The Writing of My Novel

This week, I finally did my last revisions to The Righteousness of Our Cause and published it with Amazon.com as an e-book.  The novel had been screaming to escape from my word file for five years.   I began it in 2006 and finally had it copyrighted in 2008.  Over the years, I had proofed and rewritten, and finally discarded it as obsolete, trite, too full of clichés, and badly written.    I have often said that the only thing worse than reading a bad novel is writing one!

Finally, in the middle of my medical leave of absence from the church where I am interim pastor,  I came to the conclusion that any novel has something to say or to express.   I had started writing the novel during a time of anger with my church denomination and then tried to take a fictionalized journey in the novel with two characters, Eric (a seminary student) and Beka (a medical resident) in their attempt to save their Church and their country from a group of power mad people.  This plot became a metaphor to what I felt was (and still is) an incipient but real infringement on the principle of separation of Church and State.

The plot may be thin, but the moral of the story is as thick as the present problems we find in the religious political terrain of our country today.  Some who read it will find the killings, violence, and diabolical actions of Church leaders too fantastic to believe.  Those of us who have watched and experienced the religious turmoil and battles in the last few decades will see them as metaphors for what has happened to many people of faith who have left the denomination or  faith altogether.  The novel can be found by going to amazon.com and entering "Dennis Herman" or The Righteousness of Our Cause.  Happy reading!