It's Not too Late to Follow Your Dreams

You have a dream, but something has held you back from pursuing it. It’s never too late to start doing what you know God has called you to do. 

Patrick E Craig started out as a successful musician, but felt something was missing. When he turned to faith, he left the music business to go to Bible school, but something still wasn’t right. He finally realized that his passion and his ministry could be found in writing.

Get the book – The Men of Amish Fiction, a Christmas Collection - https://amzn.to/3PAeDIG

Guest Bio:
Best-selling author, Patrick E. Craig, is a lifelong writer and musician who left a successful performance career in 1986 to become a pastor. After pastoring, teaching and speaking at seminars in churches on the west coast for many years, he retired in 2007 to concentrate on writing and publishing fiction books. In November 2011, Patrick signed a three-book deal with Harvest House Publishers to publish his Apple Creek Dreams series. His latest books, The Amish Heiress, The Amish Princess, and The Mennonite Queen, and the reprinted Apple Creek Dreams series are published by his own imprint, P&J Publishing, and all have spent time on the "Hot New releases" and "Amazon Best Seller" lists on Amazon. Harlequin Publishing recently purchased The Amish Heiress for their new Walmart Amish promotion series and that book will is now available in Walmart stores across the country. He also recently signed with Elk Lake Publishing to publish his Middle School/YA mystery series, The Adventures of Punkin and Boo. Patrick is represented by the Steve Laube Agency.

Patrick has an extensive background as a writer. Throughout his school years he edited high school and college newspapers. In 1964 he won a national editorial contest sponsored by the Wall Street Journal for an editorial he wrote on the death of President Kennedy, and, in the same year, acted as Senior Editor for a special issue of the University of Washington Evergreen during a summer internship for High School Editors. After a year at Whitman College, where he was a journalism major, he moved to the San Francisco Bay area where he became a fixture on the local music scene.

As a professional songwriter, he wrote with and for such artists as Bill Champlin (Chicago), David Jenkins (Pablo Cruise), Buddy Miles, The Tazmanian Devils, and many others in the secular music industry. His songs were recorded by such artists and music groups as West Coast Natural Gas, Indian Pudding and Pipe, Joey Covington's Fat Fandango, The Sons of Champlin, The Tazmanian Devils, Buddy Miles, David Jenkins, Laura Allen, The Fairfax Street Choir and in Europe by the Swedish Band Seid. He had two music albums released on Warner Brothers records with The Tazmanian Devils and contributed as a performer and recording engineer to best selling albums by artists such as Chris Isaak and others. 

As a performer he played keyboards and sang with bands such as West Coast Natural Gas, Indian Pudding and Pipe, Van Morrison, Joe E. Covington, The Kantner-Balin Band, The New Boogaloo Express, The Fairfax Street Choir, The Tazmanian Devils, David Jenkins, Buddy Miles, and many others. 

Now as a full-time fiction writer he turns out two to three books every year and is fast-gaining a reputation in the literary world.

Transcript

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Welcome to Radical Abundance. I'm your host, Teresa Janssen. Everyone seems to be looking for their purpose in life, but sometimes when we get a clear indication of what our purpose should be, We don't embrace it immediately today, that's what we're gonna talk about. My guest is Patrick E. Craig, and he had an accomplished career as a musician that he left to become a pastor. Then he left that to embrace full-time writing. We're gonna talk about that journey and what it means for you and I. Patrick, welcome to Radical Abundance. Good morning, Teresa how are. I'm doing great. I'm so excited to have you on Radical Abundance. You are an accomplished writer. You've written a a lot of books, best selling books, and we'll talk about those. But first I wanna hear about a little bit about your past, because I know you were a successful musician before you came, became an author, but for some reason that didn't seem to quite fit what you felt God's plan for your life was. Can you tell us about. Well, yeah. Got into music at, at an early age. I had a, an uncle who was a graduate of the Julliard School of Music, a accomplished piano player. He started me on lessons when I was young, and then he gave me a trombone when I was in the sixth grade. And I played in the bands, in the marching bands and concert bands, and I. I had friends who were gifted musicians also, and so we started forming little combos and after a while I thought that that might be what I wanted to pursue. And so I, I went to Seattle in the Northwest and got into some very, Popular bands up there and played there for a couple of years and then finally made my way down to San Francisco. That was back in the sixties and that was, at that point it was the mecca for music, especially on the West coast. And so, I got involved in the San Francisco music scene and. Worked with a lot of people that are very, you know, name known big time musicians and played in their bands. At one point I played in band, Morrison's Band, and I, I worked with guys like Buddy Miles and Bill Chaplin and I worked with other. Well known musicians, Marty Ballon. And then I got into a band called, interestingly Enough, the Tasmanian Devils, and we became in, I think in 1982, we won Best Club Band in, in San Francisco, the gr, the what they called the Bammy, which was like the San Francisco gram. and we were very popular. We got an album deal with Warner Brothers and did two albums that were very popular and played. But at a certain point I realized, There was something missing in my life. I was pursuing all different kinds of things in my lifestyle, but none of them gave me satisfaction. You know, I tried different eastern religions because that's what everybody was doing, and, and then at a certain point in 1984, I just had. it was killing me. The lifestyle was basically killing me. And I had a friend who'd a musician friend who'd become a Christian, and he had been praying for me with his church. I had a, a incredible revelation, revelatory experience in my recording studio one night where Jesus showed up and I just gave it up. I gave up all the professional music and, and went back to. And it's been the most rewarding experience of my whole life. And so that's, that's what happened with my music, and I realized I couldn't keep doing that and serve him. So I went to Bible college,, and I graduated from Bible college and be because of my musical background, I got involved in leading worship in churches and then at a certain point, a, a small church in Petaluma, California asked me to come on as associate pastor. And so I went on as the music pastor and a teaching pastor. And I did that for about 10 years and. My wife and I when we left that church, we went out and had started a music ministry where we were going to small churches that didn't have a musical expression. And we would go there and we'd stay for two days or two years depending on what they needed. And I would, we would find somebody in the church that could play, that could play an instrument, and we would teach them how to lead. And we trained them and we, we trained leaders in several churches and we led in all different kinds of churches from an Episcopal church to an Assembly of God church and everything in between. And so that was our ministry for a while, because you see, when I was seven, I was published for the first time, and. All my relatives said, you're such a good writer. You should really think about doing that. And so that seed was planted in me back when I was seven years old. And then I was always involved in the school paper. I was editor of every school paper I worked on, and so that writing thing, and even when I was doing music, , the most fun thing in the music business was writing songs. So I was always involved in writing songs, not only with my own groups, but with different people that were well known. And I had several songs that did very well out there. And . So it was always, and I always wrote story songs, storytelling songs. I always wanted to tell a story I didn't wanna do, you know, like yummy, yummy, yummy. I got love in my tummy kind of songs. I wanted to tell stories. And so by the time we reached a certain point, we came home to the northwest and I just realized that what I really wanted to do was tell stories I wanted to write. And so that's how I arrived at where I am today.. Well, Patrick, that's really quite a story and you know, the first part of your story, I hear it oftentimes people start on a path and they, they get some fame or fortune or, or not notability of some kind, and then God grabs a hold of their life and. Puts them in ministry. Yep. But then here I hear something a little bit different because a lot of people would think when you got into music ministry and the work that you're doing, surely that must be God's purpose for your life. That should be what you're doing. And yet you still found that that wasn't quite it. Now today, I know that you are a little bit of a unusual writer in some senses because you're a a rare male writer. Romance novels. Right. Is that, tell us a little bit about the type of writing you do and how that is fulfilling God's purpose for your life. Well, I'm actually one of about six men who write Amish fiction, and there's hundreds of ladies who write Amish fiction, but there's only about six or seven of us men who write it. But I am a romantic at heart, and when I grew up, One of my favorite authors was Zane Gray. Now, everybody thinks that Zane Gray is a, an adventure writer, but if you look at his books, he is one of the best romance writers that ever set pen to paper. I mean, all of his books have a very powerful romantic thread throughout them, which usually isn't solved until about the last paragraph of the book. And there's always an incredible. love interest. And so that was, I just loved that. I mean, I think the first Zane Gray book I ever read was Betty Zane. And there's this incredible love story, of course. And it, and it's classic, it starts out where they, where Alfred and Betty meet in a very unpleasant circumstances and they hate each other. And then throughout the book, at, at the end, by, by the end of the book, of course, they're madly in love. Writing Amish that I, I got into writing Amish books almost on a dare because I knew nothing about the Amish. I went to a writer's conference for several years in California called Mount Herman, and I met a fellow there Nick Harrison, who at that time was the senior editor for Harvest House Publishers. And we talked about it one time and he. Did you know that Amish fiction is the largest selling Christian genre and has been for about 25 years? And I ever since Beverly Lewis started back then in Wanda Brunett and those, those ladies, and I said, I did not know that. And he said, well, I'm putting together a, a collection of short stories and I'd like you to give me a one sheet, a story idea for. An Amish book, an Amish story, and I like Amish and I like quilting, and my wife is a quilter. So see if you can come up with something. So I came up with the idea for a quilt for Jenna, which I sent to Nick. He, he contacted me. He said, I really like this idea. He said, and, but better than that, my wife loves the idea. And she was of Amish background. Her maiden name was Yoder. She was involved in that. So he said, can you turn it into a novel?, and this is how green I was, Theresa. I said, well, how many words is that ? And he said, he said, about 80,000. And I and I, you know, I went, whoa, 80,000. I said, sure, you know, I can do that. And he said, and can you do two more after that? And I said, sure, I can do that. I had no idea what I was doing. So he took it to his his board and they bought the. and I signed a contract. And now here I was someone who knew absolutely nothing about the Amish or quilting with a three book contract with Harvest House. So I had to immediately start doing research, thank goodness for Google, right? Cuz you could find out. And I mean, I was literally typing in stuff like do the Amish fill in the blank? And for , you know? And fortunately during that period, Connected with a gal on Facebook who was an Amish writer. Her name was Sicily Yoder, and she had been in the Amish church, but moved over to the Mennonite Church because of some of the grace issues. The, the shunning issue was a little strong for her, but she was a walking encyclopedia. I could send her a note and say, Sicily, what would happen if an Amish woman wanted to write a. And she would send me back three or four pages of information about that. And so my first three books. All developed around that theme. And, and she also was the one who told me that one of the biggest issues in the Amish community is that many of them do not have a saving relationship with Christ because they depend on the, the rules, the ordinance they call it, or the, the, the verbal law that they've passed down over centuries to give them right standing with God and she. If you're gonna write Amish books somewhere in each one, you have to put that the law doesn't save you. Only Christ can do that. Right? And so I've tried, I've tried to do that in all my books, plus the, and the other thing that I've tried to look at is that a lot of the Amish books you see on the shelves at Walmart or any, some of those places, Happily ever after over romanticized books that really don't touch on the issues that are in the Amish community. So what I'm trying to do with my books is, while keeping a romantic interest, I'm also trying to put people into desperate situations that only God can fix.. And so that's been the, the focus of my books. They've done pretty well. I mean, at the end of my three book contract with Harvest House, they kind of went away from their fiction book and they went back more toward people like Storm, Stormi, Martian and people that were writing, you know, teaching books and things. And so I learned how to independently publish and publish my next three Amish books. And the first one, the am. Aris was in the top 100 of, of mystery on Amazon for seven months, and Harlequin saw it and they bought it from me, and they, they published it as one of their little harlequin romances. If you love Amish fiction like I do, check out the men of Amish fiction, present a Christmas collection. It would be a great last minute gift or maybe a little something for your. Find the link in the show notes. Well, Patrick, I think that it's really interesting because so many Christians, especially Christian women, and I have to admit, I'm one of the ones who loved the Amish romance novels. I used to read them all. Every time a new one came out, I would get it and I would read it. It was just a really relaxing thing for me because they were a little bit oftentimes predictable. But what. Also did, was it romanticized the Amish life to where me as a Christian, I could look at at their life thinking that, you know, maybe they were more spiritual, maybe they were closer to God. When exactly the opposite is true for many, many people in the Amish communities. Yes, they're relying on works and that happens outside the Amish community as well. It's only through grace that we're saved, and so I think. You've really hit on something, making it more real to life. Because where we meet Jesus is in those impossible situations that only God can turn around. Yes. And I know that you also write some historical fiction. Tell us a little bit about that, because it's not directly for the Christian audience, is that right? Well, I wrote two Amish historical. Fiction books. One was called the Amish Princess, about an Indian princess who meets two Amish men that are brought to her village as as captives. And so through her interaction with those two twin brothers, she comes to faith. I like to take historical. Real historical situations and then kind of plug my characters into them and surround them with historical figures That, and I even in that, that particular book, the Amish Princess, I plugged in some characters from some Zane Gray books that were. Also real characters that he plugged into his books. And it was set in that same area, the Ohio Wilderness back in the, during the French and Indian War, and then the Revolutionary War. And then I went clear back to the beginning of, because the whole six Books series is a, is a series about one family, the Hirsch burgers. And so I. Clear back to the beginning of the Hirschberger family back in Poland, and I took a real princess, princess Isabella Ja. And I married her to a, to a Mennonite or to a Anna Baptist stable boy. And you know, of course they ran off and ended up in Munster, Germany during the big Anabaptist revolution that where. Took over the city by force, and it was a whole, really violated all of the anti Baptist tenants of non-violence. And then somehow they got linked up with Menno Simons, who became the, the father of the Mennonite movement.. And so I used all those historical things, but plugged in some, some fictional characters and situations. And then in that process I met a fellow named Murray Pure, who's a Canadian writer and brilliant, brilliant author. And we decided that what we wanted to. Some historical fiction that was pointed toward the general market. He's got maybe 35 books published. I've got 18. We realized that we might be just preaching to the choir, you know, because the Christians that read our books all knew, or most of them knew what we were talking about. So we, we, we thought about it and we thought, how about if we take three Mennonite boys? Cuz he writes Amish fiction too and has some very well bestselling Amish books himself. He's one of the other six men that write Amish fiction. So he thought, what if we take three men a night, boys? And in wor in 1941 and get them into the Marines through a series of different circumstances. So one of the young men is sexually molested in his church and his Mennonite church, and his father, who's an elder, covers it up. Mm-hmm.. And it puts a huge anger in his heart. So he joins the Marines because basically he wants to learn to. And he tells his dad, when I learned to kill, I'm coming back to Bonners Ferry and I'm gonna find that guy, the guy that that hurt me now, and one of the other young men. Is a very devout Mennonite. His dad's a bishop and he, but he starts reading the newspapers about what's going on in Manchuria and in China, what the Japanese armies are doing to civilians. And he goes to his dad and he says, dad, if they get over here, they'll do the same thing to the women. And, and I'm not gonna allow that to happen to my sister and my. So I'm joining the Army. Well, he gets disenfranchised by his dad and he ends up in the Marines. And the third guy is like a Desmond Doss character who goes, says, I, I, I gotta stand up and help defend the country that gives my people the right to be nonviolent. So he goes to the Marines and he says, I'll do anything you want me to do, except kill. I won't., but I'll be a medic. I'll, I'll drive trucks, I'll clean latrines, whatever you need me to do. So these three guys end up on Guddle Canal and that's the first book. And so it's, it's a war book. And so when we were writing it, we contacted a lot of veterans, guys that had been in World War ii, guys that had been in Vietnam and, and our biggest concern was the language, how we could be. Deal with the language and yet present a Christian worldview. And they said to us, if you don't use authentic marine language, people who have been in the military will not read it. It'll be too wimpy for them. And so we looked at it very closely and we, we used language, most of which you can find in the Bible. You know, words that you can find in the Bible. But we still tried to make it authentic. Well, Patrick, a couple of things I think are interesting here. You know, one is I talk to Christian authors all the time who want to be able to influence or impact or reach non-Christian audiences and you have really come up with a strategy to do that. And that. Really, I think an interesting thing. How has that influenced your, do you see this as ministry or? As a career or how do you view all of this work that God has led you to through this very wandering path of, of your life purpose?. Well, I, I see it as ministry all any of us need to do is look around at the world today, and we know that if the Bible is correct, which I fully believe it is, we are in the last days. and so the, I don't think that the church's job is to win the world because I don't think that the church is supposed to make the world so good that Jesus can come back. I think the Gerald, the church is supposed to let the world know that Jesus, that it's getting so bad that Jesus is going to come back and he's going to come back in judgment and. In the meantime, what are we supposed to do? We're supposed to snatch as many people out of that fire as we possibly can. And so everything that we do should be speaking to people's hearts. You know, people should be. wondering what's going on in this world and what can I do about it? And of course, what you and I know is that the only thing to be done is a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. Right? And that's the only thing that's gonna pull us out of the fire. And so that's the message that needs to be shared with the general reading public. And so how, how you present that you have to. I'm just learning the skill right now. You know the craft of how to do that because there's certain things that I believe you shouldn't do. You know, you shouldn't spend a lot of time in books like that. Like for instance, taking the Lord's name in vain. You know, you have to be careful with your, with your language. But still, there's certain situations like in a battle scene where guys are going to use word words, that that might be offensive, but they might also cut. and so you have to learn to balance that. It might cut through people's thinking where they're not just.. This is not just a happily ever after romance, where the worst thing that happens is that the wheel falls off the bishop's son's buggy, you know, and , right? This is a real world, and there's real, real terrible things going on out there in the world. And as much as we like to be in church and have worship and listen to the word, there's still people out there that are dealing with, with very, very d. Desperate situations and they need to find out about Jesus Christ. So how do we do that, Patrick? I know you're going to be a presenter at an upcoming conference we have for Christian Creatives, and you're going to talk more about this topic of reaching the non-Christian market. Yes. As a Christian author, so I really appreciate that. I, I can't believe we've come to the end of the show, but before we go, I want you to speak directly to someone today that has felt God has a calling on their life, and maybe they haven't responded to that call. What would you say to that person? Well, when we read Roman chapter nine, we see Paul, and of course we know he is speaking to the nation of Israel and he says, God's gifts and callings are without repentance, but all scripture is for us to use. I mean, sometimes the Bible may not be about us., but it is always for us. And so when, when Paul says God's gifts and callings are without repentance, he's dead serious. And God puts a calling on your life and sometimes you get it. Sometimes you see it, but sometimes you miss it. But you know what? That calling always remains. It's always there. God doesn't change his mind. He is the same Yesterday, today and forever, especially for a Christian who. is, feels that their life is kind of wandering. It's time to do some serious business with the Lord. It's time to really set aside some time and ask him, Lord, what? do you have for me? And, and oftentimes you won't get like a audible word, but, but your circumstances will start to push you in a specific direction. Like me, I was, I, I had come to the end of the music ministry in the church and I was kind of disillusioned and dismayed. And one night I had a., and I really believe it was the Lord speaking to me. But the dream was an, a favorite aunt who had passed away who always encouraged me to write. And she was a writer herself. And my grandmother was a, an Irish storyteller. I mean, she could tell stories from memory that she didn't even write 'em down, but that's my, my family background. And so in this dream, my. Came into my bedroom and looked at me with that stern look. She used to look at me and she said, you write. And when I woke up that next morning, , I opened up the newspaper and to the Juan ads and there was an ad for a ranch called Ghost Dance Ranch that was for sale in my area. And I got the whole idea for a story, a, a mystery story, like a Hardy boy mystery called The Mystery of Ghost Dancersa Ranch. And so that was where I first started, but I really believe that God just spoke to me. He said, now you're done with all this other stuff you. And so that's what I would say to those who might be wrestling with that calling On your life. What do you love? What is the thing in your life that you've loved all your life that you, that you know you, if you could just do this, you'd be happy. Will, my suggestion to you is, Do it. That's a great note to end on. Patrick, thank you so much and I wish you a radically abundant day. Oh great. Thank you, Theresa, for having me.