PenWorks of the Word | Featured Author | J. A. Webb

Greetings, 

We are just over halfway through the month now, and so many wonderful authors are still getting the spotlight for this year's PenWorks of the Word Blog Tour. Today, it is a pleasure to introduce J. A. Webb. He is another award-winning author with a powerful story to tell. You can learn more about it by visiting The Wordmith Forge Podcast hosted by Mike Baines, or by visiting the blog from one of our other featured authors. Linda Matchett. 

One of the themes I am seeing more often these days is the concept of light versus dark. It is present in my stories, as well as several other authors that I follow. The concept Webb brings to life in his newest series follows that pattern. But, like always, I'm going to let him share his story. 

See you in the "Digital" pages, 

M.J. E.

~~~

First, I’d like to thank Matthew for inviting me to guest here on his blog.

So who, you ask, is J. A. Webb?

The short answer is I’m a former atheist and now a Genesis-award-winning author writing thrilling Christian fiction. 

Some years ago, I became convinced that we as Christians need to do a better job of fighting for our culture. That we need to “go out” and battle for God’s Kingdom using the Power of Story. To inspire the lost to ask the big questions, to offer the seeker light in the midst of darkness, and to thrill the believer.

And I felt that call personally. As a man who remained an adamant atheist for decades into adult life, the discovery of the Truth of God’s word brought such an indescribable sense of awe and wonder that I wanted to capture that same sense of awe and of God’s greatness in Story- and to capture the imagination of the Lost and the Seeker with those same stories. 

In addition to the need for us, as Christians, to bring the battle for hearts and minds out into the greater world, I also sensed another need. We say that guys don’t read, and there is some truth to that. But as a guy, I can testify that one of the reasons “guys don’t read” is that very little is being written to and for us.

As guys, we aren’t as likely to pick up a romance (or a thriller of which half the pages are romance). It’s not that there’s anything wrong with romance. It’s just that we’re wired differently. God made us in such a way that we love action, adventure, true heroes protecting the innocent and pursuing justice, the Light battling— and overcoming—the Darkness.

So, if we want more guys to read, let’s give them more of what they already love to read. It’s so unfortunate that at the moment they can largely find the stories they love only in the secular marketplace, and rarely written from the Christian worldview. Often quite the opposite.

We can do better, and I hope my current series, the Seekers Series, will help fill that void.

The Seekers Series, starting with Book One, Fragments, is an Epic Christian Thriller set in the year 2158, in a post-collapse world dominated by a tyrannical, man-made quasi-religion loosely based upon the Beast system described in the Book of Revelation.

And in that future world, the Bible has been banned and lost to living memory. 

The concept for the story evolved over time as, being newly saved, I, with new eyes, read the Bible through. I was struck by how quickly the people of Israel, who had seen so many of God’s miracles firsthand, forgot Him and wandered their own way. I saw the same thing again at the end of the book of Joshua, where a new generation arose who “knew not God, nor the works that he had wrought”, and again in the Book of Judges in which it is said “in those day there was no King in Israel, and every man did what was right in his own eyes”.

But it was my discovery in 2Kings and 2 Chronicles, where the priest Hilkiah found the Book of the Law in the temple, long lost and forgotten as the people of the land worshiped other gods.

It struck me then that, given the trends in our culture, we might face that very same future ourselves. There are, in fact, powerful forces- you might say Powers and Principalities- working toward that very end.

And I wondered. What would it be like to live in such a world? To wander aimlessly in the dark, with no hope of finding the Light? Having wandered for so long in a similar darkness myself, the idea terrified me. But also thrilled me, because I then began to imagine how God would work to reveal Himself anew to such a people.

And thus was born The Seekers Series- a tale told in an admittedly dark world, but a Darkness which makes all the more brilliant the Light as it comes to conquer, once and for all, those forces which attempt to, but can never, conquer it.

I hope the story thrills a great many readers, as much as it thrilled me to write it.

If you’d like to check out the books or sample the tale, head over to my website, jawebbauthor.com- and while you’re there, pick up the prequel novella Fugitive, in either ebook or audiobook, available FREE when you sign up for my newsletter, in which I alert my readers to other great Christian fiction that I’ve enjoyed.

~~~

J. A. Webb, Genesis-award-winning author, military veteran, and former atheist, rejected the validity of the Bible at age eight and turned his back on God. Thankfully, God didn’t turn his back on J. A. Webb! After several decades "wasted" searching for truth and meaning in all the wrong places, he grudgingly picked up a Bible. And there God was---waiting for him.

Sometime later, the lack of thrilling Christian fiction in the marketplace, especially that written for men, frustrated him. He cried out, “Where are the modern-day Tolkiens, the Christian Brandon Sandersons or George R. R. Martins?”

And a still, quiet voice whispered . . . “For this thing have I shaped you.”

So, having spent decades in darkness, J. A. Webb now writes evocative tales about light overcoming darkness to thrill the believer and awaken the seeker. And all those seemingly wasted decades have been revealed not as a waste, but as a time of preparation.