'A God-Given Story'

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At the age of six, I believed I would grow up and be a preacher. At the age of ten, I knew without any doubt that I would be an author. Half a century later, I am an author writing about a preacher. So I guess I am a kind of "professional Christian." But of course, I'm also a private Christian. In other words, what I am, anyway, just rolls out into the world in a larger sense. So it's good; it feels safe and comfortable to me. And unless there's clergy around, I get asked to say the blessing!

I wrote for several decades in advertising, a profession requiring the strictest discipline. I don't think of writing as a spiritual discipline, though I am writing about things of the spirit. I work in a disciplined way because that's the way I was trained to write. While I found advertising to be somewhat brutal and unfeeling, all things considered, it has taught me many wise and useful ways to work. The take-out of this is that God never wastes anything. Nothing. The years I spent pouring my heart into work that would be thrown away, recycled, or ignored were years He was teaching me how to put my shoulder to the wheel and get the job done, no matter what. And as you know, getting the job done is no easy accomplishment. I find I must fight for every hour at my desk, or my life would devour it quite whole.

Still loving the beautiful and powerful liturgy--a gift!--and the hymns and the possibilities that lie ahead for us as God's people. The letter you mention is still very much in effect, however.

The journalist, Sam Hodges, was completely determined to get a more in-depth story about my life. I found I liked him immensely, he was a gentleman, and absolutely devoted to the accomplishment of his mission. I admired that so much that I just said, "OK, here we go, I'm tired of trying to hold back the ocean, and if anyone is going to do this thing, I would like it to be you." It was painful for me, and embarrassing. I literally despise the modern horror of baring one's soul publicly. I bare my soul publicly in every book I write, and that seems enough for me. But the deed is done, and I find I'm greatly relieved.

I have no plans to write and publish any nonfiction. Though if I had time, I would write a book called "The New Georgians." It would be about people like me (hordes of them!) who move to Albemarle County, into the countryside, to create their own version of a bucolic, eighteenth-century paradise. As for an autobiography (by the way, Agatha Christie's autobiography is among my all-time favorites), I can't say, because I don't know. I have so much work before me--a book about the building of a mid-eighteenth century house in Virginia (requiring two years of research and four of writing), a children's book about a boy and his mother who go visit relatives in their RV, a book about... you get the idea. As for my plans for the next series, suffice it to say that in the first of the Father Tim Novels, he goes "Home to Holly Springs," and is given a gift that could cost his life.

I never do well with this question. Let me just tell you what I'm reading now. Or re-reading after forty years. Knut Hamsun's "Growth of the Soil." A masterpiece. If I thought creating an entire town was hard work...

While antiquing along Virginia's famed Route 11, I found a sampler. It says, "Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get." Happiness is what I look for as a first fruit of success, which, as you know, is a thorn all its own.

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