A Writer's Journey Part IV

Title: A Writer’s Journey

Part IV

I have know Bruce Passaretti since he was five-years-old.  When I had just become the pastor of Austinburg Baptist Church, Bruce’s parents had our family over for dinner (Autumn and Leland aka had not been born yet:)  My oldest son, Matthew, ran around with Bruce, their two little heads barely at table height.  Bruce and Matthew both tower over me now!  I was Bruce’s pastor for years, had the privilege of performing his marriage ceremony, and watched him enter the wide-wide world as a teacher.

There are two things about Bruce that touch my writing career specifically.  One thing is that Bruce is one of the reasons I am an author today!  That would be kind of important, right?  Two, he kept me from quitting coaching with his senior sectional cross country run.  If I had quit then I would have never seen so many great things happen on the trails of XC and the track!  I had no idea what bright things the future held on that dark day... and Bruce’s last race stopped me.

How did Bruce impact my writing?  When Bruce was in tenth grade his parents approached me after church one Sunday morning.  “Pastor,” Kevin, Bruce’s father, began, “our son likes to read science fiction.  We’d like him to read Christian books in that area.  Do you have any suggestions?”  If Bruce read historical romance, straight up romance, or Amish stories, that would have been easy, but science fiction?  You can’t find much legit science fiction at your local Christian book store.  You’ll find rows of it at Barnes and Nobles but not in a Christian book store. 

“What author’s does he read?” I asked.  “Michael Crichton,” they replied.  Michael Crichton!  Bruce had very good taste as a reader!  He was reading one of the best in the business!  "Jurassic Park" the book is so superior to the popcorn flick Mr. Spielberg put out.  I read the book before I watched the movie and I was so disappointed.  I also thought Prey, Sphere, and Eaters of the Dead were good too.  (I was very disappointed by “State of Fear” despite the fact that I am a conservative and agree with it politically.  It wasn’t a very good novel.)  What Christian writer measured up to that bar??  “Um...” I began, my mind spinning, “the only one novels I can think of on that level are Ted Dekker’s series Black, Red, and White (there was no Green at that time:)  Past that....” I trailed off.  “Maybe Dream Thief by Stephen R. Lawhead....” I wasn’t so sure about that one.  Stephen’s Arthur and Robinhood series are so much better, but they hadn’t asked me about Christian fantasy! 

Later the next week I couldn’t get that off of my mind.  Again, there were rows and rows of science fiction in secular bookstores but not much in a Christian book store... if any at all.  To be fair, the rare Christian science fiction I have read tends to be poor and predictable.  One book I read was so bad, I thought it would be a great case study to see how NOT to write a novel.  A major Christian publishing house had put it out and the only reason I finished it was because it so bad it was good.  Another Christian sci-fi book I read was had an okay plot but it had a really gripping part in the middle of it.  In the novel future society was allowing killing kids up to three-years-old.  When the wife takes the three-year-old to die at a death clinic I was riveted.  It was so much more tense than any of the books actions sequences... which weren’t many.  It turns out, it might actually be prophetic as well, but time will tell.  There was one really good Christian science fiction/ action writer named James Byron Huggins who wrote the brilliant works, The Reckoning, Leviathan, and Cain.  Leviathan is the best of those three by far and is one of the best science fiction/ action books I have ever read... but calling it Christian is a stretch.  That is like calling Tolkien’s, Lord of the Rings series, a Christian book series.  They are moral works, with strong themes of good and evil, but are not distinctly Christian.  ANYWAY, if you read my earlier blogs on my journey to becoming an author, you know that at one point I started reading books on becoming a good writer and have a conversation with God about why I couldn’t finish a novel.  The conversation about what Bruce should read was the impetus that for that process.

Bruce also kept me in the coaching game.  When he came out to run for me as a junior, he looked like a very unlikely runner!  Like Brandon Owen, he seemed a more likely candidate for football lineman and he became a solid track thrower by the time he was a senior.  Bruce was an amazing musician (he spent hours practicing his trumpet), an incredible actor, and was a great guy to have around... but a runner?????  A big accomplishment half-way through Bruce’s first year was being able to jog a mile.  By the end of the season he could jog three miles without stopping.  His senior year Bruce worked very hard.  His goal?  He wanted to run a sub-thirty minute race.  At sectionals that year, we didn’t do great.  We didn’t do bad but we didn’t do great either.  I knew it wasn’t the kids, it was me.  I was doing something wrong but I couldn’t figure out what it was.  I would come to realize it was the dread “Drill 97” that was the problem.  (The kids hated Drill 97 while we were doing it but it was a life changing experience for them.  Many of them ask if we still do that drill and are surprised that we don’t do it anymore.  I banned that drill and might allow a kid to try it if they ran a thousand miles over the summer... maybe.)  I was standing there, listening to that little voice deep inside that whispered, “You are a horrible coach.  You should give this up.”  I was starting to agree with that voice when Bruce came into sight.  You have to understand, all the crowds watching the race are gone.  Even at the 25 mark when we saw him in the distance, effectively an guy's XC race is basically over.  The flood of runners start around 18 minutes (with a few going 16 and more going 17) through 21.  A few stragglers come through at 23.  By 24 minutes the crowd watching the boys race is gone.  But our team was there and we were all excited to see Bruce doing so well!  Bruce would cross the line at 27 something, an AMAZING improvement!!  “Maybe I’m not such a bad coach,” I muttered to myself as the kids and I headed for the bus.  As the Lord would have it, we had only been doing Drill 97 for a few years at that point, and so had limited impact.  Only a small group of runners did the drill... but they will never forget it:)

If you’ve been following my writer’s journey, you know that OIP went under in my last blog.  I contemplated putting out C-3 “A Distant Boom” and then calling it a day.  Quitting.  It was a good enough ending point for the series and would leave it on a high note.  My journey as an official writer would come to a graceful end.  Books five and six (remember the whole series was laid out at this point) would deal with the painful issues of church splits and believers going to war with each other.  I wasn’t sure how many people would enjoy such dark themes, despite the fact that they are very real in church life.  I know I write popular fiction but even popular fiction should have valleys and low points.  It was a good plan but I couldn’t do it.  I couldn't stop writing.  Like Bruce’s run, little bit of encouragement from my hard core fan base kept me going.  From this experience I came to quote the saying, “A little encouragement goes a long way,” often and passionately.  Encouragement has kept my fire going through bleak years of writing where I battled that little voice telling me to quit.

*** Author Adrian Essigmann has eighteen books in print on Amazon.com, soon to be nineteen!  All of them are $.99 cents on Kindle, with the exception of “An Assumed Risk” which will be (Lord willing) an e-book before summer.  All of his books are available in soft cover too!  Type Amazon Adrian Essigmann and his author’s page should come up ***

Book list

Fiction

Wolf Hunting – Action/suspense

Wolf Hunting 2: Trick Shot – Military action/ science fiction

American Fairytale – Colonial America/ Fairytale

Life, Liberation, and the Pursuit of Video Games – Dystopian

Asylum Series (Tribulation genre meets CS Lewis meets lost)

Asylum

Killer Robots

Werewolves

Elf Princess

Zero Book – 666

C-3 Series (Pilgrim’s Progress meets Ender’s Game)

An Assumed Risk

Heavy Opposition

A Distant Boom

Two Hearts

The Magnificent Six

Don’t Pass Go!

Two Paths – Coming Soon!!

The Princess of Ashes Series (C-3 Series spin off)

Falling Ashes

Non-fiction

Miracles Can Happen: The Jim Ross Story – Jim Ross was miraculously sparred from death... twice!

Attack on Girl’s Track – A look at boys competing in girls sports, from the perspective of a track coach.  The book uses five years of track results from Section V (2012 – 2016) to prove its point.