I would like to address this post to my fellow Mormon readers.<\/p>\n
A couple of days ago, I got a discouraging message from some old mission friends of mine.\u00a0 It said, more or less: “who would have thought that the missionary that taught us the gospel would write such a lurid book?” They were referring to my latest release, Sholpan<\/em>.<\/p>\n To be honest, it’s been very difficult for me to publish it, because I knew that this sort of thing would happen.\u00a0 I worry that my friends and family will think that I’ve done something inappropriate, or violated some moral standard, or made myself unworthy in some way.\u00a0 It’s very difficult to put your writing out there under normal circumstances, much less with complications like these.<\/p>\n However, I would like you to know that I have prayed about this, and that the answer I’ve received is that this is a story worth telling.<\/p>\n Sholpan<\/em> is about a girl who lives essentially LDS moral standards and falls into what may be the worst situation any of us could imagine for such a girl: slavery in the harem of a powerful warlord who has the power not only to rape her, but to kill her.\u00a0 By refusing to compromise her values–and risking death to do so–she makes friends in unexpected places and gains a whole lot more power than she ever would have if she’d taken the easy path and compromised.<\/p>\n In other words, it’s a little bit like the story of Esther.\u00a0 Yes, there are sexual themes, but they aren’t there to be gratuitous or titillating; they’re there to show that even in the face of such horrible immorality, you don’t have to compromise your values.<\/p>\n I know this kind of story isn’t for everyone, which is why I’ve put up warnings in the book descriptions and made it abundantly clear that this book has adult content.\u00a0 And if you decide you don’t want to read it, I won’t be offended at all.\u00a0 But please, don’t assume that I’ve gone off the deep end or betrayed my faith, because that’s not the case at all.<\/p>\n It’s a difficult position to be in; I’m sure that Stephanie Meyer’s and Orson Scott Card’s bishops get a lot of mail from fellow Latter-day Saints who feel that they ought to be excommunicated.\u00a0 But these are the kinds of stories that I feel driven to write: stories that address difficult moral issues and don’t shy away from portraying evil for what it really is.<\/p>\n I appreciate your concern on my behalf, but my faith and spirituality are still quite strong.\u00a0 You may or may not believe that after reading my books, but please don’t feel like you have to save me.\u00a0 The best thing you can do is continue to be a positive influence, and let me be a positive influence for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I would like to address this post to my fellow Mormon readers. A couple of days ago, I got a discouraging message from some old mission friends of mine.\u00a0 It said, more or less: “who would have thought that the missionary that taught us the gospel would write such a lurid book?” They were referring… Continue reading “Who would have thought…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[541],"tags":[635,513,111,122,458,315,636,324,257,37,258],"class_list":["post-6184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sholpan-novella","tag-controversy","tag-dark-and-gritty","tag-ethical-dilemmas","tag-friends","tag-good-and-evil","tag-mission","tag-morality","tag-orson-scott-card","tag-sex","tag-spirituality","tag-stephanie-meyers","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1BK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6184"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6202,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6184\/revisions\/6202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}