Anne Rice says: (on facebook)

I saw this today on facebook and thought it might be interesting fodder here as well. You can visit facebook yourself and become a fan of Anne Rice yourself to see what others are saying. So here's her status for today 3.27.09:

Anne Rice: My emails tell me today and every day that people are crying for high level Christian novels. I want to live up this with my work. What do you think?

My limited knowledge of Christian publishing has me assumming that the ones crying out are referring to the targeted fiction put out by the bigger Christian publishers as CBA* and ECPA** write for a very specific audience of Christians with protective restrictions and guidelines in place to keep their work from offending their core market readers. The work they produce rarely appeals to the broader Christian reader and is often seen as falling short literarly.

Anne says she wants to live up to this in her work. I'm guessing she means she'd love her work to appeal to many Christians on many different levels. I for one believe she can do this.

Anne asks what do we think about this statement. I think Ms. Rice should hurry up and get her new book out there and let the chips fall where they may. :)

There does seem to be more clarification however when speaking of literature in relation to appealing to Christians. There are far too many ways to define what a Christian novel is. For instance someone brought up affiliated author Frank Peretti who does in fact write Christian fiction, but only for a specific market of Christians. Clarification is key. :)

*CBA-Christian Bookseller Association
**ECPA-Evangelical Christian Publishers Association