I read, reviewed and interviewed Jason Dahl's SEBERIAN: The Hidden Battle Revealed in August 2016 and loved it. This novel and the author's interview showed a love of Christ, His Word and a passion for creating a riveting story that honours God and what God has achieved in his life. This novel was well received as evidenced by its positive reviews and I am glad to have been able to be part of giving credit where credit is due.
Now, Jason needs to take this novel and the series to the next level. When I heard that he was creating a Kickstarter program to do this, I offered him space on this blog to promote this program. I have already jumped in and pledged to help him financially with this new endeavour.
Now, Jason needs to take this novel and the series to the next level. When I heard that he was creating a Kickstarter program to do this, I offered him space on this blog to promote this program. I have already jumped in and pledged to help him financially with this new endeavour.
So without further ado, I will hand you over to Jason as he relates the backstory to the novel and the Kickstarter program for the continuation of this series and its progression to the movie.
Over to you, Jason!
Thanks, Peter! Just wanted to give this audience my perspective and the background to my novel and to further this series.
Does God still act in this world?
With all the crazy things going on in the world it could be really easy to say, “No.” Acts of terror happening all over the world, people committing murder live on Facebook and countless other evil events. I hate to say it but I really don’t think that we as people have improved much. So what do we do? What can any man or women do against so much evil? Let me tell you a true life story about how I came to grips with this problem.
Several years ago I was going through a really hard time. I was struggling with three big things in my life. The first was that my wife and I had been going through five years of unexplained infertility. After several doctors and finally a surgery for my wife they offered us no hope. The doctors said, “Forget it, you will not conceive.” Five years of that struggle was painful.
The second thing was the fact that my youngest brother went to Afghanistan with the US Marine Corp. So I was concerned about all the things going on in the world that resulted in him being sent. And, of course, I was concerned for his safety.
The third thing was a near death experience. I fell from a roof. I fell 12 feet headfirst onto concrete. I flipped over completely and landed flat on my back without any injuries. It was a miracle and I was freaking out for weeks knowing that I could have been killed or paralysed.
So all three of these things were going on at the same time and I needed a way to process. I needed a way to get things out of my head so I started writing. I started with a movie script which I then got into the hands of a professional writer, director, producer and he loved it. He said, “Jason this is epic. You need to produce this.” He encouraged me to produce it independently. So many changes in technology have made that very possible in today’s world.
I converted the first script to a novel in order to start creating an audience for the film. I’m in the process of publishing the 2nd book in the series. I have a Kickstarter campaign going on now that runs until July 30th. It’s designed to raise funds to
- publish the 2nd book,
- produce both books as audio books,
- do a professional rebuild of the website
- and produce our live action trailer.
This is the next big step on the journey of producing the film.
The story is a Sci-Fi / supernatural-thriller. Essentially angels and demons in space. The message is that God is for us and not against us and that he still acts in this world but at the
same time we have an enemy who is out to destroy us. The main character struggles with much of what we struggle with today. Why is the world (or galaxy) full of so much pain, suffering, death and destruction? If there is a good God why does he allow this evil to continue?
same time we have an enemy who is out to destroy us. The main character struggles with much of what we struggle with today. Why is the world (or galaxy) full of so much pain, suffering, death and destruction? If there is a good God why does he allow this evil to continue?
When I fell from the roof I was so thankful to be alive and uninjured. I believed that God had rescued me from death but I thought, “God, how did you do that? How do you do something like that in the physical world?” My first thought was, “What about angels?” My very next thought was, “No! That’s cheesy.” That really caught my attention. I thought, “Wait! Why do I think that’s cheesy? Angels are completely Biblical.” I started doing some research and found scholars who have studied the topic and also found it strange that within Protestant Christianity we largely ignore the idea of angelic activity. In fact, we are more inclined to talk about demonic activity than angelic. What makes this even stranger is the fact scripture has more references to angels than to demons.
The result of all this was not some infatuation with angels. I didn’t become some sort of an angel nut. What it did do was remind me of the fact that God can and still does work in our physical world. The story that I wrote is about the angelic and demonic battles happening in the hidden spirit whelm. (Hidden Battle Revealed) But the angels and demons are not the focus. The true focus is on the humans and the actions they have to take to work with God and his warriors to protect this world from the enemy and those men who are under his control. (By that I don’t mean by possession. There is none of that in the story.)
What does all this mean for us? I hope that this will encourage people to remember that God does still work in this world. And that he calls us to action. He calls us to fight for the weak and helpless. That’s why Jesus told us to take care of orphans and widows because they’re the most vulnerable people in society.
We are called to be soldiers of hope. The title of my series is SEBERIAN which is a word that I made up based on an old Hebrew word that means hope. (Seber = hope) So the Seberians are soldiers of hope. That’s what the story is about. We are all called to take action and by serving and loving others we can bring hope to the hopeless. We must. What does the world have to offer? Nothing good. We have the hope in Christ and his victory over Satan. When we unite with Christ we share in his victory. That’s the only hope that this world has. That’s the hope that I want to communicate in my story. And I want to do that through a cool science-fiction vehicle. I want us to be able to take non-Christian friends to see the movie, without kicking and screaming, and I hope that the story will open up good discussions and questions.
One of those three big things going on in my life had an amazing resolution. The five years of infertility resulted in the miracle of adoption. My wife and I are honored to be adoptive parents and we would NEVER change the way that all played out. God knew that our daughter was going to need forever parents. And we are so happy that he brought us all together. It is amazing how something so painful could be changed to such an incredible blessing.
So the conclusion to all this is that God is good and he still acts in this world. Sometimes through unseen warriors and other times through us, his Seberians, his soldiers of hope. If you guys would like to know more about the project you can check out my website, SEBERIAN.COM. You can email me through the site. Please feel free to ask me any questions, I would love to hear from you. Through the website, you can also find out more about the Kickstarter campaign. We have some really cool exclusive rewards for our backers.
Click on this link to go to the Kickstarter campaign:
Let me leave you with a couple questions. How do you think that God still works in this world? Does he still use angels? Shoot me an email and let’s talk.
I want to thank Peter for letting me write this guest post. You rock man! I have really appreciated your support and prayers.
I hope to hear from the rest of you soon.
Blessings,
Jason Dahl.
Thanks, Jason, my pleasure to offer you this space to promote your Kickstarter program and the advancement of the Seberian Series and the progression to the movie. I am very much looking forward to Book 2 and of course the movie!
To my readers and followers of this blog, I encourage you to consider supporting Jason in this endeavour. Any money you pledge is not debited from your account unless the final amount of the program is reached. If not reached, then no debit from your account.
Here is the link to the Kickstarter again:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/417002701/seberian
Click on the BUY or PREVIEW buttons below to buy or preview this novel from Amazon:
Thanks, Jason, my pleasure to offer you this space to promote your Kickstarter program and the advancement of the Seberian Series and the progression to the movie. I am very much looking forward to Book 2 and of course the movie!
To my readers and followers of this blog, I encourage you to consider supporting Jason in this endeavour. Any money you pledge is not debited from your account unless the final amount of the program is reached. If not reached, then no debit from your account.
Here is the link to the Kickstarter again:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/417002701/seberian
Click on the BUY or PREVIEW buttons below to buy or preview this novel from Amazon: