I'm Warren Smith, and today you'll be listening in on my conversation with the man who may be the best-selling author of Christian books in history, Jerry Jenkins.

He shares some of his writing secrets in a new book called Writing for the Soul.

For me, writing is obedience. I'm following a call to full-time

pressure work. So once I've written the book, I've obeyed. The best-selling part of it or the

big royalties or the reviews and all that, I don't have any control over that anyway. That's up to the

marketplace. And so my goal is not all those earthly things.

My goal is, to me, success is obedience.

You might think that Jerry Jenkins needs no introduction to the evangelical world.

After all, his name has appeared on the cover of more than 200 books, books that have

sold more than 72 million copies. The left behind books, which he wrote with Dr. Tim LaHaye,

became a global phenomenon. 21 of his books have been on the New York Times bestseller list, with seven of them

debuting at number one. But Jerry Jenkins was no overnight success. He was an avid sports fan in

his youth. In fact, he covered high school sports for his local paper while he was still in high school himself.

He labored in newsrooms in an era when they were noisy with the clackety-clack of typewriters

and the profanity and cigarette smoke of hard-charging reporters on deadline.

Those early experiences gave him the discipline to write crisp punchy prose, a discipline

that has served him well throughout his career.

Jenkins has also had an interesting career away from the typewriter.

For example, he's developed a friendship with horror writer Stephen King, which we talk about

in our interview today.

He has had executive positions at Moody Bible Institute.

He's collaborated with his son, Dallas Jenkins, on a successful movie and on TV projects.

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