Sunday, a friend of mine in church was wearing a T-shirt from a band I didn’t recognize.

I asked, “Who are they? Is that a Christian band?”

“Well,” he said, “they’re a bunch of Christians who are in a band, but they’re not a Christian band.”

I understood immediately. “Like I’m a Christian who writes novels, but I don’t write Christian novels.”

But why don’t I write Christian novels, when that’s such a large and growing market? Or maybe a better question would be, why don’t the books I write fit into the “Christian” category?

I sometimes write characters who are Christian. Sometimes, my characters even go to church. In my next Ardor Point novel, I expect the main character to reach a spiritual crisis, which will transform her and redefine her life, and she will credit God with the solution. The last Ardor Point novel, From the Ashes of Courage, at its core is a story about unconditional love, which is a Christian theme. And in this story, Gail faces a crisis of meaning, which is a spiritual crisis. And I write from the perspective of a life-long Christian and Bible scholar. Why then can’t I sell the story as Christian fiction?