Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Is MYTHICAL really Christian?

When self-publishing, it turns out you have to make a lot of decisions you never considered when actually writing a novel. Like how to tag it, market it, etc.

For me, one of the toughest decision was whether or not to list the book as "Christian".
For sure, it's Young Adult- it's got two teenagers as main characters, with the reader following them as they are thrust into an adventure where mythical, modern day titans battle. And being Young Adult, that means there shouldn't be any smut, excessive profanity and a lot of the other stuff that Christian novels are safe from.

Secondly, Mythical antagonist is from a Christian world. A giant. Giant's are in the Bible.
Then there's the main character, the soldier with amnesia who comes back from the dead at the beginning of the story. He's a Christian- he wears a Christian fish pendant, and he even says grace before eating, to the bemusement of the teenagers.

So, Christian antagonist, Christian protagonist, no smut, no excessive profanity. Well, yes, that does sound very Christian, or at least safe for Christians.


Except there's the violence. Horror-class violence, what with the antoagonist going around, ripping people's hearts out of their chests, and eating them.

I struggled with this- did I want to offend Christians by making them read something very violent? Then I remembered the Old Testament. There's lots of violence in there. There's even a Protagonist, David, who slays a giant antagonist, Goliath. Hmmm. Yes, I think that does make this a Christian novel- in the end the hero, a Christian, defeats the villain, a pagan.

What could be more Christian than that?

No comments:

Post a Comment