There are currently five volumes available in my ongoing
Christian Fantasy series: Warrior of the Son, Priests of Moloch, The Fields
of Clon Miarth, Fire From the Earth, and The Queen's Own. Each volume builds upon the
previous work, moving the characters toward the final climactic confrontation
as is present in all good Fantasy books. At this time I plan to have ten to
twelve books in this series, although as most writers will tell you, the story
often goes where it wants to go, irrespective of the author’s plans.
A word is in order concerning the classification of my
works. They are Christian Fantasy. This means they contain all the elements of
the Fantasy genre: trolls, goblins, battle against great evil, while at the
same time including the Power, Love, and Mercy of God. I am very specific in
this feature. The characters do not worship a non-descript deity or being. God
is God, the God of Abraham and Moses. Jesus is Jesus, although I use the Gaelic
and Latin words, Iosa Christus. Sometimes, where appropriate, the characters
will even quote Scripture, but the books are far from “preachy”. There is no
allegory here, no abstraction, and no mistaking that I am writing about the One
True God.
Don’t let that scare you. My characters are just like you
and me. You will not be sickened by their sanctimony. They are flawed and
fragile, capable of courage and deceit, mercy and intolerance. Yet a Divine
Light guides them. Most Fantasy literature features battle against great evil,
and I have included a greater good for the protagonists to follow.
You won't find bad language of any sort in this series. My characters are flawed like the rest of us and you will experience their anger, frustration, and rage,
but I don’t include the bad words that sometimes flow from these emotions. It
simply isn’t necessary to get the point across. Additionally, there is no sex
in these books. There is romance, but not at the base level so often portrayed
in today’s literature.
Of course I portray battle; swords, spears, and shields in
the desperation of medieval combat. There is glory in these images, the
sacrifice of simple men standing in the breach, offering their blood, their
lives that evil should not overwhelm their world. But there is also the tragic
result of warfare, suffering, wounds, and death. While I am not gratuitous in
the description of such things, neither do I portray warfare as antiseptic and
without horror.
One thing more. My heroes and heroines do not engage
in magic. So often, Fantasy literature includes magic, for both the good guys
and the bad guys. And lets face it; magic exists. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t
have been warned against it in Scripture. Pharaoh’s priests couldn’t have
turned their staves into serpents if there was no magic. But unlike Moses, who
turned his staff into a serpent with the Power of God, the power of the priests
came from an entirely different source, a source of which good men and women dare
not avail themselves. There is no such thing as "White Magic". Therefore, though the bad guys in my books may use magic from time to time,
it is something the good guys simply will not touch. They know magic exists,
but like the One Ring in Tolkien’s Trilogy, they know they cannot utilize it
and remain aligned to the Light. Instead, they depend on God’s “Magic”, His
Miracles, in their hours of greatest need.
