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The Last Book, the 1st Demon is here.
“The 1st Demon: Imago Diaboli” is now available through all book outlets online. If you go to this link you can find links to each site that offers the book.
As I stated in a prior post, this book has taken longer to write than most. I went back and read all the prior books in “The Chronicle of Jonathan Steel” as well as the prequel “Death By Darwin”. I even reviewed my Jack Merchant books as characters from those two books feature in this final story. Below, I will reveal the second chapter of the book for those who have read and those who have not read my books. In this chapter, Jonathan Steel and his main love interest, Ruth Martinez (from Death By Darwin) are driving from Shreveport, Louisiana to Austin, Texas. During the six hour drive, Jonathan tells his story to Ruth. The chapter not only recounts many of the developments from the prior books, but it also illustrates their growing relationship. Just a WARNING, this chapter contains many spoilers so reader beware.
Thanks again for all who have supported these books in the past. The final book contains many “tropes” that have become fairly common place in the last 20 years but I stuck with the story I outlined way back in 2000. If story beats seem all too familiar, I wrote them first!
Read the rest of this entry19 years ago . . .
Just for fun, here is an interview I did back in May, 2007 on the launch of “The 13th Demon”. I was much younger, much fatter, but had much more hair!
Live Long And . . .
I stood in the middle of the pasture and looked up at a star filled night. Growing up on a farm out in the middle of Nowhere, Louisiana God gave me a gift I would not appreciate for years. Living so far away from city lights, every night sky gleamed and glittered with a celestial light show. I saw the Milky Way stretching across a sky filled with twinkling stars. Points of light moved across the expanse as satellites and spaceships soared in orbit. I lost count of the many falling stars. On this night, at the age of 11, I wanted one thing and one thing only. I wanted to meet Mr. Spock.
I grew up in the golden age of science fiction television: Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Lost in Space. At the age of 11, I was growing increasingly tired of the silly and overly dramatic Dr. Smith ruining every effort of the Robinson family to get home to Earth. Perhaps it was because of my growing maturity. Maybe it was because of my evolving ability to write stories.
In September, 1966 something life changing happened. I had seen commercials for this show and I decided to give it a try. Star Trek. The very first episode was about a salt vampire. Yes, there was that vampire angle again! But the story? Amazing! The characters? Riveting. I was hooked!
And now I waited, eyes fixed on the distant stars reaching out with my “Vulcan” mind meld to any alien life form flying by. Come by and pick me up! Take me to outer space!
Nothing happened. I wish I could say I have had a close encounter with a UFO, now a UAP, or an ET. This side of a movie or theme park ride, I haven’t. My fascination with these phenomena did not wane. And as part of my apologetic training, I had to ask the question, “Are we alone? If the universe is filled with life, why is it so silent?” These questions prompted me to write many potential science fiction novels. Naturally, I wanted to work one of these novels into “The Chronicles of Jonathan Steel” and “The 10th Demon: Children of the Bloodstone” was born. I recently re-edited the book mainly for grammatical errors and then created a new cover. Here is it is:
I have also taken “The 7th Demon” and “The 5th Demon” and combined them into one book. Both books were supposed to be in one volume but the pandemic interfered. I have now combined both books into one large book, “The Pandora Stone: Demons 7, 6, & 5”.
And to make life easier, I have combined all ten books into three volumes. “The Chronicles of Jonathan Steel Volume 1” contains “Demon 13”, “Demon 12”, and “Demon 11”. Volume 2 contains “The 10th Demon”, “The 9th Demon”, and “The 8th Demon”. Volume 3 contains “The Pandora Stone”, “The 4th Demon”, and “The 2nd Demon”.
Don’t forget, “Death By Darwin” is technically a prequel to the Chronicles and Ruth Martinez figures heavily in the last books. And Dr. Jack Merchant now has his own series “Shadow Merchant” and “Merchant of Justice.”
And now, the full reveal of the cover of the last book, “The 1st Demon: Imago Diaboli” which will be available as soon as the final cover is finished and the book is uploaded for distribution. I will post a blog announcing it!
Writing In Between
Before we go looking for the 11th demon, here is a glimpse of the possible cover of my upcoming book, “The 1st Demon: Imago Diaboli”. Full cover reveal is coming soon.
It took several years but I decided to self publish my first two Jonathan Steel books through iUniverse and then, BookPros. BookPros was a fantastic company. They mainly focused on marketing and publicity but then got into the “hybrid” publishing business. They only took books they decided were marketable and a writer had to go through the same process of presenting a book proposal as they would have to get a contract with a traditional publisher. However, beyond that point, I had to fund the project just as anyone would with self-publishing but the advantage was the excellent marketing and publicity program.
BookPros released “The 13th Demon” and “The 12th Demon” and both were successful. In fact, it was my success with BookPros that led ultimately to my third agent and a five book contract with Strang Communications (Now Charisma Media).
My local Barnes & Noble was kind enough to allow me to have book signings for both books and then asked me to participate in a unique event. Our manager for the Barnes & Noble asked several local authors to come every Saturday in the month of November and write a novel. We had about six of us sitting at a large table in the store with our laptops working on a novel. Potential authors were invited to come by and join us.
I first met Winnie Griggs at this event. Winnie Griggs is an award winner writer of book series (https://www.winniegriggs.com/) and she spoke at our recent Aspiring Writer’s Workshop conducted by our Louisiana chapter of the American Christian Fiction Writers. Our little group sat around the table and for a few hours every Saturday worked on novels. Anyone could come by and talk to us and ask questions. Winnie gave a short workshop on writing a novel.
By then, I had two books finished of my twelve demons and was working on the third book. It would be about UFO’s and ETs. But I wanted to do something that was an “in between” work bridging the second and third book. I had left the reader in a bit of a cliff hanger at the end of the second book. And the third book would begin a couple months later. I decided to write a story connecting the two books and it would not contain one of the twelve demons.
I also wanted to try an experiment. I would write each major scene from a different character’s point of view in first person. This would force me to get into the heads of each character and learn how to speak in their voice. By the end of November, I had finished what would become “The Ark of the Demon Rose”. I ran it through Xlibris with no intention of actually selling the book. It was short, but still long enough to qualify as a novel. I had a dozen or so copies printed and gave them away to my supporters. Free. No cost.
Now, I was years later and producing those five books for my contract. What to do with this book? After conferring with my representative, we decided I would retcon that book into the lineup of twelve demons. It became “The 11th Demon”. I worked very hard with Strang to rework and re-introduce the first two books. I have written about the difficulties of having to shorten the word count of those books making them less than what I had intended. This led to my recent release of the re-edited books as “Demon 13: Dark Covenant” and “Demon 12: Wolf Dragon”.
I have now re-edited that original “Ark of the Demon Rose” as “Demon 11: Ark of the Chimera” and here is the cover. It is now available at all outlets. If you have purchased prior copies of “The 11th Demon” still available from Westbow Press, this book has new content and is different from that original book. Westbow continues to provide that original book and I have asked for it to be returned since, technically, I own the copyright but that is a lesson for another day. I recommend seeking out “Demon 11” if you want to see more of the original content.
Tomorrow, evil will reign from the skies!
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.
Of Magic, Merchants, and Mayhem
I want to thank everyone for reading the past few posts promoting my latest book, “Merchant of Justice”. Response to the story has been good especially from my medical colleagues! If you haven’t read “Shadow Merchant” I encourage you to check it out and our website, hopeagainbooks.com has links to buy the book.
Tomorrow I am traveling to the Daytona Beach area to visit with Mark and Donna Sutton. Mark is my former pastor, co-author, and brother in Christ. In 2001 Mark and I were privileged to release “Conquering Depression” published by B&H Publishing. Since that time, B&H asked us to update the book and in 2014, released “Hope Again: A 30 Day Plan for Conquering Depression.” In 2019, Mark and I released the third edition under our own publishing banner, “Hope Again: A Lifetime Plan for Conquering Depression.”
I cannot express how many lives this book has changed. I do not say this as a boast for I never planned on co-authoring a book about depression because I never planned on having a major life changing depressive episode. God had different plans and as I have said many times, “it was not my plan”. It seems most of the time, what I am involved in has never been MY plan. My simple awakening moment every day is to ask God what work I can be involved in today. His work. Not mine! And God has blessed this little book that kept on going.
Now, I am faced with the reality that my section of the book based on medical data and apologetic and cultural issues is sadly out of date. It needs to be updated.
But, the book is now, in one form or the other, almost 24 years old. Perhaps it is time to let it fade away. Yesterday, while visiting Barnes and Noble I saw many books written by Christian authors dealing with anxiety, depression, and cultural influences. Maybe our book isn’t needed anymore. At the time we wrote the first book, there were hardly any books written at an easily understandable level for helping Christians develop a plan to conquer depression. While it did not become a best seller, it filled a niche and has changed and touched lives all over the world. LOGOS, the Bible study software, lists our book as part of their library.
I am asking for prayer and direction about our book. I will be sitting down with Mark to discuss the future. Mark’s health no longer allows him to write books but his knowledge of the Bible and how to apply it to everyday life is large and in charge!
We talk more about our book at conqueringdepression.com and I apologize that site is not as active as I desire. If you want to check out our book, I suggest you order it from hopeagainbooks.com not the conquering depression website.
On another note, I am actively involved in finishing the final book in the “Chronicles of Jonathan Steel”. I wrote the rough draft for the first book way back in 2000. It has been a long journey writing about all thirteen demons! And I want the last book to bring together all of the story lines. When I decided to write a book series, the first thing I did was sit down and write the last chapter of the last book so I would know where I would be going over the series. I know where I have been headed with every book and I want to true to the stories I’ve told up until now. In a future post I will tell the story again of how a total stranger had a vision about my books and told me I had three guardian angels watching over me to make sure Satan did not keep me from writing these books. Those of my readers who follow Jonathan Steel please be patient. It will be worth the wait!
If you interested in the Jonathan Steel series, I suggest you go to Amazon or Apple Books and download my Volume 1 of the Jonathan Steel Chronicles. There is not a printed version because it would be over 1200 pages long! This is the latest updated versions of the first three books restored to their original form after heavy editing by my traditional publisher. These books are the “author’s” cut, so to speak!
Also, I am working on putting together an audiobook series of the books. Lots going on!
And, I haven’t forgot about Dr. Jack Merchant. I’m working on the third book as I am working on the Chronicles of Jonathan Steel.
And, I am so excited about a book I discovered just yesterday, “On Magic & Miracles” by Mirian Jacobs. She is a Christian author who has addressed the “wizard” in the room regarding how Christian authors can write stories including magic! My spin off series from Jonathan Steel, “The Node of God” has been in limbo because I have wrestled with how to write a Christian story that includes magic. Now I feel liberated and I am about to start work on finishing that first book, “The Node of God: The Harbinger of the Redeemer”.
One last note, tonight at Brookwood Baptist Church our monthly Brookwood Apologetics meeting will feature a Question and Answer Forum where our “scholars” will be open to any question about Christian and science, culture, and so forth. We may not have all the answers but we will have some and we can point anyone in the right direction for answers.
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!
Intentional Christmas
Acts 4:25 – 28 says: You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:
“‘Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
26
The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord
and against his anointed one.’
27 Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28 They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.
I often wonder why the massacre of all baby boys under the age of two in Bethehem was not mentioned in historical accounts. If such an event were to occur today, it would be on all the podcasts and news feeds within hours of the event. Frankly, the people of that time feared King Herod so much they cowered under his ruthless rule and never challenged his deeds. There is a record of a revolt against Herod around the time of Jesus’ birth in which hundreds, and possible thousands of Jewish populace were crucified and the crosses lined the road to Jerusalem. THAT was recorded in history.
But the death of maybe a dozen children in a small obscure village was not significant in the vast ocean of Herod’s foul deeds.
It is hard to accept that all of these events were allowed by God to accomplish His greater purpose. Let’s face it, the worst deed in the history of mankind, that is the death of God in man form on the cross, led to the greatest deed in the history of mankind, the empty tomb and death conquered.
As we consider the Christmas story, which is far more than a fable, let us pause and reflect on the cost of the Prince of Peace’s journey into our midst. After all Jesus was a baby born to die. But death would soon perish beneath the power of the Resurrection. And this is Good News indeed in a world heavily burdened by fear and chaos. He came to bring us good tidings of great joy.
May you find peace and joy this season as the year comes to a close.
And, I was hoping I would have my book available before Christmas. Here is the cover for the ebook.
I am waiting for the final version of the print cover and then I can release the book. I am excited about this next to the last chapter in the Chronicles of Jonathan Steel.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Bruce Hennigan 
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