What is one of your favorite childhood memories? Can a person have a favorite childhood memory? There are many. The best memories are of things where the senses take over, the memory is vivid, and the colors are bright. In great memories you can smell the aroma of the food, feel the nip of frost on your nose, savor the sun’s warmth on your face, feel the heart swell with love, relive the emotion of the moment, and feel the laughter building from within. Some of my favorite or most vivid memories are included in my collection of humorous short stories, Ramblings of an Old Poot. It was released in mid-March 2020. Do you remember the first story you ever wrote? If so, what was it about? I wrote a lot of stories while I was in school. The best one was a short story, in my junior year of high school, that I received an A++. The only time I ever received that grade on anything in English class, ever. In 1969, the US was in the grips of the Cold War. I grew up in the west Texas town of Odessa, Texas. The setting of the story was in Odessa. The story concerns the discussions between a boy and his grandfather in the aftermath of a nuclear conflict. The farms were wastelands, the water supply contaminated, and the animals dying from radiation poisoning. The story was written so that the reader would assume the setting was in Odessa, TX in the US. In the final paragraph, it is revealed that the actual setting was in Odessa, Russia (USSR), which is now in Ukraine. What sort of cultural, spiritual, or social value do you think reading and books hold? Reading holds the key to everything. What do you enjoy most about writing science fiction? What I enjoy most about writing science fiction is I can produce some of the most oddball devices in my stories and not have to explain how they work. The best part about The Jesus Ring is each and every one of the designs God gave to Peter for the life saving devices, weapons, and transporters is actually scientifically feasible. They have been mathematically proven to be feasible but the science hasn’t caught up with it yet. Science fiction is fiction till it’s proven, then it’s just science. Repairing the body with just a different frequency of light? The Bible says “God is light”. Dialing into a specific magnetic band for a flying aircraft? Science has proven there are trillions of magnetic bands throughout the universe, each with its own frequency. Warping the fabric of space and time? Science is working on it now. Science fiction is fun. No matter what oddball contraption we can dream up, the science will be found to prove it eventually. In the 1960’s, Pluto was the edge of our solar system, now look where the limits reach. Science and technology are still infants compared to a hundred years from now. What challenges did you face while publishing your first novel, The Jesus Ring? The biggest challenges publishing The Jesus Ring was the title and genre. There is such a negative attitude in the publishing world about anything to do with God, Jesus, Christianity, or the Bible. Like any other writer, I submitted my manuscript to many of the major publishing companies with and almost instant refusal stating they “weren’t interested in Christian books” while it stated right on the reviewer’s bio that they were open for submittal of Christian books. Guess my synopsis and queries weren’t as good of a “hook” as I thought. Agents were just as bad. Querying may not be my strong suit. Where did you find the inspiration for the character Peter Christian in The Jesus Ring? God knew the Apocalypse was going to be intense, so He chose a warrior to lead the faithful into those harsh times. Peter was the first of Jesus’ disciples based on the Bible. It seemed fitting that the first warrior God recruited for the “end times’ would be Peter. All of the “Golden Twelve” were named after Jesus’ disciples but very few readers have commented about the connection. I made a point not to spell it out in the book. What is something that most people don’t know about fantasy books that they NEED to know? I really don’t know what I could tell people about fantasy books. If they don’t know the difference between fantasy and reality, they need to have Scotty beam them back to their home planet. How do you usually select character names? Have you ever named a character after your family or friends? I usually make up names for characters. If I am stumped, I will take an old Houston white pages book and pick a number. If it is 25, I go to page 25 and take the 25th name down. I don’t use friend’s names because a lot of characters get killed off during the book and that would be terrible. I am not normally a superstitious person, but the bumper sticker says, “Crap happens” (something like that) but why tempt fate? When is writing hardest for you? What do you do you pick yourself up during those moments? Every writer struggles with their talent. I have been writing technical documents for over 30 years and it is never easy. The “flow” has to come and, sometimes, it doesn’t come willingly. I always likened the mind to a house full of windows. If the window I am looking through is blocked or blurred, I move to another window. I work on something else till the “epiphany” or that sudden insight comes that ties things back together or pushes it onward. I am notorious for adding ideas or thoughts to the bottom of the story to see what can or will fit into the story later on in the book. It may end up looking like a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle but

How a morning fishing trip inspired a novel   I was fishing early one morning in Galveston Bay in late summer of 2019. It was early enough to watch the dawn turn from gray to full sunrise and it was beautiful. The fish were feeding, the bait was jumping as the saltwater predators fed, the egrets, pelicans, and seagulls were getting their breakfast, and the water was calm and as clear as it can get in this bay. There were several dolphin surfacing in the channel close to where the boat was anchored. While I enjoyed the beauty of the sunrise and nature at work, I thought about the miracles we see every day but don’t recognize. Some foolish thoughts, some not so foolish. Thoughts like: Are there any other of God’s creations that can marvel at the beauty I was seeing that morning? Do the pelicans have the same exhilaration as humans do at the sight of something beautiful and spectacular? Does anyone but me wonder about the miracle that God’s Will made each of us; the plants, animals, and even the sunlight radiating from that huge yellow orb? Arranging the very atoms of each cell of our bodies in such a way that they glom together to make an organism as complicated as our own human body to function as a unit. Forces, magnetism, and attractions that are not understood by humankind that hold everything together and makes the organs of our bodies function with every other part of our bodies. Not the least of those organs being my eyes and brain that could marvel at the beauty of the morning sunrise and appreciate its beauty. Does anyone but me wonder why our home planet, and all the planets of our solar system, were placed just at the right distance from our Sun so all living organisms can thrive. Our moon, the size and distance from the Earth specifically oriented to nurture all life on it. Without the moon, we would not be here. It is almost by design, and it most surely was. Then the thought occurred to me that “This won’t last”. The end of times has been foretold in the Bible and the book of Revelation, it had been foretold by Matthew, Mark, Timothy, Luke, John, and Daniel. Matthew warned us to “watch and be ready”. The apocalypse is inevitable and, once started, my days of peacefully enjoying a sunrise may be over. I am not a fatalist, but I am a firm believer in the Bible. Including 2 Peter 3:14 through 3:16 that states “all His messages, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.” To me, this means there are people that purposefully will change the written scripture or teach parts of the scripture to their own design and purpose, leading up to the End Times. Daniel talked about the current ills that could set the events of the Apocalypse. We are starting to see the events that were forecast that will eventually lead to Armageddon. The “wars and rumors of wars”, earthquakes in places that have never quaked and far from any tectonic plates, volcanoes that have become active after thousands, and sometimes, hundreds of thousands of years of inactivity, the unrest, famine, and diseases never seen before. These, among others, were all predicted. Knowing Peter Christian, an unlikely hero   Who is Peter Christian? What’s his role in the Apocalypse? “Peter is a modern-day veteran from the War on Terror in Afghanistan. He suffers from PTSD due to his experiences there. Like so many of our veterans, he turns to the medications, anti-depressants, and alcohol to alleviate the symptoms until he finds the Ring, or rather, the Ring finds him. The Ring heals his body and mind from the multitude of symptoms associated with PTSD and gives him a direct link to God. He can talk to Him and have a conversation directly with Him. The Ring would change him not only mentally but also physically. It clears all his mental issues and diseases. “Peter is assigned by God to embark on this adventure as the first apostle. You might say he was drafted by The Ring. It would seem that God needs a warrior instead of a pacifist to prepare the world for the upcoming battle and prepare the way for Jesus’ return. He’s not necessarily the rider of the “pale horse” but being chosen by the Jesus Ring, triggers the advance of the pale horse in the Bible.” Why read “The Jesus Ring”?   “It’s a good read. I tried to follow the predicted events leading up to Armageddon as close as possible. The Jesus Ring follows a lot of what’s going on in the world right now. I took some liberties with the science fiction. All science is fiction until science proves it and then it becomes fact. All of the sciences involved with the fantastic machines for food production, medical equipment, weaponry, and flying machines I’ve mentioned in The Jesus Ring are theoretically feasible. There are some of my own thoughts of how the world’s finances will crumble and why. There is some fantasy with Satan’s “harvesters”, huge carnivores that actually feed off the non-believers and transport them back to Satan’s home to be used as feed stock for his minions… I even added some theories about where and why the dinosaurs originated and became extinct. One way or another, the “end times” are going to be horrific and those that will have to experience them are in for a terrifying experience. Keep in mind The Jesus Ring is a work of fiction, but God help you if the “end times” resembles anything like The Jesus Ring.” Experience apocalyptic fiction as if it has never been written.