My debut novel, “The 13th Demon: Altar of the Spiral Eye” is available this week and my launch party is Friday night, October 7th, 2011 from 6 to 8 P.M. at Brookwood Baptist Church (corner of I49 and Bert Kouns) in the Well, the coffee shop. I will be introducing the ink*well, a regional Christian artists’ community and speaking briefly on “One Book’s Journey: How to Get Published”. Those who purchase a book are entered into a drawing for one of the following: an Ipad2, a nook touch, and a Kindle WiFi. Coffee and snacks are complementary. Click on this for a flyer: bruce-flyer

I bought my first macintosh in 1991. I was disgusted with the PC world and my favorite computer, the Amiga had gone bankrupt so I bought this thing called a Powerbook 140. It had a black and white screen, a trackball, and one mouse button but I fell in love with its simplicity immediately. It wasn’t long before I was a Macintosh convert. Not sure why but I realized that I had a tendency to gravitate to the underdog. Everyone else was using PCs and passive matrix laptops with this new operating system called Windows.

But, I sensed that there were some people out there who thought differently from the mainstream. I saw this in the Powerbook and in the Macintosh desktops to come. I saw my first “Personal Computer” in 1977. It was called an Apple II and it consisted of a beige box with an integrated keyboard, a funky looking thing called a mouse, and a green and black monochrome monitor on which you could play this game called “Pong”. I wanted it! But, it was only selling for a measly $4500! And, being a starving medical student, a computer was out of the question.

Now, 16 years later, I had my first Apple computer and this thing was truly science fiction come to life. It was different. Just like I enjoyed being. Different, unique, thinking outside the box, looking at life from a different perspective. When Apple was almost gone under the hands of Gil Amelio and selling for $11 a share on the stock market, I heard rumors Steve Jobs was coming back as part time interim CEO. I told my wife to buy as many shares of Apple as we could afford! People thought I was crazy. But, I knew that Steve Jobs, like Walt Disney had a singular vision of creating the highest quality experience. Jobs did this with a personal computer and made it more than just a box with buttons and mouse. He wanted it to become a tool of creativity; a natural extension of the artist’s mind.

Well, the rest of the story is history. I had one of the first blueberry iMacs. I had one of the first lime iBooks. I had one of the first aluminum Powerbooks. And, those machines served one purpose for me — to allow me to continue to express my writing in a creative way. Just using a Macintosh fired up my imagination. Just thinking about “think different” had just that effect.

In 1999, I really “thought” different when I wrote “The 13th Demon: Altar of the Spiral Eye”. I had a dream that people would want to ready a gritty, realistic novel about the conflict between good and evil and learn in the process there is a God and the evidence for God is overwhelming! But, I ran into editor after editor that could not think “different”. Publishing is a business. It is about selling books. And, it is about predicting the future. What will people be reading two years from now? I thought I knew. I was right. But, it would be more like five years before people would be reading books by authors like Ted Dekker. I like to think I was there at the beginning, and maybe just a little premature. I was thinking “different” and no one else could think with me.

It took 12 years. I had to be persistent like Steven Jobs. He left Apple at the height of his creativity, the launch of the Macintosh in 1985 and it would be, well 12 years before he came back to Apple and made them see how his “dream” could change the world. It was a slow climb after that but look how his imagination and creativity have changed our world.

It took me 12 years to get “The 13th Demon” to the marketplace. Now, I am nowhere near the level of a Steven Jobs. I may fade quickly into obscurity after this book launches. But, I know that God gave me a dream and when God places us in the position to become a part of His work and His Story, we have to think “different” from the world; we have to think way outside the box.

My conclusion is this: John Maxwell said it well, “There are dreamers and then there are those who make their dreams come true.” A dreamer can go back to sleep at night and come up with another dream. One who makes his Dream come true focuses all of his/her energy; all of his/her resources on accomplishing that dream. And that requires the creativity of thinking “different” of thinking “outside the box”. Thank you, Steven Jobs for your legacy. But, more than that, thank you God for thinking outside the box and becoming flesh and dwelling among us and showing us ultimate love and dying the final sacrifice for our disobedience. For, finally and completely, Steve Jobs is responsible for how he spent his life and I do not know where his heart and soul were in relation to God, but he will stand before Christ and answer for his life. When I stand before Christ, I want to know that I thought “different” from the world and did everything in my power with great focus and perseverance to change this world through the love of Christ!

Here’s the deal.

You can’t get published without an agent.

You can’t get an agent unless you’ve been published.

Anyone see a problem with this scenario?

Getting published WITHOUT an agent:

The story of our “Conquering Depression” book is a fairy tale. It never should have been published. My pastor and best friend, Mark Sutton asked me to help him write a book on depression since I had just recovered from two years of counseling for my depression. He wanted my medical angle on depression and he would give his counseling angle on depression. We sat down and wrangled out a format — a thirty day plan for conquering depression. The idea was that anyone could break a habit in thirty days. And, when you are depressed, you can’t take things in large chunks. You’re lucky to swallow small bites. Take one day at a time, was our feeling. We started working on it in the early summer and by Halloween, we had a finished outline, the first week or seven chapters, and a book proposal. Now, what to do with it?

Here’s where it gets weird. Mark was going to Nashville the second week of November to hold a marriage seminar. We had met an editor we will call Ben when he was at a major Christian publisher in the Northwest. Since that time, Ben had been hired by Broadman & Holman and was now living in Nashville. What if we got Ben to give us some advice on a good publisher for our book? Maybe he would know if the current market would welcome a book on depression.

We met with Ben at lunch on a Friday and I had the book proposal in a clear binder on the table. While we were waiting for Mark to come to the table, Ben picked up the binder and asked, “What is this?” I was supposed to keep my mouth shut but I told him briefly it was a book proposal for a book on depression from a Christian point of view. His eyes widened and he frowned. He frowned! Then he said something I will never forget. “Since we’ve moved to Nashville my wife has really struggled with depression and we can’t find a good resource anywhere. I’ll take the book.”

We signed the contract that next January. It was just that easy. No, it was a God thing!

Working WITH an Agent:

It wasn’t long until a man contacted Mark and wanted to be our agent. He was highly recommended and I saw my opportunity to get “The 13th Demon” published. At that point, I had shopped the book around without success for a year and a half as an unsolicited manuscript.

We will call my new agent Frank. Frank promptly got to work putting together a book proposal. He asked for my first six chapters and then I got a bill for $400. I was puzzled. What was this bill for? It was for editing my first six chapters. Now, I have learned since then that an agent will edit your chapters if you are a new author. But, Frank had never mentioned he would charge me for this service either in our talks or in our contract. I was a bit disturbed, particularly when he suggested some substantial changes that sounded suspiciously like he didn’t understand fiction writing at all. But, I paid the bill and made the changes. Then, I started getting copies of my rejection letters and the letters had been copied onto the back of someone’s manuscript pages. Maybe this was normal for an agent, but it was disturbing to think that somewhere one of his clients had a copy of a rejection letter on the back of a page from MY manuscript. Two years passed and I never heard a word from Frank. I got the occasional rejection letter and finally, Mark and I called him only to discover he was now being sued by a former client, AND was under indictment for fraud. We fired him! Two and half wasted years!

Lesson to be learned: Read your contract carefully and have it checked by an attorney. Really research your prospective agent. Ask up front what expenses you will be responsible for. And, check out a reputable source such as the Writer’s Digest Guide to literary agencies.

Agent #2: Four months later, Mark was at a retreat in a western state and he ran across a kind couple who asked him to have a seat at their table. In the course of the conversation, it turned out the man was a literary agent and by the time Mark came home, we had a new agent. This time, the agent was with a major literary firm out of New York City. And, right off the bat, it was easy to see this man was vastly different and far more professional than our previous agent. However, I ran into an instant problem. He refused to represent my fiction! What? I want to get my fiction published. This was what I had lived for; dreamed for; hoped for since I was 13 years old. And yet, he steadfastly refused to even read my fiction and told me, “Fiction has to be stunning to get published. Forget fiction and stick to your non-fiction.” We went back and forth for two more wasted years. He decided to leave his firm and go back out on his own and he let me out of the contract. He was a kind man and he taught me a lot. But, our relationship was very frustrating.

And so, as I wrote in yesterday’s blog post, I decided to self publish. And, after getting “published” and establishing a “track record” I was given a list of five agencies by a good friend of mine who insisted I needed to find an agent and become respectable and go the traditional route of publishing. The first two agencies turned me down. But, the third agent, Jeff Jernigan was kind and supportive and understood that I had a working knowledge of the publishing industry particularly after working with BookPros and his words were this, “When you get you next book finished, contact me. We’ll sign a contract and I’ll get you a publisher.” And, that is exactly what he did!

I can’t sing his praises enough! Jeff has been a wonderful agent. He went the extra mile in my contract negotiations. And, in our conversations he would say things like, “I will see to it you become a successful author.” He was encouraging from day one and he has delivered far and above my expectations. It took me ten years to find a good agent who believed in me, but it was worth the effort and the struggle.

Don’t give up. Take my advice and develop a “track record” of some type through contests, blog posts, essays, whatever you can find to show that you are a good writer and one day, you will find an agent who will make all the difference in the world. It happened to me and it can happen to you!

My debut novel, “The 13th Demon: Altar of the Spiral Eye” is available this week and my launch party is Friday night, October 7th, 2011 from 6 to 8 P.M. at Brookwood Baptist Church (corner of I49 and Bert Kouns) in the Well, the coffee shop. I will be introducing the ink*well, a regional Christian artists’ community and speaking briefly on “One Book’s Journey: How to Get Published”. Those who purchase a book are entered into a drawing for one of the following: an Ipad2, a nook touch, and a Kindle WiFi. Coffee and snacks are complementary. Here is a pdf file of the flyer for the event: bruce-flyer

I often get asked, “Where do you get your ideas from?” For “The 13th Demon” I found inspiration from two ideas and two questions. One way to develop ideas for a story is to ask “What if?”

My first “What if?” question was this. What would happen to an assassin, a mercenary, a special forces individual if that person became a Christian? Could they continue in their job? How would they deal with the past? Would they be changed fundamentally or would they be compelled to continue to kill? I wasn’t sure of the answer, but the possibilities intrigued me. I filed that question and answer away for future consideration.

My second “What if?” question was this. If a person is a Christian and develops amnesia, would they still remember they are a Christian? Is the conversion experience so powerful, so complete it transcends memory loss? Or would the person “forget” they are a child of God? If they did, what does this mean, theologically? I filed that question and answer away for consideration.

Now, the third contributor to my story was not a question. It was a situation. Good ideas can come from real world situations. My church was sitting on the corner of a typical neighborhood intersection, buried away from the growing part of town in an area that was “transitioning” (whatever that means). My pastor, Mark Sutton, had felt called to our church for one reason: to move this vibrant, growing church a mile down the street to a major intersection where it would be easily accessible and very visible. However, the first and greatest obstacles were our own church members. About 25% of the membership did not want to leave the building. I was stunned. I had given money to expand this building, but it was not the church. The membership was the church. The building was just that, an inanimate object. But, some of our membership worshipped the building. It was like an idol, erected for the world to see and for some of us to worship. Their passion for staying in the building often exceeded their passion for winning others to Christ. The battle was long, brutal, and costly. But, in the end, my pastor’s vision and God’s will prevailed and we moved to the location God had first shown Mark on the day he drove through our region. And so, I wondered. What would happen if a building became an idol? What if the building was like a living, breathing creature that could be possessed by evil and thus become the beginning point for the downfall of good, unsuspecting church members? I filed that idea away for consideration.

The fourth factor in the book’s story was my growing interest in apologetics. One of my favorite authors, Michael Crichton, had written two of my favorite books, “Andromeda Strain” and “Jurassic Park”. I loved how Crichton took science, history, and philosophy and built a compelling, fast paced story around the facts. It would be much later that I realized how “facts” could be perverted to fit a story in the best seller, “The Da Vinci Code”. Crichton did not pervert the facts. He let them serve as the power behind the plot. I wanted to do this with the science, the history, the philosophy, and the facts behind my growing knowledge base in the defense of the Christian faith. That is what “apologetics” was all about. Finding the truth in the Christian world view. But, how to do this? How could I write a book around the science and the history I had learned? I filed that idea away for consideration.

I did not know it, but the stage was set for my book. After completing the manuscript for “Conquering Depression” in June, 1999, I made a deliberate decision to take six weeks off and read. I had been hired by LifeWay to write for their online “Extra” publication and I had gotten seriously behind on my reading. A good writer is also an avid reader. So, I put aside any desire to write and made the decision that by the first of August, I would have chosen which one of my many novels in various stages of development would become my first novel to complete and submit for publication. It was time for my fiction!

As the weeks passed, nothing happened. I read a lot. But, every time I looked at my novels, I felt nothing. No spark of passion. No desire to finish the story. Cold, cruel indifference. Now, I was getting worried. After all, I had been working on “Conquering Depression” for nine months and now I was writing four articles a week so my writing was disciplined and well honed. If I didn’t start on something soon, I was worried I would lose the spark!

July 31st came and now I was desperate. I had no idea what I was going to start writing on the next day. And, then, I got it. I have done this so many times. I get a good idea. I pick it up and hold it up to God and say, “Hey, God! Look at this great idea I’ve had. I’m going to do this for you and you are going to bless it! Aren’t you lucky to have me?”

Seriously, have you ever done this? I have. Many times. And, every time, my efforts end in disaster. God has to wrench the “good idea” out of my hands so He can put His “God idea” in its place. Then He says to me, “Bruce, I want to invite you to participate in the work I am doing by accomplishing this one thing. And, when you accomplish this one thing that is ideally suited to your gifts, talents, and skills, then I will bless you.” And, the wrenching part? It hurts like, well, like “hell”! In fact, it is a taste of hell for hell is ultimately all about me!

That evening, as this realization dawned on me, I was terrified. For, I realized that “Conquering Depression” might be the only book I ever write. For someone who has written since he was 8, this was a terrifying possibility. Nevertheless, I swallowed nervously and prayed the most humble prayer I could muster. “God, forgive me for being so arrogant and proud. If the depression book is the only book I ever write for you, then I accept that. If I never write another book, I accept that. I want to do your will. I give my writing over to you completely. It is yours. Show me what I should do.” And, with tears in my eyes, I climbed into bed and slipped into a troubled sleep.

At 4 A. M. I awoke, sat bolt upright in the bed and realized the entire story of what would become “The 13th Demon” was in my head. It was there like a hurricane developing over the gulf, ill defined but recognizable. The pastor and his church possessed by an evil presence. The mysterious man with amnesia, bent on revenge as the pastor’s only hope. And, a community on the brink of disaster. It was all there. I started writing immediately and by noon had written sixteen chapters. It was the first of August, my deadline and by the 30th, I had completed the rough draft of “The 13th Demon”. God had answered my prayer with a story I had never contemplated; a genre I had never considered; and a book series that would occupy the next two decades of my life.

The title came later out of the blue just as some of the characters surfaced while I was free writing the story. During my research, amazing things happened that I could only call miraculous. But, it would prove almost impossible to sell the idea. For you see, in 1999 the world of Christian publishing was not ready for a Christian “thriller” or “science fiction” or “horror” novel. I was turned down by the best. And, every time the reason was not because of the poor quality of the writing. I was turned down because the story was too edgy, too violent, too harsh. I had one editor from a major Christian publisher tell me she loved the manuscript but that “No one in the CBA will ever publish your book.” She would prove to be right and it would be seven years before “The 13th Demon” appeared in public. That story I will talk about tomorrow!