Welcome back, Jeanette. God has really been
moving in your writing life. What do you see on the horizon?
I always have half a dozen more stories bubbling in my head
that I hope to write if the Lord tarries and permits. And I continue in my
"day job" as a missions journalist, editor of a missions magazine,
and a ministry very dear to my heart: training and mentoring Christian writers in
two languages on five continents (most recently Mexico
and Kenya).
But I can say honestly that I've given up looking too far into the horizon just
because God's path for my life so often takes completely unexpected twists and
turns. My focus has zoomed in on rounding the next curve in the road: finishing
that next book, article, speaking engagement, ministry trip to the absolute
best of my ability while looking forward with anticipation to what new surprise
God may have for me on the horizon.
Tell us a little
about your family.
I am married to a fellow missionary kid, Dr. Martin Windle,
currently serving as president on an international ministry organization, BCM
International (www.bcmintl.org). I have four adult children, three sons and a
daughter, ranging from age 21-30. My middle son and our daughter, the youngest,
are adopted from Bolivia,
where we were then serving as missionaries. Our oldest is in his final year of
law school on full scholarship from the Bill Gates Foundation in Public Service
Law. Our middle son works in Nevada.
Our youngest son is currently a combat medic with the 2nd Marine Regiment out
of Camp Lejeune, NC. Our daughter is a wife and mother in Lancaster, PA.
Forgive me if I don't mention their names, but one commitment my husband and I made
to our children long ago (birthed from our own too-public upbringing as
missionary kids!) was to preserve their privacy in print and speech.
Has your writing
changed your reading habits? If so, how?
I am an avid reader, both fiction and non-fiction. Like food
and drink, reading is part of my regular intake, no matter how busy I get. Perhaps the
biggest impact writing has on my reading habits is that I do minimal fiction
reading when I am at full-throttle writing a new novel. Instead I read enormous
amounts of non-fiction material on the particular country setting where I am
currently writing. Most recently for instance with Congo Dawn, I read at least 20,000 pages of history, current
events, political/social/economic background on the Congo region as well as
collateral subjects such as conflict minerals, private military companies, the
inside-out of multinational corporations. Once I finish a manuscript, I will
admit to indulging myself in a surfeit of fiction (including many waiting
titles from CBA author friends) before I begin my own next writing project.
What are you working
on right now?
After seven consecutive adult international intrigue titles
and a children's international mystery series, I am actually buried currently
in a project that is very much outside either of those boxes, more The DaVinci Code meets Michael
Crichton's Timeline than anything
I've written to date. Set alternatively against a near-future and pre-diluvian
Earth, Deluge is a story that has
been bubbling for years, and I am excited about where it is going. But I hope I
won't be leaving you in too much suspense if I reserve the details until I am
much further along.
What outside
interests do you have?
Outside of
writing, I've been in full-time ministry for thirty years now as a missionary,
missions journalist, speaker, and trainer/writer for indigenous Christian
writers on four continents. While
technically "work", traveling to new corners of the planet and
meeting new people is one wonderful side benefit. Whenever possible, I try to
squeeze in some sightseeing in each new country. And when I do have spare time,
I'll admit you can usually find me with my nose in a good book.
How do you choose
your settings for each book?
My settings choose me more than the other way around.
Seriously, every time I've finished writing about one country, God has brought
people and circumstances into my life that lead me to a new country, new
story-line, and new spiritual theme. For Veiled
Freedom and Freedom's Stand, set
in Afghanistan, God opened
the doors to so many 'boots on the ground' sources in Afghanistan as
well as being able to travel there personally. When I finished Afghanistan and
began brainstorming my next novel, unplanned and unexpected contacts with some
of the planet's most incredible missionary pilots and jungle medical volunteers
opened doors to writing Congo Dawn,
set in the war-torn Ituri rainforest conflict zones of northeastern Democratic
Republic of the Congo. I'm excited to see where God leads next for settings of
future titles.
If you could spend an
evening with one historical person, who would it be and why?
Shem's wife (as in Noah's daughter-in-law, the eventual
maternal ancestor of Jesus Christ). As to why, her POV figures strongly in my
current work-in-progress, and I have so many questions for her. What was it
like to marry into a clan of known crazies? To face giving up all known
civilization and technology to raise children in a stark, primitive new world?
What drew her to Shem: romantic love, his faith in Elohim, Creator of All, or
both?
What is the one thing
you wish you had known before you started writing novels?
I've often wished I'd known before I jumped so blithely into
writing novels just how difficult it would be, wrenching heart and soul and
mind to pour out a story and its spiritual theme on printed page. I would
certainly never have had the courage to start on such a long, strenuous,
hair-pulling, heart-rending journey, had I seen the road ahead. Even more so
the equally arduous process of getting a book actually contracted and published
once it is written.
So while I do wish I'd known, I'm glad as well that God only
let me see each next step (isn't that the way God works in so many areas of our
lives?). Now that I do know just how hard writing a novel is, I constantly ask
myself in the first stages of each new book what in the world I think I'm doing
dragging myself back into the arena to start all over again. Then I get far
enough in the new book that I can't turn back, and after another long, arduous
journey, somehow another book is born.
What new lessons is
the Lord teaching you right now?
Each of my novels is birthed
from the particular point along my own spiritual journey at which the book is
written, so that the spiritual truths with which the protagonists are wrestling
are also the lessons God has been teaching me. Most recently, the height and
breadth and depth of God's love despite all seeming evidence to the contrary of
this planet's darkness and suffering.
In Congo Dawn, the protagonist asks a
question:
“I would give my own life to stop the pain
I’ve seen. To stop little girls and boys from being raped. Or just as bad,
forced into armies where they’re turned into killers . To keep families from
being torn apart by war. Children dying of preventable diseases for lack of a
dollar’s worth of medicine. So am I more compassionate than the God who created
all these people, created all this beauty? How can an all-powerful God who
claims to love humanity look down on our planet and watch such unspeakable
things happening, innocent people hurting and dying, bad guys winning over and
over again, so much
suffering, without it breaking his heart? Without reaching down and putting a stop to
it?"
Coming to grips with that question in my
own life as well as that of my fiction protagonist has led inexorably to a very
simple realization.
I am not more compassionate than my
Creator. Any love I can possibly feel or show is a dim reflection of our heavenly
Father's love.
So if I begin
with the recognition that God is truly love, that He loves us far more than we
can love others, then I must also accept (whether or not I will ever fully
understand it this side of Heaven) that the coexistence of a loving Creator
with human suffering is no oxymoron, but a divine paradox those refined in the
fires of adversity are best equipped to understand. However dark the night, our
heavenly Father really does know what He's doing. His ultimate plans for our
lives and for all His creation are not only birthed from immeasurable love, but
they will not be thwarted.
What are the three
best things you can tell other authors to do to be successful?
I wish I had three good answers to this--or even one. The
truth is that one can read every writing book, work diligently at developing
one's craft, jump through every hoop listed in the CBA or ABA writers market guides, and still not find
success as a writer. Which is why I'd like to share instead what I call the
"But God Factor".
My own publishing story (too long to tell in full here) was
perhaps like many, writing that first juvenile mystery series, submitting to
publishers, receiving encouragement, rejections--but no contracts. Except that
I was sending my submissions hard-copy from the mission field. I'd run through
every lead by the time we came stateside for a three-month ministry trip. I remember
vividly asking God to either open a door or close it completely so I would not
waste more time on writing that could go into other ministry.
We were at a final missions conference before heading back
to Bolivia
when I received a call. To my astonishment, it was an editor of Questar
Publishing, recently merged with Multnomah Press, who'd already sent me a
rejection, saying they didn't publish juvenile. The caller informed me that in
the merger they'd found tucked away in a drawer some wonderful children's
mystery-suspense chapters. They'd called a phone number on the proposal (my
in-laws) and had been given my contact info at the missions conference. Would
that proposal still be available for a new juvenile fiction line?
Would it! The contract arrived just as we headed back to Bolivia, the
beginning of my CBA career. That out-of-the-blue phone call at a missions
conference would far be too improbable for fiction. Which simply goes to show
that one can follow every guideline, jump through every hoop. But in the end,
delightfully, unexpectedly, there is always the "But God Factor" that
turns all our own plans and efforts on end.
So instead of advice, let me leave this one encouragement to
my fellow writer-in-Christ. Do we
need to understand the market? Perfect our craft? Follow editorial procedure?
Yes, of course. But we are not only writers, but children and servants of God, called
and gifted by Him to do the works to which He has called us. I don't
know God's plan for your writing gift. But I know He has one.
So write what
burns within you, not just what may fit the market. And when you've done all
you can to be a writer of excellence, trust God to open the right doors for
your message. After all, who could ever predict a dusty manila envelope in a
back drawer of an abandoned publishing warehouse to be the launch of a writing
career.
Tell us about the
featured book.
If
absolute power breeds absolute corruption, what happens when a multinational
corporation with unlimited funds hires on a private military company with
unbridled power? Especially in a Congolese rainforest where governmental
accountability is only too cheaply for sale and the ultimate “conflict mineral”
is up for grabs?
Set
in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo's war-torn eastern Ituri
rainforest zone, Congo Dawn confronts former Marine lieutenant Robin Duncan with
just that question. A veteran in handling corruption and conspiracy, Robin has
never had any trouble discerning good
guys from bad. But as her private security team tries to track down an
insurgent killer, Robin faces a man who broke her trust years ago and discovers
that gray areas extend deeper into the jungle than she anticipated.
As
a vicious global conspiracy emerges, run by brutal men who don’t leave
witnesses alive, Robin must decide if there is anyone left she can trust. And
where is God in the suffering and injustice? How is it followers of Yesu
(Jesus) caught in the crossfire can still rejoice when everything they hold
dear is ripped away?
Please give us the first page of the book.
PROLOGUE
Ituri
Rainforest, Democratic Republic of Congo
Paradise Lost.
That translated piece of literature
written by a long-ago foreign poet had been a favorite of Jesuit monks who’d
taught a Congolese orphan boy his letters and their language many years ago.
Perhaps because they’d felt just so at
their exile to his own country.
“Baba. Father. Have you not understood
what I said? With these we can now make a paradise out of our home.”
Father and son stood on a stony
outcropping that thrust skyward over the rainforest canopy, one of dozens of
the strange rock formations that rose like termite mounds above the treetops,
their stony composition bearing no apparent relation to the sandy soil or red
clay that made up the jungle floor. Burial mounds of the Ancient Ones, tribal
legends avowed before pale-skinned foreigners arrived to teach terms like igneous and volcanic anomaly.
“Baba, do you not see what a miracle this
is? As great a miracle as finding you alive again. The Almighty at last has
chosen to shower favor upon us. This place, our people, will never be the same
again.”
The tall, ebony-skinned youth was dressed
incongruously for this place in collared shirt, slacks, and such shiny black
shoes as his feet had never known during their growing years. But anxious, dark
eyes and beaming smile were the same, though he now held out a handful of gray
pebbles rather than the schoolwork of his boyhood. In years past, his father
could have responded with unstinted praise, but now he shifted his own bare
feet to look down over the cliff edge.
The clearing below stretched to the banks
of a wide, lazy river, its water the dark tannin shade of tea, a drink the
Jesuit monks had taught the older man to enjoy. Several dozen thatched
mud-brick huts occupied the highest ground, beyond the reach of wet-season
flooding. Women wrapped in the colorful lengths of homespun cloth called pagnes
stooped among cultivations of cassava, maize, beans, yams, and peanuts. Others
moved along a path from the riverbank, their graceful sway balancing pottery
water jars on top of their heads.
Children too young for work or school
scampered among banana plants, playing some game of running and hiding. On the
river itself, a pair of hand-hewn wooden pirogues drifted lazily toward a bend
where the watercourse disappeared back into untamed rainforest. Several village
men, naked except for the same loincloth that was the older man’s sole dress,
stood precariously on the canoe rims to cast fishing nets woven of thin, supple
lianas. Drawing the nets from the water, they removed a few catfish and eel,
then cast the nets again.
Paradise Lost.
There was a time when such had been the
older man’s own opinion of this remote jungle locality. When this place had
seemed to him an unjust and cruel exile . . .
How can readers find
you on the Internet?
I would like to invite any
reader interested in knowing more about Congo
Dawn, my other titles, or my own life journey to visit me at my website (www.jeanettewindle.com ) or
contact me directly at jeanette@jeanettewindle.com . I am
also delighted to participate with local book clubs or discussion groups
through Skype video or online chat conference.
Thank you, Jeanette, for sharing this new book with us today.
Readers, here are links to the book. By using one when you order, you help support this blog.
Congo Dawn
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Congo Dawn
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