What If...

When I was about 10 years old, I went to a GoodWill store with my father. I found a book there called How to Write Screenplays That Sell and bought it for a quarter. It has since been highlighted, dogeared and tabbed so many times that I dare not even open the book for fear of destroying it. One of the very first chapters, as I recall it, advised that to come up with a good story you needed to start with a 'what if' statement. All good plots could be summarized by this what if idea and the author proceeded to show this with many prominent film examples such as Romancing the Stone and The Karate Kid.

Now, almost two decades later I found myself stumbling upon a novel concept in the very same way; inadvertantly following the advice I had read as a child.

It happened while I was taking a shower. I get my best ideas when I'm in there though I'll never understand why. My mind started to wander from the debate I had had that morning regarding Scientology and Dark Age Christianity and I found myself wondering "what if..."

"What if every religion in the world-- cult and mainstream, philosophy and morality-- is all inspired by one common story? One book. And the only reason they are so dissimilar in parts is because each is based on a mere fraction of the complete tale."

And there it was, the birth of an idea. I have always wanted to write a novel. When I first purchased that book so many years ago, I wanted to be the next King or Lovecraft. But as my tastes matured and my interests migrated from fictitious religions to those real faiths which shadow our world's histories, I decided to write something more scientific and less fiction. Something that could speak to anyone and everyone. Grandiose dreams aside, I just wanted to get these ideas and dreams out of my head and onto paper.