A few years ago, I came home from college for a visit, and while I was gone, my mother had found, bought, and hung a long plaque above the archway leading into our living room. I love our house very much, and I will always consider it the place where I grew up, even though I spent the first ten or eleven years of my life in a different house fifty miles away. I’m very glad it’s going to be staying in the family. And when you live in a house for fifteen years or so, it just becomes part of you, along with certain items it contains. That plaque is one of those things, even though it was only added a few years ago. It already feels like it’s always been there, and belongs there always.
The words, etched into the wood, read: Home is Where the Story Begins.
If someone were to ask me what the one driving thing in my life is, that one thing that defines me and inspires me to keep living and loving and seeking, it would be this: Truth. And, more specifically, Truth in Story.
I’ve always loved stories, in every shape and form and place. The earliest encounter with story I can recollect is when I was very young. My parents gave me one of those record players for children, the kind where the records are almost an inch thick and impossible to break. I would sit in my room in the afternoon with my toys and the sunshine shining through the window, and I would listen to that record player over and over again. I remember, I had two Star Wars records, that loosely told the story of the first movie with really simple dialogue and awesome sound effects. I wish I still had them.
After that, it was the talking Mickey and Goofy. For those of you who don’t know about these, they are basically big plush figures that had a tape deck in the back, and when you inserted a tape, you could listen to the voices of Mickey and Goofy tell you story, and their mouths would move and everything.
I then graduated to probably one of the biggest influences in my early life, The Adventures in Odyssey series by Focus on the Family. Not only were these killer stories for a kid (especially later, when BlackHeart tried to bring Mr. Whittaker and everyone else at Whit’s End down) but I realize now how much of my early sense of the world were shaped by the values, morals and worldview expressed through that radio program. I owe a lot to Focus on the Family, and am thankful for the adventures I had. Every night growing up, I would fall asleep to an Odyssey tape, and I practically memorized every word of every set (I had twenty or more).
Toward the end of that time, I was introduced to another story that would become an enormous influence on me, both as a writer and a reader. In fifth grade, my parents celebrated their anniversary by going to Toronto, Canada, where my father took my mother to see a performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera, performed by the original cast, with Michael Crawford as the Phantom, and Sarah Brightman as Christine. By the time I hit sixth grade, I knew every word to every song, and most of the dialogue. The Phantom has become one of those things that is part of me; I grew up listening to it, I sung it in my head, and I was mesmerized by the story and the amazing characters. Later in life I would grow to much identify with the Phantom, and found his journey one of the most amazing stories ever. I still feel that way.
The stage production led me to the novel on which it was based, by Gaston Leroux. I read it when I was thirteen, I believe. It quickly became one of my favorite books, and it still is to this day.
Seventh grade was a defining moment in my life, and set me on the path I am still following, and plan to follow until I rest my bones. I realized how much I loved stories, to be told stories, to listen to them, to read them, to experience them in any way I could. But more than that, in seventh grade I realized that I wanted to tell them. I wanted to make my own, for other people to read and hear and experience.
So, that was the impetus for the beginning of the most epic sci-fi novel ever not written, RED LIGHTNING. Actually, that’s not true. It was written, at least a good part of it, about a hundred pages or so. If you’ve seen Independence Day or Alien then you’ve read my masterpiece of thirteen year old literature. It was a complete rip-off and so horrible I don’t even want to read it. I even wrote it with a red pen because I thought it went with the title. I still have it. I hope nothing ever happens to it, because as blatant of a rip-off as it was, it was the beginning. It was my first attempt at writing anything, and every writer has to start somewhere. And that’s where I began.
Here I am, twenty-five years old, working on my first novel (technically, my second) and it’s better and more fulfilling and more frustrating than I could ever have imagined. But I wouldn’t change a thing, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. When I look back on it, I wonder how I got here, how I became what I become, and this is the path that I see. But more than that, I believe God drew me to that side of him that is Creator, that is Story-Teller, that is the Author of Life. I’m so honored and privileged to experience that part of Him, and my goal has always been to express his Truth through what I write.
And let me tell you something, what I love about the Truth is that it’s everywhere. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that Truth is found exclusively in the Bible. Truth is found everywhere, even in the scriptures of other religions, in the science-fiction works written by atheists, in the fantasy works written by Christians. Even if the name of Christ is never mentioned, no allusion to the Bible or God is made in the text, Truth is Truth, no matter where it is found. Truth is not exclusive to the Bible, but all Truth leads back to God, because all Truth is claimed by Him, because he IS the Way, the Truth, and the Life. That’s the beautiful thing. Truth is everywhere. Because God is everywhere. If Jesus was contained to the pages of the Bible, we would all be in trouble. But the Truth is in every day, in the actions we make, in the words we say, and ESPECIALLY, in the stories we tell …
