In a way, it seems like things have been going painfully slow, yet there have been some very crucial changes. For one, I decided to shift the focus of the story from Bjorn to his 16-year-old daughter. Also, I have a really cool plot twist about mid-way through the book. I can’t go into a ton of detail, but I can give you the (current) one-sentence summary:

A 16-year-old girl discovers an oppressed workforce and works with her divorced father and a team from an advanced civilization to free them.

Of course, the different characters on the team are all stinking awesome. I love them already. But I read the first third of the Twilight script yesterday (incredibly well written) and was awed by how high the bar is and how far I have to go. Thankfully, I’ll (Lord willing) have lots of help brainstorming high-caliber ideas and cutting anything that’s cliché, but before I draw other people into the project I’ve got to have a basic architecture that can support such artistic heights.

One more positive note: I’ve gotten some good inspiration lately for how to work the spiritual/theological side of things, which is the part I’m most worried about. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a Christian movie or book where the message isn’t either weak or cliché and I know it will be very difficult to keep from falling into either pitfall. Christian music has the same two problems, but one label — Reach Records — has done an outstanding job keeping clear from both, so they’re my best inspiration at the moment.

1. Sent: Living the Missional Nature of the Church by Ed Stetzer (should be nearly finished by the end of the year)
2. Do Hard Things by Alex & Brett Harris (good, but a little too social-justice oriented for me to be super-excited about it)
3. Holiness By Grace by Bryan Chapell (great theology, but so thickly written it was a bit of a chore to get through it)
4. Bauckham’s, JND Kelly’s & Hiebert’s detailed exegetical commentaries on 2 Peter (read a good chunk of each, I figured together they counted as 1 book)
5. Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis (ok, so it’s an easy, fun book — those count too!)
6. Scarlet by Stephen R. Lawhead (also fun, part of a Robin Hood trilogy)
7. The Lively Art of Writing (excellent book, recommended by Mrs. Jordan)

Of course, that doesn’t count the books I’ve started:

1. Robert Ballard’s Bismark: Germany’s Greatest Battleship Surrenders Her Secrets
2. Dune by Frank Herbert (one of the few fiction authors whose writing style I very much admire)
3. The Gospel & Personal Evangelism by Mark Dever (excellent so far, forward by C.J. Mahaney)
4. How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon Fee & Douglas Stuart (I really like this book so far)
5. Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Ted Tripp
6. Age of Opportunity by Paul David Tripp (on parenting teens – wrote a promotional article for it in the TFC newsletter)

How about you? What have you been reading?

• X-Men
• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• The Matrix
• Fireproof
• The Princess Bride
• Speed Racer

Notice that we share two (X-Men & Hitchiker’s Guide) — that’s pretty good in my book. I think the most important thing (for books too) is a good number of likeable, interesting characters. This is where X-Men, Hitchhiker’s Guide, the Princess Bride and the original Star Wars really shine. Now if you mix that with my favorite genre (an intense blend of fantasy and cyberpunk), then you’ve really got something.

Bjorn’s Game is a cyberpunk sci-fi story that follows the main character, a revolutionary nano-bot programmer named Bjørn Hawkins, from ardent humanism to saving faith. It begins when he goes against cultural norms by having an “illegitimate” son (born without government approval) because of a strange telepathic relationship between himself and the unborn boy. When the government tells him the boy died of complications at birth, he knows it’s a lie. He soon discovers that his son was actually added to an oppressed underground work-force, millions strong, who are systematically brain-damaged by his own invention, nanites. After his belief in humanity’s moral goodness is destroyed, he is awakened to his own depravity as his marriage falls apart and sets out on a quest to develop a nanite antidote for his son’s brain damage and to discover the authenticity of Christianity so he will know whether to hand the antidote over to renegade fanatical believers who live as missionaries among the underground work-force.

Huge thanks to my wife, Jessica, for encouraging me in the development of the story and the writing and for listening to far too many story ideas when we should’ve been talking about other things, and to Sophie for hounding me to actually write the story I’ve always dreamed about.

Here it is: Bjørn’s Game – Chapter 1 (Note: the PDF is sideways, you’ll have to right-click and go to Rotate Clockwise to see it right-side-up)