Lana Christian

Hey, @Celebrianne, thanks for your kind words! Glad you liked it! (Gotta admit I had fun writing it!)

Did you know the Bible contains communication snafus? This light-hearted look at a few offers four takeaways for your writing: https://www.lanachristian.com/how-snafud-bible-communications-speak-to-us-today/

@Shamrock, I don't know what genre you write in, so I can only speak to biblical fiction. The big 5 trad publishers who produce biblical fiction don't want to take on books in that genre unless the MC is female (and all the agents who rep biblical fiction know that). So, as of today, unless a miracle happens, writing biblical fiction with a male MC becomes a matter of whether to woo a smaller press (no agent, little or no advance, more marketing work for yourself) or go indie (everything is on your head).

If you sub other kinds of chases for car chases, there are plenty in the Bible! (My book about the Wise Men has Herod's guards and Nabataeans and an unknown enemy chasing them.)

iSTOCKPhoto has a lot of vector art. Lightstock has photos, videos, and vector art. Neither of those are free, but they're much more reasonably priced that Shutterstock.

Thanks, @Jared Williams! (I love how you think!)

Thank you, @Jeff Potts!

That's great to hear, @HK1! Thanks much!

Kind of you to say, @Johne. Thanks for your input!

Thank you, @Nicola!

I appreciate everyone's comments, but we're getting a little off topic. Here's the deal: The mindset of larger publishing houses (and, by extension, many agents) is that (1) mostly women read biblical fiction, so (2) they want to read about female protagonists. I'm sure publishers have statistics to back that up, but it's pushing THAT NICHE in a certain direction. Agents who rep biblical fiction coach those authors to write in a certain way for this reason. Writing a male MC IN THAT NICHE gets a kindly rejection. That's the current climate FOR THAT NICHE. It's given me pause because I've sunk

@carolinamtne, I'm not trying to find female characters. (There's no shortage of them to write about.) The issue is what publishers are demanding in the biblical fiction space--for the MC to be female, not male.

@zx1ninja, forgive me for not knowing what genre you write. Publishers are very particular about the % of female readership they draw for biblical fiction and what they think that readership will be more likely to buy.

Agents and publishers want to guarantee that biblical fiction will draw a whopping % of female readers, so there's a big push for biblical fiction to have female MCs. I recently had a very prestigious lit agency say I had a great book proposal, my writing met their standards, but they wouldn't rep me if my MCs were the Wise Men.

Could you help me out with a quick poll? If a work of biblical fiction had male main characters and only a couple orbital (secondary) female characters, would you read the book? (This will help me with my book proposal. TIA!)