Snark & Sensibility

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J.A. Webb

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Fiction Friday

THE AUTHOR’S STORY

As a child, I was fascinated by all things science, and absorbed every bit of science-related nonfiction I could find. My love of reading and science soon led me to discover the thrilling world of science fiction. And I was hooked.

But I soon discovered a disconnect between what I was reading and what my Sunday school taught. That disconnect grew too obvious even for my young mind to ignore. 

What was I to believe? The “settled science” of evolution? Or the biblical story of creation?

How was I to reconcile the miracles of the Bible with the established laws of physics, and with the “experts” who discarded such stories as tall tales on par with the mythology of the Greeks and Romans?

I received no satisfactory answers from my Sunday school teacher (in hindsight, I remember him with great sympathy-my badgering questions must have driven the poor guy nuts). But in contrast, the scientific community was absolutely firm in its assurances that it offered objective and proven truth.

So, at age eight, I rejected the validity of the Bible and turned my back on God. Thankfully, God didn’t turn his back on me! 

After several decades "wasted" searching for truth and meaning in all the wrong places, I grudgingly picked up a Bible. But only once every other avenue was exhausted . . . and only once I was suitably desperate to find that peace so missing from my world, that indefinable something it would take to fill that aching, God-shaped hole in my heart. In my life.

And there, waiting in those long-abandoned pages of my Bible, was my Creator and my God. The truth and meaning that I had been seeking for so long.

Having received salvation, I had not lost my love of reading. Especially my love of speculative fiction.

But there was a problem.

Where was I to find thrilling fiction of that genre I so loved?

Especially that written for men?

In my favorite Christian bookstore, I found plenty of romantic suspense, romantasy, even a fair bit of YA fantasy and sci-fi. But where was the Christian fiction written to-and-for guys like me?

Was I to return to that secular/materialistic speculative fiction I’d so loved when I was unsaved? Now, with these new eyes my Creator had given me, those books no longer held the same appeal. The worldview was antithetical to what I now knew to be the Truth, and frankly, in the modern works, it’s not only the worldview that’s a problem. I’d need a censor to cut out the foul language and the even fouler sexual content in those books. And believe me, that would leave many full of gaping, ragged holes, more redaction than text.

So where was I to find thrilling,

inspiring stories that my heart so desired?

In my frustration, I 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 you been called.”

So, having spent decades in darkness, I now write evocative tales about light overcoming that very same darkness, to thrill the believer and awaken the seeker. 

And all those seemingly wasted decades? All the bad choices? The heartache? Those have been revealed, not as a complete waste, years fit only to grieve over . . . at least not wholly . . . but as a time of preparation.

So, if you are a lover of speculative fiction, I invite you to sample my current work, The Seekers Series. Of this series, Fragments: Book One and Inheritance: Book Two are now available, with Interregnum: Book Three releasing in December 2025 and Persecution: Book Four in late 2026, with many more to follow.

I’d also like to offer you a gift. Visit jawebbauthor.com and claim your free ebook or audiobook copy of Fugitive, a prequel novella to The Seekers Series.

And if you do, email me and let me know if these stories thrilled you!

A SELECTED SCENE FROM FRAGMENTS

The wagon train had departed Capital Station in the early evening. For some time, Curtis watched Leif’s use of the controls. Now, certain he understood the system, he shifted to adjust his makeshift cushion. Goodness, this bench was hard, and the vibrations were numbing his nethers.

The setting sun still glared through the side windows, but Lars had fallen into a deep, snoring slumber.

Leif pulled out a pipe and stuffed it with tobacco, the sharp smell of the leaf wafting. He lit a match and was about to touch it to the pipe, but stopped short, apparently seeing Curtis’s pained expression. With a sigh, Leif blew out the match and stuffed the unlit pipe back into his shirt pocket.

They rode in silence. A rare fast transport whizzed by, moving northbound at blistering speed, breaking the monotony, and eliciting Leif’s only words since the station. “Whoa, you don’t see that every day. Those things haul—I mean they really haul, don’t they?”

Curtis nodded, preparing first one, then another opening gambit. None seemed right. Maybe this wasn’t the time?

The evening sky retreated in deepening shades of red, chased by the indigo band of leading night. The last long tree shadows faded into the dusk. He shifted toward the side window to see the countryside since the small windscreens bracketing the front door offered only a view of the freighter ahead.

As the last of the sunset retreated, an arcing concrete overpass blocked all view, limiting the sights to the shadowed beams of the road overhead. Graffiti scrawled garish reds and yellows high on the abutment, too deep in gloom to be deciphered.

Then the night sky again filled the window, bright in comparison to the dark space, and Curtis flinched when an impact shook the boards only inches above his head.

Leif growled something unintelligible. “Jerks. They hide on the overpasses and throw rocks on the wagon trains.”

What could have happened had the object come through the front windows? Curtis shuddered. “Who? And why would they do such a thing?”

Leif grimaced and opened his mouth, but something flashed in the periphery of Curtis’s vision, lit momentarily by the running lights, high in the space between their car and the one ahead. He rocked forward, craning to the top of the windscreen but there was only the empty sliver of night sky, stars lost in the red glare.

“Did you see that?”

Leif squinted an eye. “See what?”

“Something out there on top of the cars.”

Leif pursed his lips. “Probably the trash they threw at us blowing off.”

No. Curtis had seen something. Or someone. But holding this position to watch the sky was cramping muscles. He shifted back in his seat, readjusted his cushion, and rested his head back.

Eyes closed, he drifted into somnolence with the rocking of the car, the drone of tires. Then something like a dark cloud passed over his soul, drawing him again into the dream.

Now red desert sand, scorched and lifeless, blew in drifting tendrils across the cracked plain, the moaning of that arid wind the only sound beneath an unnaturally low ceiling of roiling yellow-gray clouds. This shattered, rocky terrain blurred to the horizon, broken only by pyramidal heaps of debris.

He stood on the summit of one, a crowd at the base—people he loved, his parishioners, his adopted family. He’d seen many of them born, watched them grow, officiated their weddings, and sat by their sickbeds. Had buried parents and even children.

Not knowing what he waited for or why, he now stood watch, focus on the far horizon, dread in his heart, vigilance rewarded when distant movement rippled.

A form appeared, like a dust storm but darker, stranger. It moved toward him, toward his charges, with unnatural speed, its surface undulating a bizarre nauseant motion.

Pulse hammered his ears. His leg muscles twitched to run, but where?

The power of the thing vibrated the earth, pulsated the air, thrummed his being. Its approach deafening.

He shook himself, breaking the paralysis. He must protect his flock. But what could one do against such?

His hand was going numb where it gripped the lantern, his fingers turning white. Of course! What does one use to fight darkness, but light? And that fast-approaching wall, rumbling ever nearer, was nothing if not darkness.

He hoisted the lantern and called for his people to draw close, to come into the light. They scrambled up the slope, desperate and afraid.

The looming darkness overwhelmed. Within the murky cloud, twisted shapes—amorphous, unwholesome things—writhed and frolicked. They emanated an aura of rage, of insatiability, a desire to devour and destroy.

He shouted a warning and raised his light to drive back the darkness.

The churning mass closed in, the forms clawing, clutching, pulling the slowest and weakest into the unseen depths.

The wind rose to a scream. Gravel pelted him, drove him backward. His light, of little use before, was extinguished in the gale. His body lifted on the wings of the hurricane. Blown higher and higher away from his flock, he uttered a final despairing prayer.

Anguished screams rose from his people’s throats as they were rended, torn, and consumed, their death throes hidden in the mists far below.

At his own soundless scream, he snapped awake, heart pounding.

Again.

The dream had come again.

Arms flailed, reaching for some hold on reality.  His hands found the edge of the rough wooden seat. Right, the wagon train. Leif.

This dream was always disorienting. Always left a vague sense of foreboding which persisted and haunted his days.

But this time, there came something new. A certainty that, unless he averted the coming tragedy, the consequences wouldn’t end there, in that dream world. No. Ramifications would forever change his life and those of all he loved.

Gripped by this certainty, he could no longer avoid this current matter. He rubbed damp palms on his knees. Purged his lungs, straightened his back, and held to that grip on reality. Focused on time and place.

 MORE ABOUT FRAGMENTS

Fragments: Book One of The Seekers Series

A people enslaved.

A band of heroes on an epic quest to uncover a lost truth.

An ancient secret waiting to set them free . . .

An Epic Thriller of Deception, Faith, and the Fight for Truth

The world ended – but its masters remained.

It is the year 2158, and Hegemony has fallen.

That once unified global government lies splintered in a thousand isolated fiefdoms, but the Order, the one-world religion, remains.

Now, twenty-two years after the Great Collapse and fifteen years since the Bad Times, a period during which the world teetered on the precipice of a new Dark Ages, mankind struggles to rise from the ruins of a once great civilization.

Meanwhile, the Order has consolidated its secret hold on these seemingly independent regions, once again securely ensconced as the unseen power behind all human government.

Should any desire for truth be rekindled in the hearts of men, the Order stands ready to stamp it out. . . .

Father Curtis is a loyal priest of the Order, the one-world religion that rose from the ashes of a fallen civilization. His faith is his foundation, his service his purpose, his remote parish his refuge. But when a cryptic summons from the highest echelons of power ends with him branded a heretic and framed for murder, his world is shattered. Hunted by the Order’s ruthless secret police—the ever-present Eye—Curtis is forced to run, a fugitive armed only with questions and a terrifying, prophetic dream of a devouring darkness.

Miles away, brothers Leif and Lars fight a different battle. As skilled craftsmen struggling to save their family business from the crushing fist of a corrupt regime, their lives are a grind of quiet desperation. But a chance encounter on a fateful train journey plunges them into Father Curtis's desperate flight. They are drawn into a clandestine war they never knew existed, a conflict waged in the shadows by a society of Seekers who risk everything to recover the fragments of a lost and forbidden text—a holy book whose truth is so explosive, the Order will kill to keep it buried.

From the halls of power in the gleaming Capital to the grimy back alleys of a civilization on the brink, a desperate race begins. Survival is not enough; they must uncover a divine mystery that could save humanity or damn them all to an eternity of darkness. But when the very foundations of faith are a lie, who can you trust? And what terrible sacrifices are required to bring the truth into the light?

Fans of Frank Peretti, Ted Dekker, and the sprawling worlds of Dune and Atlas Shrugged will be captivated by this pulse-pounding fusion of high-stakes thriller, epic sci-fi, and profound spiritual warfare.

The Seekers Series:

“They’d risk anything to seek the truth . . . the Order will do anything to stop them.”

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J. A. Webb is a former atheist and now a devoted follower of Christ, military veteran, husband, father, small business owner, and Genesis award-winning author of thrilling Christian fiction, writing from his four-acre farmstead located on the rolling plains of the upper Midwest, USA.

"Thrilling Christian fiction . . . where the seen and unseen worlds collide."

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT J.A. WEBB and don’t forget to order your free download. I did and can’t wait to read it!