My new novel, Forgotten Promise, is the first book in a genre I’ve started calling prophetic fiction.
Here’s what it means, and why I think Christian fiction and Christian supernatural suspense needs this genre.
What Is a Christian Prophetic Supernatural Mystery Suspense Novel?
Here’s what separates it from supernatural mystery suspense in general.
Most supernatural mystery pulls its power from something vague: an unnamed force, a ghost, a psychic ability with no source and no accountability.
Prophetic fiction pulls its power from something specific: the biblical gift of prophecy, the Holy Spirit’s leading, and discernment that can be tested against Scripture rather than simply trusted on its own authority.
Here the supernatural is a gift from God, and the story treats it that way throughout.
Stories Carry Truth That Reaches the Heart
When I write nonfiction, I teach Biblical principles and hope people can understand and apply the principles.
Fiction works more on an emotional and spiritual level. People allow themselves to experience the story principles through a main character who goes makes choices with real stakes. The reader learns the lessons along with the main character, which is a great way to learn.
Thus, the readers learn vicariously through the characters in the book.
Jesus taught this way more often than He taught through direct statements.
He taught principles through a farmer scattering seed, a woman searching for one lost coin, and a father running down the road to meet a prodigal son.
Stories wedge themselves deeper into people’s minds and stay there long after the first read.
Through my current main character, Ava Anderson, readers get to see a person learn to follow God’s leading. They watch her hear God through dreams, visions, and gifts of the spirit that begin to develop as she follows God in a modern story.
Many people do not fully understand what prophecy is, what prophetic gifts are, or how a person learns to hear from God in everyday life.
They may read about spiritual gifts in the Bible and believe they are real, yet still have no clear picture of how those gifts could function today.
Readers see the character’s questions, hesitation, dreams, visions, timely words, and the inspired knowledge that must still be tested against Scripture and confirmed in prayer.
That is what I wanted prophetic fiction to do.
Readers do not need Ava’s exact gift to feel her fear of speaking, or her hope that the whisper she keeps hearing might actually be worth trusting.
Watching Ava work it out scene by scene teaches readers what it looks like to trust God’s voice before you are certain, and to keep listening anyway.
Why I Wrote This Prophetic Fiction Novel, Forgotten Promise
I didn’t set out to invent a new genre. I just wanted to write the book I could write.
Throughout my life, I have dreamed movies and books. Each time, I would wake up and wonder what the dream really meant.
Over the years I made notes in my journals with different ideas, but I never put any of them together into something finished.
Then I received a personal prophecy indicating I would write a fiction book.
At the time, I had already written a couple of nonfiction books, and I was focused on my blog and nonfiction teaching ministry.
Fiction seemed like a distant dream and nothing I would actually sit down and complete.
One night I had a vivid dream about a woman who was pulled into real, tangled circumstances by her own prophetic gift. The Holy Spirit led her, step by step, to untangle the mystery she found herself in.
I woke up with an immediate and certain knowing that this could be a series of novels.
I had read a couple of Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas novels and loved the quirky, likable main character, whose strange intuitive pull (what the books call psychic magnetism) drew him into mysteries.
But I wished those books showed more of an obvious Christian life and process underneath the story.
And of course, back in the 1980s and 90s, a lot of us read Frank Peretti’s spiritual warfare novels, so, I began thinking about a Christian character and a novel series of my own.
As I started drafting, more events and ideas came to mind, similar to the way a prophetic word arrives, bit by bit as you speak it out.
Forgotten Promise became a compilation of all of these things: the dreams, the journal notes, the people I have encountered over the years, the inspired thoughts, and events I have experienced, all folded into one story.
Meet Ava Anderson the Main Character of Forgotten Promise
Ava is a marketing executive in Seattle. She is sharp and capable. She is two years into a relationship that looks right on paper.
She has a corner office in downtown Seattle that she earned the hard way and a life built on strategy and organization she can defend in any meeting.
Then the dreams start to haunt her at night. A lighthouse on a rocky coast. Fog rolling thick across the shore. A voice calling her name from somewhere inside the stone tower, a voice she almost recognizes and can never quite place.
She runs toward the door every night, yet the path stretches longer with every step.
Each time she wakes disoriented, unsettled, and unable to explain why this dream keeps returning with persistence.
The gifts she has long suppressed begin to surface inside her carefully ordered life. In the middle of a client meeting, Ava offhandedly mentions the reason behind the company’s hidden failures.
The room goes silent because Ava has no way of knowing these things.
Then there is Jamie. Her cousin, and once her closest friend, before corporate life consumed her.
As children at the family cabin, Jamie called the two of them “lighthouse people,” convinced they were born to see what other people missed.
Ava cannot remember the last time the family mentioned his name.
When she finally calls him, his number is no longer in service, disconnected.
That is the moment the mystery opens its door and asks her to walk through it.
What she finds on the other side, I’ll let you discover for yourself.
Prophetic Fiction Tropes
A few tropes tend to show up across this genre, and you’ll find nearly all of them in Forgotten Promise:
- The reluctant heroine. She doesn’t ask for the gift. She spends real energy trying to outrun it before she finally stops.
- Prophetic visions as clues. Dreams and impressions arrive fragmented, sometimes contradictory, and only make sense once enough of them stack up together.
- The mysterious ally. Someone who understands more about the gift than they let on at first, and who becomes essential before the story is over.
- The prophetic burden. The isolation of knowing something true and having no safe way to say it out loud.
- The threat no one believes. A warning dismissed until the moment it can no longer be ignored.
- The moment of surrender. A point where the gift seems to fail entirely, and the only way forward is to stop trying to control it and trust God with what happens next.
That accountability running underneath all of it is what defines Christian prophetic supernatural mystery suspense as its own category.
The truth is tested and has real consequences. The main character follows the Holy Spirit and listens for God’s voice alone. She follows her heavenly Shepard; another she will not follow.
Grace and redemption anchor the plot instead of shock value.
The story stays clean rather than leaning on gore or the occult for tension. The gift is not treated as a gimmick or party trick.
It comes from God and costs the person who carries it something real, the same way it would cost you or me.
Who This Book Is For
It is for readers who love Christian supernatural suspense.
If Frank Peretti’s novels shaped your view of the unseen realm, or if you enjoyed the warmth and mystery of Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas books or the atmospheric coastal settings of Colleen Coble, you will feel at home in Ava’s world. The story carries real suspense, spiritual warfare, and a mystery with layers. It stays clean, so you can hand it to your teenager, your mother, or your book club without hesitation.
It is for believers exploring their own spiritual growth.
If you have been reading my articles on hearing God’s voice and wondering how it all fits together in daily life, Ava’s journey will encourage you. Her growth models healthy practice where everything is tested, everything is anchored in Scripture, and everything flows from intimacy with God.
It is for readers who want faith woven in naturally.
There are no sermons in this novel. It is not preachy. The Christian themes of grace, redemption, and the Father’s love run beneath the plot, the way they run beneath a real life of faith. Skeptical friends and family members can enjoy it purely as a mystery, and the truth will do its silent work.
It is for readers curious about spiritual gifts and prophecy.
If you have wondered what a modern-day prophet or prophetic person looks like or how the gifts of the Spirit show up in ordinary life, Ava’s story will speak to you.
And it is for anyone who simply loves a good story:
There is a missing cousin, a century-old broken promise, a lighthouse, tunnels, intrigue in a coastal setting, and a woman discovering that the very gift she feared is the key to it all.
Begin the Journey
Forgotten Promise (Ava Anderson Series, Book 1) is the first prophetic fiction novel in this series, written under my fiction pen name, Cindy K. Johnson, and it’s available now. Find it on Amazon
If you’d like updates on the next book in the series, along with the teaching I share here, join the newsletter:
Come tell me what you think once you’ve spent some time with Ava. I’m active on Facebook X, and Instagram. I’d love to hear whether the lighthouse in her dreams stayed with you the way it’s stayed with me since I first wrote it.
