Suspense, action and danger aren't what typically come to mind when the topic is Christian romance novels, but for author Camy Akimoto Tang, that's all in a day's work.
In Deadly Intent, her fourth novel and first thriller, a Japanese-American day-spa therapist in Sonoma County finds herself accused of on-site murder. Naomi Grant's faith is challenged as she is forced to fight for her innocence—and her life. "The heroine must learn to truly trust in God," Tang says. Further complicating matters is the distracting presence of the other prime suspect, one Dr. Devon Knightley, a man "striking enough to start a female riot."
While her novels embrace several niches, Tang strives to create fiction that is relatable and realistic. Her action sequences are no exception. In Deadly Intent, the final confrontation between heroine and villain hinges on a move whose origins lie in jujitsu. Tang learned the move from, and practiced it on, her martial-artist husband—and one time narrowly missed his eye.
Tang strives as well to create characters who live, breathe and love outside romance or suspense stereotypes. "Now that I'm writing I'm actually using my psychology degree. How many people with psychology degrees can say that?" she says. "I try to create psychologically plausible characters. I read so many books in which characters are disjointed psychologically, and I think, that would never work in real life. They'd be psychopaths."
Tang's first publication, in 2007, was the initial volume of a "Sushi Series" trilogy, billed as "romance with a kick of wasabi." The series follows Asian-American, Christian cousins as they do their very best to resist romance, their family's well-intentioned pressures to marry, or both, with predictable results: romance and marriage, but on their own terms. These were matters Tang's Stanford crowd knew firsthand. "A lot of things we would talk about and struggle with are in the Sushi Series."
Tang, who grew up in Wahiawa, Hawaii, a small town on Oahu, with a younger brother, is quick to say that not everything in her novels is drawn from real life. "I have to gather my family together and give them the disclaimer: 'None of you are in any of my books!'" But it's part of her authorial mission to note, "Your relations with your family aren't always completely resolved. I wanted to show that sometimes that's okay . . . it's okay if your family relationships aren't perfect."
JENNY PEGG is a doctoral student in history and former Stanford intern.
