AUTHOR BIO:
Michael J. Webb
graduated summa cum laude from the
University of Florida and obtained his J. D. from the same university. Over the past forty years he has travelled
the world in search of adventure.
He is a history buff, both ancient and modern,
and is fascinated by the intersection of the scientific, supernatural, and
Biblical world views, and has studied and taught from the Bible extensively for
more than twenty-five years. He is also intrigued by recent discoveries in
quantum physics that are now providing extraordinary insights into the reality
of the spirit realm, especially as it relates to the study of Light. He incorporates all of the above into his supernatural
thrillers.
Michael and his wife make their home in
North Carolina.
Books by Michael:
The Master’s Quilt, The Nephilim Parchments, The Song of the Seraphim
(Giants in the Earth trilogy), The Oldest Enemy, Infernal Gates. He is currently working on Devil’s Cauldron,
the sequel to Infernal Gates. He also
authored a non-fiction work entitled In the Cleft of the Rock: Insights into
the Blood of Jesus, Resurrection Power, and Saving the Soul.
WHAT
MADE YOU DECIDE TO START WRITING?
I began brainstorming about becoming an author in my mother’s womb. As a
child, I loved to make up and tell fanciful, exciting stories, or act them
out. A couple of the kids I grew up with formed a neighborhood drama
company and we put on plays. The first one was about kings and queens and
dragons and mythical characters, inspired by the ‘60’s Sinbad movies. I
wrote the stories. Later, I switched to poetry in high school and the first
couple of years of college, hoping to catch the ear of a fair maiden, then
tried my hand at short stories.
I soon realized that the stories I
wanted to tell wouldn’t fit into either of those molds.
I started thinking about writing novels
as a career in my late twenties, but didn’t begin working at the craft
regularly until 1984. I spent the next six years researching and writing
a novel that was longer than Moby Dick, War and Peace, or Atlas Shrugged.
When I finished it, I proudly sent it off to an agent and received an eight
page, single-spaced, typed rejection letter. I had to pay this NY Agent a
fee to read the darn thing, so the rejection letter cost me a little less than
$100/page. Anyway, that attempt at “The Great American Novel” eventually
became a trilogy. The first two books were published as paperbacks in the
early ‘90’s. Then, my editor left the publishing house, and the new
editor wasn’t a fan of trilogies, or my work. So, I got one of those “don’t
call us, we’ll call you letters,” and my novel went into the writers “black
hole” for twenty years.
I kept writing--and kept getting more
rejection letters.
Then, in August 2011 I entered a
contest sponsored by Risen Books and submitted a novel I'd
written in 1998-1999. Much to my surprise, it won and The Oldest Enemy was published in October 2012! I’d
worked hard for a couple of years trying to get agents and publishers
interested in the fast-paced supernatural thriller, to no avail. It had been
hidden away in a drawer, gathering dust, until the contest. Interestingly, many
of the exciting events portrayed in are now unfolding on the world stage,
especially in the Middle East.
Suddenly, I’d found a way out of the
black hole! I’ve just released Infernal Gates and
intend to release a new suspense thriller each year.
I’ve never gave up the dream of seeing
the three novels I’d written way back in the 1980’s published in their
entirety. I’m very happy to report that I released the complete Giants in the Earth trilogy as E-books on Amazon.com in April of this
year.
Just goes to show that timing
is everything!
Oh, by the way, I still have the
rejection letter, and no, I didn’t frame it.
Too long—just like my first attempt at
a novel!
WHAT
AUTHORS HAVE INFLUENCED YOUR WRITING STYLE?
Hemingway, Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, James Rollins, Daniel Silva, Frank
Peretti, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Phillip K. Dick, James Byron Huggins,
and J.R.R. Tolkien, not in any particular order.
WHAT
DOES YOUR WRITING SCHEDULE LOOK LIKE?
Chaotic!
I write when I can, mostly at night and on the weekends. I have to set
aside blocks of time, because when I go into my office and start writing I get
“lost” in the process. Hours pass and seem like only minutes. I see
all my books as movies, and I simply transcribe what my characters say and do.
It’s really quite interesting and a heck of a lot of fun—most of the
time. I do suffer occasionally from “writer’s block,” but I have a proven
strategy to overcome it rapidly. I lay down, close my eyes, and
pray. Usually, within a short period of time, scenes and dialogue start
scrolling through my head once again. Rarely, I have to walk away for a
day or two and come back to the story. I spend a lot of time in my day
job travelling by car to appointments, and I occasionally use some of the time
to develop scenes in my head. Scenes also come to me at the gym, while
I’m shaving, watching a movie—well, you get the idea.
I write by the seat-of-my-pants. I typically start a novel with a vivid
opening, an idea of two or three key scenes I want included, and a very rough
idea of where I want to end up. After that, I just start writing and God
does the rest.
WHY
DO YOU WRITE THE KIND OF STORIES YOU DO?
Someone once said, "Inside every
fat book is a thin book trying to get out . . ." I can't help
myself--I write "fat" books! I've tried to write books under one
hundred thousand words, but no matter how hard I try, I just can't seem to lose
the weight.
My very first novel started out at over
two hundred thousand words--and became a trilogy. I've tried writing short
stories and they turn into novellas. I've tried novellas and they turn
into full-blown novels. I'm a hopeless lover of deep characterization and back
story, lots of action, and page-turning plots, something nearly impossible for
me to do in less than one hundred thousand words.
I'm a storyteller at heart, and I love
entertaining readers with pulse-pounding action, flawed--but
intriguing--characters, and fascinating plots that have my readers asking,
"How did he come up with that?" My tagline is "stories
that ignite imaginations and stir souls..." I like to get people
thinking about the world they live in from a very different perspective than
they are used to, especially as it relates to the realm of the spirit, angels
and demons, and the intersection of the biblical, scientific, and historical
disciplines.
There is an ancient battle being fought
around us on an hourly basis in the realm of the spirit. It regularly
manifests in the natural, terrestrial realm, yet few people really understand
the true nature of the battle. Hence, many perish for lack of knowledge.
Like Toto in the Wizard of Oz, I love pulling back the curtain and exposing
"the wizard" for who he is--a short, balding, fat man from
Kansas! That’s not to say the wizard doesn’t have power, he does.
But with the proper weapons of warfare we may lose a few battles, but we
ultimately win the war. I like to think that in some small way my stories
have the potential to function like the red pill Nero took in The Matrix—we
awaken and discover just how deep the rabbit hole is. Once that
happens, like Nero, we are accountable for our knowledge.
Nevertheless, while all of my suspense
thrillers, including Infernal Gates, have the purpose of
provoking my readers to examine their belief system, at their core I hope they
are simply good stories; the kind that keep you turning pages long after the
sun goes down and make you wish there was more to read once you've
finished. My heart is to figuratively serve up a ten course meal with
each new story I tell, and leave my readers hungry for their next serving.
Don't get me wrong, there is definitely
a place in this world for short stories, novellas, and novels under
a hundred thousand words. I just won't be writing them anytime soon.
WHAT
IS THE MOST INTERESTING THING YOU HAVE LEARNED FROM YOUR RESEARCH?
Some Mathematicians, Physicists, Theologians, Paranormal Researchers, Ancient
Cultures, Writers, and the deceased Rod Serling, the creator of The
Twilight Zone, have something in common. They all know there is at
least one additional dimension beyond space, time, and matter. They all use
different terminology to describe it, but when you strip away the varied lingua
francas, they’re all talking about the same thing. I call it the
realm of the Spirit, others refer to it as the Fourth Dimension, and still
others call it parallel universes.
Whatever the terminology, we risk much
if we ignore its impact on our lives, both now and for eternity.
I’ve been studying Light for a very
long time as it relates to this additional dimension. Recent research in
Quantum Physics is just starting to confirm some very fascinating things about
the nature of Light and its relationship to creation and humanity. One of the
most astounding things I’ve been studying for over two decades is the
incredible idea, first expressed in Book of Genesis, that Adam and Eve were not
initially created from “dust,” but from the very foundational building block
that God used to create everything—Light. Some of the very first
rabbis believed and taught this. There is very compelling linguistic
evidence, in more than one place in Scripture, that states this concept clearly
when one uses a pure translation and doesn’t impose any kind of religious bias
to create a man-centered vs. a God-centered doctrine. Accepting this idea makes
a great deal of sense in context with numerous biblical principles and opens
the door to understanding the complex nature of the Spirit Realm in ways that
science is just beginning to acquire. I discuss this at length in my
non-fiction work In the Cleft of the Rock: Insights into the
Blood of Jesus, Resurrection Power, and Saving the Soul.
One of the passages I quote most often
in my teachings is from the Book of Hosea, where God speaks through the prophet
and says, “My people perish for lack of knowledge . . .” There is much we
have yet to learn about the realm of the Spirit, and I’m convinced that in the
next few years the lines between Biblical, scientific, and mathematical truths
will become so blurred that we will wonder how we ever missed the obvious
Truth.
HOW
DO YOU LIKE TO SPEND YOUR TIME WHEN YOU'RE NOT WRITING?
My wife and I love to travel, both for ministry and fun. We have numerous
places on our bucket list to visit: Iceland, Australia/New Zealand,
Chile. I want to visit Antarctica, climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and to the Base
Camp on Everest. We love to snorkel, and our favorite place to get away
from it all is St. Johns in the U.S. Virgin Islands. We also enjoy
hiking, and I love horseback riding, although I don’t get to do it often.
We are “foodies” who love to try new and different restaurants and cuisines, and
going to movies.
HOW
CAN READERS CONTACT YOU AND/OR LEARN MORE ABOUT YOU AND YOUR WRITING?
BACK COVER BLURB FOR INFERNAL GATES:
Ethan Freeman, ex-Special Forces
Ranger, wakes up to discover he is the sole survivor of a fiery commercial
airline crash that killed his entire family.
His nightmare is only beginning when he becomes the FBI’s prime
suspect. Only Ethan knows he’s not a
cold-hearted murderer, but he has no idea what happened to him--and why he
alone survived.
He finds an unlikely ally in Sam
Weaver, the NTSB Chief Investigator. An
ex-military pilot, Sam senses Ethan is innocent. She tries to remain dispassionate in her
investigation of the crash even as she finds herself attracted to the man who
may be America=s worst homegrown mass-murderer.
Neither Ethan nor Sam realize that shadowy
spiritual forces are at work which will alter their lives forever.
A
monstrous evil, imprisoned since the time of the Pharaohs, has been released by
The Nine, a sinister group of powerful
men and women who believe they are the direct descendants of the
Anunnaki, ancient Sumerian gods. The demon they have unleashed intends to free
The Destroyer from The Abyss, the angelic prison referred to in the Book of
Revelation, and unleash a worldwide reign of terror and annihilation.
Facing impossible odds, time is
running out for Ethan and all of humanity as he is drawn into an ever-deeper conspiracy--millennia
in the making--and learns that he is the key to stopping The Nine. Will he overcome
his deepest fears and find reserves of strength he never knew he had as he confronts
pure evil in order to save himself and an unsuspecting world?
