What was Satan up to while God was about the business of saving the world?

What does Satan, as the most powerful demon in the universe, do to stop Jesus from saving the world when Jesus is too powerful to take on directly? As I contemplated that question, I pictured two answers that derive from the obvious fact that Satan failed.

My first vision showed scene after scene of a bungling demon trying to kill the child Jesus but something always comes up to destroy his best laid plans. Fans of Pinky and the Brain will know what I’m talking about here.

The second vision, the one that led me to write Fulfillment, was simple: Kill the mother.

Frank Peretti meets Stephen King in this tale of first century intrigue, mystery and evil beyond all imagining. Well, most imagining anyway. After all I did imagine it, didn’t I? And you will, too, when you read about how Mary lived in happy ignorance until that fateful day when she became the central figure in a drama beyond her wildest imaginings.

Angels we have heard on high
An angel announcement and a broken engagement catch an unwed pregnant teenager in a web of peril in an age when stoning was the punishment for fornication. Mary's situation attracts evil spirits, a king who would destroy any threat to his throne, the king’s unquestioning soldiers, and a would-be lover all bent on destroying Mary. Let’s also throw in a soldier who does ask questions, but asks them too late.

Mary’s journey, while steeped with betrayal and the foul stench of the ultimate demon, is a setup for an even bigger story. She discovers a lost love found, the promise of a newborn king, and a wealth of new friends from a dwarf with the heart of a warrior to the young mother whose husband and children face their own death sentence in a bloody massacre.

Moxie and connections
Fulfillment is the first century suspense drama with a huge twist of horror when Satan discovers he isn’t messing with an ordinary teenage girl. This kid has moxie and connections in high places.

If the thought of Satan out to get you isn’t enough to keep you awake at night, how about reading Fulfillment? It will. Click here to purchase the paperback or Kindle versions on Amazon.

Amazing New-Fangled Games

Amazing new type of game: Uses all text with no pictures.

No pix? No way!

Yes, way.

What’s amazing is the action pops up inside your head. No screen needed. And not only do you see the pictures but the whole thing comes alive like a 3D movie with surround sound.

But wait, there’s more.

These games don’t require an artist to draw the graphics so the game makers save a bundle on production and pass the savings on to you. Prices start as low as $.99. That’s 99 cents, less than a buck and you get the whole game, not just a teaser version. Check it out on Amazon. 

Why Do We Even Celebrate Christmas?

Ever wonder why Christmas is so important to Christians when the real story of Christianity is the miracle of Easter morning when Jesus rose from the dead? In the world of horror stories where at least some of my novels hang out, rising from the dead is no big deal. Vampires do it every day. But in the real world, we only know of one person who pulled it off successfully.

Christmas is about the birth of the child who would grow up to become Messiah. Yes, the Easter story works better if the man rising from the dead was born in the first place, but his birth is a minor point hardly worth noting. One of the four Gospels doesn’t even mention the birth of Jesus. Another makes brief reference to it using the symbolism of poetry where we read, “The word was made flesh and lived among us.” (Say what?) While short on details, the author gets his theological point across to knowledgeable readers.

For the rest of us, Christians and nonbelievers both, it’s enough to hear about the angel visit, the virgin birth, the shepherds and the wise men.  Meanwhile pass the gravy, and are you sure we opened all the presents? Oh, and what time did you say the game starts?

What we never hear about, until recently when I published Fulfillment, is how Satan tried to stop the birth of Christ in the first place. The genesis of Fulfillment (hee, hee, hee) happened the day it occurred to me that Satan knew Christ would be way too powerful to kill. Christ is the son of God so you have to figure he’s more of a Superman type than Batman, for example. (Surely you’ve noticed the similarities between Superman’s origin story and the biblical account of Jesus’s birth? And do you really want to start comparing Batman and Satan? Don’t go there because it gets scary. There’s a reason he’s called “The Dark Knight.”)

Instead, read Fulfillment, which one critic described as “the most unique version of the Christian Nativity story ever written.”

Click here to purchase the paperback and Kindle versions. What a cool present to give to your Christian friends.

What did Mary’s Mom and Dad say when she announced she was pregnant?

And followed that up by insisting that God was the child’s father?

What? Wait? God did it? Give me break. God’s a spirit. Spirits don’t have sex even when you consider both meanings of the word. (1. Doing it. 2. Having the tools to do it with.)

With Christmas around the corner, it's time to consider how the parents reacted when Mary made her big announcement.

Dad may have said, “Well, you know, Mary, that wasn’t a very good decision on your part. And who is this kid named God? I mean his very name is blasphemous. And when did you find time to do it with all your studies this semester? This is what comes from wearing such provocative short skirts. Why I can see your toes, for crying out loud.”

Not!

We don’t really  know what was said in that conversation, but you may rest assured old daddy was more than furious. We’re talking about the first century of the Common Era (C.E.) here. Good old A.D. as in anno domini. The rule with pregnant teenage girls in those days was you sent them out to the public square where everyone in town gathered around with their favorite rock in hand. They played catch with the pregnant teenage girl. And yes, everyone threw fastballs or rather fast rocks. The life expectancy of your average unwed pregnant teenager was three months for discovery followed by the local religious leader’s cry of “Play Ball!”

In Mary’s case, as a citizen of Nazareth, she could expect a crowd of about 10,000. The city was built on the side of a mountain at the edge of a cliff, so guess where Mary would have gotten to stand. A rock up the side of the head right before a sky dive sans parachute is not the best start to the rest of your life as a pregnant teenager.

Well, it didn’t look good for Mary if you were her dad or mom. Or one of the 10,000 volunteer rock throwers.

What was the scene like the morning Mary showed up for breakfast carrying her barf bucket for just-in-case?

Fortunately, you don’t have to wonder. I’ve already speculated for you in my novel of the first Christmas. Dad was more interested in throwing things than talking to Mary. Mom was more interested in calming dad down than in Mary’s little issue with tossing cookies in the morning.

And what about Satan? You may be curious about where he comes into the story. He does. Trust me on this one because despite what anyone may try to tell you, the great God of the universe really was the father of Mary’s baby. And you just know Satan would do anything to wreck God’s best laid plans. And he’d start by playing “Let’s kill the mother.”

Fulfillment is available in paperback and Kindle versions on Amazon. Click here.

How to Take Your Dialogue to the Next Level

Yesterday, I wrote about how to enhance the dialogue you write by thinking more about how people often only half listen in a conversation. I suggested asking leading questions to force the other person to more fully participate in the conversation. Last night at my writer’s group, I gave an exercise in three parts. In part one, we wrote a monologue. In part two we revised the monologue as a dialogue with two speakers. The third part of the exercise was to revise the dialogue to indicate that the second person was only half listening. The first speaker was permitted to ask leading questions. The prompt for the exercise was: I won’t see you until…

It was a timed exercise so I skipped the quote marks and tags. Here is my result for part three.

I won’t see you until Danny comes back from that Jupiter trip –

Wait. Danny went to Jupitor?

Yeah.

What’s he doing on Jupitor?

I don’t know. Something about picking up crops or plants or trees or whatever they grow up there these days.

Oh, that reminds me. Mom picked up the coolest oak cabinets for the kitchen at ISOGS.

No, no, you’re missing the point.

What? You said trees. Naturally I assumed you meant oak. They’re the only ones that grow in outer space.

Wait. I wanted to tell you I love you.

You what? This isn’t about my mother’s kitchen, is it?

You’re spoiling the moment, darling. Don’t you feel what I feel?

Did you say you wanted to tell me something about loving me? No, that couldn’t be right? What were you saying?

I wanted to tell you I love you because, frankly, that’s the way they do it in vampire  movies, and well, I have a little confession to make.

Vampire movies? Oh, that reminds me. Did you see Dawn of Dead Blood Suckers yet?

You watch vampire movies?

Yeah, you knew that, right?

Noooo. Since when?

Last Saturday. George Nipster took me.

Wait, you went out with George?

Yeah.

I thought we were dating?

We are? Oh, I thought we were just friends.

Well, I am a vampire. We don’t do friends. Well, we do friends, but we don't have any.

I thought you were a werewolf. Danny said to watch out because you’re a real wolf.

Yes, I know you think I’m a werewolf, and I am. But then Gilrod bit me the other week, and now I have to leave for Space Station Alpha. I think I’ll always be under a full moon up there –

Hold on. You’re going to the moon?

No, Space Station Alpha.

When did you become a space junkie?

When I became a werewolf I got that free scholarship to NIU where all the animals go.

So are you a vampire or a werewolf?

So yeah, exacty. I’ll be a blood sucking werewolf in space. Or I’ll bite all their heads off and then suck their blood, but either way it won’t be pretty when Danny returns from Jupitor with that cargo ship load of wolfsbane and oak stakes.

Aren’t you allergic to that stuff?

Sure, but I can avoid the wolfsbane. All I have to do is not drink any poisoned Tang. But the oak stakes? One or two I can catch but a cargo ship loaded with them?

***

Did you download your $0.99 copy of Snpgrdxz and the Time Monsters yet? Today on Amazon for your Kindle. Click here and be sure to pass the link on to your friends.

Why Do Characters Ask Questions?

On the surface, you may be wondering why I would even ask a question about questions. Characters ask questions because they need an answer from another character in the story. Pretty simple, right?

Not.

Consider when a sales person or teacher asks you a question. By sales person I’m not thinking of those pesky telemarketers that call you in the middle of your dinner. I’m thinking about professional business development people who are tasked with finding new customers and serving existing customers for your company or any company for that matter.

The sales rep needs information to guide you to make the best decision about a purchase for the needs of your business. The sales rep asks a lot of questions about those needs. But if you listen closely to the conversation, there is something else going on. The sales person has to be a good listener and asking a question forces the sales person to listen to you instead of “selling” you.

But it works the other way around. If the sales person tries to tell you or “sell” you on a product, you’ll only half listen. You have better things to think about then listening to some sales rep natter on about a product you’re only half interested in, in the first place. The smart sales rep asks instead of tells. You’ll hear questions like:

• How would it feel to never have to worry about digital security breaches again?
• How would a new digital security breakthrough fit into your network?

Such questions are conversation starters. When a sales rep opens a dialogue, the customer listens and responds. The exchange will be in the form of brief statements and more questions. For the sales person, this dialogue will guide the customer in making an informed choice about their purchase.

BTW, the questions above are the type we ask at FXX Enterprises about our new digital security solution, DVNC, which prevents the kind of security breaches you hear about every day in the news. This, of course, raises another question: Why aren’t more of those big box retailers, restaurant chains, banks and medical offices calling us yet? Learn more by visiting our FXX website by clicking here.

The same thing applies to a teacher or college professor. If your instructor drones on with a lecture for the whole class period, you’re likely to be found among those students snoring away in the back of the room or among the note exchanging lovers. Either way, you’re not going to ace that next exam. But if the teacher asks leading questions, you are more likely to become engaged in the topic leading to that A. (They still give As, don’t they?) 

Let’s bring this Q&A back to writing dialogue in fiction. If people only half listen, then how realistic is it for your characters to have a lovely conversation as though they have nothing else on their minds to distract them? Instead of trading facts and opinions in a nonstop back and forth of data dumping, have your characters raise leading questions that force the other character to respond.

Your characters, like people everywhere, have to focus to answer a question. If a character isn’t focused on the conversation, asking a question will make this obvious and help restore the listener’s focus.

To add realism to your dialogue, have a distracted character not listen. Have the other character call out the non-listening one. While you’re engaged in writing realistic dialogue, avoid long lectures by your character by breaking the information up into a back and forth conversation. (There are exceptions of course, but in general, short and spiffy is better than long and “Oops, I fell asleep. What were we talking about?”)

Why haven’t you downloaded Snpgrdxz yet?
My full-length new novel, Snpgrdxz and the Time Monsters, is going for less than a buck for your Kindle this week on Amazon. You only have today and tomorrow. So what gives? Why wouldn’t you click on over to Amazon right now and check this deal out?

How to Get to Know Your Characters

The Write Time Writer’s Group in Geneva, Illinois, discussed ways to get to know a character in preparation for writing a novel. With Nanowrimo coming up in November, these ideas may help you prepare to write a novel in a month.

Here’s our list:

1. Give them their own goals.
2. Identify personal theme songs for each character.
3. Write a voice summary for each character. As an author, you have a voice. Your characters need their own voice to help you distinguish them from each other.
4. Interview your characters. This is one of my favorites. As my character answers a series of questions, her personality, mannerisms and speech patterns emerge.
5. Rewrite the Gettysburg Address as the character. This gets at the character’s voice and personality.
6. Diagnostic – Use DSM for mental disorders – working reference for physicians, psychologists, social workers, attorneys, etc.
7. What else is going on in your character’s life? This is the backstory that doesn’t make it into your novel, but helps you get to know the character.
8. Which Hollywood actor would play your character? Basing your character on an actor provides a built-in character description.
9. Write the story and the characters will reveal themselves. At the end of first draft, you will know your characters. Make adjustments as part of the editing.

Explore the characters in my new horror humor novel, Snpgrdxz and the Time Monsters, today for less than a buck for your Amazon Kindle. It’s nonstop action, nonstop monsters and nonstop laughter when you visit the crazy world of Snpgrdxz, the teenaged alien shape shifter, and his high school buddy Bryan Ganarski. And don’t forget Jennifer Hawkins. A guy has to have someone to fall in love with even if she does shoot at you, right? Click here to learn more.