Stoney M. Setzer's Blog: Zero Hour: Christian Speculative Fiction , page 9

Sharing Links--Lyndon Perry

My friend and editor, Lyndon Perry, has been a great supporter of Zero Hour from the beginning.  Most of the stories in it were originally published in his ezine, ResAliens (http://residentialaliens.blogspot.com/), and he helped make the anthology itself a reality.  I'd also like to thank him because he just featured Zero Hour on his blog.  You can check it out here:

http://blogginoutloud.blogspot.com/2011/07/zero-hour-stories-of-spiritual-suspense.html

Also, he has published his own Kindle collection, Flash Fiction Five Pack.  This is quick, enjoyable reading that displays Lyn's trademarks as a writer: 1) a good sense of humor, particularly in terms of puns, 2) a good imagination, and 3) the ability to create a good story with an economy of words, a must for the flash fiction (1000 words or fewer) format.  Each story hits the ground running, establishes its situation right away, and pays off with a comic twist at the end. The flash fiction format creates a quick, lively pace that keeps the reader's attention throughout. My favorite was "Shock the Monkey," but all them are very good. This is definitely worth reading.  And, of course, here's the link for anyone interested in purchasing Flash Fiction Five Pack:

http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Fiction-Five-Pack-ebook/dp/B005A98IDW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310122992&sr=8-1

I appreciate you checking this out and hope that you will share it with others.  Until next time, Philippians 4:13.--SMS

New Kindle release: "Angels Unawares"

I've just released another new short story on Kindle!  This one is entitled "Angels Unawares."  I actually wrote it back in 2003 and briefly had it posted on http://www.sffworld.com/, but this is a new, revised, and (I think) improved version of the story.  It's only $0.99, so check it out!  The link to purchase is below:

http://www.amazon.com/Angels-Unawares-ebook/dp/B005A59D4Y/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1310005980&sr=8-3

Thanks, and Philippians 4:13.--SMS

New Release: "The Widow Greer"

Hey everybody, just wanted to announce my new release on Kindle, "The Widow Greer."  It was not included in Zero Hour itself, but it is a sequel to one of the ZH stories, "The Watchman."  Follow the link below to get your copy for just $0.99!

http://www.amazon.com/The-Widow-Greer-ebook/dp/B0058F9E2M/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=books&qid=1309345204&sr=8-2

Thanks for your continued support!  Philippians 4:13.--SMS

A Life Lesson From Turner Field

If you know me well, then you know that baseball is my favorite sport.  Well, this year my Father's Day present consisted of going to see my favorite team, the Atlanta Braves, take on the Texas Rangers at Turner Field.  My wife and two oldest children went with me, along with three other friends of ours (one of whom was Michael Jarrell, a die-hard Rangers fan and the illustrator for Zero Hour).  In all, it was a fun-filled night with some of my favorite people on Earth, in one of my favorite places on Earth.  The only drawback was the final score, 6-2 in favor of Texas, but even that didn't interfere with my enjoyment.

As it happened, the game was the Major League debut for the Braves' starting pitcher that night, a young prospect named Randall Delgado.  Delgado had been called up from the Braves' Double-A team in Mississippi because their scheduled starter, Tommy Hanson, had shoulder tendinitis and could not pitch.  Consequently, a 21-year-old pitched his first game against a team that had made it to the World Series the previous year.

I can only imagine what must have been going through Delgado's mind.  No doubt he was excited, maybe even nervous.  This was his dream, or else he wouldn't have been playing pro ball in the first place.  I'm sure he imagined himself striking out on batter after another, mowing down Texas' lineup like an All-Star pitcher.  Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way for him.  He left the game after four innings, his team down 4-1 at that point.

What was impressive, however, was the way Delgado conducted himself in the face of disappointment.  He didn't stomp his feet, throw his equipment, or yell at his teammates (who certainly had their own part to play in the game's outcome).  In a postgame interview, the Braves' manager praised Delgado's poise and composure.  Simply put, he did not let adversity get the better of him.

What a lesson for us as Christians!  James 1:2-4 tells us, "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.  And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."  What that means is that adversity is the classroom in which we can learn the most.  When things are easy, then we aren't getting challenged.  We don't grow as much because we tend to think things are just fine.  It is when things aren't fine, when we need to put our faith in God and submit ourselves to His leadership, that we have the greatest opportunity for spiritual growth.

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis also alludes to the importance of perservance.  "[God] allows this disappointment to occur on the threshhold of every human endeavour...If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt."

Christian living is full of "dry spells."  So is writing.  But this is how God teaches us to perservere.  May we learn the lesson well.  Philippians 4:13.--SMS

Backstory: "Darkest Before Dawn" (Part 2)

As promised, Part 2 of my Backstory entry for "Darkest Before Dawn" will center on the Christian themes that entered into this story.

The simplest one to address is that of the darkness itself.  As I've mentioned previously, the ten plagues of Egypt have given me some fertile ground for inspiration in the past.  "In the Shadow of the Sphinx" dealt directly with the plague of boils from Exodus 9:8-17, while "The Watchman" draws its inspiration from the plague of gnats in Exodus 8:16-19.  Well, the ninth plague was darkness, coming into play in Exodus 10:21-29.  I didn't allude to it in the text as directly as I did with the other two instances, but I cannot and will not attempt to deny that it had an influence on this tale.

Another huge Christian theme is that we cannot avoid the consequences of our sins, even if we try to cover up what we've done.  Numbers 32:23 says that you can "be sure that your sin will find you out." Galatians 6:7 admonishes us, "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap."  The consequences of our sins will catch up to us, just as they do for the guilty party in "Darkest Before Dawn," so we need to be careful about how we live.

Finally, as to the character of Obadiah Riddle, the traveling peddler/prophet: We tend to assume that a prophet is one who sees the future, and sometimes in Scripture the office of a prophet does include that function.  However, the biblical model of a prophet is one who proclaims God's truth, whether or not it directly applies to forecasting the future.  For Riddle, I particularly thought about Elijah.  He was a man who crusaded against sin, proclaiming God's truth, and at one point, he called for there to be no rain until he said otherwise so as to make a point to the corrupt King Ahab (1 Kings 17:1, James 5:17).  That seemed to fit hand-in-glove for "Darkest Before Dawn," as I felt I needed a character who could not only serve as a catalyst for the strange event but who could also serve as God's messenger to deliver the divine perspective on the proceedings.

Since "Darkest Before Dawn" is the last story in Zero Hour, there's no need for another "Backstory" post after this one, but that doesn't mean this is the final post for the blog.  Far from it!  Stay tuned, and remember, Philippians 4:13.--SMS

Backstory: "Darkest Before Dawn" (Part 1)

There's a lot to say about the last story in the collection, so I'm going to break this up into two entries this time around.

First off, the Twilight Zone influence is alive and well on this story.  When I was a kid, I remember that Channel 46 (then an independent station, now Atlanta's CBS affiliate) would show TZ reruns every weeknight at 11 PM.  I was in my early teens before I was ever allowed to sit up to watch them, and then only on Friday nights or during summer vacation.  However, that never stopped me from reading the tantalizing one-sentence blurbs for them in the TV Guide (back when that publication was still the size of a Reader's Digest).  The descriptions never failed to tickle my imagination, and I can remember some of them to this day.  "A hospitalized woman waits to see if surgeons have been able to repair her disfigured face" ("The Eye of the Beholder").  "An Army major, a clown, a ballerina, a bagpipe player, and a hobo try to find escape from their mysterious cylindrical prison" ("Five Characters in Search of an Exit").

Then there was this one: "On the morning when a condemned man is to be hanged, townspeople wonder why the sun has not yet risen."  That description was for an episode entitled "I Am the Night--Color Me Black," maybe not the best TZ, but certainly not the worst, either.  At any rate, the connotations of that one-sentence synopsis bounced around in my brain for years, finally forming the seeds for "Darkest Before Dawn."

Zero Hour as a whole is dedicated to my wife, Cindy, but this individual story is dedicated to my father, the late Robert M. Setzer, also known as "Bob" or "Shooter."  He was a fan of Westerns, particularly those featuring John Wayne.  For years, the easiest gift idea for his birthday or Christmas consisted of presenting him with a new Wayne movie for his collection.  Unfortunately, he was also an alcoholic, ultimately resulting in his passing in 2009 due to liver cirrhosis.  Because this story was set in the Old West--and because one character's drinking plays a pivotal role in the unfolding of events--dedicating this story to his memory seemed natural.  On a happier note, my father did receive Christ as his Savior two weeks before he passed away.

Part Two will take a closer look at the Christian themes that entered into "Darkest Before Dawn."  Until then, remember Philippians 4:13.--SMS

Backstory: "The Alabama Hammer"

Someone once asked me which of the stories in Zero Hour was my favorite.  That's a difficult question to answer as each of them is special to me in its own way.  However, I can say without reservation that, of the fifteen stories, I probably had the most fun writing "The Alabama Hammer."

Watching wrestling is a weekly family ritual in our house.  Sure, the storylines are prewritten, and the outcomes are very often (possibly always) predetermined, but that's not necessarily a detriment.  Other TV shows and movies are also prewritten with predetermined outcomes...it's called fiction, and if you take wrestling on those terms, it can be quite enjoyable (although I'm sure that at least some of the injuries they sustain are quite real).  In fact, after a stressful week at work, a little Friday Night Smackdown can be downright cathartic.

Of course, there are some people out there who believe that everything shown on wrestling is real.  That provided part of the thrust for the story.  Another part came from one of the staples of wrestling--a reigning champion holding a microphone and challenging anyone who dares to take him/her on.  Suppose, I asked myself, someone who didn't know any better took such a challenge seriously?  And of course, if you think you detect a hint of 1 Samuel 17 in this story, you wouldn't be wrong.

Who did I model my wrestling character upon?  The Alabama Hammer is really an amalgamation of wrestlers.  In terms of his popularity with the fans, think John Cena.  Although I didn't write much of a description of his appearance, I guess I'd have to picture one of my all-time favorites, the recently retired Adam "Edge" Copeland.  There is a reference to a move called the Lynyrd Lunge...if you know anything of wrestling, think of that as Edge's signature move, the Spear, with an Alabama-themed nickname.  As for the nickname of the wrestler, "Alabama Hammer" simply had a nice ring to it.

In regard to his opponent, I once again got inspiration from an old genre-based TV show.  I'm not a huge Star Trek fan, but there was an episode of the original series entitled "Arena" that helped inspire how Garnackus would look.

Philippians 4:13.--SMS

Backstory: "The Watchman"

First off, a bit of trivia: "The Watchman" wasn't the first story I had published overall, but it was the first story that someone actually paid me to publish.  The now-defunct Dragons, Knights, and Angels purchased one-time publication rights to this story back in July 2006 for $10.00 and published it a month later.  It was the first time that my dream of being a published, paid author had ever met with any sort of validation.  For that reason, "The Watchman" will always be special to me.  Incidentally, it is also the oldest/earliest of the fifteen in Zero Hour.

The idea for the story came from the ten plagues of Egypt, as was the case with "In the Shadow of the Sphinx."  I also revisit the theme indirectly in "Darkest Before Dawn."  Depending upon what translation of the Bible you use, this particular plague is either referred to as gnats or lice.  I went with gnats.  I wanted to set my story in Georgia, as I do quite often.  Here in Georgia, there is an imaginary boundary called the "gnat line."  Go south of it, and you will see exponentially more gnats than you will north of the line.  So pronounced is the problem that a minor league baseball team in Georgia has incorporated it into their name--the Savannah Sand Gnats.  So, to go with that setting, I figured gnats made more sense than lice here.

The decision to make my protagonist, Glenn Sanders, a newspaper editor was pretty easy.  I needed a way to give him inside knowledge of what was happening in his town, and a press pass seemed a simple way to do that.  Residential Aliens also published a sequel to this story, "The Widow Greer," using the same characters as Glenn grows into his role of Watchman.  You can find that story at http://www.resaliens.com/2010/08/the-widows-greer/#more-872

Finally, as for the role of the Watchman himself, it comes from Ezekiel 33:1-9, which reads, "And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, "Son of man, speak to the sons of your people and say to them, 'If I bring a sword upon a land, and the people of the land take one man from among them and make him their watchman, and he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows on the trumpet and warns the people, then he who hears the sound of the trumpet and does not take warning, and a sword comes and takes him away, his blood will be on his own head.  He heard the sound of the trumpet but did not take warning; his blood will be on himself. But had he taken warning, he would have delivered his life.  But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman's hand.'  "Now as for you, son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel; so you will hear a message from My mouth and give them warning from Me.  When I say to the wicked, 'O wicked man, you will surely die,' and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require from your hand.  But if you on your part warn a wicked man to turn from his way and he does not turn from his way, he will die in his iniquity, but you have delivered your life."  That makes for a sobering thought...are we telling people about Christ the way we should be?

Philippians 4:13.--SMS

Backstory: "Square Peg"

Most of us, if we're truly honest, know what it is to feel like a square peg.  We've all had times in our lives when we have felt like misfits for whatever reason, like we somehow didn't fit in with the people around us.  That feeling--one with which I am as familiar as anyone else--was the driving force behind "Square Peg."

Of course, if we are followers of Christ, then the Bible tells us that we not only will not fit in with everyone around us, but that we should not.  Romans 12:2 commands us, "...do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect."  1 John 3:1 notes that, "For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him."  Jesus himself states in John 15:18 that, "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you."  That may sound daunting, but we know that God is with us. 

In the story, Ben finds that a big part of the reason that he feels like an outcast is that he is missing his purpose in life.  God has a purpose, a calling, for each of us.  If we're not in line with that calling, then we're going to feel out of place because we're missing the boat of what God has for us.

Now, as for the Denise character...if you've read the stories, you'll notice that a lot of my female characters are depicted as good-looking redheads.  That's a tribute to my wife, Cindy, the most beautiful redhead I've ever seen.  "Square Peg" is especially a tribute to her.  Before she came into my life, I was a loner--another sort of misfit feeling entirely.  When she came along, she solved that problem for me with her love.  In that way, the relationship between Ben and Denise is a reflection of this.  I chose the name Denise because that is her middle name.  Of course, if you read further into the story, you'll see that Cindy and the Denise character diverge dramatically once you get past names and hearts...in other words, no extra toes!

Philippians 4:13.--SMS

Backstory: "The Bloody Bucket"

Sometimes, stories about your own family--even family members you've never met yourself--can provide the seeds for stories.

Personally, I don't drink, but there have been a lot of alcoholics in my family (which, in turn, is part of the reason I don't drink...I don't want to risk having inherited that particular gene).  In fact, whenever my Grandma would tell me a story about one of my uncles, many of whom had passed on before I was born, the stories would often start with the phrase, "There was this one time when your Uncle Whoever got drunk and..."

One story that always stood out in my mind went something like this, "One time your Uncle Marvin got drunk and said that he was going to open up a restaurant called the Bloody Bucket, but he never did."  Apparently old Uncle Marvin, upon recovering his senses, realized that the restaurant game wasn't for him and that such a name would certainly be a business-killer.  However, that concept--giving such a bizarre name to a restaurant--stuck with me.  Long before I had a plot to go with it, I decided that it would make for a neat story title and story setting.

As for the story itself, the idea of guilt over a loved one's passing is also something that my family has been familiar with through the years.  When I was ten years old, our house caught fire.  My mom, little brother, and I were the only ones there at the time, as my father was working graveyard shift.  Mom woke me up at something like 4 AM to tell me that the house was on fire.  She told me that she would get my brother if I would go next door to get help.  However, living outside the city limits, our "next door neighbor" didn't live as close by as they might have had we lived in town.  So, while I was getting help, my mom and brother got trapped in the house and died of smoke inhalation.  For a long time, I wrestled with guilt, wondering what might have happened had I been able to get help sooner. 

In years since, God has shown me that it wasn't my fault, that nothing I could have done differently would have produced a different result.  However, I will never forget what that guilt (kept secret for many years) felt like.  Ultimately, I decided that such guilt and the deliverance from it, couched in some Peretti-like spiritual warfare, would make an appropriate driving thrust for "The Bloody Bucket."  For that reason, this may be the most personal story for me in "Zero Hour."

Thanks for reading, and Philippians 4:13.--SMS