Den Warren's Blog

Evangelicals can easily see the dangers of science without ethics. And we know very well that atheist scientists have no guiding belief system that must compel them to have ethics other than following what is popular at the time.

Christians are generally reknown for writing bad scifi, especially with a lack of evangelical authors. There is no excuse for that, since we evangelicals should be the experts when it comes to understanding ideas that are contrary to scripture, which result in "unintended consequences", which we evangelicals can see coming a mile away.

There are plenty of plot ideas to be generated from all this rampant dysfunction and potential for even greater heights of dystopia. Fruit hanging on the low branches, just waiting to be picked. (Okay, its not really quite that easy.)


For my book, The Lucid Series: Android Uprising I chose a combination of things that may well be in the future.

Christian publishing houses gravitate towards only a couple of main sub-genres, because they sell. It may be up to the Indie publishers to create and revitalize a genre that could actually cause a Christian male to pick up a book by a Christian author that actually promotes Christianity which stirs them and invigorates them.

The Christian cyberpunk sub-genre can only become better if Christians can show some support by reading and reviewing the books so others believers can spend a minute portion of their entertainment budget on them.

Prayerfully consider joining our Goodreads Group: Christian Cyberpunk Books if you want to write in the genre, be a reviewer, or are a fan of it. This group does a good job of encouraging and supporting each other.

Christian; Do you know of someone who would read an E-book (or paperback) which has been described as ". . . a truly fun book of solidly Christian cyberpunk dystopian YA."?

See full review HERE.

This award-winning, vetted novel, suitable for young adults has the Gospel message appearing throughout The Lucid Series: Android Uprising in as natural way as possible.

This E-book is now FREE. You could tell everyone on your mailing list about it. All you have to do is go to the Lucid Series: Android Uprising page, and click the button that says "Give as a Gift", then enter your Amazon password and enter their email (and a message if you want) and BAM! they can claim the E-book, which they can easily read on their device, even if they have to download the Kindle Reader which is free and only takes a couple of clicks.

I pray that by this time next year there will be several accounts of life-changing testimonials that I can add to this blog. Maybe your friend or relative can be one of them.

This book is also available in paperback, which could be used to lend out to multiple readers.

Please pass this message along on your social media.

God Bless,
Den

There are probably over a billion Christians in the world, with growing numbers on all continents. Many, if not most of them spend part of their money on entertainment that is secular, or anti-Christian.

What if the throngs of Christians, as a group, started spending that same money on entertainment media that glorified Jesus?

First of all, many would peddle items that masquerade as Christian to try and get their share of the pie. But this is already at work. The Christian genres are already so plugged up with non-Christian wares looking for an easy market, that you can't find the genuine article.

Secondly, funds would dry up for so many projects that are helping turn our fellow countrymen against us.

There is help for this situation out there: David Bergsland's Reality Calling. Is a review site out there that does in-depth reviews on Christian books using definite criteria.

My own book, The Lucid Series: Android Uprising is one that a Christian would find acceptable as well.

It is long past due that this situation should be changed. Christian authors must learn how to produce more attractive products and learn how to be more bold with sharing their faith. Christian consumers of anti-Christian media should turn from it and spend a little time to find out which items are worth supporting.

There is not much to tell about the what I physically did in making this book. In the first draft the plot was a horrible mess. Nothing fit. The prose was beyond a disaster. I went through seven complete edits of it plus an unknowable amount of other edits to clean it up.

I have written other books in the past that I wanted to write. The Kings and Clans Trilogy, and some pretty funny spec fiction books. They all were from a Christian worldview. They contain a lot of rougher language than what the Christian market wants, but Jesus is mentioned in them. People mostly don't like that. Whatever.

But as I was writing The Lucid Series and the plot became clear, I realized that this was a book that needed to be written. Each day I prayed for the mishmash mess I made to come together. Then the message in the book became more clear. Each day the book became less mine and more God's. Ideas came into my groggy brain, seemingly from nowhere.

Yes, I was used to write it, but I'll have to give God the credit for any success it may have. (I am not saying this is any kind of inspired writing like scripture. He just helped me do better than my best.)

The voices in my head tend to believe whatever the market says about my writing, but this time I know that it is a book that has enormous potential to win souls and bolster Christians. That is why I am trying to keep myself out of it. It is like it is not mine to sell. I am only charging the minimum that is allowable by the market. (Not saying I will never raise the price, as that may be an advantage. Sometimes they get more downloads if the price is raised.)

Right now it just needs reviewers. Please prayerfully consider helping out with this. Then if you like it, please consider distributing paperbacks.

The Lucid Series: Android Uprising

Cyberpunk is the science fiction world of androids, clones, cyborgs, synthetic presences, nanites, virtual reality simulations, or any other such high tech thing that affects Man's reality.

I contend that cyberpunk is the perfect vehicle to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our world where the populace spends its time consuming the far-out products of pop culture.

Why?
1. Cyberpunk is the most relatable speculative fiction sub-genre. It is more relatable and realistic than space travel or any fantasy. Unlike Amish romances, It is something men may read.

2. It is easy to believe that a cyberpunk setting, in its high tech attempts to make a perfect world, will have severe problems resulting in dystopia. We know from our current situation (sexual identity, same-sex marriage, abortion, etc.) that Man typically messes things up.

I have spent a lifetime reading Christian Apologetics, and I believe that I have written a compelling case for the Gospel in my novel: The Lucid Series: Android Uprising. My goal is to win souls with it.
So I prayerfully request the help of Christians with:

1. Please pray for my work like you would any other missionary.

2. Please get my book and do a review on it. Reviews are what keeps the book in the front of the lists. My book is competing against many books in the "Christian Fiction" category that never even mention Jesus. My e-book is priced as low as is allowable on Kindle. But to show you my sincerity, I will gift you a copy if you will review it.

3. Consider giving paperback copies as gifts, especially to young adult readers.

4. Consider writing your own Christian cyberpunk novel. Please give me lots of "competition" for winning souls.

5. Join the Goodreads Christian Cyberpunk Books Club in Goodreads for information on more titles in this sub-genre.

The Lucid Series: Android Uprising

Den Warren

Modern pop culture has an immense influence upon people’s lives because they spend so much time immersing themselves in it. But what about the content of this immersion? Does it bring people closer to God, or just occupy their attention?
Christian fiction is a small segment of today’s popular culture. What is the goal of it? Is it to entertain and edify Christians? Is it to subtly nudge people into considering giving more of their lives to God? Probably yes to both, but perhaps a greater goal should be considered.
What about the purpose of Christian fiction to leading people to Christ? Shouldn’t that be a primary objective? We writers are told in every book about writing fiction that we should never preach in our writing. Why not? It is true that many will be turned off by preachy fiction, but what if some readers are not? Are we Christian authors willing to risk a writing career to help bring a needy soul to Christ?
If you write Christian fantasy, is the Christian theme of your story so buried in allegory that Christ cannot be seen without someone writing anther book about it? Will your stories make the reader want to read the Bible, or play Dungeons and Dragons? Will your stories make the reader remember your name, or the name of Jesus?
If you write Christian romance, is the goal or the protagonist to fall in love with the man, or with Jesus? Is there a basis for the claim that your romance novel is Christian?
Christian characters should be a lot more than just nice. So many already have the wrong idea that Christians are to just be nice and never say anything disagreeable. Just because a book does not have vulgarity does not make it Christian. Nice is not the same as good. Read more about this here for free.
Like most men, I wouldn’t read much Christian romance. But here are a couple of Christian cyberpunk books that you can trust to be thought provoking to someone pondering spiritual matters and presented with the Christian option. The Lucid Series: Android Uprising and The Last Christian. Both of these would make a thoughtful gift.

Cyberpunk is science fiction category typically in a high tech dystopian setting.

Most Cyberpunk fans scoff at the idea of Christians writing Cyberpunk. Christians are supposedly against all science, backwards, etc. Only secular atheists should be able to write scifi. Christians belong in a church. Those who claim to be cyberpunk fans become irrationally close-minded, intolerant, hostile and insulting to conservatives.

This anti-Christian liberal view is laughable. How scientific is it for a person to claim they are a sex when their chromosomes belong to another sex? How scientific is it to deny that life begins at conception? Where is the science in evolution that can not explain the origin of the universe? Apply Darwinian evolution to other fields such as psychology and you see that it is based upon Freud, who was a complete fraud.

But secular minds still cannot conceive of how Christians can be forward thinking. Christians want the old way of parenting, of running a government, of running a household or business . . . only because they worked a lot better than the current disastrous complete failures in liberal social experimentation. However, that does not mean that Christians are against progress and innovation.

The main reason there is a definite place for Christians in Science Fiction is because of Man's failures when they stray from God, and the predictable nature of those future failed attempts to fix the failures. In fact, because of this, a conservative viewpoint is much more suited to writing science fiction. Fantasy, on the other hand, would seem to be the domain of the liberal, whether in fiction, or non-fiction.

Fiction works when things in the story go wrong, not when it is all unicorns and rainbows. It would be pretty tough to come up with some tension where Christians are causing problems to the righteous atheists, although scifi writers like to try going that way with it. That is why scifi writers continually use belligerent aliens or zombies as antagonists.

My novel; The Lucid Series: Android Uprising https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077QFKNPL
is set in a dystopian cyberpunk universe. It is hard-hitting to the point of being sermonized. You won't find much like it out there. It was written with definite Christian themes. It is a clean-language book with violent action.

. . . In a dystopian cyberpunk 2215, the former US was fragmented into multiple small countries.
. . . People in the UN proxy state of Homeland are controlled by psychotropic drugs, corrupted education, propaganda and oppressive laws.
In this story . . .
. . . Computer hacking clones are trying to get rich no matter what they have to do.
. . . A garbage collector hates everything about his life and goes rogue.
. . . An entire strain of genetically-engineered children is to be culled because of an imperfection.
. . . A tyrannical government robot unit is led by a ruthless being hiding behind a synthetic presence.
. . . A clone couple is living off of the grid and expecting an illegal child.
. . . A series of androids vow to fight for the truth even to the point of war.
. . . And a boy asks, “Is God real?”
The Lucid series is a unique clean-language novel that has heavy hitting, brutally honest edgy Christian themes and some graphic action.

The Unbelievable Universe Progressive Novel method is a dynamic, interactive approach for a group of writers to putting together a novel. This system just kind of organically mutated while we were working on The Supreme Archvillain Election. Producing a novel using the UU Progressive Novel approach cannot be accomplished without 100% of contributing authors being willing to patiently collaborate with each other. All of the authors must be willing to accept the conclusion of the book, and even the possibility that their character be killed, which is typical in UU stories. Also, they have to be willing to accept profits after expenses only, not pay.
Also, the editor must be open-minded, fostering an environment of creativity, yet willing to say “no” in a constructive way when necessary. The editor must be willing to become the edited and truly listen to the suggestions of the authors, who in some cases and some aspects may be more capable than the editor anyhow.
The Supreme Archvillain Election (SAE) was published with the participation of just such authors, and hopefully, such an editor (me) as described above. We had a lot of collaborative discussion about the direction of SAE among each other. I think producing SAE in this manner was an enjoyable process for all of us.
First, a call for submissions was made for each author to create a supervillain who would be giving a speech at an evil meeting of evils on why they would make the best Archvillain to lead a new evil organization. Each contributing author was to write a short story on their speech, and then were also given the option of submitting a second short story showing their character in action prior to the meeting. In retrospect, it would have been better if the editor would have written the complete opening chapter to introduce the other authors to more details of the story.
Then, as the stories came in, they were compiled into a first draft. Each story was thoroughly edited by the individual authors, and the editor, but together were still considered to be a first draft. Here’s why: The complete collection of all the stories are then reviewed and edited by each of the contributing writers. The writers then communicated with each other with their ideas. This was not to criticize their cuddly creations, but to help meld the story together. Any changes to a story had to be submitted by the author of the story and approved by the editor. At this point, some plotting changes can be made.
After everything was compiled, the editor sent out the second draft to each of the authors. At this point, the goal was to focus on fixing plot problems, or improving wording rather than looking for new plot twists, etc, which could be an endless cycle. After this was done, the whole thing was sent out in a third draft to make sure that the editor didn’t get any of the changes wrong. A third draft would not have to be the final one. The editor would have to make that call.
More UU Novels: If there is sufficient interest in producing a sequel or another totally different progressive novel, or even other simultaneous projects, the participating writers from a previous volume will be given the first choice of participating. One of the previous contributors may be approved as an editor for a project if they desire. Any new members to the group will be admitted only by the approval of all of the returning participating members. We’re not mean or snooty, we just want to maintain the chemistry and continuity among us. Plus, it’s a loyalty thing; and we only need so many in the group. The publisher reserves the right to remove an author or reject a story. If someone reading this seriously wanted to join us, they should contact one of us and have some writing to show us. –Den Warren

I write books and articles that I would want to read.
As a reader, when I read fiction, in order for me to finish it, I want it to be fast-moving stories that hold my interest.
Lots of action is a vital component. When the scenes are being built, I like it when there is some humor to keep me entertained through the slow spots. I like the story to have high stakes; for me I want the stakes to be life and death, not really about whether they break up or get married.
I also prefer my stories to be written from a Christian worldview. But I have no use for namby-pamby wimp characters who are "nice" under all circumstances, and never do anything wrong. I want the stories to have a theme that leaves you thinking about how things are done, or even learn something. I'm not talking about any more liberal sensitivities, but an affirmation of some real-world wisdom or take me to a world I never knew about.
If you know of such a book that has all of the above, I would like to know of it.
Anyway, that is what I want to read, so that is what I write. I have written in dystopian, fantasy, sci-fi, and superhero genres. If you like the same things, I suggest you give my work a look.

Kings and Clans Trilogy
Fantasy Quest: Vampire Hack
Metahuman Wars

As an Indie Author and Publisher, we are always looking for no-cost ways to promote our work. The main way most of us do it is to follow each other and retweet each others' publications.

I have over 15k followers on Twitter, which is about average, I suppose. So when I tweet one of my books, about two or three hundred people will see the tweet. Then, if someone retweets the tweet to their followers, that is more people who will see the message who perhaps have never heard of me or my books. Some of those may be inclined to follow me. So the activity breeds more activity.

I try to always return the favor is someone retweets one of my books. Even if they are not an indie author, I will go to their site and retweet their pinned tweet, so long as it is not porn or something objectionable to my readers.

There are lots of twitter users on Goodreads. If you have a Twitter account, I will almost always follow you back. Follow me @D3NWARR3N.