The Farthest Frontiers: An Interview with Two Writers of Marginalized Speculative Fiction - Page 4

FC: I founded the Lost Genre Guild to promote Biblical speculative fiction (most people don’t know what that is, so please check Wikipedia — a guild member wrote the definition), and I cannot believe the number of lives that have been touched. If the Boss strikes me down tomorrow, I've already lived dream one.

I just checked out the Wikipedia article. That’s a very good historical recap of Biblical speculative fiction.

FC: My own short fiction has only been published in two anthologies — I’m nobody. I work in a factory. My first novel Flashpoint: Book One of the Underground, will be released on September 30, by The Writer's Café Press. Most of my readers have been reviewers for Flashpoint’s advanced review copy. I leaned on my publisher to make Christian-pirate novelist ML Tyndall (Legacy of the King’s Pirates series) my front cover blurb. My three favorite novelists are George Orwell, CS Lewis, and ML Tyndall — so having my only living favorite novelist on my front cover is dream two.

On September 30, my third dream will be realized. I was eight years old when I knew I wanted to write storybooks — dream three took 33 years.

Will you be content with a certain kind of niche audience for your works? Or are you aiming for fame in the larger marketplace?

CW: Again, I'd like to be able to make a fortune from my enterprise. I'm sure that people who are classified as black are not the only people who support black products. Do only Chinese people each Chinese food? Do only white people listen to Mozart? Do only black people listen to James Brown?

FC: I hope sci-fi readers find me, but they don't look for their favorite fiction on religious shelves. I’ll be content with whatever he gives me: Christian science fiction is nonexistent as a subgenre, so if I'm ever able to pay the mortgage with fiction it will be a miracle.

CW: I believe I'm working outside of the mainstream because the mainstream is not publishing me. If they published me, I'd stop working outside of the mainstream. You'll have to ask the mainstream why I'm outside of it. If I waited around for the magic blessing of mainstream publishing I'd never write anything.

FC: The big publishing houses have bought out most of the small Christian imprints, so I just hope to make a difference for my subgenre. As a reader through my whole life, I was so tired of only finding the atheist worldview presented in science fiction. According to Writer's Digest, religious fiction in general is predicted to be the big growth market in coming years. Cecil and I are in the right place.