So I’m at the Write to Publish Conference in Wheaton, Illinois, in May 2004. I learn that publishers don’t want to publish someone who has written a story, but someone who has written a good story and has the potential for a long career with them. At that point in my career I had written one novel that I was figuring out how to get published, plus some poetry.

During the conference I began to think about what else I could publish. Very quickly the idea for a baseball novel came to me. I committed it to some notes. More slowly came the idea for a different novel, one that happened from an experience our family had overseas.

When we lived in Saudi Arabia we had the good fortune to do some traveling. In 1982 we did Europe for 28 days; also in ’82 we went to Cairo for Christmas. In 1983 we decided to do Asia, and planned for 30 days there. At the time of the trip, Sept-Oct, Charles was 4 1/2 and Sara was just under 2 1/2. They were with us on the trip, of course, since we didn’t do what some couples did, taking the kids home to be with grandparents then going on a trip by ourselves.

Our itinerary was Hong Kong, China, the Philippines, and Thailand. Two weeks in China was the biggest part of that. It had just opened to Western tourism a couple of years before that, and it seemed exciting to go there. At our stop in Hong Kong we visited with our church’s missionaries there, who asked us to carry Chinese language Bibles in and make contact with a man of our church in Beijing. Of course we said yes, not thinking much about what that meant.

A day or two later it hit us when we received the small suitcase with the materials: Bibles, cassette tapes, tracts, and who knows what in that bag. We thought about getting them through customs, as well has how to reach our contact in Beijing with just a name and phone number—and that of the location where his wife worked.

The short story is we got the Bibles through customs, to Beijing, and with the help of our tour guide were able to make contact with Alan. He had spent over two decades in a prison camp because he wouldn’t deny the name of Christ when asked to by Chairman Mao’s goons. Meeting him and his wife in that restaurant in Beijing was one of the great events of our lives.

Back to Wheaton in 2004. I wondered if I could make a novel out of a Bible-smuggling American tourist couple who were expats. What kind of trouble could I put them in? Would I put that in the current era or in 1983? On that trip I kept a very good trip diary, which had not been lost in the moves we made over the years. I also kept a lot of the literature they gave us at hotels and other tourist stops, as well as souvenir books we bought. So I had data to put it in 1983. That seemed like the better option, but what to do to make a full novel out of this story?

1983 was still Cold War times. President Reagan was working on arms deals and the Strategic Defense Initiative, meeting with world leaders. We all assumed that the CIA had our back, infiltrating countries, gathering intelligence, helping our government get the upper hand on our enemies without going to war. The first of Tom Clancy’s novels were a year away, but spy novels abounded. What if, I thought, I put this American couple into the middle of a CIA operation in China? A major plot twist came to mind fairly quickly.

By the last day of the conference this idea had come together. I hadn’t yet put anything on paper, but I had the idea. At the last lunch I wound up sitting at the same table as James Scott Bell. He was the keynote speaker for the evening sessions, and thought I hadn’t heard of him till that conference he seemed to be a rock star at this Christian writing conference.

We all talked about our works-in-progress, or planned. I said what I was thinking of for a novel. Someone asked how I could pull that off, i.e. China in 1983. I told of our trip there and of the trip diary and other literature I had. James Scott Bell nodded approvingly, though I don’t remember him saying much.

So that’s it. May 2004 was when I first thought of the book. Through the years I’ve worked on the tag line, a summary, and thought through scenes. But it wasn’t until October 2012 that I actually committed a word of it to paper or pixel. It’s now sitting at 34,300 words, looking at a February 2013 finish, maybe earlier if life aligns right. Figuring a month cooling off and a month to do final edits and publishing tasks, I’m looking at an April 2013 book launch.

Stay tuned.