JERRY B. JENKINS

I was raised as a Christian but the transaction has to be made by yourself - you and God - at some point.

It's made me more expectant of the imminent return of Jesus, and also more sensitive to the people around me. Knowing Jesus will return soon makes me want all the more to tell people about him and all that he offers.

Left Behind takes what to some people may be unbelievable predictions from the Bible and shows how they might play out. It makes the events of biblical prophecy understandable and thus believable.

When I was a junior camp counselor and it was my job to tell the campers a bedtime story or devotional, I would tell them a rapture story.

He just kind of talks them through, and then I get the fun part cause I get to make up the stories.

Books that do a tenth of what Left Behind has done are smashing successes.

The uninitiated have real questions and valid concerns over how the things of God appear to them.

Actually 'Soon' has more than the Left Behind series, but I really believe less is more.

When you come to Christ as a real young person, I think when you become a teen-ager either you rebel or you search, doubt, and wonder.

Broken relationships are a source of heavy heartbreak that seem to affect every family.

The Christian market has less competition and lower standards.

I don't see success as the goal. Obedience is the goal.

Gil Thorpe is a great diversion and is to book writing as poetry is to prose.

Of course, bad marriages are so pervasive that they have invaded the faith community too.

SOON was the first novel where I used a rough outline. Usually I have characters and an idea and write as a process of discovery. Like working without a net.

Writers write. Dreamers talk about it.

I love inventing worlds and characters and settings and scenarios.

While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area.

People are scared to death and they're looking for something beyond themselves.

Tim sends me a fairly ambitious workup in notebook form noting the passages we're going to cover and the chronology of the biblical events, and his commentaries on those things he's read and written.

I was raised in a Christian home and, in fact, my mother led me to Christ as a youngster.

Ironically, in today's marketplace successful nonfiction has to be unbelievable, while successful fiction must be believable.

I've written enough books with real celebrities, such as Walter Payton and Hank Aaron and Billy Graham, to know that fame looks good only to people who don't have it.

In my opinion, Jesus is God's attempt to reach man. But while I believe Jesus is the way to God, it makes no sense to hate people who disagree.

There is a comfort zone of knowing where things are going and having characters in place, but the action gets more and more dramatic and is very challenging to describe.