Spero elaborates on the events described in ‘Fidelis’, but starts and ends in different places.  This may sound like an odd way to tell a story (book two of a series traditionally picks up where book one finished, after all), but it proves to be a refreshing and clever way to – almost literally – weave a narrative, with a different thread of the future history that Horvath is constructing being plucked out of the tapestry of the whole and examined.

We follow the fortunes of two characters who we met in Fidelis, Tasha and King, from their first meeting just after a massive nuclear strike on the USA.  Told initially from Tasha’s point of view, but thereafter mostly from King’s perspective we get a different look at the unfolding events in this post-apocalyptic landscape.  At first the two friends are making their own way through the troubled country, giving us an insight into events not witnessed by the primary characters of Fidelis, but later we come to the first meeting of Tasha and King with Fides and Fermion, now seen and described through different eyes.

Here is where Horvath’s device of overlapping different characters’ narratives in successive books risks becoming repetitive as we are taken through events we have already read about, but the change in point of view and the individual concerns of the new characters (in the teenage King’s case, touchingly recognisable worries about girls are jarringly set against a back-drop of dystopian civil war) make the story fresh and interesting, even if we occasionally know what is coming next.

Some questions from Book One are answered (who is Fermion?), while others are left unresolved (who are the Shadowmen?).  Puzzles still remain at the end of the book about the characters we have been following throughout – for instance, is Tasha, who slays multiple highwaymen with rather more skill than your average elderly lady, really all she seems?  Tune in for Book Three to find out (I sincerely hope!).

Horvath’s villains are a nice mix of well-rounded characters who can be quite difficult to spot, and out-and-out rotters with nothing to recommend them whatsoever.  This balance between the black-and-white good vs evil ideology of a traditional heroic adventure story (or any of George W Bush’s speeches) and a more thoughtful approach satisfies both emotionally and intellectually.

The diverging paths of the main characters preserve an unknown ending, which does not disappoint for a dangling cliff-hanger on the edge of a cataclysmic battle with the evil Pledge forces, with elements of a Tolkienesque epic mythos seen again in the closing paragraphs.

All in all, I found Spero to be an excellent book, which made me want to go back and read Fidelis again.  The only question remains, what’s he going to call the next one?

We’ve had ‘Faith’ (Fidelis), and now ‘Hope’.  If this were a trilogy, I would have to go for the Latin word for ‘Love’ (taking my cue from 1 Corinthians 13:13) – I’m thinking possibly ‘Amare’.  However, since I have it on good authority that there are seven books planned, then I’m going to have to put my money on ‘Caritas’, the third of the seven Heavenly Virtues (the polar opposite of the famous Deadly Sins) after Faith and Hope – Charity.

Danny F, England.

[Editor:  The third book is indeed titled Caritas!  Good job, Danny!]

Actually, the way that I’ve written the books they can each be read independently. You can read either or both and in any order.  This will be true for the remaining of the series, too.

Why?

The series is not linear.

In other words, Spero doesn’t start where Fidelis leads off.  For a number of reasons, I am writing the series with each book (except book 7) reflecting the perspective of a different character in the series.  The time frames covered by all of the books is roughly the same and where the characters of the different books interact, the same scene is present in each book, seen from that character’s unique perspective.  Where the characters depart from each other, the story branches off.  You might say that each book overlaps the others.

This approach allows me to lay ever deeper layers of meaning to the events in the books. One character will think nothing of an event in one book but in another book, another character will perceive the event as a turning point or startling development.

In short, you’ll be able to read any of the first six books in any order that you please.  Each is stand alone, but none are the whole story.

The seventh book will start, chronologically, where the first six books end, and proceed to tie up all the loose ends, weaving the six story lines into a single rope.

There are a number of reasons for why I took this approach.  One of them is that I perceive that our entire lives are like this.  Each of us is a character in a book.  There are some 10 billion books in the ’series,’ with many of our ’stories’ overlapping the stories of others. Taken together, our individual stories constitute one grand story.  This grand story contains elements that are astonishing, but in my view, missed if you take the stories of our lives one at a time.  At the same time, one cannot overlook our individual lives, for pieces of them are what make the grand story, the Mosaic, we’ll call it, what it is.

My seven book series is a very faint shadow of what I perceive is reality.  It begs the question:  if the Birth Pangs series are a mosaic of my authorship, who is the Author of the series of our lives?  Is there really no Author?  Really?  I don’t think so.  If you think that way, one of my aims is to persuade you otherwise.

To my surprise, BarnesandNoble is offering the best prices hands down- even beating me- especially on the hard cover.

Here are current prices:

Amazon.com

It is clear in your writing that you go to great lengths to develop masculine men and feminine women, yet you go to great pains to make your masculine men not macho, and your feminine women not submissive or needy in the least, while remaining very feminine. What draws you to explore these issues of masculinity and femininity?

I suppose there are two aspects of this question.  What draws me to explore these issues and how did this get reflected in the presentation of men and women?

The ‘draw’ is easy enough.  In my own life I felt that there were a missing components of ‘masculinity’ in my own life, like I was meant for something quite different- as a man- but for one reason or another I was not acting like a full man.  If there is a ‘masculine ideal’ I wasn’t measuring up.  There seemed to be others who felt the same way, even if their conclusions were different.  The extraordinary success of Elridge’s “Wild at Heart” I think illustrates this.  I don’t think that only men feel this disconnect, either.

At any rate, it seemed to me as I tried to find a way to resolve this issue that the very structure of our lives de-masculinizes and de-feminizes us. Every where you go, no matter what you do, we are asked to… no, required to, water down the virtues of our respective genders.  No system could hold a fully masculine man or a fully feminine woman, each aware of the potency of their being and allowed to express it.  Systems would break in the face of that kind of individual Manhood and Womanhood.  But in Birth Pangs the systems and structures have already all been broken.

Because of the raw anarchy of the times, no man or woman can rely on some institution to come in and do what needs to be done.  If it is going to be done at all it will have to be done by people.  In Fidelis, this is expressed in a number of ways and in particular are expressed by the characters Fermion and Tasha.

For example, after one battle in which Tasha performs as admirably as Fermion, it is Tasha who swoops in to take care of the wounded and the wounded prisoners.  When others want to ‘finish off’ the wounded prisoners, Tasha inserts herself.  She does not insert herself diplomatically or passively.  She doesn’t offer a suggestions.  She asserts herself stoutly and dares all men to cross her… as I mentioned, she had already demonstrated that she was a formidable warrior… crossing her would not be wise.

This concern for the weak among us, this expression of the nurturing instinct among women, is revealed in all of its fierce righteousness in the conduct of Tasha.  I believe that this is well represented in Spero, as well.

Similarly, Fermion provides idealized illustrations of masculinity on the loose.  Not machoism, but masculinity.  Fermion does not need to do dangerous things in order to feel manly.  He does dangerous things because he is manly.  That is, he does them because they need to be done.  He does them because he has studied reality and man’s place within it and has a carefully thought out view of the world.  Still waters run deep, you might say.  When Fermion takes a life it is not malicious or arbitrary or bloodthirsty, but rather the manifestation of a principled way of thinking. He commits his body completely to the task his mind has decided must be done.

Fermion makes decisions and makes wise ones.  He is the sort of man that others would want to submit to, and he is the sort of man who knows when it is time for he himself to submit.

Other characters represent various degrees of these somewhat idealized versions of men and women.  Fides, the main character of Fidelis, struggles to find truth in the broken universe he finds himself in- truth about the world and God, and about man.

I guess the lingering question posed by the Birth Pangs series in regards to masculinity and femininity is how exactly we are going to let men be manly and woman be womanly in our current life and times.  To that I don’t know the answer.

(and Fidelis) from the author or from Amazon.com

Fidelis, my first book, is Latin for faithfulness.  The second book, Spero, is Latin for hope.  Spero is an exploration of what hope is and why we need it.  It is an exploration of what things are good to put our hope in and what things are bad to put our hope in.  In the fictionalized America of the future portrayed in the Birth Pangs series, all of the things that people have traditionally put their hope in have been brought low.  There are no government agencies, no schools, and not even churches.  In the face of daily perils, people have to figure out how where they are going to place their hope.

It is interesting to me that the political candidate running on ‘hope’ is also running on ‘change.’  I think this illustrates the root of the problem.  The best place to put your ‘hope’ is where it won’t shift beneath your feet.  Also, we need to be clear about what things we hope to overcome.  Nearly all of our systems and institutions are geared to address certain day to day realities that are important but not, I’m afraid, ultimate.  There is one problem that surpasses them all: death.

Spero is about people- even good people- putting their hope in lesser means to tackle lesser problems and being confronted with the consequences of that approach.  Spero is about being confronted with our chief problem and challenged to consider what possible solutions there might be to that problem… and whether any of these are within our control, or obtainable by our own effort.

I am very pleased to make available an extended excerpt of Spero.  You may download it below.  Feel free to pass it along and share it!

Here is the extended excerpt of Spero:

You might wonder how that is possible.  Well, while it is true that I hoped to write in January, it isn’t wasted time.  I did plenty of reading for research purposes and contemplated the story frequently, so writing it was merely recording what had been imagined earlier.

Anyway, it is clear that generally speaking, writing during the day is just going to be impossible.  Hence, today I was up at 5 a.m. and I knocked out another 4 pages or so before the kids got up.  (On account of the kids, this blog post has taken more than thirty minutes to compose).  How often I’ll be able to do that is open to debate, on account of the fact that the kids have been getting up three, four, and even five times a night.  Needless to say, I’m often pretty tired and getting up early in that state does not put me in a writing mood.

However, if I can block out the time, at say 5-10 pages in a sitting (which is what I was able to do with Fidelis), I can have the text completed by the end of February and there is still hope for a summer release.  We’ll see.

In other news, I am expecting to be featured in a national print mag in March.  This will be a great opportunity for me.  As far as I know, this is a done deal, but I have had enough ‘done deals’ fall through that for now I want to wait before naming names.

I’m not sure where the podcast stands. I have audio enough to complete chapter 1 and distribute it but I don’t know where the rest of the book is.  When I know more, I’ll let you all know. I know I have some subscribers.

And about the role playing game… the same circumstances that keep me from writing keep me from engaging in the game.  I did clear out a million and a half abandoned dwellings.  I still have lots of ideas for the game, though.

Getting book 2 out is the latest top priority, however.

That’s all for now.

That all said, much of book 2 is done- inside my head.  That’s the way it went down with book 1 as well.  It went through my brain for weeks and weeks and then I finally got the opportunity to sit down and write and it all just spills out. This is in fact why I do have the first 20 pages or so of book 2 already done.  It was in my head and driving me NUTS so I had to sit down and write it.  It’s killing me not to write the rest but I simply must get these projects done.

I do have a big Birth Pangs related event coming up.  I will be at Cornerstone Music festival (here:  http://cornerstonefestival.com/ ) promoting my book as well as some of the Christian ministry activities that I am involved in.  It’s not the sort of thing that someone just ‘happens’ to be in town for, so despite the fact that there will be close to 40,000 folks running around, it’s not the kind of thing that a myspacer is likely to wander into.  That said, if you ARE a c-stoner, feel free to look me up among the hundreds of booths!

C-stone will be from June 25th to July 1st ish.  It is in July that I plan on sitting down to write book 2 and hope to be done by November… if I succeed, be looking for a Spring release!  Kudos to anyone that can guess the name of book 2… you should be able to figure it out from hints and details in the book.

Anyone that has already read book 1 is welcome to read the first pages of book 2.  Just let me know- authorATbirthpangs.com.