Chris Fabry is an award-winning author and radio personality who hosts the daily program Chris Fabry Live on Moody Radio. Chris’s novels, which include War Room, Dogwood, June Bug, Almost Heaven, and A Piece of the Moon, have won five Christy Awards, an ECPA Christian Book Award, and two Awards of Merit from Christianity Today. He was inducted into the Christy Award Hall of Fame in 2018.
Chris and his wife live in Arizona and are the parents of nine children.
If someone asked you to describe yourself with one word, what word would that be?
Persevering.
That’s a great quality for a writer to have. Who are your writing heroes? One you’ve met… And one you haven’t met.
Jerry Jenkins is a writing hero. I not only met him but he also took me under his wing and taught me. There are editing mistakes I see in my first drafts and smile because I hear his voice. I’ve read a lot of Cormac McCarthy stories and have never met him.
Let’s talk about Saving Grayson (Tyndale House, November 2023). Please tell us about it and why you chose to write about memory loss and Alzheimer’s.
In the first scene, Grayson is sitting in his closed garage in his boxer shorts holding a nail gun, and he can’t remember why he’s there. The trouble for Grayson is amplified for his wife and those who love him, and the story tries to capture the tension of how to love someone who is slipping away.
We are all dealing with this in our families and extended families. But I chose this struggle because the reader is forced to follow Grayson’s search to solve a murder mystery as well as discover the truth about his own life. Grayson is trying to uncover the truth and get it down on the page before he can forget it. I found that a really compelling storyline.
What did you learn from the process of writing it?
I actually did a major rewrite of it after it was finished because it didn’t ring true to me. And in that season, I was face down on the pavement, so to speak, wondering how to make it work. And I realized that I was in the same place as many of my characters who were at the end of their own ability to love or make life work. When you get to that point, it’s really hard, but it’s also good because you’ve tapped into a big emotional aspect of the story you’re trying to flesh out.
What do you hope your readers will take away from it?
I’m hoping someone will see themselves and say, “I realize that I have controlled the pain and struggle so much that I haven’t allowed others to love me well.” And perhaps someone will say the same thing about God—that through this story they see how they’ve kept God at a distance.
Your books encourage and inspire others. What encourages and inspires you?
I’m inspired by audio books that have helped me overcome my inability to read long novels. I finished The Lord of the Rings in 2023 solely because of Andy Serkis. He was amazing. Stories read to me take me back to my childhood and become this inexhaustible pool.
Thanks, Chris! It’s always great to have you at Divine Detour.
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For more information about Chris, visit his website and follow him on Facebook and X.
To purchase Saving Grayson, go to –