Mar/Apr 2003

Tale Spin

By Bob Liparulo

Murder? Suspense? Author Ted Dekker's gritty fiction isn't safe--and Christian guys love him for it.

It's 11:20 on a Friday morning, and Ted Dekker is making his way through the wide corridors of Gener8xion Entertainment in Hollywood, California. The going is slow; he's concerned about missing a meeting with company chief Matt Crouch. Crouch is the man behind the hugely successful movie The Omega Code. Now he wants to bring one of Dekker's novels to the silver screen.

But it's not the prop demon heads crowding the halls that's slowing Dekker down. It's the production house workers, who keep stopping him to say how much they like his work. One of them--who turns out to be David McQuade, Gener8xion's vice president of marketing--seizes Dekker's hand and wraps an arm around the writer's shoulders.

"I just want to shake the hand of the man who wrote Blessed Child," McQuade says. "When I got to the end I wept like a baby."

Quite a reception for any writer, let alone one most people never heard of, who's still trying to produce the kind of surprise mega-hit Frank Peretti had with This Present Darkness. More amazing is the speed at which Dekker has risen from obscurity.

Dekker's first book, Heaven's Wager, was published 2-1/2 years ago; before that, he ran a cartography shop.

In fact, literary achievement seemed an unlikely destiny for a guy who'd worked in retail since age 12. "That's when I opened my first business," says Dekker, now 40. "I sold jewelry and watches for candy and comic books on the streets of Jayapura, Indonesia, where my parents were missionaries."

Two decades of buying, running and selling businesses, however, left him feeling hollow. "I was making a living, providing for my family, but I didn't feel the passion I knew God gives you when you're doing what He designed you to do," he says. "Actually, I was pretty miserable."

He began using his evenings to type up a fantasy story that had been rolling around his head. "I was immediately enthralled. It sounds trite, but I knew then and there that writing was what I was born to do."

For five years, fiscal responsibilities as a husband and father prevented him from taking a headlong plunge into that literary lake. Then he sold the cartography business and found himself looking for his next endeavor.

"I was so used to being in business," he says, "my mind kept turning toward buying or starting another company. The idea of writing full time kept flittering around up there, but I thought, 'No, no, I can't do that!' After all, I had no training or education in writing and had never published a word."

That flittering became a constant longing, and with the encouragement of his wife, Leanne, he sold most of their possessions to fund a shot at becoming a novelist. "My friends thought I was out of my mind," he says.

During the first year he finished the novel he'd started years earlier. Publishers weren't interested, so he rewrote it and finished a second novel. Still no bites. He started a third.

"All the while, I was reading everything I could get my hands on about how to write," he says. "God may have called me to be a storyteller, but it was up to me to learn the craft." Networking former business associates led to meetings with working writers, whose brains he would pick mercilessly.

"By the fourth year, things were getting desperate," Dekker recalls. He had to sell his sport utility vehicle and dirt bikes to make the mortgage payment. Less than a month later, he got the call: W Publishing Group wanted not only Heaven's Wager, but also two other novels he hadn't even begun yet.

"Ted's timing was perfect," says W publisher Mark Sweeney. "We used to practice what I call 'opportunistic fiction'--that is, we'd buy books only from established writers. We wanted to change that, and start finding and cultivating the next generation of great novelists."

But it wasn't just timing, and it wasn't just Heaven's Wager that piqued W's interest. "We turned down the first two novels Ted sent us," Sweeney says. "Within months after each rejection, he'd send in another one, and the writing was substantially better than the one before.

"Here was a guy who was consistently coming up with some big-idea story and consistently improving his quality. We decided this was a writer we could seriously get behind, who could be a pillar in our approach to fiction."

More than anything, the element driving Dekker's success is fierce determination. "A lot of wannabe writers have talent, but they don't produce," points out Dekker's agent, Jan Dennis. "And here's the part people don't get: It's not easy, and it's not magic. Ted works very hard to develop intriguing ideas; he writes when he doesn't feel like writing."

The way Dekker sees it: "Doing my best is the only way I know how to thank God for the gifts He's given me. It's my way of praising Him. And that's true for any profession.

"If you're a whiz at numbers, be the best accountant you can be. Good with kids? Be the kind of teacher students talk about with admiration the rest of their lives. When you give it back to God--whatever it is He's given you in the first place--that's success."

Such nuggets of wisdom percolate throughout Dekker's action-adventure stories, without coming off as preachy or didactic.

"If I can say this as a reader, not as a peer," he says, "too many fiction writers working in the Christian market are heavy-handed about the message they're trying to convey. The story has to come first."

Jesus either taught outright or He used parables--stories--to communicate heavenly truths, Dekker says. Mixing the two makes everything muddled.

"It's not a good story because of all the preaching, and it doesn't teach well because of all the plotting and characters thrown in," he explains. "That's why so many people, especially men, read novels by secular writers--they're exciting, and story is king. Don't you think Tom Clancy and John Grisham and Stephen King want to make comments about social and moral issues? Sure they do. And they do it, but within the context of a good story told well."

Even Dekker's conspicuous lessons flow smoothly from the behavior of his characters, as in this snippet from A Man Called Blessed (co-written with Bill Bright):

"Caleb was staring at her and she was feeling her heart pound without understanding exactly why.

"'I am learning to ride my bike,' he said.

"'I...I'm not sure I understand.'

"'It's something Father Hadane told me, and I'm beginning to comprehend. When you learn to ride a bike, you don't just learn that you ought to ride it; you actually attempt to ride it and then you do ride it. Belief works the same way. I am learning to believe; I am riding my bike.'

"He said it with a delightful awe--you'd think he had just mastered the secret to atomic power."

Despite his emphasis on story over theme, the spiritual messages of his tales are clear. In Blessed Child (also co-written with Bright), he asked--and answered--What does complete faith look like? In its sequel, A Man Called Blessed, he took the question a step further: What happens to childlike faith when we become adults?

Heaven's Wager offers up a modern retelling of Job, couched in a suspenseful thriller. In his latest release, Blink, Dekker endows the protagonist with a mysterious gift to see possible futures, examining the openness of God.

"When you've finished reading a Dekker book," says Sweeney, "you've learned something about God and about yourself, and you've been completely entertained in the process."

Surprisingly--because it's so rare--his fiction appeals equally to men and women. Dekker's thrillers have strong themes of love, but it's not the Harlequin passion kind of love or the fluffy romance you find in a lot of women's novels.

"No story in the world is worth a dime without love, because that's what everything is about," he says. "Men don't generally admit it, but it's true. If I wrote the most exciting espionage story, but the main characters didn't love something--God, a country, a woman--no one would care. Love, suspense, action--everybody's happy."

Now, even with more than 300,000 copies of his six novels in print, Dekker seldom relaxes his breakneck pace. On any given day, he'll spend eight to 12 hours pounding out words he hopes will eventually lead readers to a closer relationship with God.

Despite the serene setting of his Colorado ranch home--or perhaps because of it--his home office nearly always pulses to the loud strains of P.O.D., Linkin Park or whatever new band has caught his fancy and keeps his blood roiling.

Then there are the times, several weeks a year, when everything vocational stops. Dekker treks to an isolated monastery--there's one in New Mexico he favors--for quiet solitude and uninterrupted communion with God.

"It's a time when I confront my deepest fears and recognize my own naked wretchedness," he says. "And from this deepest pit springs a God-breathed life that feeds my heart with breathtaking clarity. It's there that I recapture His purpose for my life, my role in His kingdom."

This echocardiogram of intense activity and extreme reflection has enabled him to become one of the most prolific writers working today. By the time Dekker hits his third-year anniversary as a published author this October, he'll have seven books in print and three others queued up, finished but for the printing.

"I have these stories inside me that need to be told," he says. "If the market would bear it, I'd put out three a year. For now, I'll have to settle for two."

If anything in his career bugs him, it's the occasional criticism that his novels are too gritty. "Christian fiction has whitewashed the human condition for so long, readers tend to expect stories with little bumps, not tearing burrs," Dekker laments.

"As fallen creatures, we experience suffering and death. I write about these things with great passion, because it's only through Christ's suffering and death that we have life. And it's only through our own suffering and death that we find the awesomeness of God's love."

Writers and booksellers need to give readers credit for understanding that reality, he says. "We need to fight the dumbing-down--the sanitization--of our culture's stories. They're supposed to convey truths, and the truth, while ultimately glorious because of God's grace, often hurts."

Dekker's "grittiness"--perhaps a better word is unflinchingness--reaches a new height in his upcoming thriller, Three. When he was considering the story, which is about a serial killer, colleagues told him it couldn't be done from a Christian perspective. Of course, that cemented his writing it.

True to form, he is a better writer on this one than his last. Three has enough twists to kink the mind of the most avid reader of mysteries, enough heart to satisfy the most sentimental believer.

"If Three goes through the roof, great," Dekker says. "All writers want to be read by as many people as possible. But if it doesn't, that's OK, too. I did my best."

He thinks for a moment, ready to say something else. Then he simply nods, cranks the volume on a guitar-laden wail of a song and turns back to his word processor. Another story. Another chance to give back a little of his gift.

Bob Liparulo is a contributing editor to New Man magazine