Backstory

Kevin Mark Smith writes: "Avid readers love backstory, so here’s the backstory behind Flashback. Before I wrote Flashback, my agent was pitching two other projects of mine to publishers. A few requested manuscripts, but those fizzled out. They liked the stories but didn’t think that the current Christian book market would support them. Why? It drove me nuts. So I asked him.

“Only women read Christian fiction,” he said. “Women want romance, not legal thrillers.”

What! At first his assessment angered me, not toward him, but toward the Christian men who read Clancy, Grisham, Turow, and other secular writers. It seems that Christian women prefer clean stuff, not worldly stories. Men don’t mind profanity, ultra-violence, and even sex scenes in their diversions, and they shy away from the clean stuff.

So that was it. Without a romantic angle, Christian women, the readers of Christian fiction, wouldn’t buy my books, and publishers would not take a chance on a new writer who didn’t tap into this market.

An idea had been percolating in my noggin. A man struggling with dreams of a simpler life yet seemingly blessed with all the trappings of success is thrown into the tempest of a difficult, dangerous, even life-threatening case. How would I bring out that struggle in a way to tap into an audience willing to listen? The innocent, pure, even angelic Stacy popped into my head. Women are good listeners (at least better than men, right?). She listens to his struggles and offers a compassionate ear. What happens when a man sees more in a woman than just an object for conquest?

I won’t share any more–spoilers! Suffice it to say Flashback is the result of my brainstorming session with my agent. To be clear, I planned to write Flashback even without the romantic angle. However, adding this element resulted in a deeper, richer story. Flashback is more than just a Christian legal thriller. I must admit, adding romance makes a story far more fulfilling to the writer, too." FLASHBACK hits e-stores Wed. Aug. 28th