Circle 31 Podcast

Note: Please note that the text below is an uncorrected transcript of the audio captured for this podcast. We pray the Lord uses these words to bless you as you seek Him!

Kendra LeGrand: All right, everybody. We are back with our final episode in The Hidden Prince Circle 31 Podcast schedule. And so we are talking all about part three and the epilogue because that's what we're reading this week. And, Tessa, you have you have such a way with words. Obviously, that's why this is your profession.

But we've seen through reading this book that things have come to a crescendo. And now we're gonna get some resolve in the story. We're gonna kinda see how things are gonna end, you know. Or I don't wanna give any spoilers. I know.

I know. It makes me end shift.

Ellen Adkins: Spoilers? Do you not?

Kendra LeGrand: I know. So anywho, we'll just leave it at that. We're gonna get some resolve. And so, Tessa, I'd love to hear from you. How, when you when you're thinking of a story and you're writing a book, do you think with the end in mind? Or do you just kinda see where it goes and then obviously tie it up in a nice bow at the end?

Like, how what's your writing process, and how do you map it out?

Tessa Afshar: Every book is different. It's sort of like, with children. Every child is different, and every book is different. Usually, when I start a book, I have some idea of the main character.

I have some idea of a main problem. And I write happy ending books, so I have some idea that this thing has to be resolved.

Kendra LeGrand: We like that. There's too many bad things in the world to not have a book with a nice ending.

Tessa Afshar: This is exactly right. And so the subjects that I pick have to have a happy ending, and if I feel like that's not a happy ending, then I can't write about it. But, but so for this particular book, I knew that the ending of the book would have to settle the hidden prince in his rightful place. That's all I'm gonna say.

But he had to be where he could grow up to be the king about whom the Bible prophesies. Right? But the context of the book only allowed me to leave him there as a child. So I didn't have the scope for more, and that's all you're going to get.

The point is that you couldn't have the later prophecies come to fruition and be fulfilled unless this part of his life, became settled where it should have been. So that's where we are. It's just the early days. And when I started the book, initially, I meant this part of the book just to be like a chapter or two about his childhood.

And then as I started researching, as I started writing, I was like, oh, no. This deserves its own book completely. You know?

Kendra LeGrand: It went from one chapter to a whole book.

Tessa Afshar: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And, but I didn't have, the scope to do more than what I what I gave the reader readers. And, of course, the tricky part was I knew what I had to do for the hidden prince just historically, but what I didn't know was how about Keren and Jared?

What was I going to do with those two? Because they are fictional, and where were they going to settle? I could I could put them anywhere I wanted to. I had that power. And so, you know, because of my own background, I went through having to leave, sort of my extended family, having to leave a country, having to leave a home, having to leave my friends, having to be resettled.

I went to England at first before coming to the US. And so I understood what it was to lose your language, to lose your food, to lose everything that was familiar, and to miss everyone. You know, the biggest loss for me was my dad because he stayed behind when we moved to England. And so I knew how that felt. I knew it to the core of my being.

And when I had to make a decision for those two, whether they would go back home and have all of that or whether they would have to sacrifice all of that and not go back home, I had to take, all of that emotional loss into consideration. I knew firsthand what they would go through, and I had to also decide, like, what would God ask of? What would God ask of them in that circumstance? So that's how I wrote that ending.

Kendra LeGrand: Good insight, Tessa.

Ellen Adkins: That's good insight. Good insight. I think you just write such dynamic characters. I was talking to Kendra before this and saying, I love you're just so funny too. There there's so many, like, good uses of humor in this book.

I've just it's been such a joy, reading it, and I'm excited to bring it to a close this week. This week, we are kind of honing in the theme of God's provision. My gosh. This week, we are really honing in on the theme of God's provision. And I'm just curious, you know, when I think about provision in my own life or how God has provided for me, sometimes when I think about it, I really envision a certain way that that will play out.

I kind of have expectations about what I think provision is going to look like. And I think in this book, you see God's provision show up in some really unexpected ways. Things that maybe the characters of this book would not immediately view a certain circumstance as a means by which God was providing for them. But we see as we read on that it actually is, God providing for them and protecting them. So I'm just curious, in your own life, how have you seen that unexpected provision from God come about?

Tessa Afshar: That's such a great question, and I love, Ellen, the way that you set that up. Because we understand most of us understand that the provision of God is one of those, promises of God that are all the way through the bible, Old Testament into the New Testament. It's consistent. We've recognized that that as people of God, that as followers of Jesus, we can count on this provision. When we get into trouble is when we start expecting what the provision is going to look like.

Like, God will provide for me, and this is what it will look like. I'll give you an example that's been sort of, to the surface of my life as I was preparing for this, which is that, when I always knew that I wanted to be a writer, but I was a late bloomer. Because when I was younger, I was in my twenties before I became a Christian. I wrote two romance novels because at that stage in my life, that's what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a romance novelist.

And I came very close to publishing, but ultimately, the Lord closed that door. And I really believe it was the Lord. And that closed door sort of shook me a little bit, and I felt because I was very fragile toward rejection. And so after that, every time I would start writing, I felt like, oh, this is not good enough. This is not good enough because I knew what that rejection felt like, and I couldn't break through until Jesus healed me.

So when I finally started writing my first novel, it was really just because I had promised Jesus I would finish a book. Because all through the years, I would start a book, and my head would say, this isn't good enough. No one would ever read this, and I would abandon it unfinished. And it was until, this point when I promised Jesus I will finish this book, and it was a book about Rahab. And that book went to be published.

It was my first novel, and it was, the first Christian novel that I finished and the first novel that I published. Hmm. But I never intended to continue writing books, set in biblical times. I really had no interest in that. Like, my passion had always been to write sort of Jane Austen-sequel kind of books.

That part of history, I'd lived in England. That that's that was sort of my passion. That was the dream. So when I finished that book on Rahab and it went on to be published, the publisher came back and said, okay, Tessa. What's next?

And I said, oh, I have this great Jane Austen-sequel kind of novel. And they were like, no. No. That's not how it works. All of your readers have fallen in love with what you've done here, and they're writing us, and they want more.

So you have to write more books set in times of the bible. And I was like, wait. Wait. What? Jesus totally bamboozled me.

Kendra LeGrand: He does that sometimes. He certainly does do that.

Ellen Adkins: He really is good at that.

Tessa Afshar: Right? You know, I was like, that was not the plan, lord. Like, that was not my plan. What kind of provision is this? This is not what I expected.

But at the beginning, I said yes because clearly that's what he wanted, and so I walked into it with obedience. But, you know, I fell in love with it, and I realized that all these years, he had prepared me for this. He, you know, he had educated for this me for this. He had actually paid for my education. He had given me the experience I needed by, leading women's ministries and, hanging out with women and learning about them, and he had totally prepared me for this.

But the thing that changed my heart about God's provision, this being the perfect provision for me, was when I when the letters came. I started getting letters from the readers, and they started telling me how the book caused them to go and start reading the bible for the first time in a long time. They started telling me how it, strengthened their faith. I had one letter from a guy who said, Tessa, I'm two hundred and fifty pounds, covered in tattoos. I'm a construction worker, and I cried like a baby at that scene.

Another guy told me that it was the first time that he really understood what it meant to have worth in God. Oh. As I was I was telling the same story that was in the bible, but I was expanding on that story in a way that they could then go and you know, novels do not have the impartation of the Lord. The Bible does. But it helped them go back to the Bible and suddenly recognize this is what God is saying to me.

And that's when I fell in love with my own genre, and I realized God had provided for me. This was my dream. I just didn't know it.

Ellen Adkins: Oh, I love that, Tessa. I love how, fiction can really engage our imagination and how biblical fiction or how do you put it?

Fiction set in biblical times.

Kendra LeGrand: Good job. We learned that week one.

Ellen Adkins: But it really engages our imagination in a way, but then it points us to the source of all of those big themes that we're drawn to in in stories. So I, I love that.

Kendra LeGrand: That is so good, Tessa. Okay. Well, listen. Luckily, we get to hear I mean, we hear from you. You have a you have a teaching this week that we get to listen to if you're a part of Circle 31.

You know, of course, we're having some conversation about the book. And then we will get together, beyond the pages just as a team and with you guys just to talk about the book and hear from you. But, Tessa, it has been an absolute delight to talk with you, to hear from you. And, like I mentioned in a few of these episodes, if you are struggling to trust God or if you, like me, love control and or maybe you're struggling to see God's provision, we have this download for you in the show notes, “Choosing to Trust, Overtaking Control: 10 Compassionate Devotions That Will Increase Your Faith While Decreasing Your Doubts.” And I think we see through Keren and Jared and the other characters that, you know, maybe they doubted where God was taking them.

But this week, we're gonna see that he actually had them exactly where he wanted them. And so, Tessa, we're, excited to close out your book. And, again, thank you so much for joining our podcast.