Author: Terri Blackstock
Cyberspace predators have become parents’ latest nightmare as technology breaks down the walls of privacy for unsuspecting youth. Predator—New York Times bestselling author Terri Blackstock’s latest novel—takes us into this cyber world where a vicious hunter poses as a friend to potential victims. The stalker uses a social network to hunt his next prey.
Terri Blackstock fans will not have long to wait to get their hands on her latest novel. Predator has just been released.
Terri is the award-winning author of Intervention and Double Minds, and has sold six million books worldwide. Terri’s other works include the following series of novels—Cape Refuge, Newpointe 911, the SunCoast Chronicles, and the Restoration Series.
This author has been the recipient of many awards recognizing her gift for writing and her every-growing popularity among readers, including the announcement several weeks ago that she is a 2010 Christy Awards finalist for her novel, Intervention. Some of these awards include the 2007 winner of the Christian Retailer’s Award for General Fiction for Nightlight; 2006 Christy Awards finalist for Last Light in the suspense category; 2005 Christy Awards finalist for River’s Edge in the suspense category; 2003 Christy finalist for Covenant Child in the category of allegory. Her 2008 novel, True Light, topped the Top 50 charts for all Christian books the first month of its release. (Visit Terri’s website for more information about her other books and her writing journey).
MARK: Terri, thank you for joining us today. Your latest novel is not for the faint hearted. Tell us a little about the story of Predator and its main character, Krista Carmichael.
MARK: In this novel, a gap widens between what Krista says she believes about God and her innermost doubts about His love for us. She begins to question why the Almighty would allow pain and suffering to fall upon the innocent. This is a very common question in today’s troubled world, even among those who have put their faith in God. How would you answer this question without giving away Krista’s struggle or her final moment of truth?
TERRI: Krista works in a ministry that helps teen girls in a low income/high crime area. When her sister is murdered, she sort of puts on a mask so the girls will see her as this strong, unwavering Christian. She doesn’t want them to know that she has these questions, and that she’s angry at God for allowing her sister to be murdered. So she has this internal struggle between what she really feels and what she wants people to think she feels. She begins to question whether she belongs in ministry at all. But the fact is, her suffering and her honest questions qualify her even more for ministry, because she can now relate to the girls on a level she couldn’t have imagined before.
I think sometimes I have my characters ask questions that I ask in my own struggles, and I don’t feel like I have to tie up the answers in a nice little package. What I try to show my readers is that God is very complex, and His purposes are complex, and there’s so much that we don’t know about Him. He’s not a three-dimensional God who fits nicely into any human formula. He’s five-, six-, ten-dimensional, and He sees the end from the beginning, and plans the ends and the beginnings. This life is a rehearsal for something that we can’t even fathom. I just want them to explore those questions and challenge what they’ve always expected from God.
MARK: Many readers and writers are avid users of the social networking system—Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and many other sites. And we’ve seen where parents have allowed their children to use this technology to reach out to their friends and to make new friends. Did you come across any surprises about this technology as you researched the subject? Any advice for parents trying to protect their children against the perils of social networking and online invasion of privacy?
TERRI: When I was researching the book, I was stunned at all the articles I came across about people who were dead or missing, or women who’d been stalked and raped, because of relationships they forged online. Or they gave too much information, and predators put those puzzle pieces together to find out things about them that they never would have given out under ordinary circumstances. We teach our children not to talk to strangers, yet we haven’t educated them enough about the strangers they choose as their “friends” on social networks. And the reason the parents aren’t educating them is that they’re doing it themselves. I saw a statistic that 75% of grown women who use the internet are involved in social networking. And they’re as careless as the kids are.
I think a great exercise is to get a friend to write down everything they can figure out about you from your profiles. Predators can learn things from your pictures, the groups you belong to, your status updates, tweets and moods, and most of all, your friends. You may be very careful with your information, but stalkers can usually see your friends’ pages, too. And a friend may be much less careful with information about you. Once you’ve had a friend write down all those things, then take them off. And make sure you tell your friends to remove personal things about you. There are good uses for social networks, so it’s unrealistic to tell everyone to close their accounts. But we shouldn’t post anything that we wouldn’t tell a total stranger face-to-face.
