Q: Where did the idea for Entropy Gate come from.
A: I had an idea about a vortex of some sort that was destroying Jupiter and a group of Russian and American scientists explore it.
Q: Didn’t that happen in 2010?
A: Yeah…it sort of did. I was going to scrap the idea, but then I turned it around and went with Venus. Once I did that, any similarity to the movie (and book) dissolved.
Q: And Father Michael?
A: Yes?
Q: I mean, where did he come from?
A: I think he comes from the same place that all of my characters come from. He’s a combination of people I know and, I suppose, a little bit of me.
Q: And the others?
A: David Frank, possibly the most controversial character, isn’t anyone I know, but I always pictured Jean Reno as the actor to play him (if a movie was ever made) and some of the dialog is actually written to match his vocal cadence and vocabulary.
Q: Why do you say controversial?
A: Because I’m writing stories with strong, positive Christian themes and he’s a likable atheist.
Q: And his likeability is an issue?
A: For some it might be. But I have met nice atheists and agnostics who haven’t said I was an idiot for believing in God. I have met, one in particular, who was just a total jerk and threw his atheism around like a hammer challenging everyone who believed that there could possibly be a higher being to argue with him. He was at grad school. We kicked him out of a party.
Q: For being a jerk.
A: Yes. But sometimes the whole notion of having an atheist as a likeable character is odd for me.
Q: Because…
A: A friend I grew up with went from being a Christian to an agnostic to an atheist and I have a hard time with that sort of evolution.
Q: Has that changed your character at all?
A: Oh, no. David Franke is locked in. He’s a real person now.
Q: Real-
A: As real as the others. Michael, Chen, Artimus, their all like real people in my mind.
Q: Have you ever had to kill off one of these real characters?
A: Yes…it’s a rather funny story actually. In Return (book two) one of the main characters dies. I had always planned on having him not make it through the story, but my original plan saw him dying a completely different way. I wrote myself into a corner where he was the only one to be able save the rest and so he got killed. I went home from work, where I had written the chapter, and my wife asked why I was depressed. I told her that one of the characters died and she just rolled her eyes.
Q: Who dies?
A: Someone. I’m not telling.
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