What's Your Purpose as an Author?

Yesterday I had a talk with one of my daughters. Part of the conversation had to do with my purpose as an author. She was a bit confused.

"I thought you wrote inspirational books," she said.

She was right, of course. I'd written three of them and my fourth, well, it was a cozy mystery. A bit out of the same realm.

Fortunately, I'd worked through the same issue myself just a few months prior before deciding to release Scrambled. I wondered: "Will people like it that I've switched genre's?" "Will they see my purpose as miss-managed?"

What I realized then just as I do now is that every author is filled to the brim with ideas and not all of them run the same wave. C.S. Lewis himself was known to write fantasy as well as nonfiction. He wrote for adults as well as children.

And while I'm the first to admit that a  mystery story is a cry from a Christian fiction novel, there are surprisingly some elements that remain the same. 

 

• Like to figure things out about your life; make it better? Read a Christian fiction or nonfiction book.

 

• Like to figure things out when it comes to sleuthing? Want to discover "who did it" even before the author releases the news? Read a mystery.

I'd like to think that my purpose as a writer is not only to share the goodness of God but the joy of life. I'd like to think that sometimes we just need an escape and a good mystery can do that. We also need to get the good old left brain working to figure things out.

And I'd like to think that I can do both.

What's your purpose as an author? I would love to hear your thoughts.