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Of Garlic and Crosses
Before I continue my story from yesterday, here is a portion of the cover for the upcoming book about the 1st demon. I had to play around with the subtitle. My original idea would have given too much away so I settled on this subtitle. The full cover will be revealed soon.
Barefoot, I stood in ankle deep sawdust soaked with blood. The deer’s eyes, devoid of lids and glaring from a skinless skull stared at me in deep sorrow. I fought back nausea as my brother soaked the deer head’s skin in another tank prior to mounting it on a solid form matching the deer head’s shape.
I ran out of his taxidermy shop, past my house, to the front yard. Already with the coming night fireflies blinked in the distant trees. I gasped for breath and slowly recovered. At age eight, growing up on a farm, I had seen my share of animal death. But the sight of those lifeless eyes would haunt me for years. Just that afternoon I had watched “Dracula” on the 3:30 Dialing For Dollars Movie. My mother drove a school bus and she dropped me off at the house on her way to finish her rounds in time to watch the movie, whatever its subject. I was to write down the “count, amount, and direction” in case we got a call during a commercial. If they called and we gave that information and the current amount, we would win hundreds of dollars. Watching the Dialing For Dollars Movie was a sacred trust.
But Dracula? The images terrified me and now, as the sun set on the distant horizon above our farm, I felt the cold stare not of the eyes of a dead deer but the cruel hypnotic stare of Count Dracula and I ran screaming into the house. We had no garlic. But I made a crude cross out of popsicle sticks and placed it beside my bed. I don’t think I slept that night.
Thus began my fascination with vampires.
So back to that question from yesterday’s post: Would there be twelve other demons? When I wrote “The 13th Demon” I had the possibility of one sequel in mind just to complete the story of Joshua Knight. But, twelve more demons?
I love book series. Spencer, Kay Scarpetta, Elvis Cole, just to name a few. However, in the years I have spent reading book series I have always noticed something. Along about the fourth or fifth book, it was as if the author ran out of ideas how to more the main character forward. Often, this resulted in bringing the character back to their less than “mature” state that developed over several books. Not a problem if this digression was intentional and worked within the story.
Before I considered writing a book series, I had to know if there was enough “story” about Jonathan Steel for twelve more books. So I did two things. First, I prayed about it.
Second, I sat down and outlined possible future book ideas with the central theme being one of the apologetic facts I had learned. I concluded its as doable. There were far too many good ideas.
But, what about Jonathan Steel? Did he have enough story to justify twelve more books? Fortunately, I had created a character with amnesia. That would give me a lot of latitude in telling stories centered around his slowly recovering memory. I could do this without cheating on his growth and maturity over many books.
And so, I sat down before I went any further and I wrote the next to the last book where he would completely recover his memory. I had to know his entire backstory. This gave me a goal to work toward. And then I wrote the last scene of the last book. All of the elements of a puzzle put together by the time we got there. I now had the final tapestry. All I had to do was fill in the details.
I was sitting in my office at the hospital. At that time, the hospital had only dial up internet connection. I decided the second book would be about vampires and their history and why we are fascinated with them. I would make Joshua join a vampire “clan” and Jonathan would have to rescue him. I had recently read a frightening book on prions, “Deadly Feasts” by Richard Rhodes (https://a.co/d/01b7ia7A) and I thought prions would be an interesting scientific fact as the threat in my story.
While searching for information on vampires, a page showed up in my browser. Totally blank and then something formed in the center of the image. A demonic face appeared, fangs exposed, eyes bulging. It hissed and snapped its jaws at me. And then, the most astonishing thing happened. It came OUT of the screen. Not just an illusion! The image bulged out of the screen, overlapping the edges as if it was becoming REAL! I slammed the laptop shut, my heart racing! What had just happened? In a panic, I removed the battery (they were removable at that time) totally resetting the computer and picked up the phone to call my co-author and pastor, Mark Sutton. I told him what had happened and to my surprise, totally believed me.
“Bruce, you’re writing about spiritual warfare. Satan doesn’t want these books to come out and he is trying to stop you. This just proves, that no matter what, these stories should be told.”
And so it began!
I’ll continue the saga of “The Chronicles of Jonathan Steel” tomorrow. For now, here is the cover of the re-edited version of the twelfth Demon, “Demon 12: Wolf Dragon” now available everywhere in print and ebook format. Note the figures in the background. They came directly from a chapter in the book that recounts, with historical accuracy, the horrid reign of Vlad the Impaler!
You don’t have to sleep with garlic tonight. Just embrace the cross.
The Last Book is Almost Here!
I am counting down the days until the release of the FINAL book in “The Chronicles of Jonathan Steel”. In anticipation of this release, I have re-edited the earlier books in the series and each day, I will feature something about each re-issue.
I’ll start with the book that began in it all. But, before I do that, here is an enticing image I created as a starting point for the cover of “The 1st Demon”.
Before I go on, here is the newest cover of my newest version of “The 13th Demon”. “Demon 13: Dark Covenant” is a re-edited version of Book 1 in “The Chronicles of Jonathan Steel” and is available on all book sites, both printed and ebook format. Whatever you do, DO NOT order the original “The 13th Demon”. It is no longer in print and if you order it, you will buying a used copy from someone at a jacked up price! Search for Bruce Hennigan and/or Demon 13: Dark Covenant.
I’ve shared the story of “The 13th Demon” before but I’ll recap. Mark Sutton and I had finished our manuscript for “Conquering Depression” to be published by Broadman & Homan in the summer of 1999. Yes, that long ago! We turned the final manuscript in mid June and I decided to take a few weeks off from writing to just read. During the next 7 weeks, I read over a dozen books.
At the airport book store in June, I ran across a book by Robert Crais featuring Elvis Cole, P.I. The cover intrigued me because it showed a Jimmy Cricket cuckoo clock. I had to check out a story about a private investigator with an obsession with Disney. Turns out Robert Crais is from Louisiana, my native state and I fell in love with his books.
I couldn’t just turn my back on writing, of course. My determination was to write my first novel. I took out my many novels in progress and narrowed them down to six possibilities. I placed the finished chapters of each novel in their individual folders. Each night, I read through a folder. And NOTHING happened! No excitement! Nothing grabbed me and begged me to continue writing!
Near the end of July I joined my pastor, Mark Sutton, and several staff members from Brookwood Baptist Church on a trip to Saddleback Church in California. Sitting across the airplane aisle from Mark, I was not happy when he asked me what I was going to write next. I remember looking at him with a sinking sensation.
“Nothing! Mark, I got nothing!” I sighed. “What if God only wants me to write Conquering Depression and nothing else?”
He never answered that question and it bounced around in my head throughout the trip and in the coming days. I set a goal of starting my novel on August 1st. On July 31st, still nothing. That night before I went to bed, I had a startling revelation. This kind of revelation happens to me way too often. I realized I had made a plan and held it up to God and told Him, “Hey, God, here’s this great idea I’ve had and you just need to go ahead and bless it. I’ve saved you the trouble of getting my attention to tell me what to do next.” With a dreadful sinking sensation, I prayed, “God, I am so sorry I presumed to do what I thought you wanted me to do. If writing Conquering Depression is the only book I’ll ever write for you, then I accept that. I give my writing career to you.” And I fell into a restless sleep.
Four A.M. I woke up in a cold sweat and sat up in the bed. It was there! The entire story was there! Had it been a dream? Had it been merely the gestating ideas and characters pulled from a myriad of potential novels? I had no idea. All I knew is I had to start writing. By dawn, I had written sixteen chapters of what would become “The 13th Demon”. Where did thirteen come from? I had no idea. Why demons? I had no idea. I was interested in science fiction, not horror or supernatural.
But there was one foundational concept I had established. I loved the writings of Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, anyone?) because Crichton would take an interesting concept out of the blue and build a fascinating thriller around it. Dinosaurs, genetic engineering, and this strange thing called chaos theory. By this time in my life, I had joined the Christian apologetic community, Reasons to Believe. I had discovered amazing scientific, philosophical, and historical facts corroborating the truthfulness of the Bible and the Christian faith. I remember thinking, “Why hasn’t anyone ever told me this? It would have saved me from countless episodes of doubt and damage to my faith!”
Could I build a story around some of these “apologetic” facts? Could I “disguise” Christian principles in a thrilling, supernatural story? After all, Frank Peretti had done so. And just recently the Left Behind series had taken the world by storm. These concepts were floating around in my head along with a character from the Elvis Cole novels, Joe Pike. A stoic, emotionless, justice obsessed killing machine, Pike fascinated me.
And so, Jonathan Steel was born originally as a minor character in this story. “The 13th Demon” was supposed to be about the pastor, not Steel. But as I wrote the story organically coming out of this gestalt from my sleep, I realized Steel was the far more interesting character. And by the time I finished the novel on August 31st, one month later, I had my protagonist and his team. Now, what to do with it?
I did what every prospective author did at that time (and what we had done with Conquering Depression) by putting together a book proposal and blasting as many Christian publishers as I could. The response was devastating. Every publisher turned me down. And I realized the problem was not necessarily my writing. This book was what would be called “Christian Speculative Fiction” in the future. CSF is science fiction, fantasy, and horror written from a Christian worldview.
Now, thanks to writers like Ted Dekker, Tosca Lee, Andrew Peterson, and Robert Whitlow CSF is common place. But at this time, Christian publisher had no idea how to market it. True, Left Behind was doing well. But books about demons? Books with horror elements?
My best response came from Kregel, major publisher. They loved the book but said, “we don’t know what to do with it.” And then a simple question in my rejection letter changed everything. “Does this mean there are twelve other demons?”
Hmm!
Tomorrow, more of the story.
Lots of New Developments!
I haven’t posted in a while. 2026 has turned out to be a challenging with health scares for my family and all is well at the moment.
Good news, though. I have just finished the last chapter of the rough draft of my final book in “The Chronicles of Jonathan Steel”. Just a few more weeks of editing and book layout and cover design and the book will be released!
It has taken me longer to finish this book than I planned because I had to go back and read all of my eleven other books! Yes, eleven including “Death by Darwin”, the official prequel to the series. Here is the good news. I have updated and re-edited Books 1-3 in the series and they are soon to be available on all outlets. The titles:
Demon 13: Dark Covenant Book 1
Demon 12: Wolf Dragon Book 2
Demon 11: Ark of the Chimera Book 3
I have combined the 7th and 5th demon books into one book: “The Pandora Stone: Demons 7, 6, & 5” and have re-edited this book. I wrote both books during COVID so some of my story beasts were a little wonky and I wanted to fix that.
I also have a new cover for “The 10th Demon: Children of the Bloodstone”.
If you have read all of my books, then the changes will not be that significant. But, the first there books have been spotty with regard to availability since I took them back from their traditional publishers.
Here’s the new covers!
More good news. I have combined all books into three volumes of ebooks “The Chronicles of Jonathan Steel”: Volume 1 includes Demons 13 – 11. Volume 2 includes Demons 10 – 8. Volume 3 includes Demons 7 – 2. These are ebooks only and are available on any outlet.
I’ll alert you to when these books are available. Most are already available as ebooks if you search for them. Next post will discuss the upcoming Aspiring Writer’s Workshop, a free workshop on Saturday, April 25th.
The 2nd Demon Officially Available
Links to ordering “The 2nd Demon: Tales of the Grimvox” in ebook and print format are listed below
Nook and Barnes&Noble Paperback
Enjoy!
The 2nd Demon is two weeks late but is here!
“The 2nd Demon: Tales of the Grimvox” is now available as an ebook on most platforms. It will be available for order as paperback after Friday, January 10, 2025.
I was hoping to get the book out before Christmas but Santa brought us a pre-Christmas gift, a six pack of flu!!!
Blurb: The second demon possesses Jeremiah Stone, the brother Jonathan Steel never knew he had. Jeremiah has kidnapped Steel and is using the Grimvox, an arcane repository of demonic history to sift Steel’s memories. Searching for a specific memory, Jeremiah and Steel relive their past lives and the legacy of their father, the Captain. With the help of Father Caskey, Josh searches for his adopted father. Steel must escape his brother and the connection with the Grimvox before he loses his mind. And, his life!
I must admit I just checked over the final galley proof and read the last chapter. I’m still trying to see through my tears! I hope you enjoy this book. It is the culmination of many previous books and the coming together of a lot of loose ends. It definitely sets the stage for the last book in the series. Have a Happy New Year!
Free Books!
As the year 2023 draws to a close I have to admit I have not written a new book. However, I have done something I have wanted to accomplish for some time. I have taken “The 13th Demon”, “The 12th Demon”, and “The 11th Demon” and reworked them into one volume of an “author’s” cut.
What is an “author’s cut”? When an author signs a contract to produce a work, that author is now an employee of the traditional publisher. The work is no longer completely the author’s. The publisher is a business and, as a business must produce a work that will bring in money. This means shaping that work into something that can sell and, at the same time, not break the bank. Thus, publishers demand strict word count limits. Word count limits translate into page numbers. Page numbers, in the world of printed books, costs money. There must be some kind of break even at 80,000 words as this seems to be the sweet spot for printed books. Any larger than 80,000 words and the basic cost of printing goes up.
Since I have formed my own publishing entity, I am keenly aware of this. The problem for me as an author was trimming my first two works down from over 100,000 words to 80,000 called for substantial artistic sacrifices. Admittedly placing a word limit can be advantageous. It forces the author to be more creative in the editing process. But, I had to sacrifice entire characters and their story arcs to fit the word limits for these books.
Now, I own the works and I have chosen to restore these dissected parts back into the whole. I have also tuned up the “bread crumbs” I placed that led to future story lines. “The 11th Demon” never suffered from the word limit problem. If anything, it was too short to begin with. I have fleshed it out some more to fill in details on the storylines and the “bread crumbs”.
All three books are now available in one ebook volume. The printed version runs over 1200 pages so I am sticking with the ebook version for now and it can be found in any online book source.
Look for “The Chronicles of Jonathan Steel Vol. 1” and enjoy. The work includes new versions of the first three novels, “The 13th Demon: Dark Covenant”, “The 12th Demon: Wolf Dragon”, and “The 11th Demon: Chimera”.
Now here is the really good news. For a limited time, the first thirty readers who access this link to my “bookfunnel” source can download an ebook version of this collection for free! But hurry! The free books are limited to only 30! FREE BOOKS for first 30 readers!
Jonathan Steel, Where are you?
What’s Been Happening with Jonathan Steel?
It has been almost a year since I released the last Jonathan Steel book. So, what have I been doing?
First, I have semi-retired from my medical practice. I’m still working part time. This means more time to work on my writing as July 1st. Here are the projects I am working on:
Rewrite of “The 13th Demon”, “The 12th Demon”, and “The 11th Demon”.
That’s right! I am restoring all three books to their original, long story format. In my agreement with a major publisher, I had to make a LOT of concessions on all three books. Word count limitations forced me to make significant cuts to the first two books. And content restraint required me to make concessions on “The 11th Demon” which is STILL in the hands of Westbow Press!
Here’s what I have done. I have restored “The 13th Demon: Dark Covenant” and “The 12th Demon: Wolf Dragon” to their original length. I am still working on updating “The 11th Demon: Chimera”. Soon, the new versions of 13th and 12th will be available everywhere! Look for the new subtitles. I am hoping to get 11th out by the end of the year.
This has necessitated me holding back on the final two books in “The Chronicles of Jonathan Steel”.
Next Jonathan Steel Book
“The 2nd Demon: Tales of the Grimvox” will explore the backstories of Jonathan Steel, the Captain, Lucas, and a certain new character that emerged in the last book whose name I will not mention because “Spoilers Sweetie!”. It sets up the final confrontation between good and evil as Jonathan Steel must finally defeat the Council of Darkness and the Vitreomancers.
I am working on “The 2nd Demon” rough draft right now.
Next Jack Merchant book:
The response to my Jack Merchant Medical Mystery series has been phenomenal! I am shocked at how well the book, “Shadow Merchant” has been received. I am currently working on the second book in the series “Slice Fatigue”.
Jonathan Steel “spin off”:
If you’ve been reading my books, you have seen hints and suggestions of “The Node of God”. This will be a continuation of the story of the Children of the Bloodstone and will feature a trilogy. The first book is halfway done. World building takes time! Tentative title: “The Node of God: Darksyn Rising”.
Steel, P.I.
In the future, I will be launching a continuation of Jonathan Steel’s story as he moves into the job of a regular private investigator who doesn’t always have to face off with demons. Well, not always.
Non-Fiction books:
“The 5 Minute Atheist” is my personal story of a crisis of faith and my journey of recovery from that crisis through the discovery of Christian Apologetics.
And there are more books in the pipe.
BOOK FAIR!
NOW — If you live in the Shreveport/Bossier area, come see me and a lot of other excellent Christian authors at the upcoming “Wholesome Book Fair”. It will be held at Barksdale Baptist Church, 1714 Jimmie Davis Hwy, Bossier City, 71112 on Saturday, October 28th from 11 AM to 2 PM.
I will have ALL of my books available in print format and Ebook coupons for downloading from Bookfunnel.com. That’s right! You can purchase any of my books for only $2.50 as an ebook and download the book with a special code I will supply to ANY book reader. No need to fool with Kindle, or Apple Books, or Nook, etc. And this will be the ONLY way right now you can get all three updated, 13th, 12th AND 11th demon books!
I will also be featuring books by two other authors, Mark Sutton and Marcus Buckley. For more information on the books available check out hopeagainbooks.com.
I hope to see you THERE! I’d love to meet you!
Free Books!
Three weeks until Christmas!
THE 4TH DEMON: THE TRIAL OF THE 3RD DEMON
First, there was some delay in the availability of my newest book on Amazon and other portals. The books are now available and if you cannot find them by doing a search for “The 4th Demon: The Trial of the 3rd Demon” then search under my name. Also, you can go to hopeagainbooks.com for links to the book. And you can go to my Author Central Page on Amazon to find the books, https://www.amazon.com/Bruce-Hennigan/e/B0055JCM3O/ref=aufs_dp_fta_dsk .
THE 13TH DEMON AND THE 12TH DEMON
So here’s the deal. Charisma Media has ended their Realms imprint and returned the bulk of printed copies of “The 13th Demon” and “The 12th Demon” to me. Right now you can only buy used copies on Amazon so don’t do that! They will charge too much. And the ebooks are not available. I am working on combining these two books into the first volume of “The Chronicles of Jonathan Steel” with new, additional material I was forced to eliminate by Charisma’s draconian editorial process. But that will be after the first of the year.
So I am giving away the first two books for free! That’s right! I have about 40 copies of each and I am bundling them together and will ship you both books for free. All you have to do is pay for shipping and handling fee of $10! This is a good way to introduce others to the world of Jonathan Steel. And, you can start ordering right now. Just go to this PayPal link and place your order. Note that I will be shipping BOTH books, not one or the other. If you already have a book, just give the other away. Again, I only have about 40 copies of each book so don’t delay. Note that the price will be listed as $1 because I have to put a price on the invoice and the shipping will be listed as $9
https://py.pl/m555K — link for purchasing the two books.
CASEY’S SPARROW TEE SHIRT FOR EPILEPSY AWARENESS
Now, to the other issue, my daughter’s tee shirts. If you have read my blog posts in the past, you are familiar with Casey and her life long battle with epilepsy. She has designed an “Epilepsy Warrior” tee shirt to raise money for epilepsy awareness and she will give the proceeds to the Epilepsy Foundation. We have sold about half of the minimal 50 shirts so far and have eight days left in the campaign. Go to https://www.bonfire.com/caseys-sparrow/ and order a tee shirt, a hoodie, or a long sleeve tee shirt.
Thank you for supporting my writing and thank especially for supporting Casey’s efforts to raise epilepsy awareness!
Weigh Your Heart!
I was very depressed trying to watch a Hulu show, “The Patient”. If you made it through the entire series you know why. Dark, depressing, hopeless, filled with despair and the most subtly violent murders I’ve ever witnessed. I wanted to chain myself to a dark, basement bedroom floor by the end of the thing!
And watching the first part of that series changed my approach to writing. I’ve been working on the next two demons in my Chronicles of Jonathan Steel trying my best to keep them in separate books. That didn’t happen. The story of the 4th demon is so intertwined with the 3rd demon I had to combine the books for one LONG book. It will cost a bit more but that is because of the added cost of printing and producing the book by my distributor, Ingram.
Read the rest of this entryDemoneyes!
As promised, the next book will be out on Monday, November 22nd.
Can Jonathan Steel complete all three tasks demanded of him by the “unholy triad” of the 7th, 6th, and 5th demons in time to save Joshua Knight’s life? Can Joshua Knight keep the mysterious Pandora from taking over his mind while he is fighting for his life? To save Joshua Knight, Jonathan Steel must become an ally of a serial killer and locate the arcane Ark of the Demon Rose. In the process, his past comes back to haunt him. Was he once an assassin? What price is he willing to pay to save his son? With time running out, Jonathan Steel betrays all that he has come to represent and must walk on the side of the demons!
At the end of “The 7th Demon: The Pandora Stone” I left my readers in a bit of a cliffhanger and I promised I would have the next book by December 1. Well, it is here! “The 5th Demon: Demoneyes” will be available on Monday, November 22nd! Print and ebook versions will be available.
This book takes the reader deeper into the mind of Josh Knight and his battle with Pandora. The battle for Joshua Knight’s life continues as Jonathan Steel tries to complete the three tasks given to him by the unholy triad. Jonathan Steel must break down the barriers of time and space itself to achieve his goals. And, all the while, he must walk a thin line between betraying his allegiance to God and walking on the side of the demons!
Christmas is upon us and this book will make a good gift along with the accompanying “The 7th Demon” book. My readers may notice there is no “The 6th Demon” book. There are three demons featured in two books. This will also be true in the coming final two books. Each will feature two demons. That’s right! I will finish the Chronicles of Jonathan Steel in two more books.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving! Because, Jonathan Steel will not!
Bruce Hennigan 
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