Q & A with David Maine discussion

So, what would you like to know?

This was the book that hooked me. What started you writing "biblical fiction"? I would also like to hear some of your thoughts on the OT in general if you would care to expound upon that...

Biblical fiction, hmm... At the time I started The Pres (mid 2002) I didn't even know there was such a thing. I mean, I hadn't even heard of The Red Tent, which was in the process of becoming a huge book. I thought I was being totally original. Oops! Wrong again.

What got me started was some idle thought along the liens of, "Wow, I wonder what it must have been like to be Noah's kid and have this wacky dad who's prophesying the end of the world... and then he turns out to be right." The first thing I remember from the process was this image in my head, of people standing around, looking up at the sky as it starts to rain, and realizing, "Hey, the old guy was right after all." So it was more of a visual thing than any sort of philosoophical or theological idea.

Then when The Pres turned out okay, I started naturally thinking about other stories from the Old Testamant. I was nervous about just doing the same tricks over and over, which is why my approach to the three stories is so different each time, structurally and linguistically (Fallen moves backward in time, Samson is a first-person monologue throughout, etc).

As for the OT in general--what always strikes me is how huge it is compared to the NT, which is what was much more familiar to me growing up. The stories in the OT are wild, and often brutally violent. They really utilize the archetypal buildings blocks of drama--there's violence, and sex, and honor and betrayal, there's supernatural happenings, and there are moments of purity and kindness and, of course, plain evil. It's powerful stuff, and it's a lot less simplistic than the way it tends to get interpreted, either by fundamentalists who want to pull things from it to justify their actions, or by people who want to reject it all as a Sunday-school cartoon. It's a complicated and often contradictory set of stories, poems and lists; there's a lot to it, which is one reason, I guess, why it's lasted so long and remained so central to so many people's lives.

The Pres was amazing. The raw manly nature of Noah, his carnal needs taken out on his wife whom had an inner dialogue that made me sad and laugh all through the book. This whole family was as dysfunctional as any family now, but with ancient phrases instead of the cultural tags of today. It translates well for me. Noah being scorned and mocked for building the ark was well played. Then the having to kill an animal or two on the ark once at sea was important because it is what would have happened. The need for solice and chasing away boredom with sex was an interesting facet that has NOT gone away in today's society. Noah's own intter dialogue was a rollercoaster ride of sorts that I enjoyed whether he was happy with God or not. I listened to the audio books of this book, Fallen and Samson. They were all wel done and enjoyable.

While it would surely get people in an uproar, the story of Jesus's crucification would be interesting story to do. Also the last supper. Oh! And Revelations would be amazing but daunting. Any thoughts on those?

I've flirted with all of these but I've shied away from anything to do with Jesus because I think it would inevitably be taken as a commentary on Christianity. I mean, how could it not be? Making Jesus a character would require me to either represent him as divinity (taking a stand) or not (taking a stand). It's not that I don't have thoughts about this, it's just that I have no interest in proseltyizing, which is would I would be doing, almost by default, just by framing the story one way or the other.

Also, Jesus is just so much closer to us in terms of time, and is so thoroughly documented in the Bible, that there's a lot less to play with. I mean, Fallen represents about a page and a half of scripture, The Pres is aboout 4 pages, Samson is 6 or 8. The New Testament is a hundred pages or more, much more is widely known about the era, so I'd be far more constricted in what I could do (as long as I adhered to my general guideline for thse books, which is to add stuff but not contradict anything significant). Same with Moses, for what it's worth--Exodus is like 175 pages in my edition of the Bible. That's a book right there, not much for me to do.

Revelation, yeah, that would be fun and trippy and potentially disturbing. I will admit to some interest there... Not sure how to frame it though. And not sure how to present it without preaching. Never say never though.