Are You a Scaredy Cat?

Today’s guest is K. Dawn Byrd,  a prolific and talented writer who said she writes for the pure joy of putting words on paper. At one point she told me she wrote in marathon sessions, finishing a book in 30 days.  Today, she talks about switching some of her secular books to Christian books.

Are you a scaredy cat?

I’ve written several genres, but my favorite is suspense. I find it exciting to write and my best-selling books were a secular series using a different pen name. In the series, I explored different mental health diagnosis in each book. In one of the books, the bad guy suffered from Dissociative Identity Disorder and had a fascination with eyeballs, which he kept as souvenirs from his victims. I have a file of fans waiting on the next release in that series, which I ceased writing and removed from print when I returned to my first love, Christian fiction.

You’d think if I could write blood and guts, it would be my genre of choice to read. Wrong. You’d also think I’d enjoy horror flicks. Wrong. I’m such a visual person that horror movies stay with me for weeks, making me leery of being in a dark basement alone.

Amazing Love, my last Christian Fiction release is a romantic suspense novel about Hosea and Gomer from the Bible. It’s a modern-day story in which my heroine finds herself in a terrible situation when she chooses to leave her loving husband and follow a life of sin. Even though she’s never stalked by the proverbial serial killer who moves through the cover of night in my secular works, she finds her own brand of trouble, paying a huge price for her sin.

Byrd - Amazing Love - new 2 The idea of telling the modern Hosea and Gomer story came to me while reading the story in the Bible one day in my daily Scripture reading. I’m amazed at how much God loves us and how willing he is to forgive us if we approach him in a true spirit of remorse and ask for forgiveness. It was a hard book to write because I tortured my modern-day Gomer. I recently read the novel again and put it through another edit and found myself in tears at certain parts in the book. Odd, considering that I wrote it, but I found that I loved my character and hated seeing her suffer. At the same time, I loved seeing God’s love for her. (Click on the cover to visit the book on Amazon.)

So, tell me…where do you stand when it comes to suspense? Horror? Blood? Can you read it? Write it? Watch it? Are you like me and you can write it, but can’t read it or watch it? Lord willing, I’ll be visiting the secular suspense series soon as I recently contacted Amazon about the possibility of editing them and placing a disclaimer on them that they’ve been republished as Christian fiction. With Amazon’s blessing, they’ll be released as a Christian Fiction suspense series after I pray over them and ask God’s guidance on how to show his love and grace throughout the plot. Please pray for me that if it’s not God’s will that I publish them again that I’ll leave this series dead forever. I want to be in God’s will in every aspect of my life. May God bless you!

JIM:  So, dear Reader, tell us where you stand when it comes to suspense.  Can you read it, watch it, write it, or … what?

4 thoughts on “Are You a Scaredy Cat?

  1. I enjoy adventure and can read a certain amount of mayhem but there is a limit. Like you, I’m a visual person and a really scary movie stays with me for a long time. Years ago, 50 maybe, I saw The Birds. To this day when I see a large flock of black birds in a field or sitting on power lines I get a creepy feeling, and I can almost see their beaks coming through wooden doors where people are hiding.

    Hope your plan of converting your books to Christian books with the same general plot works out. Too many Christian novels are sticky sweet and nothing like real life. God can work in the very worst of circumstances. Readers should be made aware of that.
    Good luck.

    • You’re so right, Galand! Life is messy and I think that’s why so many people want to read the sticky sweet…they want to escape from the messy. My step-daughter is a sucker for sweet romance. She loves it! I love suspense. We learned long ago that we can’t recommend books to each other. She started reading one of the secular suspense books (the one about the eye ball collector) and said it gave her a nightmare. She never tackled another one of my suspense novels. If I try to write straight romance, I find myself bored and straying toward adding suspense…a serial killer, a murderer, some mental illness. Something to stir up the plot! But, that’s just me. I’m glad there are genres out there for everyone.

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