Christian Fantasy Author Lorilyn Roberts: How I Became an Author

50 Great Writers You Should be Reading 2016 Contest. 

Below is the article I wrote that won me a top spot.

Lorilyn Roberts

My love for writing began with a homework assignment in third grade. The teacher asked us to write a short story. Fifty-plus years later, on occasion, I’ll pull the old, faded, handwritten story out from underneath my bed and read it. I still remember writing the words.

In fourth grade, I wrote poetry.

In fifth grade, my teacher accused me of plagiarism in front of the class. My father went to the school and talked to her. He never once questioned my integrity.

By the time I was in ninth grade, I had written two unfinished books. Yeah—I didn’t know how to finish them.

When I was thirteen, my parents gave me a guitar for Christmas. The next few years my writing waned as classical guitar took up most of my time. I loved the attention and self-worth it brought me as I performed at many major events.

When I went to the University of Georgia my freshman year, I rediscovered my love for writing. Since I grew up in a family business, however, English wasn’t on the list of “qualifying” majors; maybe physical therapy or business administration, but not English. No starving authors were allowed in the Roberts’ family.

Then, as often happens, I fell in love.

I hit a crossroads. What was I going to do with the rest of my life? In a moment of insanity, I threw my college degree out the window, and at my parent’s urging, agreed to go to court reporting school. My future husband promised someday I could go back to college.

As a court reporter, I was writing, if you can count thousands of pages of depositions writing. I imagined how many books that would be, and I longed to write something different.

When my husband finished medical school, we moved to Gainesville, Florida, where he began his residency in radiation oncology. I enrolled in college and earned my two-year degree towards a bachelor’s in journalism. I took my first creative writing class, and my writing appetite was whet once more.

My life changed forever when tragedy struck. I discovered my husband was having an affair and had gotten his girlfriend pregnant. Not only was I devastated because I loved him, but I had sacrificed a lot for his career. My dreams were just beginning to be fulfilled, although my inability to get pregnant caused me great depression. My hopes of becoming a mother, earning my college degree, and writing books evaporated overnight.

I cried oceans of tears and didn’t want to live anymore, but God heard my desperate wails. I sought counseling, began to read the Bible, got involved in a local church, and started attending a prayer group. Most importantly, I recommitted my life to Jesus Christ.

Perhaps the hardest part was accepting God’s will. I had to go back to work as a court reporter since that was the only skill I had. I had dreamed of so much more.

While it took some time, God gave me new dreams and better opportunities. I obtained that elusive college degree, and in the process, did quite a bit of traveling that included studying in England, Israel, Italy, and Australia. On a whim, I got certified as a scuba diver and made over a hundred dives around the world.

However, my longing to be a mother remained unfulfilled for eight more years. Then, on May 8, 1994, on Mother’s Day, I arrived home with a three-year-old Nepali girl. Five years later, over Christmas, I adopted an infant girl from Vietnam.

Manisha a couple of months after arrival.

Joy in Vietnam When I Adopted her

Reading picture books to my daughters unexpectedly rekindled my love for books and writing. We made frequent trips to the library, and I would come home with armfuls of books. We read hundreds of books together, even into their teens—one of the best things about homeschooling.

Not surprisingly, the first book I wrote was a children’s picture book, The Donkey and the King. When I finished it, God told me something I didn’t expect. He wanted me to wait until my children were older before I wrote more books. My passion for writing was all consuming. As a single mother, my daughters needed me when I wasn’t working—now as a broadcast captioner.

I waited four years to write my memoir Children of Dreams. I was afraid if I waited any longer, I would forget my daughters’ adoption stories. I wanted them to know how God had brought us together as a forever family.

After writing Children of Dreams, my passion for writing grew. However, I only knew how to write picture books and nonfiction. How could I learn to write fiction? I remembered those two books I wrote as a teen—the books I never finished. 

At the Florida Christian Writer’s Conference, I heard about a Masters in Creative Writing degree from an accredited online college. I later enrolled at the spry young age of 53. When I completed my Masters, the book I wrote as part of my thesis became a best-selling book in Christian fantasy on Amazon. Three years later, Seventh Dimension – The Door is still listed in the top twenty Christian fantasy books (I eventually made it free on all eBook platforms).

Following Seventh Dimension - The Door, I wrote four more books in the series: Seventh Dimension - The King, Seventh Dimension - The Castle, Seventh Dimension - The City, and Seventh Dimension - The Prescience. Currently, I’m working on the sixth book in the set to be published later this year.

What drives me to write? I write for an Audience of One. God gives me the desire to write, and He gets all the glory. I feel God’s pleasure and spiritual insights I can’t explain.

As I look back, I’ve learned I needed to live a little so God could teach me much. God has shown me He never wastes anything and limits the feasts of the locusts. They can only eat what He allows. It is never too late to start writing, and it’s always too soon to quit. If we commit our way to our heavenly Father, God will multiply our time, effort, and ability. If my writing can change a life—even if it’s only my own—then I know I’m in God’s will, and really, isn’t that all that matters?

Lorilyn Roberts Answers Questions About Writing, Family, John 3:16 Network , and Future Books - Part One

QUEST

LORI       

Question:  How do you find time to write: 

Lorilyn:  Until recently, as a single mother, most of my time revolved around my family. My youngest daughter just started her first year of college this month, and my oldest daughter recently moved into her own apartment. I feel like I've entered into a new chapter of life and am still adjusting to the change. The home is much quieter, but it does allow me more time to write 

Several years ago, recognizing how involved I was in their lives as a single parent, I felt it was important to pursue my own dreams when they became older. 

I also work very strange hours as a full-time broadcast captioner. I half-heartily think about how many people have read my captions around the world and imagine what it would be like if that many people were reading my books.

When we were doing book launches in the John 3:16 Network, that took up much of my free time. I love doing TV and radio appearances, but they are also time consuming, so I haven’t done as many as I would have liked.

Sometimes I’ve focused more on charitable pursuits. In the fall of 2014, my younger daughter and I took books to orphans in Nepal. Over the last two years, the John 3:16 Marketing Network has donated books to the Wakulla Correctional Facility near Tallahassee, Florida. Prisoners have read and reviewed about three hundred books.

Question:  How many books do you write in a year?

Lorilyn:  This last year I wrote two books, but it left little time to do other things. I plan to take a break before writing the next book in the Seventh Dimension Series, so I will probably write only one book in the next several months

Question:  Tell us about your John 3:16 Marketing Network of Christian Authors.

Lorilyn:  Currently, the John 3:16 Marketing Network is closed to new members. Once we stopped hosting book launches, I realized there were other groups more beneficial to new and upcoming Christian authors. Promoting books, whether mine or others, and writing simultaneously is hard, and as much as I enjoy marketing, my passion is writing.

A core group of authors in the network continues to encourage each another in marketing and writing. Many blessings come from the members who are active, and even those who have moved on still connect in various ways.

If a new author or wannabe author wants to join a Christian group or receive mentoring, I would recommend for nonfiction writers, Shelley Hitz, who has a “Training Authors for Success” website. For fiction writers, I would recommend Jerry Jenkins’ new writers guild. Both groups help authors with writing and marketing.

If you are an author with some history of writing books and want the camaraderie of other authors who have been at this for a while, contact me and we can talk. I occasionally bring in authors free of charge.

My original desire, once we stopped doing launches, was to provide one‑on‑one mentoring for new writers launching their first book. Many “roaches” out there promise the universe and give little in return. They often involve the outlay of too much money, and authors are burned because they don’t know any better. Unfortunately, I haven’t found the time. I prefer to think of marketing as a ministry, not a business endeavor, and I’ve struggled to make that switch to a business model, but that could always change.

Question:  Tell us about your newest book this year.

Lorilyn:  I just published the fourth book in my Seventh Dimension Series, The City.

Question:  Tell us what brought about the creation and writing of the Seventh Dimension Series.

Lorilyn: After I published The Donkey and the King, I wanted to do a series of picture books, but picture books are expensive to produce, especially when you hire an illustrator. Publishing them is not economically viable as a POD book. I found it hard to sell at a price point that people would pay, and I couldn’t afford not to recoup the costs on future books. I also knew I needed to wait to write more books until Joy was older. She was only seven at the time, and I realized that it was unfair to devote that much time to writing books when she was still so young.

When Joy was eleven, I wrote Children of Dreams. Even though I had kept all my notes from both my daughters' adoptions, I was afraid if I waited any longer, I would forget the story. Over a decade had passed since I had adopted Manisha. 

After the thrill of writing my adoption memoir, I wanted to write more books, but I recognized I didn’t have the expertise to write fiction. Some things I wanted to write about from my life could only be told as fiction.

Once I saw my limitations as a writer, I went back to college to obtain my Masters of Art in Creative Writing from Perelandra College. In order to graduate, I had to write a full-length novel. From my coursework, I developed the first book in the Seventh Dimension Series that included the animal characters from The Donkey and The King.

I included issues from my life—bullying, abandonment, failure, and fighting. I was a pretty wounded kid. I can identify with that kind of teen. At the same time, I also had a deep longing for God.

I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, but I had some Jewish friends, and their sense of community was something I wanted. I was jealous for their God.

The little dog from The Donkey and the King, Much‑Afraid, was also my childhood pet. The real Much‑Afraid, Gypsy, came to me during a

thunderstorm. When we buried her many years later, a sudden thunderstorm appeared out of nowhere. We had to hurry as lightning flashed all around. I promised at that moment, when I was fifteen, someday the whole world would know about Gypsy—the dog God gave me. I share her story in my adoption memoir Children of Dreams. I could say more, but I’ll let readers read the book rather than summarize it here. (Children of Dreams is a 2016 Readers' Favorite Award Winner in the Memoir category.)

I have written four books in the Seventh Dimension Series. One or two more books remain to be written. A great deal of research goes into my writing. Even the second book, The King, required research into chariot racing in the first century.

  

The words I write will live on after I’m gone. Someday I’ll stand before God and give an accounting for every book I’ve written. I’m intimately aware of the importance of making sure I draw people to God, giving hope, and showing that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. The concepts of forgiveness, hope, and purity find their way into the fabric of my stories, pregnant with suspense, mystery, and hopefully, twists and turns that keep the reader guessing.

Who wants to read a predictable book? I must make the reader read until the very last page to know how the story ends. 

*~*~*~*

Part two of Lorilyn's interview will be posted in a follow-up blogpost. Visit http://LorilynRoberts.com to learn more about her books.

Contemporary Thriller by Jim Baton, Book Review by Lisa Lickel

A Way Out of Hell

Book two of the Peace Trilogy

Buy on Amazon Australia 

Amazon US 

Barnes and Noble

Ebook $5.99

Print $15.99

About the Book

When ISIS turns your city into a living hell… ISIS unleashes a reign of terror across Indonesia. As a former jihadist, Abdullah knows all too well the high cost and absolute ineffectiveness of fighting such violence with violence. He accepts the impossible challenge of finding the ISIS cell hidden in his city, and disbanding it non-violently. But time is running out, and there may not be any city left to save. Meanwhile, he has to protect his adopted daughter Sari, a Christian university student, who is one of ISIS’s targets. Together they come face-to-face with the holy warriors of mass destruction and strive to overcome that evil with good. In this riveting sequel to Someone Has to Die, Jim Baton introduces us to the real people caught in the web of terrorism, with their wide variety of backgrounds and motivations, and the possibility that they, too, can change.

Lisa Lickel's review

Baton has racked up an impressive amount of endorsements for his very fine work, Someone Has to Die and A Way Out of Hell, including a former congressman. Although I trip but am willing to reason over his website declaration that Christians and Muslims worship the same Father, I can read his fiction and appreciate his craft for sharing a story that is frightening realistic and full of possibilities.

A Way Out of Hell is a sequel to the 2012 story, Someone Has to Die. Both are set in Indonesia, a heavily Muslim country, but one actively fending off radicalized Muslims who promote one world extreme sharia dominance through acts of murder and terrorism. Obviously portraying the fascinating setting and culture in a natural manner draws in a reader unfamiliar with this part of the world. A sympathetic peacemaker who sees and acknowledges his human flaws, the societal failures and resulting loss of his family through divorce and murder, Abdullah makes his purpose one of not giving in to hate and cruelty; to look beneath the reasons and meet needs in a positive way that is able to turn and pass it on. The back cover description shares the story. My review is simply that the writing is stellar, the story riveting and excruciating and occasionally embarrassingly true when Baton showcases who is willing to risk peace at all costs and who doubts it can be done. This is the ultimate lesson in meeting extreme prejudice head-on and refusing to blink. Baton makes me believe.

Told through multiple characters, A Way Out of Hell is a lengthy but page-turning, cringe-worthy tale of extraordinary people in an alien setting, whether native or guest, forging peace and brotherhood without thought of price.

About the Author

Jim Baton (pen name) has spent the last 20 years living in the Muslim world, where he’s been involved in a variety of peace and reconciliation activities including interfaith dialogue, training elementary through university students in peace principles, and bringing Christians and Muslims together to pray.  His real name and photo won’t appear on this site to protect his identity from radical groups where he lives out his faith.  When in America, Jim is available to speak to groups that have a heart for loving those of the other religion and can protect his identity.