I wrote about a third of "The Test" within a month of writing "Message in a Bottle". I stopped after I got to where she asks if she can lay her head on his shoulder, and I let it sit untitled and unfinished in my cabinet with my other writings until Nov 6th, 1998, about 9 months later. I had the whole scene laid out in my mind from the beginning, but I don't think I was willing to deal with the issues at that time, so I let it wait. My purpose in writing it was both to look at temptation straight in the eye, and to examine what goes through people's minds when they are faced with temptation.
There is another reason I wrote it, as well. If you have ever read a Christian romance novel and compared it to a similar secular one, you have probably noticed that on the average, the secular one is more engaging. I haven't read a lot of either, but I have read enough to notice this and wonder at it. I think that a Christian romance novel usually does a good job of capturing romantic tension between its main characters, but it usually ignores the whole world of sexual tension that assails a man and woman when they start getting close to one another. Mind you, I am not suggesting that a Christian romance novel should have sex, but that it ought to have sexual tension. I think I managed to catch the essence of sexual tension in this story.
-J.R.