January and February are usually quiet months for me as an author. With one notable exception. Last year, my editor sent me the first editorial suggestions for “The 13th Demon” in February and I spent the month working on a major rewrite for the book that came out in October of 2011. This year, I was prepared to spend mid February to March on the book. I was thinking that January would be quiet. Dead. Nothing would happen.

Wrong!!!!!

Here it is the end of February and I am SOOOOO busy and I love it! Already, I’m out of breath and the year has just begun. And, according to my stalwart editor, Andy, the second book “The 12th Demon” out this coming October is MUCH better than book one. I’m getting stoked for a good year.

Bottom Line so far: God is so good. And, as I look forward to 2012 and look back to where God has brought me from, I realize I’m riding the wave of His plan for my life, not mine. And, that is just where I need to be.

Item #1 — Drama. I never wanted to be involved in drama. And yet, God positioned me to be in charge of a drama ministry at Brookwood Baptist Church for 15 years!!! Because of my experience with drama, I am requested often to speak on a multitude of topics relating to drama in the church. This past weekend, I spoke at the annual Louisiana Music and Drama Festival on my work with kids in our church’s Kidstuf program. That work involves writing and rewriting and adapting scripts for weekly drama and directing adults to act like kids. The weird things is, Kidstuf is oddly about apologetics. You know, the defense of the Christian faith; the establishment of the fact that our worldview is based on sound, rational thinking. So, how does Kidstuf work? Each month, we teach the kids a “virture” or value, like honesty, self-control, honor, generosity, sacrifice, etc. And those virtues are rooted in sound scripture. And how do we convey this to the kids? Through edgy sketches and drama that makes them THINK! That’s right! We’re making our kids think critically about the world around them. Imagine that! Which leads me toL

Item #2 — Apologetics. I never imagined I would be in this field. For one thing, I never knew it existed until I was challenged by my scientific colleagues on why I was a Christian. This story I’ve shared many times before. But, I never imagined I would become a trained apologist and then use that apologetics to  defend my faith and help out with kids who are being twisted and deformed by our postmodern culture. In fact, since the first of the year I have spoken four times at major venues on apologetics! That is in addition to the speaking engagement at the drama festival. I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to our state Evangelism Conference. And then, I was invited to come and speak to Mark Sutton Ministries’ seminary class on apologetics. And then, I was invited to speak at two different “LifeGroup” sessions here in my home city. Tomorrow night, my best friend Mark Riser and I will be speaking at the launch of a new church series on the Life of Christ.

I mean, this is just too weird!!! How did I get into this? But, you know what else happened? Somehow apologetics made me want to write fiction that used those facts as the basis for stories and that led to . . .

Item #3 — Published Christian Author in Speculative Fiction. I started out at the age of 13 writing science fiction. For years I tried to get published and put my writing career on the shelf to conquer college and medical school. When I came back to it, God say “Write Drama” and that is what I did. In 1995 a series of children’s plays was published by Contemporary Drama. Wait! It’s supposed to be science fiction! And then, I got depressed. Bad depressed and worked through it in two years and my pastor said “Let’s write a book on depression.” And we did and in 2001 came “Conquering Depression” published by Broadman & Holman. But, where was the science fiction? I brooded over my multiple manuscripts of science fiction all in various stages of development and nothing happened. I told God I would write whatever he wanted me to write. After all, I hadn’t been too successful with the science fiction stuff, but God had used me to touch lives with other kinds of writing. Maybe the big Dude Upstairs knows what He’s doing!

I woke up one Saturday morning with this weird, scary, horror type story in my head that used, wait for it, apologetics as a center piece and the results, 30 days later, was “The 13 Demon”. I didn’t want to do what I now know is “speculative fiction”. I wanted to stick to good old hard science fiction. But, God had other plans. And now I’m writing, published, apologizing, kidstuffing and . . .

Item #4 — Speaking Career. Back in 2008 when I was taking a course in apologetics I was required to go to this Dynamic Communication Workshop and learn how to, uh, communicate. Get out of here! I already KNOW how to communicate! I write. I speak. I direct. I act. I chase little monkeys around the kid’s area. But, I had no choice. If I wanted to get my Certified Apologetic Instructor certification, I would head out at once to DCW. Guess what? Life. Changing. Experience! Bada bing! I was Co Mun Icating! And, now, I am getting all kinds of request to come and speak on everything from “How Can I Know God Exists?” to “Writing and Adapting Scripts for Children” to “Should I Self Publish or Not?”

Here I am smack dab in the middle of a plan I never imagined. I wanted to be the next Michael Crichton. Well, in a way, my speculative fiction is similar to the style he used. So, did God allow me to have the desires of my heart. You bet you He did! Man, what a year so far!

So, I’m contemplating a new endeavor. I’m considering starting a website dedicated to “apologetic fiction”. What does this mean? Simply, my goal would be to equip Christian fiction and non fiction writers with ways to use their writing to show the truth of the Christian worldview. I plan on talking about LEGACY — the mean and women of the past who used their writing to advance Truth. People such as C. S. Lewis and Tolkien and Chesterton. I plan on touching on BASICS, the basic tenets of apologetics — philosophy, history, science and how we can think again as Christians. How to use those elements in your writing. I plan on REVIEWS, covering books both fiction and non fiction about Christian apologetics so that you, the author, will know which book is best for your research. I plan on exposing FORBIDDEN topics, what my LifeGroup pastor, Weston, calls “speculative theology”. These are topics we Christians LOVE to argue over but that can become a stumbling block to non believers and skeptics we are trying to reach with our writing. And, I want to invite other authors to submit PARABLES, stories, poems, essays, blog posts illustrating the need for Truth in today’s postmodern culture. And finally, a little game in “NAME THAT WORLDVIEW” where I review a novel, a television show, a movie, etc. and see if you can figure what worldview is being portrayed.

So there it is. Look soon for the site intitled PARABOLE, the Greek word for parable. Is it more work? Yes! But, it is no more work than I am involved in right now preparing for these teaching and speaking engagements.

So, if you might be interested in exploring such a site, send me a comment. Make a suggestion. Let’s see if we can proclaim TRUTH to the world through our FICTION and our WRITING.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need a nap!!!!!