Deadlines have kept me offline for a couple of months, but now is a fitting time to come back. It’s Crossfire release day! I’ve been looking forward to this!
I sat down to write Crossfire as a way to challenge myself. My husband was about to come home from his last deployment, and I needed focus, something to keep my mind off the calendar and it’s slowly ticking days. The idea grew from the first image of the first scene, a counselor in her office, attacked by a random assailant. It grew from there. As I explored why Andrea Donovan became a counselor, it came that she had lost her brother to a drug overdose after he came home from a deployment. He’d turned to drugs to deal with PTSD, and they stole him away. She saw her job as keeping others from the same fate.
And that’s when God stepped in.
I had the privilege, back in the 2001-2002 school year, of teaching twins, Jon and Aaron. Their mother was my coworker. They’d long decided they would be soldiers, that they wanted nothing more than to defend their country, high speed all the way. Aaron in particular was one of those kids who seemed to get the way I taught. I can be a bit sarcastic, and he took that and ran with it. He had this way of making you smile. A lot. Jon and Aaron were in my classroom on September 11, when I had to step in front of a group of ninth graders and tell them that everything had changed, and I had no idea what would happen next. I sent them to hear the news from their mother, but I’ll always remember the faces of their classmates, how it felt to get that news in front of them and have to tell them, to change their world.
Jon and Aaron would later play a huge part in Crossfire, once God got involved.
There is so much more to the story, but I’ll save that until Friday since this is running long.
Until then, I hope you enjoy Crossfire. I’m so looking forward to this!
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