Q4. Another major theme that creeps in the background is the role of truth, and how you have an average guy like Fides who could care less abut the ultimate truths and meta-narratives of history constantly having his conscience nagged by these demons, these demons of truth and history. This begins with his being given a Bible and develops with his relationship with Fermion, a mysterious traveler who seems to know a thing or two about truth. Can you speak a little to this overarching theme?

Gladly. From a big picture point of view I think we all tend to begin our investigation into truth against a backdrop of already assuming certain things are true. For example, we think that it is true that we even exist. We take it for granted. We take for granted that our senses don’t deceive us and that our brain accurately interprets the sense data and that our mind processes objective reality. Based on these assumptions we turn our attention to areas of inquiry such as religion, politics, philosophy, ethics, science, etc.

There is a serious flaw in this approach if we’re really trying to get to the whole bottom of things and that flaw is that our explanations for reality also have to explain the things I listed above. You can’t pick and choose what you want to explain. We find that we instinctively take much of what we think we know based on the authority of others. That is not necessarily an insult. Let’s face it, we only have our own narrow experience of reality and to fill out the broader picture we’ll need to hear about other people’s experience of reality- providing those people really exist too, of course. But taking assertions of fact about reality on authority exposes us to other people’s presumptions and things they take for granted, and of course they only have a narrow experience of reality, too.

So what is the average person to do? Provided he cares, that is, and Fides initially doesn’t care. But going against the grain of reality can start to hurt after a time, so eventually Fides has to address the issues. What can he do? The most important thing is not to prejudge things.

If we take an issue like the existence of God, it is easy to find atheists running around talking as though we were obliged to take a naturalistic view of things by default, and any assertion about the existence of God has to be backed up by extraordinary evidence, while any naturalistic explanation is preferable, even with no evidence in sight at all. Now, there is no way anyone can know such a thing without first knowing that there isn’t a God or that if there is one, he’s indifferent to us. You can’t prove this assumption, you can’t verify it, it is axiomatic. But if you’re starting over from scratch- that is, you’re beginning your investigation into reality with fresh eyes, then you know you can’t start with such axioms. Certainly if you have such an axiom it is hardly worth saying that you don’t believe in God and think the evidence for God to be weak. Of course you’d say that. Your axiom forces you to.

Now, the existence of God is certainly something that Fides is exploring but that is not the only thing he is exploring. For example, he is witness to realities such as honor, bravery, courage, beauty, love, and other intangibles. His account of reality has got to respect these things as realities requiring as much explanation as an apple falling to the ground. We explain an apple falling by invoking gravity. How do we explain gravity? See where that is going?

In this context, then, the importance of history in uncovering truth rather than relying on something like the scientific method alone, which is largely constrained to this present moment, is laid bare. For if you must rely on authorities to some extent and other people’s experiences of reality to inform your own experience of reality, then it is not enough merely to consult your contemporaries but also those who have come before you, as well. A contemporary might say something like “Miracles aren’t possible” but if credible voices in the past attest to seeing a miracle, you’re in a bind. You can’t know that miracles aren’t possible. But even if they’re possible it doesn’t mean they happened. And if they don’t happen to you, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened to others.

Now, Fides finds out that these musings are important in other ways. For example, he experiences righteous indignation when witnessing the slaughter of largely defenseless travelers. If some other people want to kill some other people, what is that to him? Why is it all the more bitter when he sees that they are defenseless? Why should he care? But he does care.

This requires an explanation. Preferably a good one. Fidelis is largely a story of Fides constructing the best explanation for everything we experience, not just mechanical observations about the empirical universe, but also of loyalty in the face of imminent death and his own passions and longings.

Here is the second and third questions I was given to answer.

Q2.  Where does Fides come from?  Why bring Fides to life now in this point of your life?

Fides is the main character of Fidelis.  Well, if not the main character he is the one through whom the story is told.  The close connection between ‘Fides’ and ‘Fidelis’ should be pretty obvious.  ‘Fidelis’ is Latin for faithful or faithfulness, as in ‘Semper Fi’ the Marine slogan which means ‘Always Faithful.’

Some readers have noted an allegorical theme in Fidelis and that is not out of line.  In a pure allegory, there would be many one to one correlations… meaning that it should be safe to equate Fides with faith and to try to match Fermion up with something.   Well, you can’t actually do that.   Faith is the key to help unlock some of the main themes in Fidelis and Fides is at the fore front of some of those themes but he is also still his own character.   Fides is struggling with a deep distrust of himself, of people, and God.  In a word, he is struggling with cynicism.  He grows into the awareness that faith is not blind, that it is grounded, and that it is compatible with reason and being reasonable.  This completely flies in the face of faith as understood by many people today, the most glaring example being Richard Dawkins who believes that faith is believing something without or even in spite of the evidence.  Even many Christians have a view of faith that is unhealthy.  Fides plays a key roll in the extended discussion on faith that Fidelis is.

Q3.  You open your novel with the words, “Hold steady, son.”  These words contrast sharply with the son’s first flashback, where his first thoughts are “away.”  This theme of the temptation to flee and the virtue of holding steady become very prominent as we see the main character, Fides, developing?  Why this theme?  Why this constant assessment of Fides’ courage in the face of often overwhelming odds?

Faith contains an element of risk.  You are sitting in a chair.  It is logically possible that the chair might fail or even cease to exist, dropping you on your toosh.  Despite this possibility, you sit.  You sit because you have a relationship with chairs, and perhaps that chair in particular, and trust that it will hold you.  The risks involved in trusting chairs is mild compared to the trust we are required to put in people, our own selves, and ultimately, God.   If you trust a charlatan you might get burned.  Well, you will get burned.  One solution to this risk is to never trust anyone.

However, we can’t live that way.  We literally cannot live a single day without putting some trust in other people.  Even if it means trusting that the US or some other nation doesn’t obliterate the world in a nuclear blast, we are trusting someone.  A life of reasoned and reasonable faith means stepping out and living your life despite the fact that there is a decent chance that you’re going to get betrayed.

For as many times as I’ve been betrayed, I realize that I have betrayed others.  I’ve let people down.  People have let me down.  So what could I do in face of that reality?  I could withdraw.  I could retreat.  Running away from situations where we expose ourselves to the frailities and ambitions of people conceivably could keep us from getting hurt.  Fidelis asks, in its own round about way, is such a life worth living?  Despite the risk, is it not perhaps better to live the life of adventure?

That’s where ‘holding steady’ factors in.  Faith in the sense I’m talking about is not and cannot be a temporary and shifty attitude.  If you hold firm in one instance but run like a baby in another you’re asking for trouble.  Here I assume that we’re holding steady on things for good reasons.  I can see why people would want to ‘flee’ if they put their trust in something that they should have known would get them hurt.  That’s why its important to have good reasons for the things you trust.

Clearly, this applies to our relationship with God.  Sometimes we feel like we have good reasons for trusting him and then something nasty happens in our lives, the lives of those we love, or on such a massive scale somewhere that we can’t help but notice.  We begin to wonder if perhaps God is like that person who constantly is letting us all down.  Well, if we do have good reasons for trusting him, then it is just at those moments that we need to have a trained attitude to ‘hold steady.’  How many people retreated just when they were on the verge of being helped?

You might say that many have been helped… but many have been hurt.  Grant it.  If your reasons for trusting God also give you confidence that he is aware of the hurt and is taking steps to deal with it, we are simply in a place where our trust is being put to a critical test.

I find that our ability and willingness to be faithful in relationships with other people is a good measure of their ability and willingness to trust God.  In some ways, I think life together is real time training for learning how to trust God.  Anyway, holding steady means not budging on the things that are important to you even though it looks like it is about to hurt you.  That means holding steady requires courage.

Here is the first question:

“You have an educational background in theology, you’ve taught in high schools, you’ve been a truck driver for awhile, and you’ve even delivered pizzas for a short time.  With such a diverse background of occupations, how is it that we find you now writing fiction?”

Well, circumstances changed so that I came off the road to watch my children.   It is hard to write with all that noise, but I did manage to scare up some free time.  During one stage of the writing (the end) I had to get up at 5 in the morning for about 2-3 weeks in order to finally bring it to an end.

Fidelis really tracks with my background of experiences.  For one thing, I conceived of the book (and in fact, the whole series) while driving truck.  The thing almost came into my head fully formed.  Fidelis covers a guy traveling back to find his family.  He begins in New Mexico and has to journey to Indiana.  That is a trip I made by truck on numerous occasions and I began imaging what life would be like if I had to make the trip on foot.  Also, when you’re out on the road away from your family on a regular basis you really feel the pain that Fides (the main character) endures  frequently.  Basically, my life has been doing what has to be done because it has to be done or my family would suffer… thus the truck driving, thus the pizza delivery.  That is what Fides is about, too.

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zzJfANgkWU

I really should have put the regular hard cover jacket next to it so you could see the resemblance. That’s what I’ll do with the next batch.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Deadline for Overseas Shipping Order: Sunday November 25th, 2007

(A donation of $10.00 is approximately two books to a soldier. )

I have some relatives in the military who have read my book and enjoyed it and I believe that most American soldiers would as well. I got to thinking about it and wondering about how I can get copies of my book in the hands of soldiers. I contacted www.soldiersangels.com and they have replied agreeing to facilitate getting my book in the hands of our soldiers and veterans, including wounded soldiers in the Veteran’s hospitals, etc.

Your donation will help me make bulk purchases of my book so that I can distribute more than I would if I bought them in smaller quantities.

For tax purposes you should consider your donation a purchase as I am not equipped as a tax exempt organization. Also, if you would like to purchase your own, personal copy, please purchase it separately so that I can keep the monies distinct. However, if you donate and then purchase the book, I will in turn donate part of the proceeds to buying more books to give to our troops. That is for donors only!

(A donation of $10.00 is approximately two books to a soldier. )

This post has the first few captivating pages of Fidelis for your listening pleasure. You can subscribe to the feed to automatically receive new additions automatically.

And she also did a nice looking map. Go ahead and click on it to see it full size!

Thanks to Kelley for her great work!