Goodreads asked S. Chris Shirley:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

S. Chris Shirley I was originally inspired to write Playing by the Book after hearing a fundamentalist Southern pastor—whom I respect very much—say some very hurtful things against homosexuals from the pulpit. I wondered if there was any possible scenario that could bring this Preacher around on the topic, then thought that if he had a son that turned out to be gay, perhaps he might come around a bit. Or not. It was hard to say, but as I turned this scenario over in my mind, I realized that the more interesting story would be told from the point of view of this fictitious gay son and whether he could survive growing up in such a household.

But that was only half of my inspiration. You see, even as this preacher was saying that gay people would burn in hell, I had great empathy for him. He is a good and caring man and a pillar of his community. Of course, I knew that several of my New York friends—many of whom are atheist—would dismiss him as ignorant just as this preacher would dismiss them as plain wrong. I had lived long enough in both “worlds” to understand them and felt a bit trapped between the two. I realized that this may be a tension that other people felt and wanted to examine that as well.

So I set out to write a story that explored the original scenario of a gay preacher’s son, but decided that it had to be written in a way that straddled these two “worlds”: where red state meets blue state, fundamentalist Christian meets people of other faiths, and gay meets straight.

flag