Novel Was Inspired by True-Life Mission Experiences, Says Lay Speaker

John I. Carney, a certified United Methodist lay speaker and a member of First UMC Shelbyville, has self-published "Soapstone," a novel inspired by his short-term mission trips since 2003, especially his trips to Kenya in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

Carney, who is the city editor for the Shelbyville Times-Gazette, takes his foreign mission trips with LEAMIS International Ministries, a small, non-denominational missions group based in Marion County, and he recently joined the LEAMIS board. In addition to Kenya, he has been on trips to Nicaragua, Bolivia and Costa Rica.

"I wrote the first draft of the novel in November 2007," said Carney, "as part of a writing exercise called National Novel Writing Month. The exercise calls for you to write 50,000 words during the month of November -- an average of 1,667 words a day. That doesn't leave you much time to second-guess or edit yourself, and so the manuscript comes out looking pretty rough. But it also brings out creative elements that wouldn't be there if you had the time to think about them."

Carney decided to create a fictional story which would give him a chance to incorporate some of his real experiences and memories. Although he admits the main character Jeff Doerman, inspired by his own experiences, he consciously avoided basing any of Doerman's teammates on individual people with whom he has served on previous trips.

"Plus," he laughed, "Jeff gets to have a little bit of a romance on his trip -- something that, sadly, hasn't happened to me."

After speed-writing that first draft, Carney tinkered with it in the following months before deciding to self-publish it through a publish-on-demand firm.

Carney says the novel isn't meant as a serious treatise on the benefits of short-term mission trips, a subject of some discussion in recent years. But he said he'd be pleased if it inspires a reader to think about the possibility of ministry in a foreign country.

Carney, the son of retired United Methodist minister Jack Carney, became the first lay speaker to preach during an evening worship at Tennessee Annual Conference during the June 2008 event. In October through December 2008, he taught the basic lay speaking class at Scott UMC in Shelbyville. He is also a former long-time board member for Mountain T.O.P. (Tennessee Outreach Project), and continues to volunteer with Mountain T.O.P.

"Soapstone" is available from Amazon.com or at createspace.com/3358275 .