Friends,

I'm pleased to announce that my first novel, Follow the Devil / Follow the Light, will be published as a nine installment serial by Mockingbird with illustrations by Mikey Karpiel. The novel is a dark fantasy that draws inspiration from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Divine Comedy. You can read Stave One on September 5th here: https://mbird.com/. New installments will appear each week leading up to Halloween. After the initial run, Mockingbird will release a Kindle version available on Amazon.

I wrote the novel as an invitation to renew our spiritual imaginations, to "play" with the eternal verities we affirm in our creeds, and to contemplate the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins: "Christ plays in ten thousand places." Writing about realities like heaven and hell also felt sublimely punk rock in our post-truth era.

I've attached my "Note to Readers" below. There are some pretty dark moments along the way, but I promise everything works out for Joe Muggeridge (our protagonist) in the end.

Jeremiah


Note to Readers

Can the reality of Imago Dei eclipse the failings of an unlovable protagonist? Can the Christian imagination speak to a generation captivated by Stranger Things, Squid Game, and the Marvel universe? Can the means of pop culture advance theological ends? These were just some of the questions I wrestled with during the creation of Follow the Devil / Follow the Light.

What follows is a supposal, a work of fiction, a dark vision for dark times. There are fits of allegory throughout, but nothing to advance the tradition of Plato, Dante, Bunyan, Hawthorne, etc. I have no unique access into the provinces of the hereafter: infernal or beatific. Fortunately, neither do my readers. This side of the veil, we can only speculate “what dreams may come.”