Felix
is the co-author, alongside his beautiful wife Carol Ann, of the I Can’t Believe It’s Vegan!cookbook series. Felix
and Carol Ann Whelan live in rural Missouri with their daughter, Kathryn
(Kate), their son, Conner, and, at last count, twenty dogs, cats, chickens,
sheep and goats overgrowing their one acre hobby farm. They are
vegetarians surrounded by cattle farmers, Catholics surrounded by Protestants,
and ex-city slickers transplanted to a town that will never completely trust
anyone whose great grandparents weren’t born there… The first book in
Felix’s Children of the Goodseries was released on
Holy Thursday, 2014, by NuEvan Press.
D.O: Howdy. Thank you for joining us today.
WH:
Thank you for inviting me.
D.O: When did you know you wanted to become a writer?
I've
actually made that decision three times over the course of my life. I knew the
first time when I was ten years old. I grew up half a block from the public
library, and spent most of every summer there as a kid, the library being the
only air conditioned place in town that didn't yell at kids for hanging out.
Spending large chunks of time in a library, I learned to love reading, and
decided when I was ten that I wanted to take the next step and be a writer. My
mom bought me an old manual typewriter at a yard sale and off I went! But I got
distracted in my teen years, and didn't get back to writing until I was in my
twenties and went to college. There I caught the bug again, and ended up
majoring in creative writing. But I had to make a living after college, so I
took whatever jobs I could get, and wound up managing retail stores for ten
years or so, then becoming an office manager, which I've been doing for the
last twenty years. When I turned fifty, I had something of an identity crisis
about it all, thinking, "Okay, Felix, your fifty years old, you’re smart,
educated, a darned fine writer, and what do you have to show for it?" If
I'd died that day, and at the Pearly Gates God said "Ah, Felix the
writer. What've you done with all that talent I loaned you?" I
would have been in deep trouble. So I resolved, for the third time in my life,
to put my nose to the grindstone and take writing seriously. Over the years I'd
had a few short stories published, and had self published some cookbooks with
my wife. Not good enough... I resolved to write a novel or die trying! Children
of the Good is the result!
D.O: Hmm, that’s a very touching story. I’m very pleased I’m hosting you today on Authors Curtilage. The picture here with your son is beautiful. [smiles] can't wait to have one like him.
WH: Okay then, God will bless you with one. As much as you
want. [Smiles]
D.O: Thank you Felix. What are the various craft you've studied
before you came into the entertainment industry or do you just possess some
natural tendencies to write stories?
WH:
I was born with some raw natural talent with words, and a love of stories and
storytelling. But I really learned how to write, and write well, in college. I
went to Webster University in St. Louis, one of the last great Liberal Arts
colleges in the Midwest. The English Department was staffed by a host of
accomplished, published writers, every one of whom really knew their stuff. I
feel very lucky to have benefited from their mentoring. As long as I can
remember, I've also been fascinated by religion. I'm a devout Catholic, but I
have studied just about every religion on earth, both on my own through
reading, and in school. My minor at Webster was in religious studies, which in
that Liberal Arts context included classes on Buddhism, Hinduism, Native
American religions, New Religious Movements, just all manner of human religious
expression. One of the field trips offered by Webster's religious studies
program, though I could never afford to go myself, was spending a summer in Haiti
observing real Voodoo in action. That just shows how broad the program was. So
while I am very strong in my Catholic faith, it's definitely not for
lack of knowledge of other traditions! When it came time to write a novel set
in a near future where the Antichrist is in charge, all that study of religions
served me well in imagining how, in the real world, such a character might come
into being, how he might seize power, how he might enchant the hearts and minds
of all the people of the world, how a society that shares the values of the
Antichrist might function...
D.O: Impressive. What are the steps you took to develop your book from a rough draft into a published novel?
WH:
I wrote what would become chapter eleven, The Seed of Light, first,
just writing by the seat of my pants, thinking it was going to be the novel's
opening chapter. I got through chapter five writing intuitively like that, then
once I could see clearly where the story was going, I recognized I had to
"flash back" and show the Antichrist's origins and rise to power. So
Part II, The Evil, Rising, came into being. Once I had
imagined a plausible back story for the Antichrist, and connected his agenda
back to the family we met in the first five chapters, I knew I really had
something on my hands. I had a great first half of a novel. Not wanting to blow
it, I then took a step back, and actually outlined the rest of the book,
chapter by chapter. I placed the "big events" I knew had to happen at
the right spots in the story to maintain proper narrative structure, and to
keep the pace of the novel moving. Chapter one became chapter eleven because it
made more sense at that stage of the story. I needed a new Chapter one, and
tossed off a quick prologue. My wife is always my first, and usually harshest
reader, which I appreciate, so when I handed her the finished first draft of
the novel on Valentine's Day, she immediately axed the prologue and sent me
back to the keyboard. Chapter one, The Story, which replaced the
prologue, is a far better beginning, but it is actually the last piece of the
book I wrote. I finished at the beginning.
D.O: I also employ the two writing paradigms, seat of the pant and
outlining. They are good writing styles to write organically. What
sensitive materials does your book deal with?
WH:
It doesn't get much more sensitive than religion. But the only
actual religion you see practiced in the novel is the Antichrist's cult of self
worship, a sort of New Age institutionalized narcissism. Under the Antichrist's
spell, the world has forgotten Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, you name it. All
of that has been nefariously erased from global memory. People embrace the
Antichrist's Gospel of Self in part because they don't know
any better. It's the State Religion, kind of like Nazism was in Germany. It's
the only context anybody is allowed for understanding themselves and their
culture. They really believe that by elevating selfishness to the highest
virtue, they are being "good people." That's all they've known all
their lives. We think of "Cradle Catholics." Well, these are
"Cradle Sociopaths," and nobody thinks there's anything wrong with
that. So that's the world Children of the Good is set in. Now,
we readers remember God, we remember the church, we are outside the world in
which the story is taking place. So when a luminous woman starts appearing to
children with a message that her good son is coming to rescue the world from
the evil that has overtaken it, we recognize the Blessed Virgin. We know who
her son is. We've heard about Marian apparitions like Our Lady of Lourdes, or
Our Lady of Fatima, and we immediately recognize what's going on. The
characters in the story, though, don't have that historical insight. For them
it's all new. They're discovering God and goodness and this magical Blessed
Mother for the first time. It's a neat trick. And it's plenty "sensitive,"
plenty controversial. It's making two "in your face" statements at
the same time about reality, our present day reality as much as about any
potential future. First, it will be obvious to most readers that the
"futuristic" culture of self-involved narcissism at the heart
of Children of the Good describes our present day American
culture to a tee. And if the culture of the Antichrist looks so much like our
country today, is it possible he's already in charge, in real life, and like
the people in the novel, we just don't recognize it? Second, it's saying
Catholic reality is real. It's saying the Catholic
supernatural view of the world is not just a story, not just a "belief
system." It's real. Concrete. Capable of acting on us, even if we don't
want it to. If the whole world stopped believing in God, God would still exist.
He would still have a plan and work in our lives. God is real. The Blessed
Virgin is real. Heaven is real. The Saints are real. And so, confronted by
those two clashing truths, readers, just like the characters in the story, have
a choice to make. Which side are you on? Now that's sensitive
material!
D.O: Hmm. Surely, readers are not going to be able to put this
book aside once they start reading. What is the underlying theme, the explored
truth or moral in your book?
WH:
First, that God exists, whether we like it or not, whether we believe in him or
not. And he cares enough about people to act in history on our behalf, to reach
down for us, over and over again, no matter how hard we slap his hand away. The
second major theme explored inChildren of the Good, which I haven't
mentioned so far, is The Problem of Evil. Basically, why do bad
things happen to good people? If God is both all good and all powerful, how can
evil exist? Either God allows evil, in which case he can hardly be said to be
all good, or he is all good, but he can't stop bad things from
happening, in which case he must not be all powerful... It's a conundrum that
has shattered the faith of many a believer in just about every religion on
earth, not just Christianity. There are a lot of cultural Jews who consider
themselves religiously atheist because of the Holocaust. No good God would
allow the extermination of eight million people, so God must not exist. I don't
know that I have fullyanswered the question behind The
Problem of Evil in my novel, but I do think I have taken the
conversation in a new direction, shed a much more complex light on the issue.
It's not a simple question, so there is no easy answer. It's something that has
to be wrestled with.
D.O: What town or city does your book portray and what is the
feeling we have in this dwelling place?
WH:
The town is Arkady, a very typical Midwest, USA small town, based
largely on the town where I live in real life. It's a great place to set the
story because it provides a chance to examine how this global cult of self
worship, this worldwide control the Antichrist has established, and his dark
agenda for Humanity plays out in the fine details of the very ordinary lives of
small town people. It’s a microcosm that helps bring these very big ideas down
to a very personal level.
D.O: Having a unique point of view in telling a story provides
your story with intention. From how many characters' viewpoint is your entire
book seen from?
WH:
All of them, actually. Children of the Good is written in
the third person omniscientperspective. Hardly anybody writes that
way anymore, and it was a conscious choice on my part to approach the story
from that view. The "viewpoint character" of the book is really the
unnamed narrator who reveals the story from a "God's eye view,"
showing us what every character is not only experiencing, but what they're
thinking and feeling, as well. The narrator comments throughout to make sure
various threads of the story are being properly interwoven. My goal in choosing
the third person omniscient perspective was twofold. First, I wanted readers to
experience the bad guys in the story with as close to the same sense of
identification as they have for the good characters. This is not a "black
hat VS white hat" story. The bad people think they're doing the right
thing just as much as the good people do. Even the Antichrist thinks he's doing
the world a favor. Children of the Good is morally complicated
just the way real life is morally complicated. Only by taking a "universal
view" of all the characters could I approach that sense of impartiality.
Second, on a far more practical front, I wanted the experience of reading Children
of the Good to be as much like watching a movie as I could make it. On
the big screen, you may identify more with one character or another, but what
you see is the story as it unfolds. The
camera is not inside any one character's head. It may be clear whose story is
being told, but you are actually viewing all of the characters, all of the action
that makes the story what it is, from the outside. It's happening in front of
you, like you're watching it through a window. I very much wanted to deliver
that kind of cinematic experience to readers. I also wanted to make the novel
easy to adapt into a screenplay, should the opportunity to make a Children
of the Good movie arise. I think these characters, and this story,
would be fantastic on the big screen!
D.O: Weldon Felix. What does the lead character of your book want
most in the world?
WH:
From that third person omniscient perspective it's hard to point to one
character and say, "okay, this story is all about him..." Or her,
or whatever. But one thing the three primary "lead characters," John,
Ann and Nelly Harper, all have in common is that what they all want most
is to do the right thing. For John, the right thing is a moving
target. He's emotionally volatile, and with every major event in the story, his
understanding of "right" changes, and he veers off in a new
direction. But always in pursuit of what he thinks is "right," in
that moment. His wife, Ann, and their daughter, Nelly, who is just a little
kid, are a lot more constant, more centered. Their definition of
"right" is quieter and tends to move in more of a straight line. So,
I guess in the sense of a traditional "character arc," Children
of the Good is more John's story, in that he's the one who undergoes
the greatest change.
D.O: What are the core truths for your lead character?
WH:
I think John’s "core truth" is that he is essentially a good person,
in the way most of us sort of grope unconsciously toward the good in our
everyday lives, but he lacks self awareness. When he really needs to trust his
instincts, he gives in to self doubt. When he's got himself most twisted up in the
wrong direction, he fails to question his own motives at all, and bounds
forward. Like most of us, he wants to do the right thing, but he has a heck of
a time figuring out what that is...
D.O: How do you think your book will influence readers growth positively?
WH:
You'll note that the publisher is NuEvan Press. "NuEvan"
is a contraction of "New Evangelization," a term I most associate
with Pope – now Saint – John Paul II, though I think it is
older than that. But JPII was the most vocal advocate of a new Catholic
evangelization in my lifetime. He called for all of us lay Catholics in the
pews to take our faith, actively, out into the world. And not just to those few
places on earth that have not heard the Gospel, but to the streets of America
and Europe, to countries that once upon a time were pillars of Christianity,
centers of Catholicism, but which have fallen so far away from the faith that
they have become the new "mission fields." Western society, as
dominated by the United States and Europe, has become a secular, atheistic, and
largely amoral culture. "The virtue of "religious tolerance" has
devolved into the vice of religious indifference. Religion no longer
matters, is no longer welcome in the public square. "You do your thing,
I'll do mine, and let's agree never to talk about it..." Basically,
everyone is entitled to hold religious views so long as they hold them the way
one holds a preference for, say, pasta over steak. Beer over wine.Believe
what you want, just don't act like it matters... My absolute number
one wish forChildren of the Good is that reading it might remind
people on some deep level that religion matters, God matters. When
we forget about God, our culture drifts more and more into narcissism and
nihilism. If we do not know ourselves in a religious context, we really can't
know ourselves rightly at all. We mistake ourselves for God, then watch out!
Trouble ahead!
I
would be especially pleased if Children of the Good piqued
readers' interest in Catholicismspecifically, over just religion in
general. If fallen away Catholics, and readers who've never considered the
Catholic Faith before, find something in my novel that leads them to read more,
ask questions, take a class, or anything that sparks their journey into, or
back into, the arms of the Church. That would be amazing!
D.O: I pray the readers of this book be enlightened as you
intended. Any hint about your next book?
WH:
The working title of Book Two in the Children of the Good series,
at this red hot moment, and this could change, of course, is Fruitless
Works of Darkness – a reference to Ephesians, of course. Expect the
Antichrist's efforts to seduce Nelly Harper into his service, big trouble for
the Remnant, but also an awesome new character, several actually, that raise
the narrative to a whole new level, and that bring in a deeper view
of God, our own humanity, and the “real reality” of the Catholic
Faith…
That’s
pretty vague, I suppose, but I’m just outlining now. There’s a million miles
between the outline and the finished novel, so expect the story to grow and
change and evolve…
D.O: [Smiles] Okay then, thank you once again for joining us. May
your days in the field be filled with fame, fortune, honor, story ideas,
character development, and more, and all that is well.
WH: Thank you, Lola, for this opportunity! It's been great!
Credits: Authors
Curtilage Book.
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