Travis Thrasher

Dealing with Isolation

Travis Thrasher knows the meaning of isolation. Like the Millers, the missionary family at the center of his newest (and ninth) novel, Isolation (FaithWords, Sept.), he once lived in the middle of nowhere on top of a mountain in North Carolina. But Thrasher, who now lives with his wife and son in the very populated city of Chicago, says that Isolation is one of his least autobiographical novels—although definitely his most frightening.

“I love being scared—it's a universe I'm comfortable in,” he says, laughing. “My favorite author of all time is Stephen King. From the time I was a kid, I've loved how he puts ordinary people in crazy, scary situations. You begin to relate to the characters, so when these frightening things start happening, you really care.”

It wasn't difficult for Thrasher to come up with his own idea for a horror novel. “We knew a missionary family on furlough who were staying at a large, strange, remote house, and I thought, this would make a good setting for a story,” he says. “It was one of those ideas that wouldn't let go.” As for what makes a horror novel Christian, Thrasher explains it has to do with how the characters question their faith and God's presence as frightening events unfold—including murder, being trapped in a snowstorm and threats to the family's children. “Both of the main characters, Jim and Stephanie, wonder—why would you do this to us, God?”

For Thrasher, the most important thing is how when everything seems at its worst, God shows up to save everyone. “Sometimes you get angry at God, and you have to be put in your place,” he says. “God has to tap you gently on the head, remind you that he loves you and that he's in control. At the very end, after these characters have gone through this horrible journey, God reminds them of all this. So the title has double meaning: isolation from others and isolation from God.”

Ideas for scary novels may come easily to Thrasher, but writing them is another story. “Writing Isolation was dark, even oppressive. I can't say I love rereading it for editing, either, because it takes me back to that same mind frame,” he says. “It's not just because I'm trying to be spooky, it's about the characters, too. One is truly angry at God, a missionary who is losing his faith, which is a heavy thing to write about.”

The advance reception to this Christian horror story has already been so positive that FaithWords is hoping for another. It looks like Thrasher will have to face his demons again. “I like making people scared. But it's not easy writing at night—you might spook yourself,” he says. Yourself—or maybe your wife. Thrasher thinks she won't touch this new novel. “My wife does not like scary things. She might be willing to read bits and pieces, but I'll probably just explain it to her.” —Donna Freitas

Tom Morrisey

It's an Adventure

Tom Morrisey's Christian adventure novels are usually set in exotic locales he's visited as a travel writer and editor-at-large for Sport Diver magazine. But part of his Wind River (Bethany House, July) takes place in Iraq, a place he has never been.

So he spoke with people who had been there, he conducted Internet research, he watched CNN, and he showed what he wrote to veterans of the Iraq war. As for the title setting—the Wind River mountain range in Wyoming—Morrisey worked from memories of trout fishing there.

“I used to be a copious note taker, but not any more. I just trust my instinct. I realize if it's important to my fiction, I'll remember it,” says Morrisey, who lives in Orlando, Fla. “The fabric and the texture, which is what I'm using in my fiction—I don't write that down.”

He's working now on a novel for Bethany House about treasure hunting, set off the Florida Keys and the Outer Banks. Morrisey expects it to come out around July 2009.

Wind River is his sixth novel. His fifth, In High Places (Bethany hardcover 2007; paper 2008), is a finalist in the 2008 Christy Awards. But Morrisey, who has a master's of fine arts in creative writing, says he had pretty much given up on fiction writing by the time he became a committed Christian at age 44, a dozen years ago. He had freelanced and at one point edited a magazine for Chevrolet customers.

“Once I became a Christian, then I decided I felt led to put together a collection of true adventure stories” with a faith element, he says. He queried four publishers and says three expressed interest. The fourth was Dave Lambert, then a Zondervan editor, who dropped him a note saying the book idea was intriguing but Zondervan didn't see how to market it. (Baker Books published Wild by Nature: True Stories of Faith and Adventure in 2001; Morrisey says it was in print for only 11 months.)

Lambert invited him to propose a novel instead. The problem was, when Morrisey arrived for their scheduled lunch date, “I didn't have a single thing down on paper to talk to him about.” Morrisey prayed all the way to Grand Rapids. Lambert took him on a tour of Zondervan, then out for lunch, and the topic of a novel never came up.

Then, as the two men passed a statue of Jesus washing Peter's feet in the Zondervan lobby, an idea and a plot began to come to Morrisey—and 20 feet along, at the front door, Morrisey pitched Lambert what became Yucatan Deep (2002).

“Christian artists are always saying, 'God gave this to me,' ” Morrisey says. “But I really do think that was divine intervention and proof that God has a sense of humor—he waited until the very last second.” —Juli Cragg Hilliard

Patricia Hickman

Revealing Deeper Layers

As a second-grader growing up in Arkansas, Patricia Hickman wrote her first chapter book and told her mother she was going to be a novelist. Her mother's response: “Oh, you're crazy. People like us don't write novels.”

“We were from the wrong side of the tracks in her estimation,” says Hickman, whose 15th novel, Painted Dresses (WaterBrook), comes out July 15.

To look at Hickman's life now is to wonder how she gets any writing done. She's married to Randy Hickman, pastor of Family Christian Church in Huntersville, N.C. Their ministries include helping people who have HIV/AIDS and working against international child trafficking. Following the 2001 car-accident death of one of their three children, 20-year-old daughter Jessi, Hickman speaks and writes about grief. “All of these things are an adventure. And how do I do it? I guess just one thing at a time,” Hickman says.

Nine years into the Hickmans' marriage, they nearly divorced. She was working for Dun & Bradstreet, and he for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. She had a near-affair. Instead of breaking up, the Hickmans became “sold-out and missional” Christians. He went to Bible college and became a pastor. While at his first church post in Baton Rouge, La., in the early 1990s, she finally dedicated herself to writing. She bought a computer with $600 she had saved up in loose change.

“I sat down and just looked at that computer screen and thought, 'What in the world?' ” she says. After joining a critique group led by novelist Gilbert Morris, she focused on historical faith fiction and got her first book contract. But at the end of that series, she was miserable. “I had not signed up to write books that I didn't want to read.” Christian novelist Francine Rivers told Hickman to write books she was passionate about and the market would find her. She wrote Katrina's Wings (WaterBrook, 2000)—about two sisters growing up in the 1970s in a setting based on Hickman's hometown—and it became her breakout novel.

In a quest to improve her writing, Hickman pursued a master of fine arts degree. While in that program, inspired by some of her own family mysteries, she began working on Painted Dresses. In the book, adult sisters Gaylen and Delia take shelter in a dead aunt's mountain cottage because a drug dealer has put out a hit on train-wreck Delia. They discover the aunt's collection of framed, painted dresses, which leads to revelations about their own painted-over lives.

The theme echoes Hickman's own past. She had always known her late parents were different from other kids' and now believes they had mental problems. Dreading ending up like them, Hickman “painted” over that fear and presented herself as “the good daughter.” She's working now on a memoir. —Juli Cragg Hilliard