A Single Step

I thought A Single Step would be a short story that would serve as a segue to bigger works, but it demanded to be told as a novel and that's how it ended up. I finished it and published it on Smashwords this weekend. A Single Step is my statement of how life is--how I've discovered it--that I leave as a record for my family, and for you, my readers. This story is based on my journey from fundamentalist religion to accepting spirituality as I encounter it. I mean it to be an expression of what I've experienced and what I've learned for my family and for you.

So after many months of hard work, with tremendous help and support from my wife, I've finished the tale-telling and the manuscript formatting, and published the results on Smashwords. Please check it out, and if you like what you see in the free first third of the story, I hope you'll purchase the remainder to experience the totality of the tale. And I would love to hear your thoughts on the story in comments to my journal, or in an email to my newsletter (see the ALSN tabe of my website).

A Single Step is the tale of a journey, and that may be the most fundamental of humanity's story-telling. Our life is a journey, and it's our desire that the journey be for a purpose and that we'll end it better than we started. In Western  culture, this idea of growth through journeying is brilliantly expressed in the the Odyssey. Many stories since have been built on that format. In modern times, it's best expression may be in The Lord of the Rings. Both stories were an inspiration to me and contributed to A Single Step.

The idea behind A Single Step is one of hope. Bobby Lorman begins his journey with tremendous obstacles. From the burden of the religious expectations of this family, to the practical consequences of having committed a crime, he must work his way through guilt and intimidations to find a way of living that works for him. Dogmas and doctrines won't help; he needs an experience with spiritual reality.

It is my own experience with spiritual reality that I want to share with you through my stories. In doing so, I hope we'll all discover that experience--that communion with the transcendent that enriches our lives and makes us believe that we can be more than what we are. For whatever reason, it seems that we find our inspiration and our best expression of ourselves through storytelling.

I hope my stories can do that for you, and that it all begins with A Single Step.