To start off 2024, I’m excited to announce Heretics of Piedmont: A Novel of the Waldensians as part of a unique giveaway!

The organizer of this giveaway, Jayna Baas, had such a creative idea to promote an amazing collection of books that literally spans centuries of faith.

As a side note, one of the books in this giveaway, Whose Waves These Are by Amanda Dykes, was one my wife and I read together. It was a favorite of ours in 2022, only to be topped by another Amanda Dykes novel: Set the Stars Alight.

I recently read a blog post by Pastor Tom Brennan titled, “How to Write a Book.” I’ve read two of his books and have been impressed by both the content and quality, so I knew his insight here would be valuable. A point he made in the post that caught my attention was this:

Only write a book if you have read at least twenty-five books on similar subjects.

I agreed, but then I wondered if I had read that amount for my two (almost three) fiction books. I realize nonfiction study is different from researching a novel, but still I think it’s a good standard to hold myself to. Had I done that though?

I’m not sure about everyone else, but for me it’s easy to be pulled into investing in shiny new tools when learning a skill.

When I picked up running, I heard about all the gadgets: smart watches, GPS, pricey shoes, running shirts, running shorts, head bands, wrist bands, armbands for your phone, apps for your phone, app subscriptions, virtual running coaches, and many more. Where do you start?

I’ve found writing to be the same. There are computer programs to write your first draft and others for editing; there are spelling/grammar checkers and analyzers that give you metrics for the whole manuscript (overused words, redundancies, glue words, etc.). But don’t forget about the research, plotting, and planning stages, each having their own array of tools you can choose from.

Continued from Part 1

I sat on a church pew one Saturday morning watching my children practice their Christmas program. It was going to last almost two hours, and I didn’t have anything except a notebook to occupy my mind.

Three days earlier, I had finished planning my first novel, but other than about thirty pages of notes, I hadn’t yet written anything. I wanted to write it, but I needed something to propel me into the actual first draft.

How did I find myself writing a story about Renaissance-era religious dissenters?

Since I can remember, I’ve had a love of geography. Some of my first memories were from watching the 1990 animated movie, The Rescuers Down Under. There’s a short scene where the heroes relay an important message from New York City to Australia. The camera zooms out to show a map and how a telegraph message went from point to point, halfway around the globe. I would have my Fisher Price globe with me and would trace my finger across the places where that message landed.

“A trailer for a book? Really?”

Trailers for movies have been around for a long time, but it wasn’t until video distribution became simple in the mid-2000’s (especially in the advent of YouTube) that book trailers came into existence.

For Heretics of Piedmont, I read from multiple sources that a trailer is helpful, but not totally necessary. I didn’t pursue it until just before that book’s release in September 2021. Video production is not at all something I was comfortable with, so I scoured Fiverr for a seller who could develop in a style I liked.

Did you know the Waldensians had their own translation of the Bible? It was probably translated from an Old Latin version (often called the Vetus Latina, not to be confused with Jerome’s Latin Vulgate) into Old Occitan (also called Romaunt or Provençal over 1,000 years ago.

In Heretics of Piedmont and its sequel (whose name is yet to be revealed), I wanted to add a couple places where the Waldensians quoted or read from the Bible in their native tongue. I mentioned the book, The Romaunt Version of the Gospel according to St John, in the Selected Bibliography section of Heretics of Piedmont, which ended up being an incredible resource for understanding the Occitan Bible. The author, William Gilly, transcribed the entirety of John’s Gospel from the original parchment manuscript into easily consumed text.

Part way into writing Heretics of Piedmont I found myself typing the phrase: “after a few minutes.” I paused, shut my eyes, and doubts entered my mind. That wasn’t the first time I had used a phrase like that, but it felt like I should check into it.

Heretics of Piedmont is set in the 15th century—1458 to be precise. Did people even think in minutes and seconds then? Did numerical time-of-day exist in the common person’s mind? After some study, I found that most people—especially those outside the major cities—only thought of time in relation to the sun’s position in the sky.

The last few pages in Heretics of Piedmont, after the story and epilogue, are acknowledgments. I am very thankful for those who supported me through my first writing journey. You can read those pages for yourself, so I’ll refrain from reiterating them here. I want to give special attention to my wife, Andrea.

A few years ago, I remember her asking me a question: “What’s one of your dreams you’d like to see come true.”

Have you ever read a story—whether a novel or a children’s book—where you rolled your eyes at the unbelievable? In fantasy and fairy tales, we expect to encounter extraordinary or even absurd characters, people, and settings. That expectation allows you to continue on and enjoy the story despite the fiction. But if we experience a contrived plot or unfactual statement, no matter the genre, we feel cheated and deflated.

I would say the genre of Heretics of Piedmont, historical fiction, has a similar but deeper challenge. Very little has been written about fifteenth century Waldensians. What accounts exist are described in, at most, a few vague paragraphs. I admit, I was deliberate in choosing that century versus the later ones; we have many more vivid accounts in the 16th and 17th centuries. Historical details of men such as Joshua Janavel or events like the Piedmontese Easter are easy to find. The preceding periods of Waldensian history are spotty and mostly from their papal enemies.

We are in an age of endless information—one might even argue too much information. Not only can we find a diagram illustrating the Pythagorean theorem in seconds by reaching into our pocket and tapping a glass pane a few times, but we also know minute life details of our friends, acquaintances, and strangers around the earth. For most of us, information is both easy to access and readily available.

I decided to write Heretics of Piedmont in the fall of 2020. This was a time when the United States, after a lull in restrictions during the summer, began to lock down again. However, to write the novel, I needed information—lots of it.

Modern society, perhaps more than ever, drives us to consume. We consume products then dispose of them when they become outdated. We absorb all that our phones, computers, Alexa’s, and streaming service demands. Though some of us may spend less time consuming than others, we still devour food, media, and words daily.

And what of our relationship with God? We can sit under preaching three times per week. We read and prayerfully consider the Bible, which of course is all good. But I argue that just as we consume, we also ought to create.

With a story set in the fifteenth century featuring oppressed Christians, it is impossible to avoid talking about the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, they were the ones doing the oppressing. In a sense, it would be easy for me to paint the Catholic Church as pure evil—the persecutors of God’s people, the Mary-worshipers, the harlot of Babylon.

But Heretics of Piedmont would be very edgy, boring, and frankly, a bad novel if I went down that road. I certainly wouldn’t want to read a book like that. Representing the Roman Church with a straw man might seem like the way to travel, but I would be doing my readers a great disservice. I could have used scare quotes around the word church when speaking about Catholics, leaned into conspiracy theories about Jesuits (even though they didn’t exist yet), and resorted to a cheap caricature of what the medieval Catholic Church was.