to Jesus. But somehow, well, I just knew his parents were gone, even though he’s only in his mid-forties.

I’m tooling around with the next novel, and in that one, the protagonist is the driver in a dreadful teenage accident that leaves the other girls in the car dead. Her parents left town and established a new life… but now, 25 years later, she’s a successful professional and the time comes that she has to face herself and her self-loathing. God and a love interest help her get to the other side of that desert.

Maybe it’s because I’ve always been fascinated by the feeling of invincibility we have when we’re young–and now I’m fascinated by what happens when we lose that feeling in a dramatic way. I don’t know for sure. I do know that for now, I’ll keep killing ’em… because in one person’s death is another’s salvation.