This is harder than I thought. Maybe harder than it should be. I dunno.
I had visions – when I first got the idea for The Coppersmith, when I first started writing it and realized I had something special – I had visions of it being wildly received and taking the CBA (that’s “Christian Booksellers Association”) world by storm.
Now, of course, I recognize how grossly naive that was.
It’s been over a year and a half since I finished the book. Three years since I first met Special Agents Janelle Becker and Ron Wilson, and realized they’d had an affair. Three years since the first priest was found murdered in St. Paul’s Episcopalian Church in Clyde, New York – his face and body torn to shreds by the Coppersmith’s misguided wrath.
Three years, and no one pays any attention. Eleven pastors dead. One more burned beyond recognition. And no one is interested.
Ironic. It’s not all that different from church-planting. Two years into this church plant and we’ve gone through three worship leaders. Maybe people don’t want to go to church with a pastor who writes psychothrillers. Go figure.
Every day in the news I can read about Muslims doing this or that. I can read about Christians being arrested for speaking up for their beliefs. No one seems to notice or care that the philosophical underpinnings of Western Civilization are being systematically eroded to the point where the whole thing will collapse. Psalm 11:3 “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
I’m whining, of course. It won’t get me far, but it’s nice to get it off my chest.