Watchful Wednesdays – Special Guest Molly Noble Bull
AND a Christian Book Launch and Giveaway.
Read to the end of the post and you have a chance to win a $100 gift certificate from Amazon. Don’t miss it.
This is the third in my series of Christian writers and their book launch. If you missed the other two please click on their names below.
Today we welcome Molly Noble Bull. She answers the question, “How do your faith and your writing come together?”
To God Give the Glory
From early childhood on, I have wanted to please the Lord, and for me, my writing is a ministry. On the dedication page of all my published novels these words are written—To God Give the Glory.
I know I am saved and going to Heaven when I die because of what Jesus did for me on the cross, and what joy that brings to my life. Though I cannot be perfect while still in this earthly body, I try always to do God’s will, testing myself constantly and hoping I am where I should be in the Lord.
And I wonder.
Am I truly living the Christian life? Am I where God wants me to be?
To be honest, I am not where I would like to be. The Bible says, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”
One thing I’ve wondered about for a long time is fiction. Is fiction writing God’s will for my life? I remember asking the Lord in prayer if fiction writing was His will, and He never really answered. But one day a strong thought came to me that I think came from Him.
It was when I’d been praying about fiction writing. His answer was not what I expected. He seemed to say that prayer is a real thing.
But of course we knew that. For a while, I was confused by His answer. Then, a light turned on deep inside me.
I could be wrong. Perhaps I misunderstood. But here is what I believe He was telling me about fiction writing.
A lot of people write out actual prayers in their fiction as if the character was praying them either out loud or mentally, and that method of scene writing can certainly be very successful. I wrote scenes just like that in my earlier books.
But then another thought came to me in the form of a question.
It was like He asked, “How do you expect me to answer a prayer from a fictional character?”
The thought stunned me. I imagined prayers floating up to heaven, and some of them came from my characters. I had never thought of prayers written out in fiction in that way as being wrong, and it changed me.
Despite the show don’t tell rule, I tell about my character’s prayers now.
I don’t show what they actually said word-for-word. Example: Jane prayed about what Tom said in the name of Jesus.
That is the way I write prayers in my novels now, and I give God all the honor and glory.
What’s Gatehaven about?
Have you ever known a teenage girl so in love with love and a bad prince charming that she was unable to see her true prince? If so, you will connect with Shannon Aimee as she and Ian Colquhoun battle an evil Frenchman with dark secrets and evil desires. Set in Scotland and a scary mansion in the north of England and ending in the state of South Carolina in 1784, Gatehaven by Molly Noble Bull is a Christian Gothic novel that will keep your reading until the very end of the book.
The Rogue’s Daughter by Molly Noble Bull opens on graduation day at a teacher’s college in San Antonio, Texas—class of 1890. Rebecca Roberts is waiting to get her diploma, hoping for a teaching job, but she hasn’t found one yet. Her only offer came from Seth Mathews, a handsome rancher with three children—a cowboy who keeps showing a romantic interest in Rebecca.
Shameful. He has children. He must be married.
Or is he?
The Rogue’s Daughter was first published by Zondervan in 1986 as a Serenade/Saga Romance, but Molly has the rights to this western romance novel now, and soon, she will publish it as an e-book under a new cover.
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Molly Noble Bull
Molly was born in Kingsville, Texas—home of the famous King Ranch, and her father and maternal grandfather were real Texas cowboys. So does she write westerns?
Yep.
But she also writes long historical novels like Gatehaven, her long Christian gothic. Gatehaven won the 2013 Creation House Fiction Writing Contest while still a manuscript. But Molly’ first two published novels came out from Zondervan. Her Zondervan novels were later reprinted and published as Promise Romances from Guideposts. Molly also sold novels to Steeple Hill, and Tsaba House, and Westbow Press published The Overcomers: Christian Authors Who Conquered Learning Disabilities, a non-fiction book she wrote with four other Christian authors.
Molly owns the rights to her Zondervan romance novels now, and she will soon self publish The Rogue’s Daughter as a e-book. Rogue is a western set on a South Texas cattle ranch in 1890.