If you want to hear more about why I wrote Unleash watch this video:
A little about my life, my family, and my writing:
My family is my life; I love being a husband and a daddy. Those roles are what make life so fun and exciting to live. My wife and I have been on an amazing adventure, and it keeps getting better because God keeps opening new doors for us. He brought us here to Colorado just a few months after we were married and he has blessed us with a home and wonderful children. We keep learning more about each other and about being parents, and I’m blessed to have a wife who is an amazing mom and teacher! My girls keep me young and imaginative; they bless me with kisses and smiles and words of encouragement. Playing and reading with them are the highlights of my day. They’re getting older each day, and it creates a constant battle within me: hold on to the days and memories that have passed, but be excited about their future and growth. It’s hard being a daddy.
As for my writing, well, that sort of just happened. I never intended on writing, but God has these amazingly big plans for us. Writing started as a personal project. During college I started The Quest for Truth in an effort to produce a book series that was safe for kids, meaning no unnecessary violence, language, or other things that make them grow up too quickly. So many kids’ series have unnecessary things in them—things that in a TV show we might hesitate to let kids watch, but that we often let pass in a book. Even series like Harry Potter (which I read) have heroes who use not-so-above-board ways to accomplish their goals: Harry did a lot of lying, breaking rules, and disobeying authority to get out of Hogwarts. Even some of my Christian author friends put in extra violence or blood or gore that’s not necessary and comes at the expense of exposing kids to things they need not experience in mind or in life. I often use the CSI TV show commercials as examples of why our media is so messed up and why I needed to write something for kids that didn’t have this junk in it. My wife and I don’t watch a lot of TV—for one thing there isn’t lot of material on there that “builds us up,” and for another I can’t control the commercials (CSI) that come on and that my girls see (someone dead on the pavement, body bags, gun fights.) Sorry for the drawn out answer, but as you can see I am passionate about writing for kids and providing material that builds them up, not brings them down.
When did I first fall in love with books?
Fall in love with books? I did fall in love, but it was for my wife, and the books came out of that. The first book series I read for fun, and because I wanted to, was the Harry Potter series (again, reading this series motivated me to write The Quest for Truth for the reasons described in the above answer.) The reason I read it? Well there was this girl . . . young lady . . . in my college church group who I started to get to know and then date. We played lots of games and were quite competitive with each other, and it led us to race through the Harry Potter series. I indeed won and not just in reading the series—I married that girl! There is another whole story about how I might have won unscrupulously, but as I said, Harry Potter cheated a little to win, too, and I was under the influence of the series, right? I am still having that argument with my wife. But this helped me to love books: I was amazed at how much I could get pulled into a series. Text on paper could paint a world for me. I could get to know characters like friends, I could go places I didn’t imagine existed, and I could experience adventures from my chair that I’d be too frightened to go on myself? WOW! So again writing came from reading, and I knew I wanted to create worlds like this for kids.
When did I decide to write a series?
I set out to write The Quest for Truth in 2005 after a brief conversation with a friend. We were discussing an article he had read in Reader’s Digest about a spy. The story was exciting and my friend really enjoyed it, but the story was true and in it the spy killed someone. He realized he’d experienced someone’s death—not firsthand, he’d experienced it on paper and taken entertainment from the story and thereby the death. I’m not saying it’s wrong to have death in stories or that spies don’t need to do their jobs, but when an account is given of death, it should be addressed with more than a passing sentence or line or a scene in a movie. There are two options after death, heaven or hell, and if the person who died didn’t know Jesus, then they won’t be experiencing eternal life in heaven but suffering forever in hell. I believe stories are tools we can use to share the message about Jesus Christ to others, and I think dying is something we often take for granted in fiction (TV and books). People die, and the consequence to their souls is very serious—deadly serious. I don’t want kids to think that people just die; they have to make a choice that will affect their eternity. The Quest for Truth series is meant to start out as seeker books (Who is Jesus?) that reveal to kids (from believer homes and non-believer homes) what the Truth is (Jesus). Parents, spoiler alert: I have no plans currently for anyone to die in the series. And I resolved long ago that if someone did die, I would deal with it with solemnness, truth, and hope. I don’t want to expose kids to unnecessary sorrow, but I know we live in a reality where death occurs. Yet books can be an escape for children, and I want them to have an exciting adventure that lifts them up both emotionally and spiritually.
What is my latest project?
I am hard at work on the above mentioned series, The Quest for Truth. Unleash is the third book and is just being released. Taken (book one) was sort of the ground work—the Wikk kids find themselves in an almost overwhelming adventure where they all have to step it up, yet they’re not sure of their own roles in the adventure. It’s also very spiritually light—there is some symbolism, but that is it. Taken is meant to be handed to any kid and to get them excited about reading and about the adventure ahead. Risk (book two) starts to reveal the hint of the Truth, or at least that something greater is out there. The Wikks have to start learning to work together and trust each other. The gifts they have been given become more apparent, and they find their places and specialties. In Unleash (book three), the Truth is revealed for what it is and the Wikks have to determine whether they’ll make the Truth their own. The adventure also goes to an all new level of danger and excitement, and we find that through team-work the kids are up to the challenge, though they are still learning. Unleash has been my favorite book to work on, hands down, and I’ve been able to really explore the characters more this time, though I will admit that the characters have begun telling me what they are going to do.
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