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This has been a great weekend! Two things happened that are outstanding. First, it seems that “The 12th Demon: Vampyre Majick” has won a national book award! Not just a runner’s up. Not just an Honorable Mention. The book is a WINNER of the National Best Book Awards! Here is the actual “meat” from the email:
Dear Bruce:
Congratulations!
The epic results are in for the National Best Books 2008 Awards!
Your book has been honored as a “Winner” in the “Fiction & Literature: Religious Fiction” category:
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The 12th Demon: Vampyre Majick by Bruce Hennigan
Winner — Fiction & Literature: Religious Fiction
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National Best Book Awards 2008 in Religious Fiction
In the days ahead, I’ll be finding out more about what this means but I am pumped! So, go tell all you friends that you know of an inspirational supernatural thriller that has won a National Book Award and they should go out and buy it before Halloween!!!
But, you know, as wonderful as this news is, I didn’t write the book for fame or money. Really! I have a wonderful day job. I am writing the Jonathan Steel series because I want to make this world a better place. Sounds corny and lame, doesn’t it? But, isn’t that really what we should all strive to do? Leave this world a better place than we found it?
And, I’m not just writing for myself. I am writing because of the One who inspires me; the One who gives my life meaning; the One who did not think it beneath Himself as the Creator of the Universe to become a man and to live out the same kind of life we live. This book award is great but I give all the honor and praise to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! If that offends you or turns you off, then just go to your bathroom mirror, look yourself in the eyes and ask yourself, “Just what am I living for?”
There is more to life than just book awards and lots of money and fine parties and all that. You know it. You can feel it deep in the pit of your gut. We seem to become a more isolated and “me” centered society each day. We’ve lost the capacity to sacrifice time and money and personal freedoms for the good of someone else. We have placed ourselves on God’s throne.
Well, I found something to live for that will outlast my final paycheck or the last dollars in my retirement account. It’s changing the world for the sake of my God and leaving it a better place than I found it. Don’t believe me? Well, as important as that National Book Award is to me right now, this excerpt from an email I received two days ago from a reader of my books makes it all worthwhile and I would trade a hundred book awards for one of these responses to my books:
Bruce
I just wanted to give you a pat on the back for your book(s). I just finished The 13th Demon and WOW!! I haven’t read anything that made me consider finding GOD again, ever. . . . I just wanted to tell you that I loved the book and it started me thinking about my own relationship. I have started reading The 12th Demon, which I can’t put down. Great job and keep up the good work.
I don’t want to betray this man’s privacy but he relates how he is struggling as a single father of two children and reading my book helped him discover a deeper and more meaningful relationship with God. God used my book to alter someone’s life, hopefully forever!
And, that is what it is all about!
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My brother passed away this weekend. He was 71 and died from severe emphysema from years of cigarette smoking. His life is significant for readers of this blog because I had many adventures growing up thanks to his unusual imagination and his tendency to try out get rich quick schemes that were always, well, on the bizarre side.
For instance, Ronald was a taxidermist in his spare time. It was his preoccupation with stuffing and mounting dead animals that exposed me to the gruesome insides of these creatures. If you’ve never seen the muscle covered skeleton of a deer neck and skull peering back at you with those dark eyes, you’ve never seen real horror. These discarded carcasses were often tossed about a dark room where Ronald worked his artistic magic and glared at me from piles of cold, dead flesh. When Ronald hauled these remnants of his animal carcasses off into the woods, it was to their flesh the howling, made, rabies infested dogs were drawn that fired my imagination and my fears of werewolves and vampires.
Ronald once decided to raise mink. On our family farm, there was a huge open barn and Ronald placed literally dozens of metal cages along the walls. In each cage was a dark, furry creature similar to a ferret. But, these minks were vicious. Time and again I would try and pet them only to pull my fingers away before the nasty beasts could lop off a fingertip.
Once that failed, Ronald got me into raising fancy guppies. At one time, I had 15 aquariums scattered around our house and Ronald had over 20 at his house. These exotic fish would breed easily and had huge, flowing colorful tails. But, there was a problem with feeding them. We had so many the cost of food was cutting into our profit so Ronald came up with a solution. We would make our own fish food!
This required the acquisition of a coarse cereal and a fresh cow’s liver. Ronald came to my mother’s house with a 25 pound cow’s liver. It was as large as my torso and the red, glistening thing seemed to be alive in my mother’s sink. We had to cut it into long strips and for the recipe, it had to be pureed. I will never forget trying to force a foot long strip of raw cow’s liver into the top of my mother’s blender and the smell and sight of pureed liver splattered all over the wall! But, burning up my mother’s blender was only the beginning. We had to cook the liver puree and the cereal in a huge pot on the stove. The stench was unbelievable and my mother was not too pleased with the odor filling her house.
Once the stuff was cooked, we had to let it cool and then mold the stuff into foot long one inch tubes with our bare hands. It’s a wonder I didn’t get mad cow’s disease! Each tube was then wrapped in foil and placed in the freezer. We now had enough frozen fish food to feed Seaworld! Each day, I would cut a chunk from one of the “liver-cicles” and drop it into an aquarium. To Ronald’s credit, the fish loved it. But, after buying a new blender for my mother, we went into the red and never recovered our cost!
So, you see, time spent with my brother Ronald was always an adventure. There was the time he put a live turtle in a pressure cooker and put it on the stove to make it come out of its shell. It came out all right! When the pressure cooker exploded, there was macerated turtle all over the kitchen!
I will greatly miss my brother’s adventurous spirit and his tall tales and his bass voice when we sang together as a family and his fascination with excellent movies and television shows. I will greatly miss his artistic talent and his ability to draw and paint just about anything on canvas and sketch pad. I will miss his affable and easy smile and his generous spirit. And, the next book I write will be dedicated to his memory.
Ronald Charles Hennigan
June 18, 1937 to October 4, 2008
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It was a cool October evening in Blanchard, Louisiana. I had come home from school at 3:30 and made my usual mid afternoon snack. Miracle Whip and mustard sandwich washed down with chocolate milk. We were not poor but luncheon meat was expensive so I learned to fill my bread with condiments. I loved to squeeze the bread and make the stuff ooze out and then I would suck it up and swallow it. Sounds pretty gruesome, doesn’t it? Which is why I really identified with the victims in that afternoon’s Dialing For Dollars Movie about vampires.
Every afternoon, a local television station played a horror or science fiction movie from 3:30 to 5 PM and during the movie they would pick someone’s phone number at random and call. If you could tell them the “count, amount, and direction” you could win up to $500! I don’t remember what the count and the direction referred to. But, my mother drove a school bus and didn’t get home until 4 PM. So, it became my job to sit down in front of the television and write down the count, the amount, and the direction at the beginning of each movie so when she came home after 4 and they called, we would win the money. She never promised me any of the money, by the way. But, I was diligent because I grew to love the sandwiches and the chocolate milk and the gruesome movies about werewolves and blobs and aliens and vampires.
On this particular evening, I watched the old 1930s movie, Dracula. I had never seen it and one particular line terrified me. It was when Dracula said something like, “Listen! Do you hear them? It is the children of the night.” He was referring to the howls of wolves in the far distant darkness of the Transylvanian forests. That evening after finishing the movie and watching my mother’s face once again show her disappointment at not being called, I went out in the yard to play. The sun was already setting and the idea of Daylight Savings Time was still buried somewhere in the depths of some politician’s mind. I was in the middle of my front yard just running around and pretending to stalk and kill vampires when I heard the sounds. Across the highway that ran in front of my house was a huge unpopulated wooded area. Somewhere deep within those woods the sounds of howling emerged. The frightening voices of these “children of the night” brought chills to my spine. Their eerie, undulating cries played up and down the musical scale and ended in deep throated growling and snarling. I froze and peered across the street into the dark shadows of the woods. Something stirred within those shadows and the ambient light of sunset reflected in the yellowish green eyes of creatures.
Were there actual wolves stalking me? Could these be humans transformed against their will into ravenous beasts of the night ready to rip my throat out if I so much as stirred? I looked up at the darkening sky and a huge cloud of bats swirled above me feasting on mosquitoes although I was convinced I would be their desert. I ran like I had never run in my life across a front yard that now seemed miles long. I finally made it up the front steps of my house and through the door into the safety of my living room. My parents were sitting in their recliners watching the news. Their faces were in shock as I babbled on about the vampire bats and the werewolves.
I will never forget how they both laughed at my fears. I “had such a vivid imagination” they told me. Go play in your room. There’s no such things as werewolves and vampires.
Years later, my wife and I were walking down a country road. I had just watched an old show, “An American Werewolf in London” on television and we paused to catch our breath. For a second, I was back in that front yard as I eyed the woods closing in around us and the darkening sky. I never told Sherry about my fears that night but we never walked down that particular road again and I always carried a heavy flashlight after that night.
Some fears are so visceral, so primeval, so deep seated they defy rationality. We try to explain them away and they just simmer more quietly beneath the surface of our civilized veneer. Halloween is now approaching and I watch the television ads and see the costumes in the stores. I am amazed at the depth of horror we have reached in our naivety. Just yesterday, a mob of teenagers coaxed a jumper into jumping to his death in England and then rushed forward to take pictures of his body with their cell phones. What kind of world have we created? These creatures of evil and cunning are no better than the “children of the night” that crept through the depths of my imagination.
Why? Because my imagination at times is fueled by my very human endless capacity for rebellion against a good and loving God. God did not create evil. We did. We made and shaped it in the garden when we embraced a forbidden knowledge, the knowledge of good and its absence, evil. We just had to know. We just had to watch. We just had to see him jump.
As you read the books and watch the movies that celebrate the depth of horror that the human can drum up this Halloween season, invite your friends and family to pick up one of my books. Dare them to read a “horror” story of demons and human sacrifices and vampires. I guarantee that the horror they will see will be far eclipsed by the knowledge of Good that can only come from the God who created this universe. Give them something positive to celebrate in a season of darkness. Give them something to hold onto when the children of the night fill our minds with fear. Give them the gift of the Savior!
By the way. Thirty years after that day, they finally called my mother. And, she was ready with the count, the amount, and the direction. She won her $500 and had her picture in the paper.
