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Spiritual warfare is real

Spiritual warfare comes in different forms and comes and goes to different degrees, but for me recently, it took an interesting twist. But I'm not afraid. In fact, I'm glad it happened. Keep reading to learn why...

Let me go back and start with a little explanation... Right after Divine Mercy Sunday the spiritual attacks hit at their worst and continued so that I questioned if it would ever quit.

I had a difficult week battling this latest round. It shortened my temper, caused massive depression, and battered my resistance. It was so bad at times that I would completely surrender to God and find some relief just when I thought I would completely succumb. It's an amazing feeling when God does that. Jesus gives us a respite from the burden, but I was also offering up the suffering as my cross.

God never gives us more than we can handle. It's how we handle things that matter. Lean on Him. When you really can't take the beating any more, give the suffering completely to Jesus. It is incredible to have that faith--He always gives more back to us when we completely trust in Him.

But this attack continued after I'd had some temporary relief. The demons kept trying to make me hate God and give up prayer and going to mass to receive the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. It was so hard to fight that discouragement they dumped on me.

Then I had the thought to pray the St. Michael* chaplet. I barely started the chaplet and the burden lifted. I finished the full chaplet feeling peace again.

The next day, I had a slip of the tongue that sent me to confession. I also had a couple of little defects, or maybe venial sins at the worst, that I mentioned but had accredited those to the spiritual attack I had been dealing with. No sooner did I say this than my phone rang in the confessional.

It's not supposed to do that. It has never done that. Since I bought my iPhone 16 Pro six months earlier, I set Do Not Disturb to automatically come on at the locations of the churches I attend. It's always worked. In fact, even tonight, the setting was confirmed to be working--I had a call during mass and the phone never rang, just like normal on the DND setting.

Back to the confesion... Puzzled and embarrassed in the confessional, I said to the priest, "I'm sorry. It's supposed to be off." (I meant DND but was too flustered to think clearly and thought only that the ringer should have been off while I was there.) I said this while hurrying to hit the down volume button to silence the phone, but it took more than once. (I found out why later.) I barely looked at the phone. I wanted to finish so others could take advantage of the half hour that's available for weekday confessions at that church. I finished and received what I needed from the priest, thanked him, and left. I checked my phone outside the confessional, and it was on Do Not Disturb, which comes on as far out as the parking lot as soon as I leave my vehicle to walk across the lot (even the far end of the lot) to the church (switching from "Driving", which doesn't allow text or call notifications, to regular DND, which does the same thing when not driving). It has a wide radius.

Later that evening, when I was home after mass, I looked more closely at my phone and realized I had the confirmation that I was right about the spiritual attacks. That's no coincidence, and it tells me why my first press of the volume button didn't immediately stop the ringing. There were two back-to-back calls from the same number with 666 as the prefix. No other spammer has ever done that to me.

No call should have rung my phone at the church. On top of that, add the particular number while I was at the church, of all places, and, most notably, in the confessional AND that it happened as I mentioned feeling that I had been under spiritual attack... Yeah, no. To all the Catholic haters out there, even you have to admit that's suspicious. iPhones don't fail like that.

God can do anything, and this was actually a grace of confirming that what I experienced was true. Demons can affect electronics. Exorcists tell stories of things like this happening. In fact, the producers or directors (I can't remember their role) of Nefarious, had an exorcist perform a location exorcism and blessing before their equipment would work right during filming. Exorcists I listen to have told stories about vulgar texts or calls after sessions, usually from a triple six number.

So, now I have my own story to tell. I'm not afraid. In fact, I'm grateful, because I have evidence and experience and because these struggles strengthen my faith and my prayer life. I'm also grateful, because spiritual attacks are a way of testing us to help us grow in faith and devotion to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As some of my favorite online priests have said, if you're not being tested, that's not necessarily a good thing. Our faith stagnates if it's never tested. Like muscles, it needs resistance to strengthen. I'm grateful God gives me these, so I can grow stronger in my faith.

ps--I blocked the number before taking a screenshot. (A free phone lookup tracked the number to a real person, but I suspect a spammer spoofed it like all the other spam calls I get regularly. Still, the timing is uncanny, as is the fact that it went through when it should not have. There are no coincidences. It is divine providence that things like this happen. God uses whatever He wants to deliver his messages.)

God bless!

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* Note that St. Michael was the archangel tasked by God with sending Satan into hell. The chaplet of St. Michael invokes the nine choirs of angels to help us. St. Michael is one of our greatest allies in heaven.

More tension... never let a plot sputter

A good start to the story always has strong tension.

I would define tension in a story as words or actions that create an expectation that something will happen. It produces in the audience the need to know what comes next. It comes in different levels with multiple issues throughout a book.

This past week, book 22's opening was holding me up from writing past a certain point because it needed more tension. I had some tension in the story that started great but quickly faded so it wasn't enough for my expectations.

This is why in some of the books of Forgotten Worlds I start at a pre-climactic point and then go back (or back and forth) in the timeline to (usually a slow point) where the decision was made to start the characters down the path that led to that point, then the story reaches that opening scene and continues into the climax and denouement. In those cases, such story structures create two questions--how did this happen and how will the characters resolve it? This creates a strong tension immediately where it wouldn't have existed in a linear timeline. This can be confusing for the reader, but if done right works very well (such as adding a time stamp at each new scene or break so the audience knows where in the story the scene takes place).

This technique is a bit different than simple flashbacks. It incorporates flashbacks heavily but focuses on an earlier timeline to bring the story from a quiet beginning into the conflict of the present timeline. It is a true in media res start to a story; but to understand the progress, the audience needs to know the backstory to that point too and gets it in pieces as flashbacks at key points in the present timeline. I've liked it in many SF shows and sought to use it in writing some of these books. I don't like to use it all the time, or it loses its luster and becomes a crutch instead of a novelty; but I have used it in a handful of the books. (I'm expecting that Book 21 is the last book in this series to use that structure, and that one is all over the place, because it uses scenes from previous books in the series amid the structure of flashbacks explaining how L'Ni designed his plan.)

Most of the Forgotten Worlds stories have linear, normal flowing plots that open at the true beginning with some degree of flashbacks that aren't directly in the timeline of that particular story plot or other sequences (from the Starfire memories, a different type of flashback). In these stories, I need more standard writing techniques. That means a way to get reader's attention. Not every story needs to begin with a big conflict or risk of death. That gets to be too cliche. My goal is to keep the series moving while having some fun with the characters in any way I can but to introduce tension as early as I can.

By this point in the series, the readers know my style and the characters and series plot. I decided I could let my hair down a bit with the opening of Book 22... or it seems that way. I had some fun with the conflict that comes into play and the setup for the story. It creates tension, just not the life or death type that I have in many of the book openings. I hate slow stories, but other pieces of the lives of the character than fighting the bad guys all the time have developed.

The problem I had with the first few chapters was that the tension wasn't adequate for my tastes. It sputtered out. The rule I discovered in reading SF thriller books was to never let the reader completely rest on the down beats of the action. There must always be an unanswered question such as "Will it work?", "How will the characters resolve this?", "What did they mean by that?", and/or "Did that really happen?!" Always keep something unanswered and layer those so the reader is always hanging until the end.

In the opening of Book 22, events are misleadingly normal. However, by this point readers can expect in the series that what seems like a normal event won't stay that way for long. The interactions of the characters are fun and, as I mentioned in the last writing post, opened a big door for character development. But when that sputtered a bit, I felt it. It nagged at me.

This past week, I found an answer. I started rewriting a couple of scenes to bring in more conflict to increase the tension but then realized how much I would lose of the good stuff I wanted to keep. So, I moved the new conflict to a different point and added a bit to the older scene, all to increase the opening tension until I get into the big stuff, which is the only way to describe it without giving anything away. Now I feel like I have something to move the story forward again; the writing block is resolved. (This happens frequently while writing and at different stages of every book, but this time, it inspired an explanation using this particular point as an example of resolving the issue.)

Through all the writing and rewriting and organizing, the word count didn't increase as much as I would have liked, but after all of that, Book 22 is at about 11K words, or about a quarter done. I don't have a title for this one yet and probably won't until it's done. I'm waiting to see how the main theme plays out. Every book in the series gives me a few surprises.

Thanks for reading!