Jim Rubart spent three decades writing short stories in secret before ever showing his work to anyone.
His desire to write fiction first came when he read The Chronicles of Narnia at age eleven and thought, “Someday I want to try to do for others what Lewis did for me.” A year later he tried out for the school newspaper and was turned down. That failure pushed Jim’s writing into a hidden hobby throughout his teens, twenties, and thirties.
In 2003, Jim felt God telling him to let go of his fears and take a chance with his writing, so he began turning one of his short stories into a novel. Rooms, eventually published in 2010, landed on bestseller lists and was nominated for two Carol Awards.
Jim’s latest novel, The Chair, tells of two estranged brothers and what happens when one of them receives a chair which may have been crafted by Jesus. The story was inspired by Jim’s own experience with a friend he hadn’t spoken to in years, and what happened when they made things right. “For the last three years, that relationship has been one of the treasures of my life.”
Jim cites Galatians 5:1 as the driving force behind his novels. “It was for freedom’s sake that Christ set us free.” Jim says, “He didn’t set us free so that we could be dutiful, or follow all these rules, or get caught up in religion. He set us free because He wants us to be free. He wants to restore us. He wants us to enter in to our divinely designed destinies. The overarching theme in all my books is freedom.”