What is fantasy? Is it flights of imagination? Is it the supernatural? Or is it.... magic?
When I first started pitching my novel to Christian agents in 2023, its genre was firmly in the Historical Romance category. In my mind.
But a prominent agent informed me that my novel concept would be groundbreaking in the world of Christian fiction. Here is the concept:
High Middle Ages Europe, 1440. Gifted linguist Zahra flees her royal life following a traumatic incident, abandoning her baby sister. Years later, she has a chance at redemption when a young girl arrives on her doorstep, clutching an artifact she claims holds divine power.
Callous Englishman Stephen Kempe is arrested while searching for his abducted niece. His effort to expose the culprit are futile when corrupt officials accuse him of sorcery and imprison him.
As Zahra interprets in the trial of historic serial killer Gilles de Rais, the girl is snatched away. In a desperate rescue attempt, Zahra unwittingly frees Kempe from jail, only to face betrayal as he thrusts her into a deadly inferno.
But instead of meeting her end, it is just the beginning.
Artifacts that hold power. Sorcery. Unburning fires. Pretty sure what the agent was really saying was, "Not sure I can sell this book because Christians don't like magic."
Magic? My book? My decidedly Christian book? Why I would never!
But over the next week or so, while mulling and guzzling espresso (now you know how fancy and cultured I am), I realized that perhaps even though our Bible is full of supernatural, fantastical, yes, even magical occurrences, we Christians Do Not Like such events to occur in our fiction, lest we be lured into paganism by the devil.
So while I snuck my novel quietly into the Christian Historical/Fantasy Romance category (groundbreaking!), I created an e-learning that shows 5 different powers that occurred in the Bible. And they all occur in Innocents of Marbella, too.
Because God did that.
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Comment below your thoughts on magic as a Christian.
Your point of view in labeling such things "magic" intrigues me. I have seen and experienced much of God's power in my life, and yet I have never thought to label it as magic. Miracles, yes. Evidences of faith, yes. But I'm not sure I could get comfortable with using the word magic in this sense as it conjures up (no pun intended) images of witches, warlocks, spells, and such. Still I respect your choice of use for the word, and I will be pondering this for some time for sure because of the way Meg Ryan used the word in "Sleepless in Seattle" as it related to love. So some things really are magical. And maybe the addition…