In a couple weeks, I'll be sharing the cover for my "Problem Child" WIP, Conqueror of Shadow and Light. So I wanted to take a minute to talk about why I wrote it.
I grew up with some spiritual role models who turned out less-than-perfect--shocker, we're all human--and witnessed just how much bitterness and unforgiveness influenced their lives and affected them negatively. And yet, it was the status quo. You had to agree with the terms and conditions of their anger rather than convincing them to seek healing. I saw the opportunities missed. The relationships strained. The burden on their own lives caused by that unforgiveness. Eventually, became one of those statistics myself--the people who left them, tired of the bitterness. But Ezekiel 36:26 speaks that if you have accepted the Lord, He will give you a new heart made of flesh, not stone.
So I wrote a story about a kingdom so deep in darkness that their hearts are "cursed" to turn to stone. (I say "cursed" because it's what they believe, until the truth is revealed.) Their sins and hatred appear on their arms in black stains that creep up across the skin with each new burden, until one day it reaches the heart and infects it, turning it to stone. I wrote a story about a young woman with the burden of expectation, that she will turn out exactly like her broken father who perished young from a stone heart. I wrote a story about the lengths she would go to help her friend, and her family, escape the curse. Herself, too. I wrote a story about a boy blind from birth, whose parents abandoned him because they believed him to be cursed--why else would he be sick? He thinks he must find healing. She wants to prove that he isn't broken and sick, but worth fighting for.
And I wrote about a girl with her time ticking down: either she'll become what everyone expects of her, or she'll give herself over to something bigger.
Finally, I wrote a Narnia-esque allegory of a young man who claims he knows a prophecy that promises a cure to the stone heart...but they'll have to accept it first.
Conqueror of Shadow and Light is for the reader who feels like they're always underestimated, always doubted, always out of place. For the reader with different abilities, different traumas, different healing experiences that needs a reminder: the Lord meets you where you are. The Lord loves you, created you just so, and has a purpose for your life no matter what people say or think. And if you've been the one shut out, the one hurt, the one hopeless? There's a Savior who wants to show you a different way. That you can change. That you must change for your own wellbeing. Forgiveness isn't about justice for the offender; it's about releasing yourself from what they did to you. You do not need to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, nor do you have to mimic what your family has done in the past. You can strive for something more. You can trust Someone Better.
That is all. 
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