Q. You’ve got a fiction series called Birth Pangs. What motivated you to write this series? What’s it about?

I guess you could say that the Birth Pangs series is my own excursion into ‘literary apologetics.’  It’s pretty unique.  A friend has described it as belonging to the didactic genre.  The series is set in the ‘not too distant future’ after America has been laid low by foreign armies and a biological and nuclear holocaust.  Now, they are rebuilding from scratch.  This setting allows me to discuss everything under the sun:  what is truth, what is real, how do you know?  What is the relationship between religion and government?  What does it mean to be human?  Or a man or a woman in particular?  So on and so forth, only in my series there is no government, church, or school to tell the characters what the real answers are.
The series actually came into my head, nearly fully formed, in the last few months of a stint as an over the road truck driver.  I was motivated to write it because I love writing stories but I think the germ of this particular story was my reflecting on all that we take for granted.  For example, as a truck driver I was criss crossing the country on nicely paved and administered roads.  I imagined what life would be like without that kind of infrastructure.  What if I had to walk to California from Arkansas?  What if I couldn’t just go to the grocery store to get food?  Then I started thinking about what life would be like without that other kind of infrastructure we take for granted- our educational systems, our political system, our churches, etc, in short, our intellectual infrastructure.  You could say that the setting of the series was engineered to provide an opportunity to imagine what that would be like.

There is some definite Christian perspective in the series but the whole point of the series is to give other perspectives a hearing, too.  I have a good friend who is an atheist and liberal who has enjoyed both books in the series and some of my more conservative friends enjoy it, too.  I like that I can appeal to both groups, but the series is not for everyone, either.  There can be some meaty philosophy and theology in the midst of the fantastic battles and subtle diplomacy. 

Notice, though, that it says it will not be available by Christmas, so if you want one before then, you need to get it through birthpangs.com.

It is still not available for ordering when I looked.  Well, now time to check out BarnesandNoble.

I wanted to make sure that I was able to get the book out in time for Christmas, so I have acquired a number of boxes so I can ship orders myself. Eventually, it will be on Amazon.com, etc. At anyrate, if you want to purchase a copy or copies of Fidelis, use the ‘purchase’ link to the left.

Having them by then means that people who have pre-ordered may not have them for another 3-5 days after that, and that is unfortunate, but the hiccup is really that stinking holiday.  Whose idea was that, anyway?

Anyway, we’re going to come pretty close to hitting the target date, and that’s not too shabby.

Many thanks to L. George Thompson, or Elijah St. Cloud, however you wish to refer to him. He is the one responsible for the graphics on this web page and for the book. He has a post discussing his work and Birth Pangs in general at his blog, here:   http://elijahstcloud.com/main/?p=87  Many thanks to Mr. St. Cloud!

Its going good!  I should have some cover images to show off in the near future!