My life changed in a
Colorado hotel nestled in the shadow of the Cheyenne Mountain, over one mile
above sea level.
The change started with a
wall of immovable discouragement as I navigated my first full day at a major
Christian writing conference in February 2009. The publishing industry, I
discovered, had been hit hard by the recession. Editors, cinching their belts,
showed little interest in a debut novelist with hardly the ghost of a platform.
They were polite. They tried to impart confidence to those of us who were
trying to break in. But the fact remained that there were many more hopeful
writers than there were opportunities for contracts.
With every hour I sank
lower in hope and expectation. I thought no one would ever want to read my book,
Pearl in the Sand, a retelling of the
story of Rahab, the Canaanite harlot famous for having saved Israel’s spies
from certain death in Jericho.
The evidence of my senses
pointed to defeat. That first day at the conference, there seemed no way for this novel ever to see the light of day.
But what appears like defeat is sometimes God working out the details of His
plans. He forges victory out of bleak prospects.
The next day I met Wendy
Lawton, the award-winning agent from Books & Such Literary Agency; as we
spoke through my fifteen-minute appointment and into her break, I felt the
burgeoning of tenuous hope. By the end of our time, Wendy took me on as a
client, something she said she never did at conferences.
Wendy shared with me that
she would have had no interest in a biblical novel if we had met three months
ago because they were almost impossible to place. Then there had been a shift
in the market, making Pearl a very
timely manuscript. It dawned on me that the whole time I had worked on this
story, there had been no market for it. I had written into a vacuum. Had I been
aware of this fact, I would not have had the courage to keep writing; I would
have given up on this dream.
But God sometimes plants
dreams in our lives for a season not yet here. Noah built his boat while the
sun shone. Joseph prepared for a famine when the harvest overflowed and the
cows bulged with fat. I wished I could say I wrote Pearl in faith. The truth is, knowing my weakness, God just kept me
in the dark.
What I didn’t know was
that during the conference, Paul Santhouse, then Acquisitions Editor at Moody
Publishing, had heard the first two pages of Pearl in the Sand in one of the breakout sessions. It had stayed
with him enough that he had asked to see the manuscript when Wendy went
shopping for a contract. And that’s how I was published.
This May, my second
book, Harvest of Rubies will be
released by River North, the fiction arm of Moody Publishing. Harvest of Rubies is the story of Sarah, the prophet
Nehemiah's fictional cousin who can speak several languages, keep complex
accounts, write on tablets of clay, and solve mysteries. As a result, the
talented Sarah is catapulted into the center of the Persian court—working
long hours, rubbing elbows with royalty, and becoming the queen's favorite
scribe. Yet a devastating past has left Sarah with two conclusions: that God
does not love her, and that her achievements are the measure of her worth—a
measure she can never quite live up to. And then she meets Darius Pasargadae, a
man accustomed to having his way. A wealthy and admired aristocrat, the last
thing he expects is a wife who scorns him. Throw two such different people
together and the sparks fly as Sarah learns to overcome the idols that bind her.
It seems impossible to me that I am working on my third novel and coming up
with ideas for my fourth and fifth contracts.
Here is my point as I
write this article. We can drive ourselves crazy with depressing statistics,
discouraging circumstances, and impossible odds. However, there is a truth that
we sometimes misplace: God is strong. He is able. He is an ever-present help in
trouble. He can cover our gaps and our shortcomings. He is the best marketer,
the best advertiser, the best editor you can find; after all, He too is a
writer. Our destiny is in the palm of His hands, and though we are buffeted by
the winds of adversity and the wiles of our enemy, God is far more powerful
than both.
Tessa Afshar was voted “New Author of the Year” by the Family Fiction sponsored Reader’s
Choice Award 2011 for her novel Pearl in the Sand. She was born in Iran,
and lived there for the first fourteen years of her life. She moved to England
where she survived boarding school for girls and fell in love with Jane Austen
and Charlotte Bronte, before moving to the United States permanently. Her
conversion to Christianity in her twenties changed the course of her life
forever. Tessa holds an M.Div. from Yale University where she served as co-chair
of the Evangelical Fellowship at the Divinity School. She has spent the last
thirteen years in full-time Christian work.
Connect with Tessa:
On her website - http://www.tessaafshar.com/
On her Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/AuthorTessaAfshar
Notes:
1. Jenkins, Jerry B.,
Christian Writers Guild Blog, Debunking a
Myth, September 21, 2010.
