My Decision To Self-Publish

This past summer has been a time of transition for me. When Sylvia and I went to our vacation home in Colorado for two months I fully intended to devote a major chunk of my time to writing. As it turned out, that didn't happen. What did happen is a decision to move more deeply into self-publishing. For starters I decided to publish the third novel in what I call the Albert and Tillie series.

I decided to do this for a couple reasons. I've dropped a summary of this novel, Freya's Child, into the hands of a about three dozen editors. One after the other said he or she was not interested in representing me to the publishing world. My writing friends kept telling me to persist. Some wise agent would finally come along to represent me, they insisted. I decided to ignore their counsel. Let me tell you why.

What I am trying to do with this novel is unique in a sense. Albert Freitag, my protagonist, is forced to deal with the occult side of the Nazi movement, a side never or seldom portrayed in fiction. To date I have yet to find a novel that explores this issue. Hitler, Himmler and a large number of other Nazi leaders were committed to the overthrow of the Christian church and all it stands for. They sought to replace it with what they considered the real religion of the Aryan race.

Freitag, whose family name means Friday in English, has to question his own faith and his commitment to his wife and newborn daughter. He has to deal with a priestess devoted to this revived worship of ancient Nordic gods. Specifically, she is a devotee of the goddess Freya. The goddess Freya is the Nordic equivalent of Venus or Aphrodite among the Greeks and Romans. She is the goddess of love, family, home--and often war. Albert is forced by this priestess to question his belief in Christ and the entire Christian story. This confrontation goes to the very roots of his existence. Ironically, his last name, Freitag, points to that day in the week originally named after the goddess Freya. In fact, we seldom realize that every day in our week is named after one of the Nordic gods. But I get ahead of myself.

In my story Hulda Schwarz, the priestess, uses her wiles, her beauty, her seductive powers and her considerable contacts with demonic forces to draw Albert away, both from his beliefs and from his wife. The story question is whether he will be able to resist the temptation.

I have found no agents willing to represent me as I strive to surface these issues  in a world now removed by half a century from Nazism and what it represented. However, the gods are still with us! They have not left. They may have lost World War II. The mere humans they used to tear up and destroy the lives of millions are dead. But the gods live on, still ripping down and overthrowing Christian civilization to replace it with the same idolatry, bigotry, hatred, racial prejudice, pride, lust, lawlessness and greed they have always promoted.

Since I found no agent to represent me to the publishing world, I decided to do my own representing. I decided to work with a print-on-demand publisher and some marketing experts who will assist me in getting Freya's Child into print and into the hands of people interested in learning about the occult side of Nazis and the demonic forces that continue to war against everything we Christians have inherited and still believe in. 

Keep tuned for more about my journey in days to come.