I don't see success as the goal. Obedience is the goal.
In my opinion, Jesus is God's attempt to reach man. But while I believe Jesus is the way to God, it makes no sense to hate people who disagree.
When I was a junior camp counselor and it was my job to tell the campers a bedtime story or devotional, I would tell them a rapture story.
SOON was the first novel where I used a rough outline. Usually I have characters and an idea and write as a process of discovery. Like working without a net.
Broken relationships are a source of heavy heartbreak that seem to affect every family.
Good fiction must be entertaining, but what makes fiction special - and True - is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a larger message.
I love inventing worlds and characters and settings and scenarios.
I was raised in a Christian home and, in fact, my mother led me to Christ as a youngster.
Fiction has a unique role in conveying Truth. In fact, only fiction that is Truth with a capital T is worthwhile.
Funny, I don't feel any more powerful today than yesterday.
Actually 'Soon' has more than the Left Behind series, but I really believe less is more.
As for dialogue, I think it keeps things moving to cut to the chase.
Books that do a tenth of what Left Behind has done are smashing successes.
Gil Thorpe is a great diversion and is to book writing as poetry is to prose.
He just kind of talks them through, and then I get the fun part cause I get to make up the stories.
I fear it's because religion is man's attempt to reach God, and when he feels he has succeeded, he cannot abide anyone else's claim to have done the same.
I put off writing the first Left Behind book for a year because I got invited to assist Billy Graham in his memoirs, and had we known what we were putting off for a year, we might not have put it off.
I was raised as a Christian but the transaction has to be made by yourself - you and God - at some point.
I've written enough books with real celebrities, such as Walter Payton and Hank Aaron and Billy Graham, to know that fame looks good only to people who don't have it.
In the prequel we're going to tell about the characters before Left Behind, and the book would end with the rapture instead of start with the rapture like the first one did.
