Want a taste? Here’s chapter 1 to whet your appetite.

Continue reading “A Standard Arises – Chapter 1” →

One of the questions that comes up when I talk about my first book is where did the idea come from. The second question is “Where is book two?”. The easier question to answer is that book two is finally complete in rough draft and the editor and I will soon be doing our dance to get it into your hands.

But to answer that first question I’ve got to give you a little insight into myself. I love writing. I’ve always wanted to be an author. It would seem that I’ve also gone out of my way to avoided writing for most of my adult life. There are reasons, most of them cowardly and involving the fear of failure married to a fervent perfectionism cosplaying as a spirit of excellence. But moving on…

I started my very first novel, currently unpublished, in my early 20’s. It reached 130K words before I cruelly abandoned it with promises to return and perfect. Fast forward a few decades. My dear wife, who honestly thought she was marrying an author, hears about the Braun Book Awards on the radio and encourages me to enter. Sadly, my poor abandoned book did not really fit the criteria. I wanted to be a Christian Fantasy author, not an author of Christian Fantasy.

So I made the excuse that I didn’t have a book to submit and with the deadline just two months away, there was no way I could have one. Satisfied with the excuse, I went about my life.

A month later, as I am driving to work, God drops an idea into my head. The story of five young, God hungry people living in an idellic valley are suddenly entrusted with a warning message from God. And suddenly I knew in my heart I had to write it for that contest. And I had a month. And yes, I laughed.

So began the process of writing the story of the Amatta Valley and my five new friends. The beast that attacked them. The Maylak that saved them. I got to know them as we went along. The world formed as I wrote. The outline remained almost entirely in my head. Five thousand words, ten, then thirty five thousand. I only got seriously stuck once, at the Crossroads, and wrote a frenetic journal entry where I placed myself with them in the common room and we talked over a mulled cider.

But the deadline moved faster than I could write. The cutoff was midnight on the 14th of the month and on the 13th I realized I had far, far more story to go. I went upstairs to break it to my wife, with the promise that even if I couldn’t make the deadline, I would finish the book by the 31rst.

Dejected, I continued to write. I wanted to see this story through. I had fallen in love with the characters and the world. The deadline came and went. I felt the disappointment and uncertainty that comes from believing I was doing something important but then missing the target entirely. And then the email came.

Good news, the email said, we’ve extended our deadline to the 31rst. My heart leapt. My stomach dropped. My God wasn’t done with me or the story we had started. I shared the email with my wife. We both knew what I needed to do.

So I took two weeks completely off work and set out to finished what I’d started with God. The manuscript was forty five thousand words at that point. I had still not written an outline. I’m not even sure I could have. In many ways I was seeing only a short way ahead as these characters lived it.

Twelve days and twenty thousand words later I started to panic again. The story was so much bigger that I “planned”. The story wasn’t going to be done before the new deadline, either. But I had enough story that I could call it a complete book. My first book was going to be the first book in a trilogy. If I had known then what I know now, I might have balked at the idea.

By the end of the 30th I had a plan to leave the book in a cliffhanger state but had no idea where I was going to end it or how. I went to sleep that night with a prayer for help. The next morning I woke up with a plan. I won’t say the first draft of that plan was graceful, but by evening I had a complete manuscript and we submitted it with fifteen minutes to spare.

And so the Amatta Valley was introduced. Ra’ah, Angelis, Nebaya, Daskow and Anatellia set on their path. An entire world opened up for exploration. And in it all a Living God. I am excited to share this world with you. Will you join me?