Author, Tim George, is on the home stretch of finding a publisher for his novel, The Token. Join interviewer, Lynda Schab, as they discuss his novel, flash fiction, and of course, FaithWriters.com.

LYNDA SCHAB: Start by telling us a little about yourself.

TIM GEORGE: For some reason I have migrated steadily eastward throughout my life. My father was a minister in Louisiana until his death in 1968. As a teenager my mother and I moved to Mississippi where I met my wife of 33 years. Now we find ourselves in Florida. Who knows, maybe we'll end up in the land of our ancestors (Scotland and Ireland) some day.

My life has taken some unexpected turns along the way, from the death of my father when I was twelve years old to our sudden move to Florida almost ten years ago. During my 51 years I have attempted many things and accomplished a few. After 25 years in full-time Christian service I am now working in the private sector. Along the way God has shown Himself faithful and far more sure of my future than I have ever been.

LYNDA: When did you start writing?

TIM: In some ways I have been writing since I was able to hold a pencil. As a boy I loved books. I devoured Hardy Boys Mysteries and Tom Swift Jr. During one phase (a weird one) in elementary school, I decided I would explore space. So, I wrote NASA and had every piece of free literature they offered mailed to me. In the weeks that followed, I spent numerous hours holed up in my research lab (closet) copying hundreds of pages of information from those flyers.

My writing career took off with great promise in High School when my poem was published in the La' Reflexion, our school literary magazine. And then … well, many writers already know the rest. College, marriage, children, and career became my story.

A little over three years ago I picked up a sale copy of "Heaven's Wager" by Ted Dekker and I was hooked. This wasn't my father's Christian fiction. I haven't missed a week writing since. Of course, I want to be published. Every honest writer does. But my main goal is to tell the stories of my heart in the hopes they will connect with someone else who can identify with the message they carry.

LYNDA: You've been a member of FaithWriters for a couple of years. How did you find FaithWriters.com and what do you love most about it?

TIM: FaithWriters.com was the first search result that popped up when I Googled Christian + writing. No joke. I had half a manuscript and no idea what I was doing. It didn't take much looking around on the site for me to realize this was the place for me.

Writing is both a rewarding and lonely endeavor. You can't trust your family and friends for critiques. What mom is going to tell their son they hate his writing? FaithWriters provides an extended writing family of encouragement and honesty. It is through FaithWriters, I discovered Rosey Dow. Her coaching has been invaluable. It is also through FaithWriters I have first been able to see some of my stories in print.

LYNDA: To give us an idea of what type of writing you do, which author would you compare your work to? Or, to put it another way, to whose work would you like yours to be compared?

TIM: The author I would most like to be compared to is Athol Dickson. His stories are dominated by compelling characters and quality prose. He also is a master of the suspenseful parable. Rather than resorting to graphic violence he  draws us into the story world of his hero where we are challenged to consider ourselves and our world. There is so much discussion these days about "edgy" Christian fiction. Unfortunately that tends to actually mean a desire to break the CBA moral code and appeal to a broader market. Dickson's "River Rising" is edgy in much more inventive ways than using questionable language.

LYNDA: Give us a synopsis of your book, The Token.

TIM: My official synopsis goes like this: Two men who have been running for ten years from the same senseless tragedy are thrown into a collision course with each other by seemingly unrelated circumstances and people. Will the T-Man and Dan find freedom from the voices that have haunted them since that tragic night in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans a decade ago?  The answer lies in a woman neither can forget, a wall of water that won't let them leave, a 1985 El Camino rocking in the wind, and a silver token.

It is the story of people who have lost their way in life. During a "Katrina-like" hurricane they are thrown together where they are forced to face their past and their future.

LYNDA: Oooh…sounds intriguing! How did you come up with the idea for this story?

TIM: No publisher will ever believe this now but I started writing The Token months before Hurricane Katrina. Living in Pensacola, we had just been blasted by Hurricane Ivan and lived through its devastation first-hand. It just seemed like a great setting for what I wanted to tell.

Most of us run away from something in our lives at one time or another. Some do so by immersing themselves in family or career. Others by changing scenery. Some just build a tough exterior others can't penetrate. So I thought, what if seeming unconnected people, all running away from something, were forced to stay in one place and face themselves.

Another part of The Token that is dear to my heart is the issue of how believers deal with failure in their own lives. The Church tends to be great at handling the falleness of unbelievers. We're not so good at dealing with failings within the Body.

LYNDA: You have a pretty cool website (www.tegeorge.com). One thing I noticed is that you also write flash fiction. For those who might not know, explain exactly what flash fiction is.

TIM: Thanks for the compliment. In another phase of life I was a free-lance web designer (back when it was still a mystery to most people), so I enjoy playing around with design.

Flash fiction is just a cool name for short stories. Time for a little honesty here. FaithWriters Weekly Challenge seemed like a waste of time to me two years ago. I wanted to get published and see my book at Barnes and Noble. Thankfully, I chose to give the short stories a try. The discipline of staying on topic and condensing a meaningful story into 750 words has been invaluable. Flash fiction requires disciplines every writer needs to develop.

As a child and teenager I loved Alfred Hitchcock, Sherlock Holmes, and Amazing Stories. One of the best selling Science Fiction novels of all time (Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card) was originally a short story. The novel I am working on presently began with an idea for a story that will soon by published in one of FaithWriters anthologies.

LYNDA: What types of things have you had published?

TIM: So far all short stories and a couple of devotionals. Outside of FaithWriters, I have pulled back from the shotgun approach of sending out manuscripts everywhere and hoping something lands.

Against my wishes, a first-draft of The Token found its way into the hands of a published Christian author over a year ago. I still have her email. Basically she suggested I back off a couple of years, study the craft, and try again. I never told her this was a first-draft. (and what writer even wants to read his or her own first-draft, let alone allow a well-known author to review it?) But I still read that email from time to time. It reminds me that writing is a long-haul process.

There are a few writers who get what we jealous ones call "the breaks." Robin Parish had Ted Dekker to introduce his first novel. A few, like Randy Ingermanson, were respected physicists before beginning a writing career. Those are exceptions. Most of us have to fight through the many rejections and dry periods that come. That's just part of writing.

LYNDA: Tell us a bit about your family.

TIM: My family is the biggest part of my story. It has been the many trials and triumphs we have experienced that have molded my writing style and subject. My father died of a heart attack when I was 12 years old. My wife had two brain surgeries during the first 15 years of our marriage, both of which have left her with nagging disabilities since. Our oldest son worked his way up to the position of Executive Chef at a large restaurant in Pensacola only to be stricken with Multiple Sclerosis a few days later. Our youngest son (Army 10th Mountain Division) has been called away from his family twice in six years, first to Korea and then to Iraq. All of these have taken their toll in various ways.

At the same time, it has been our struggles that have molded my world-view more than anything else. Through all of these things God has revealed Himself in great and mysterious ways. Yet not in the story-book fashion which plagues much of Christian fiction. You know, everyone gets saved and lives happily ever after. Like Jacob, we all walk with limps. But we still walk. My wife has lived 20 years past the day our Neurosurgeon first told us she had a year at most. Our oldest son, while unable to work, has a fine family and is productive in more ways than I can count. Our youngest son survived a stint as Convoy Commander in Iraq to return whole and a Bronze Star.

LYNDA: Wow. You are so right, Tim. Our struggles and challenges in life are the things that mold and shape us the most. "Sounds like you've definitely had your share. What a wonderful attitude you have about it all.

So tell us…other than getting The Token published, what other writing goals are you pursuing?

TIM: I have a couple of projects running at the same time. Since I work full-time I have to work to squeeze them in. One is called Nightsend. Hopefully, this will one day be a trilogy that tells the story of a not-too-distant future where the Bible has all but been lost to the world. Think of it as a retelling of the Book of Acts with a Science Fiction flavor. I haven't figured out yet how to pitch that idea to a publisher. If the idea grabs you check out, www.nightsend.wordpress.com.

While doing the hard work of looking for a publisher for The Token, I am neck deep in my second novel, The Source. This is the one that began with a short story at FaithWriters called "The Magic Board". The hero of the story is Rain Man with a Christian world-view. I'm having a lot of fun writing this one. There's everything from FBI agents, to Serbian spies, to an Autistic Savant that understands a lot more than anyone gives him credit for. 

Between my day-job in public relations with a large medical facility and the college fellowship group I lead in our church, I am left with plenty of free time to work on these projects. Yeah, right.

LYNDA: It's obvious you're a very busy man. But your ideas sound fabulous and I don't doubt you'll accomplish everything you set out to do.

Thanks so much for chatting with me. I wish you all the best with getting your novel published. Make that plural - novels. We'll be keeping our eyes peeled for them to hit bookstore shelves someday very soon.

To learn more about Tim George and read his work, visit his FaithWriters profile at: http://www.faithwriters.com/member-profile.php?id=14447