The Genesis of an Idea

Like most boys, I fell in love with the Swords & Sorcery genre at an early age. Tales of knights, castles, wizards and dragons captured my imagination and never let go.

Later, as a teenager, I spent years playing Dungeons & Dragons. I'm a member of a very conservative independent baptist church and that confession may sound scandalous in light of the game's reputation of promoting the occult or teaching kids satan worshipping. Those allegations always frustrated me because I knew better. There was no way the people making such accusations had ever played the game or seen it played. The game is merely a vehicle for storytelling, there is nothing inherently evil about it. You could easily use the game to role-play scenarios similar to King Arthur's search for the Holy Grail or any of C.S. Lewis' strongly Christian-flavored Narnia books.

Then a few years ago the Lord of the Rings movies score big at the box office and a funny thing happened: conservative groups praised it for its Christian message. The irony is that Dungeons & Dragons was only invented by a bunch of "Rings" fans so that they could re-capture the spirit of that story in a game. But I didn't understand their praise for LOTR, either. Sure, it is classic Good vs Evil stuff, but it's not any more a Christian story in my eyes than Star Wars.

In short, I didn't see the Devil in D&D and I didn't see Jesus in Lord of the Rings.

Thus was born my idea for my novel. Part of me just wants to prove that you can tell good, as in "non-evil", stories in a Swords & Sorcery setting. Another part of me is fascinated that the same people who condemn Dungeons & Dragons often praise Lord of the Rings. I think there is interesting ground there to explore and that's what I'm trying to do.

What if Christianity existed in a Swords & Sorcery world alongside wizards, dragons, elves and monsters? What would people in such a world think of sorcery? How would the church react to a king whose chief advisor was suspected of being a wizard? How did Christianity even reach this world?

These were the questions I began asking in 1997 and that I pondered for years as my story slowly took shape. Just for fun I'd think the stuff over, making notes and drawing sketches. I know, I can be weird. And I was single then so I had the time. I'd bounce it off friends of mine and they helped me brainstorm. My protagonist became a flawed young soldier that finds himself torn between duty to his king and duty to his god.

It's a story of temptation, salvation, desperation, redemption and forgiveness. It's an exploration of the relationship between church and state. It's a tale of two brothers on very different paths in their lives. And it's all set against the familiar backdrop of ancient prophesies, magic swords and epic warfare.

In other words, I'm writing the story just for me! Hopefully, I'll do a good enough job with it that others will like it, too. I hope Christians can read it and enjoy it but I also want it to work for a non-Christian audience, which I really believe it will.

It will not read like a contrite Sunday School lesson. It's a Sword & Sorcery-style quest story that has Christianity in it more than it is a Christian story with some swords and sorcery in it for window dressing.

I' m tempted to say it's Lord of the Rings meets Left Behind, but it's not thematically tied to the book of Revelation. I believe it truly offers something unique, albeit in a familiar genre setting.

In conclusion, I want to give special mention to Chris Wolff, Stephen Hickman and George Little. These three guys had a tremendous influence on my story. Thanks, guys.

Welcome To Wrighter's Block

In this new blog I am going to do my best to journal my experiences, joys and frustrations as I attempt to write my first novel. Hopefully, this can be an interesting behind-the-scenes sneak at the process without giving away any story details.

Several things have conspired over the last 18 months to lead me to writing. I began working closing with a friend of mine named Sam McDavid. Sam enjoys creative writing and has a passion for language. Secondly, another friend of mine named Van Plexico wrote and published his own series of superhero novels. This was very exciting for me. Through the miracle of print-on-demand technology, one does not need a lot of money to self-publish. I read Van's books and they were fun. And the books themselves were well made.

I had a story in my head I wanted to tell but it was seeing these high-quality self-published books that gave me the needed motivation. Here was proof that, no matter how well or poor my story turned out, in the end I could have a book.

Of course, it helps that I already had a story idea. It is a plot that I've actually been developing for about ten years. The characters, places and events in the story are quite real to me. I didn't know during those ten years that I'd ever want to write a novel, but after seeing Van's books and being around Sam everyday, I realized I had a story that I had to tell. I have a need to get this story out there.

Then a funny thing happened that really pushed me to begin my novel: I got published.

I wrote a humorous superhero short story for an anthology Van was putting together. And doggone it if it didn't turn out really well. It is titled The Adventures of Captain Cook (or There's No Accounting for Taste).

"Hey," I thought, "maybe I can write."

No, I'm not a professional novelist or a student of literature. But I'm enjoying the process and, hopefully, you'll enjoy the end product. I started writing the book, the first in a trilogy, back in November of 2007. In upcoming posts, I'll try to give a general idea of what to expect, how it has gone so far and what's going to happen next.

If you want to see the book that contains my short story, click here.

I also contributed to Assembled!, an unofficial companion book to Marvel Comics' Avengers.

--David