Scinegue, book 1 in The Scinegue Series, is my debut novel, and I'm very excited about it. I didn't set out to write a novel. I was simply listening to the radio one day and heard a report about elderly people in another country basically being killed at hospitals. According to the report, the sick, elderly people were dehydrated to speed up their deaths.
That one report touched something in me, and I came home and started typing. I'm still not sure where a trash collector named Billy came from, but for the most part the story just flowed from me onto my computer. I've said from day one that God must have put the story in me because I wasn't trying to write a book, I wasn't searching for ideas to write about, and if I had thought about it, I just don't think I would have chosen to write from a male perspective. But the words just kept coming. Even then I wasn't planning to write a book, much less a series. But again, the words kept coming and I soon had several chapters written.
Sure there were some tough days when I didn't think I was capable of completing an entire novel. Those were the days I listened to Casting Crown's Voice of Truth over and over (and over). That's a wonderful song to listen to no matter where you are in your life. (I really wanted to mention it in Scinegue, but with copyright issues, etc. I figured it would be better not to.)
I really wasn't expecting the Supernatural twist that comes at the end of the story, but I like it, and I like how it opened up a door for the following books in the series to have a bit of a Supernatural/Fantasy flavor. I made a point of not imbuing my characters with Supernatural abilities themselves. They have some fun high-tech devices that Scinegue invents, but I wanted any powers in the book to come from God.
As a debut book,
Scinegue unfortunately wasn't the best it could be when it was originally released in August 2013. I thought it was at the time, but I've learned much more about writing and publishing since then. That being the case,
Scinegue has received some changes over the past year: A new cover, typos corrected and the entire first chapter scrapped. (I really liked that first chapter but realized it didn't add much to the story ; >( )
I've contacted Amazon and asked them to release the updated version of
Scinegue to everyone who has purchased it. It's at their discretion whether they do or not. If you receive an email from Amazon saying there is a new version of the book, now you'll understand why. The story hasn't changed but hopefully the delivery is better. I'm sure it can be made even better and I imagine I will continue perfecting it as I learn more but it has already come a long ways from its original release.
