Tuesday, December 10, 2019

A Cross to Kill: A Giveaway


A few weeks ago, I reviewed a really fun book, A Cross to KillI Read with Audra is doing a blog tour, and Audra told me I could post about the giveaway.  It ends today, so hurry!

The review focused on the book.  This post will focus on the author, Andrew Huff.
Andrew Huff spent 10 years in local church ministry as a youth pastor and creative arts pastor before pursuing God’s calling into creative storytelling and media production as the Product Director at Igniter Media, a church media company (ignitermedia.com).

He is a two-time finalist in the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) Genesis Contest for unpublished authors (2014 & 2017) and also won the Best Screenplay award at the 2015 48 Hour Film Festival in Richmond, VA.

Huff holds a Bachelor of Science in Religion degree from Liberty University and a Master of Arts in Christian Education from Dallas Theological Seminary. He resides in Plano, TX with his beautiful wife, Jae, and their two boys.

One aspect I noticed in the book was how the characters in the church all ring very true.  Andrew addressed this in a Q&A:
Q: Writers usually write what they know. Is there any of you in John Cross?
A: If there was, I wouldn’t be allowed to tell you. Just kidding! The more exciting aspects of John’s story are nothing like mine, and I only wish I had half of his intuition and skill. It is true, however, that writers usually write what they know, and I’m no exception. The part of me in John Cross is less the man and more the day-to-day experience in local church ministry.

When I wrote A Cross to Kill, I was on staff with a Southern Baptist church in Central Virginia, though a much larger church than Rural Grove. So much of what John experiences with the church and its members is based on real experiences that I drew from during my time on a church staff as well as from growing up as a preacher’s kid in rural Tennessee churches. The congregants we get to know are not based on individuals as much as an amalgamation of wonderful people I had the opportunity to get to know through the years.
Another point I found interesting was part of Andrew's answer to the question about struggles the main character has that readers can relate to.
A: Another faith struggle that I know many readers can identify with is the difficulty of accepting God’s forgiveness for not only the sins we’ve committed in the past, but the sins we will commit in the future. John struggles to believe God could forgive him for what he did while in the employ of the CIA, and that affects his ability to pass forgiveness on to others. This is something I, myself, have also found difficult. It’s not hard to believe God might forgive a single mistake here and there, but after failing again and again and again, it’s easy to expect a limit to God’s forgiveness. That’s when we can become trapped in the erroneous belief that faith is not enough, and we must work to retain God’s favor.
I am really looking forward to reading more in this series! 





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