Part II of my Interviw with Mythic Orbits Creator Travis Perry

This is the 2nd revolution of my interview with Mythic Orbits creator Travis Perry. I hope readers are finding the conversation interesting. Last week we started out by discussing Travis's definition of Speculative Fiction from a Christian or faith perspective. Now we're going to dig deeper into certain presumptions placed upon those authors.

Mark:       Do you feel there are certain expectations in the Christian community when reading stories by authors who identify as Christian?  
 

Travis:   Yeah, I think there are expectations from self-identified Christian readers when reading self-identified Christian authors. The first of those would be that the stories be "clean," which means free of strong language, graphic sexuality, and graphic violence.

But the Creator himself at times used the Bible to express graphic violence and sexuality. This is not at all on every page, since most sexual references are very sparse in description (e.g. Adam knew Eve), as are most descriptions of violence (Joshua struck the city with the edge of the sword), but not all are. Song of Songs and some other references can be understood as quite graphically sexual in places and some wounds are also described in clear detail. (The Bible does even record a few curse words. But very, very few, far less than the descriptions of sex and violence.)

I'm not saying clean fiction is bad, mind you. But it is not an end in itself in my view. It is possible to honor God, as the Bible does, with language that would not be allowed around kids in a modern movie rating system. It is also on the other hand possible to create a story whose values are in no way good and moral/Christian which would read clean.

I think some Christian readers also expect to see overt and strong moralizing in stories by Christian authors. Which may or may not be appropriate to a particular story.

Some others expect evangelism in stories by Christian authors. Which should not be forced into every plot, but which can be appropriate at times.

But I think the number one expectation by Christian authors is that stories should be clean.

Look for the 3rd revolution of my interview with Travis soon.

Here's a link to Mythic Orbits. I hope everyone enjoys the stories as much as I did.  Thanks so much for supporting Indie authors!