Novelist

Actually 'Soon' has more than the Left Behind series, but I really believe less is more.

I don't see success as the goal. Obedience is the goal.

He just kind of talks them through, and then I get the fun part cause I get to make up the stories.

Writers write. Dreamers talk about it.

I was raised in a Christian home and, in fact, my mother led me to Christ as a youngster.

Good fiction must be entertaining, but what makes fiction special - and True - is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a larger message.

Books that do a tenth of what Left Behind has done are smashing successes.

When you come to Christ as a real young person, I think when you become a teen-ager either you rebel or you search, doubt, and wonder.

In my opinion, Jesus is God's attempt to reach man. But while I believe Jesus is the way to God, it makes no sense to hate people who disagree.

I love inventing worlds and characters and settings and scenarios.

I was raised as a Christian but the transaction has to be made by yourself - you and God - at some point.

SOON was the first novel where I used a rough outline. Usually I have characters and an idea and write as a process of discovery. Like working without a net.

When I was a junior camp counselor and it was my job to tell the campers a bedtime story or devotional, I would tell them a rapture story.

While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area.

My dream remains to inform and entertain through fiction in the form of novels and movies that compete in the marketplace of ideas.

It's made me more expectant of the imminent return of Jesus, and also more sensitive to the people around me. Knowing Jesus will return soon makes me want all the more to tell people about him and all that he offers.

I fear it's because religion is man's attempt to reach God, and when he feels he has succeeded, he cannot abide anyone else's claim to have done the same.

Funny, I don't feel any more powerful today than yesterday.

I put off writing the first Left Behind book for a year because I got invited to assist Billy Graham in his memoirs, and had we known what we were putting off for a year, we might not have put it off.

The Christian market has less competition and lower standards.