Francine Rivers

I was reared in a Christian home, but for a long time I did not understand what it really meant to be a Christian. I got married, had children, became a successful novelist. But all the while something was missing. I went to church, but I didn't realize I needed a Master as well as a Savior. I thought I was a Christian, but I was not born again, nor did I understand what God's love really is. I was master of my life. I wanted control.

Then we moved to northern California. We were actually unpacking the van in front of our new home when a young boy from the neighborhood asked if we were Jewish. When we said no, he said, "Have I got a church for you!" I went, out of curiosity, and discovered he was right. This church really taught the Bible. I began to drink the Word, and after a while my husband, Rick, and our three children started going too. We became born again, and God changed our lives.

From the time I was a small child, I have known that I was going to be a writer. I began writing when my children were young. I had studied English and journalism in college but had not put it to use. For a time, I was actually addicted to romance novels. Once I said to Rick, "I could do better than this." He said, "So go for it." And I did. Once I started writing, Rick encouraged me to try writing full-time. I gave myself five years to be 'financially' successful. This was before I became a Christian. I published thirteen novels, and I became successful in the secular market--to the point where success was all I cared about.

Then when I turned my life over to Jesus, something frightening happened: I could no longer write. For about four years, I experienced writer's block. Nothing I wrote worked. It was a real strange experience to say, "Lord, you have control over my life," and then wham! that door--writing--is closed.

But I believe God did that to get me refocused on him and his Word. Writing had become the focus of my life, my idol. Now it was time to refocus on Christ and his Word and get my priorities rearranged. I asked God to replace my interest in romance novels with a hunger for his Word. He answered that prayer. I read the Bible through five times in four years.

Rick and I hosted Bible studies in our home. When we started studying Hosea, I knew then that this was the story God wanted me to write--to put the Hosea story into a different time period and illustrate the kind of love God has for us. That book was Redeeming Love, which was originally published by Bantam and has recently been republished by Multnomah Press.

After Redeeming Love, the door to writing opened again. But everything is different now. I measure my success as a writer not in terms of dollars and print runs, but in terms of whether I am following God and using my talents to serve him. Then, I trust, he will take whatever I do and use it for his purposes.

Ideas come in a number of ways, but usually they're sparked by something I'm dealing with in my own life, or a scripture. Most often, a book starts with a question. Then, the plot centers around the different ways that question can be looked at or answered.

Redeeming Love, the first book I wrote after I was born again, came to me when I was studying the book of Hosea. The plot was based on that book, but I used the California Gold rush as the setting. I chose that deliberately, because that was where all my "before Christ" books had been set, and I wanted my loyal readers to see the difference between how the world views love (eros) and what real love (agape) is—the love that is described in Hosea, and portrayed through Michael's sacrificial love for Angel in the story.

A Voice in the Wind was written when I was wrestling with the issue of how to witness to an unbelieving world. The second Mark of the Lion book, An Echo in the Darkness, dealt with the issue of forgiveness. How many times do you forgive someone who has hurt you or who desires your destruction? At the time there were people in my life whom I had to learn to forgive. The third book in that series, As Sure as the Dawn, picked up on the issue of anger. Anger has been an issue in my life, and in that book I dealt with two angry people. I had a scripture in mind for that book, too--2 Corinthians 7:10, which says, "Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death." Atretes is wracked with guilt over all the men he has killed as a gladiator, but he is remorseful, not repentant. It's not until the end that he understands the difference. As I wrestle with showing how these truths work themselves out, that's how the plot develops.

The idea for The Scarlet Thread actually came after I traveled the Oregon Trail with three friends, which was a lifelong dream. During that trip, and through reading the stories of other women who had journeyed on that trail, it struck me that I struggled for control of my life just as many of the sojourners did. Generation after generation, we all share the same battle. Who's going to be in control of my life? So that book came out of my struggle to learn what it means to surrender to the Lord.

I had the idea for The Atonement Child long before I was actually able to write it. That book was a way of finally working through my own past, and sharing with others some of the healing process I discovered in the wake of having an abortion. That book is perhaps the most autobiographical and personal of all my books, and it was the most emotionally difficult to write.

The plot for The Last Sin Eater worked itself out as I wrote. At the beginning, I really didn't know what Cadi had done. The story unfolded for me as I wrote. I was still thinking about The Atonement Child and the difference between guilt and conviction; guilt can keep people in prison for years, but conviction makes you run to Christ, and you experience the freedom of forgiveness and grace.

The story idea for Leota's Garden came out of research for The Atonement Child as well as some of the things that were happening in California at the time. There was something on the ballot about euthanasia, and I was already thinking about right to life issues while writing The Atonement Child. I was struck by how similar the arguments for abortion and euthanasia were. Also, the idea of secrets and what they do to relationships, explored in The Last Sin Eater, was probably still alive for me.

The plot for And the Shofar Blew was based on what I saw happening in far too many churches as I traveled around the country. The focus seems to be size and numbers rather than the pursuit of living a life for Christ. That disturbed me greatly. It made me ill to hear of churches who were removing the cross because it was "offense" and might keep people away. Without Christ, the church is dead, meaningless. Christ is the foundation, the structure, the door, everything. Without Him at the center, the "church" is just another building and social club.

Of course, for the last two series I've written, The Lineage of Grace and Sons of Encouragement novellas, the plots come from Scripture. I had to fill them out more or less, of course, but the basic story line was already there.

I have always been fascinated by the West, and all my pre-conversion novels were set in the West. But I chose first-century Rome for my first Christian series because I was fascinated by the early Christian martyrs. I longed to have the strength of faith that they had. I would like myself to be so strong in my faith in Jesus that I could stand and die and sing while doing so.

As far as the setting goes, I found that there were quite a few parallels between ancient Roman society and our own: Like America, Rome has lots of different people coming into the country representing a wide range of cultural and religious beliefs, and they had to figure out how to make a very pluralistic society work. There was an imbalance of trade. Unemployment was high, the welfare system ineffective. The masses grew more and more restless. The games were a way the wealthy tried to help the masses work out their frustrations and keep them from rebelling. But the games kept getting more and more violent.I see that happening in our own video games and television and movies. There was also pandemic promiscuity and homosexuality, and abortion was encouraged.

In writing about the kind of world that the early Christians faced, and seeing the parallels with our own, I was not really surprised. I don't think it's that Rome and America are alike. It's that mankind never changes. We have a sin nature, and when that sin nature is allowed to get out of control, that's what happens in a society. Rome started out with a wonderful idea, America started out with a wonderful idea. It's man's sinful nature that corrupts a civilization and brings its downfall.

Seeing parallels between the past and present was fascinating, and it drove me to seek God's perspective. With everything we read, everything we see, I think we have to look at through God's eyes and ask, "Is this true or not, and if not, where's the lie?" What I learned by writing the Mark of the Lion trilogy is that God will give us courage when we need it, he transforms our hearts so we can forgive, and he removes anger when we surrender. Nothing of value happens in and of ourselves, but only through Jesus Christ.

My contemporary novels are usually set in the West because that's where I've always lived. However, The Last Sin Eater is set in the Great Smoky Mountains and is a complete departure from what I've written before. It has a gothic-mystery feel to it and deals with the subject of guilt and the workings of the Holy Spirit.

A lot depends on the novel, what kind of research I do.

Before writing my biblical historical fiction, such as the Mark of the Lion, Lineage of Grace and Sons of Encouragement series, I did a lot of background research on the times I was writing about. I always start with Scripture. Then, I read everything I can find about the culture in that time period. I take notes and more notes, organizing them in big binders with dividers for subjects such as chronology (the timeline of what really happened), gladiators, food, clothing, houses, political environment, and religions.

The specifics that are especially interesting--actual historic events, details about the times--I would put into a file of their own. You don't use a fraction of what you learn, when you write. You kind of salt details into the story, so that the reader will be transported into that era and the characters will come alive.

Research continues after the writing started. I would still find things, and still double check. I know that readers are very discerning. If something is incorrect, they will let me know about it!

A big part of my ongoing research is always my own personal Bible study. I'd make sure that whatever is said is consistent with the Word, especially if it is a biblical character. Often I’d have other people in the story talking in terms of the philosophy and psychology of the day. I'd have to stay in the Bible constantly to maintain the right perspective.

For other stories, I'd have to research whatever was involved in the story. For instance, with The Last Sin Eater I needed to understand what a sin eater was, and something about the customs of the Appalachian mountain people.

For The Atonement Child, I interviewed people at my local pregnancy counseling clinic, took a post-abortion syndrome class, and went through the counseling training to research the book. I also talked to many women, including a woman who had been raped and had the child. I wanted to deal with the tough cases.

Each novel demands its own kind of research.

The Lineage of Grace series and the Sons of Encouragement series required a lot of research into the lives of biblical characters.

My first "aha" was that I should ignore the commentaries!

Seriously, I think many of the commentary writers just miss the mark. At some point in my research, I decided I would skip the commentaries and just stick with Scripture and what I could find about the customs and culture in each story setting.

I read each story in Scripture over and over, until the story became clearer to me. We are promised in the Bible that the Holy Spirit will teach us. I asked the Holy Spirit to bring the stories alive, and asked with each one, "What is the Holy Spirit saying to us through this story?"

A lot of the "aha's" came from that meditating on what the Bible says. For instance, the "aha" about Tamar is that this story is a celebration of her life. The point was how God used her in Judah's life. It was about her motivations, not about her actions. Her actions needed to be understood within the cultural context of her times, anyway. God used her, a Canaanite woman, to keep Judah's line going. That's what I tried to bring out in Unveiled.

Again in Unashamed, the story of Rahab, the real miracle wasn't that the walls came down, but that her portion of the wall did not. Again we see God using a very unlikely person to work his purposes and ultimately, fulfill his promise of a Savior.

The "aha" with Mary's story (Unafraid), is that her story is most powerful when we see her humanity.

The Sons of Encouragement series came out of writing And the Shofar Blew, as it came so clear to me what an impact the "men behind the scenes" make, in a church but also in the history of redemption.

My characters are often composites of people I know, or they're people like I am, or they're people I'd like to be like (such as Hadassah, whom I've already mentioned).

For instance, I know too many people like Atretes--people driven by anger. In some ways, I am like Atretes. Anger can be righteous, but when it's not, it's deadly and self-defeating. We live in an angry world where people try to cast blame on environment, circumstances, others--anything but themselves. The only way to overcome anger is to submit to the Lord, as Atretes finally had to learn to do.

Some of my characters help to flesh out an issue. In The Atonement Child, for instance, each character helped to show a facet of the abortion issue, each was affected in a different way, from the doctor who performed abortions because he thought he was helping other women avoid the fate his sister suffered (she had obtained an illegal abortion and died as a result), to the woman who had had a therapeutic abortion and still suffered from it, to the young man whose girlfriend had gotten an abortion without even consulting him. The characters and their perspectives show how abortion affects real people; they are based on the stories of real people.

That's a very hard question to answer, because different characters have been meaningful to me for different reasons. I'll tell you about three such characters, and why they are particularly special to me.

The character I loved writing was Michael Hosea in Redeeming Love. The prophet Hosea was an amazing man and I wanted Michael to reflect the prophet's dedication. Michael lived for the Lord before Angel, even through the hardest time of her betrayals. Men who lived in complete obedience to Jesus Christ and are on fire for the Lord are God's most amazing works of beauty and strength. They are inspiring in the pulpit, but life-changing in the home.

A character who particularly moved me in The Atonement Child is Evie, because she is based upon my mother's story.

First of all, Mom was seriously ill at the time of her pregnancy. Secondly, her doctor had convinced Dad that she could not survive the pregnancy, and Dad then convinced her that he and the two children they already had needed her too much to take the risk of having another child. Third, she never got over having the abortion. When she and I spoke about it, it had been forty-four years since the procedure had been performed. She'd had it done in a hospital by a physician with everyone involved in agreement about the decision. Yet she wept as she spoke with me. She was still grieving, still ashamed. Dad had died several years before, but she said he never mentioned the abortion until the last week he was alive. It wasn't until then that she fully realized how much he had grieved all those years as well. When my mother finally told her me her story, she was dying of breast cancer, a disease which is linked to abortion.

The story of Hannah in The Atonement Child is based on my own abortion story. In our society people, especially Christians, have a tendency to think of the aborted child as the victim. Yes, the child is a victim. But there are other victims as well. Even Evie is a victim. Even though her "therapeutic" abortion had been performed under the least guilt-producing circumstances (by society's standards), she never got over it. In fact, each of the characters in The Atonement Child is a victim of abortion in some way, and the repercussions of their silent suffering, guilt, shame and anger creates a widening circle that affects us all. Jesus Christ holds the only answer, one prayer, one step, one person at a time. (As you can tell, I still feel pretty passionate about this book and all the characters in it!)

Another "favorite" character that may surprise my readers is Julia Valerian. I say this, not because I liked or admired her, but because I am thankful for her purpose in my life. I understood her struggles, her desire to live to the fullest, and her blindness to the deceptions that were around her, her desire to have control of her life.

She challenged me. Writing about Julia revealed weaknesses in me, places where I needed Christ to shine His light. Julia made my faith in Jesus grow stronger and my desire to be like Hadassah even more intense.

We all know people like Julia Valerian--defiant, arrogant, insensitive, bent upon destruction. Some of us were even like her before we met the Lord and asked him into our hearts. And yet, we often forget something essential about the Julias of the world: God loves them. Not as the world loves, but as Jesus himself loves. Remember that question that pierces the heart: What would Jesus do? That's what I kept running up against as I wrote about Julia Valerian. I wanted justice, and the still small voice kept saying, "What about mercy, beloved?"

People like Julia are great blessings. They're the sandpaper that rubs the rough edges off our faith. They're the pressure that turns coal into diamonds. They stand like mirrors, reflecting sins we may have committed before we met and gave our lives to Jesus as Lord and Savior. Because of who they are the call is clear. Show them the message of redemption. Show them God's love. People like Julia Valerian challenge us to live like Christ, not just talk about it.

Those are three meaningful characters to me. If I had to pick just one, however, I guess Hadassah from the Mark of the Lion series (first two books) would be my favorite character. She is the kind of Christian I long to be.

As I said, each book I work on centers around things I deal with in my own life. Each is personal in a unique way. The first book I wrote after becoming a Christian, the book with which God removed my writing block, was Redeeming Love. Writing that book was one of the most precious times of my life because I was in constant prayer as I worked. I saw the project as my offering to Jesus for all he had done for me as well as a chance to tell others what had happened in my own life.

Each book I write actually teaches me lessons. For instance, a central theme that faced Hadassah in A Voice in the Wind was how to witness to an unbelieving world. In writing that book, I realized it's not so much what you say as how you live and what people see in your life. Your attitude and feelings about other people--that's the witness.

The focus of the next book in the Mark of the Lion series, An Echo in the Darkness, was forgiveness. How many times do you forgive someone who has hurt you or who desires your destruction? I have had to deal with that question. And what that book taught me was that no matter what anybody does to me, what they say about me, or what their actions are, I am still called upon to forgive. And I learned that once you forgive someone, there are three things you don't do: talk to someone else about whatever it was you forgave; bring it up again to the person you've forgiven, or dwell on it yourself. Hadassah models for me what true forgiveness is as she forgives Julia.

In As Sure as the Dawn, the issue was anger. In Redeeming Love I was discovering what true love, godly love, is all about. The Scarlet Thread explores what it means to submit to the Lord.

But the most personal book is The Atonement Child, because it dealt with an issue that was so huge for me--abortion. So much was based on my own personal experience, or the experience of people close to me. Thirty years ago, I had an abortion, and for thirty years, I've lived with the shame and anguish of that decision. Only a few close friends and family members knew what I had done. It was something I wanted desperately to forget.

My decision to have an abortion kept me from the Lord for many years. Although reared in a Christian home, I believed there was no forgiveness or salvation for a woman who takes the life of her unborn child.

After becoming a born-again Christian, I knew God had forgiven me. Yet, I couldn't forgive myself. It took me eight years to bring myself to Bible study for post-abortive women at a local pregnancy counseling center. It was through this course that I was finally able to face the full truth of what I had done, confess my sins and experience the mercy, love and healing Jesus Christ offers. Despite what I had done, God loves me. Jesus died for me. And he arose. It was time I came out of the grave I had dug for myself and accepted his forgiveness.

I wrote The Atonement Child for other women who are suffering from past abortions. I believe there are thousands in churches across our nation who grieve in secret. The consequences of abortion permeate our society. For every child that has been killed, there is a woman suffering, and a man as well. They do so in fear and in silence.

If churches begin to minister to these hurting brothers and sisters, healing can begin. And if enough of us stand and speak the truth about what an abortion has done to us and to our families, perhaps the holocaust will end.

I knew I would be a writer from when I was a small child. I felt the calling even though it wasn't until I became a born-again Christian that I came to understand that writing is my means of worshipping the Lord.

Writing for me is a means of learning more about the Lord. It's a way of praising him. It's a way of searching myself, uncovering faults and weaknesses, and searching Scripture for solutions. I use writing now to answer questions I have in my own walk with the Lord.

For instance, because I long for the kind of faith the early Christians had, I created a character, Hadassah in A Voice in the Wind, who is too frightened to share her faith with others, but who eventually has the courage to face the lions rather than recant. She also learns to forgive those who sought her death. Hadassah is the kind of Christian I want to be. Writing about her made me face my own numerous deficiencies and the need to allow Christ absolute sovereignty in all areas of my life. Without Jesus I can do nothing. With him all things are possible. I learned these things in a new way when I wrote the Mark of the Lion books.

It's my hope to continue learning about and drawing closer to the Lord through my writing. I would like to work on projects that bring to life aspects of our faith: redemption, justification, forgiveness, sanctification, salvation. Just as Jesus used parables to explain the kingdom of God, I would like to follow his example by writing stories that show what these things mean in practical, day-to-day living. I myself have the opportunity to learn and apply in my own life what I discover.

My greatest hope is that my books will encourage other Christians who have the same struggles I have and that the books can be used as tools in presenting the gospel to unsaved friends and family members. There are so many people who would rather die than pick up a Bible. Fiction can serve in a non-threatening way to open minds and, I hope, hearts to the Word of God.

The Lord sees our hearts and minds. He knows our struggles as writers. Yet, I think it's true that Christian writers have often softened the emotions and ultimately their stories in fear of offending someone. No matter how careful we are in what we write and how we write it, someone is always going to be offended. We can't write for the few who run in fear of facing real life issues. We have to tackle those issues head on.

Jesus did. He confronted sin. He transformed shattered lives. The hope of every artist is to be evocative, to be honest, to reveal truth. God is Truth, and Jesus is the only answer to man's bent nature. We have to get rid of the smiling facade and get down to the condition of our hearts. Readers want to be entertained, but they also want to be challenged. When writers can be completely honest about the battles we fight within ourselves, we will not only take back the arts, we will shine the light on the only path to salvation and victory--Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

I have been married to Rick Rivers for thirty years; we celebrated our thirtieth anniversary on December 21, 1998. A few years ago Rick and I renewed our wedding vows at Bodega Bay against the blue backdrop of the Pacific Ocean--very romantic and special. Our pastor and his wife, and our three grown children--Trevor, Shannon, and Travis--were present. Shannon is married, and so is our son Trevor. Shannon married a good friend of Trevor's, Richard Coibion, and Trevor married a close friend of Shannon's, Jenny Palmer. Blessings to keep a family close. Shannon and Rich are the proud parents of Brendan Alexander Coibion, born September 11, 1997--which, of course, makes me a grandmother!

What can I say about Brendan? He arrived six weeks premature, but right on time. It was one miracle after another with the little guy. He is perfect and beautiful, a miracle. His name means "dweller by the light." When I held him the first time, he was only six pound four ounces and not quite twenty inches long. I marveled at how small he was. His head fit in the palm of my cupped hands. I would just hold him and look at him in awe. I kept thinking that God holds us like that loves us even more than I love my precious little grandson. That struck to the heart of me.

I'd have to say Redeeming Love. That story was based on the book of Hosea in the Bible, and Hosea was the book that finally broke through my defenses and opened me up to God's love for me. I had grown up in a Christian home, and had a lot of head knowledge about Christianity. When we moved to our house in Sebastopol, a little boy invited us to his church. I was not in good shape spiritually at the time, nor was my marriage in good shape, so I was desperate. I attended that church, and eventually asked the pastor to lead a Bible study in our home. When we studied Hosea, that broke through all my barriers and I accepted Christ with my heart and whole self, not just my head.

Redeeming Love was the first book I wrote as a Christian, so it's special in that way, too. No longer would I, could I, write the steamy romances I had in the past. Redeeming Love marked a whole new direction for my writing.

The novellas in the Lineage of Grace and Sons of Encouragement series were hardest to write, for several reasons.

First, I had less time for each novella than I did with any of my novels. Novellas are shorter, so they should take less time to write, everyone thought. However, I had to do different kinds of research, and that was difficult. In order to bring the characters, setting and story to life, I had to understand the cultural context of each biblical story.

Also, I actually found the shorter format more difficult to write. You have to write much more compactly in a novella; I was used to creating all kinds of subplots in my books. In a novella I had to stick to the main story only. Then there is the restraint of wanting to remain true to the biblical story in every detail, yet add enough to flesh out the story and characters.