Courage and Conviction
What Would Life Look Like for a Gay Christian in 1860?
If William Varian is lucky, he might live long enough to die at war — a more noble death than what he faces if his neighbors discover that he has fallen in love with his childhood friend, Mat Weaver. This is what William faces in Southern Ohio during 1860. This overwhelming realization sends William into a spiral of doubt, depression, and self-harm as he questions the dogmatic teachings of his upbringing.
How Does an LGBTQ+ Christian Person Find Acceptance?
William contemplates the forms that love can take and fights to maintain his relationship with God, who becomes his lifeline. William has to seek self-acceptance as a gay, Christian man before he can confess his love for Mat in a town and time that can’t easily comprehend a positive, same-sex relationship between two believers. Will he be able to confess his feelings before the American Civil War takes him away?
Where is this Book?
My completed manuscript is a historical fiction novel set in rural Jackson, Ohio, at 77,263 words and is partly inspired by Rifles for Watie, by Harold Kieth, a John Newbery Award Winner. The book has gone through two drafts, one revision, and multiple editing run-throughs as well as countless hours of proofreading.
A writers group, authors at a writers’ workshop, and several beta readers have all reviewed it. I’m currently pitching to agents to find it a home through the traditional publishing route. If you don’t want to wait that long, you can purchase it by clicking on the button below!
Click below to order Courage and Conviction on Lulu.com.
Light Rising | Darkness Falling
These fictional narratives, grounded in historical and astrological facts, resolves the mystery behind the “wise men” of the Biblical account of the Nativity.
The setting begins in the palace of the Parthian Empire’s capital city of Ctesiphon in 3 BC during King Arsaces XXII’s thirty-fourth year of reign. This ancient Iranian, Arsacid empire sat between the Roman Empire in the west and the Han dynasty of China in the east. The empire’s territory extended from the Persian Gulf in the south up to the Caspian Sea against the contested Armenian Kingdom. Ctesiphon sat on the east bank of the Tigris River, and its ruins are approximately forty miles northeast of Babylon and twenty-two miles southeast of present-day Baghdad.
As part of the Zoroastrian faith, King Arsaces XXII (born Phraates IV) employed Magi as advisors and counselors. The Zoroastrian religion was founded by Zoroaster (Zarathustra) in the 6th century BC. He was an ancient Iranian religious reformer and prophet that eventually led to the creation of the priestly class called Magi. They were known to be philosophers, astronomers, priests, conjurers, enchanters, soothsayers, and interpreters of dreams and visions.
Our main character belongs to this order, which is popularized in the Western World as “the wise men from the east who came to Jerusalem,” recorded in the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. The Magi paying homage to a fifteen-month-old Jesus (Yeshua) in Bethlehem (Bet’Lechem) is documented. What is not well known or even presented as a plausible hypothesis is, “How did they know where to look and when to look for the newborn King of kings?”
Light Rising and Darkness Falling Concept Art