Note from the Author

Note from the author

       I have never written a novel before. I have no qualifications that I would tout in order to persuade one to read what I have written here. And to be quite honest, I wasn’t sure of the endeavor ever making it out of my computer file. I did not start with the intension of selling it, or publishing it. Only with the intension of getting it out of my heart, and out of my mind. I needed to clear the mechanism. It was a purge that had to take place so I could snap back into my real life and move on without this obsession looming over every dark corner of my day. As a Christian, I was tired of seeing Christians poorly depicted in books and on the silver screen. It seemed that they were used for target practice mostly, set up to be the punching bag of normal society. They were always the zealot extremist, the racist radical. The hillbilly church goer who believed in Jesus Christ out of a profound ignorance rather than any qualified reasoning. If religious subject matter was the protagonist topic, it usually entailed New Age spiritualism, or apocryphal and mystic acceptance. It was common place to see the doctrines of faith in Christianity be torn down in lieu of socially acceptable religious parameters. The Christians always wanted to burn the witches. The Christians always want to control money, sex, and power. The Christians always wanted to promote war against other people groups.

I studied apologetics on my own through my late twenties and on into my thirties, and it has become an insatiable hunger that I plan on continuing. I don’t claim intelligence beyond most. I am actually rather forgetful, and have to keep re-studying the same things to keep it all in my head. My grammar is terrible, and my spelling is worse, and my tendency to start things without finishing them would have precluded me from ever finishing a work like this in all likelihood. But against all odds, it has surfaced from the depths of my mind and taken what I hope to be a legitimate form of entertainment and instruction. Despite all I had going against it, I had a great respect for the content I was sharing, for the authors I have studied under, and for God’s inspired and holy word. And I set out to portray a true likeness of Christian love, and doctrine, and reason, in a fun and educational way, which could possibly serve to help a dreamer dream of Godly things.

Apologetics is a defense of the bible. It is simply being prepared to defend its authority. But after debates without credentials, and faith without an audience, a buildup of knowledge was aching to get out in some form or another. I realized I could portray a conversion in proper doctrinal context, without the real and rude world kicking against it, and within a medium that causes readers to already approach it in an open minded fashion. It had the potential to at least share how real Christians in my experience try to act. They pray together. They love each other through problems. They read the word and apply it. And they are imperfect, and in need of grace, just as I am. I am so flawed, and am so far from worthy that I really come to the table with nothing. But God has blessed me with some gifts, and I prayerfully and sometimes even begrudgingly try to live my life appreciating and utilizing them.

My hope is that I have used a believable fiction to teach real and teachable truths. I needed to show that Christianity was logical, that the word was special, and that the message existed for those who need to find God. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I dreamed of the haunting characters, and the plot began to form and take directions I honestly didn’t feel smart enough to generate on my own. I prayed and hoped that the Holy Spirit was with me when I was writing this. The basic story was done in about one month, after a lifetime of saying I wanted to write a book, and after no less than ten books started and never finished.

I also needed to present the gospel, in as clear and concise a manner as I could. The manuscripts is  make-believe, but I needed to present a real conversion, and real prayers, and real belief in the bible. I hope I have done that, and I hope I have done it with love.

I would finish  by writing my favorite verse to you, and one that I would encourage you all to meditate on, for the end of the age in which we live is imminent. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling – Philippians 2:12

J.R. Cooper

Johnson City, Tennessee