In among the tributes to Pat Robertson was a vignette of an interview that Pat did with Sylvester Stallone. The Rocky star said that he wrote the movie screenplay in three days....and it went on to get the Oscar for Best Picture. He knew that God had to be somehow involved in this. If memory serves...the creators of the board game Trivial Pursuit were just sitting in a restaurant and jotted down on a napkin the design of the game. There were many classic rock songs that are considered among the greatest ever written....that according to the singer or musician were created in a few hours.
It was about twenty-five years ago that I sat down at a keyboard and pecked out a chapter of what would become the novella.....Isaac Crockett....the link of which you can see to the left of this page. This went on for a few weeks....as each evening I would just come up with a new idea for where to go with the story.
First of all....I'm no Sylvester Stallone or any other talented author of books. It never entered my mind to try to publish the novel....(although our son did have one hard cover made as a present)....nor did I ever sit down to do the needed editing of the grammar or even the spelling. All I wanted to do was....evangelize....through a story. So if you come to read Isaac Crockett....please keep that in mind....and the mistakes and typos might not be so frustrating. The story was easy to write because some of it was autobiographical. When I had to choose a name for a character.....I just picked one out of my past.
There are three parts in the story. A rock star....Isaac Crockett....a Christian....'Reformed' Christian no less....the 'good boy' of rock....decided to leave his band and all the fame....and return home to Ocean City, New Jersey....for whatever God might have in mind for him to do.
The second part....and a main theme....is that Isaac meets.....and falls in love with a young Catholic girl....who for different reasons was leaving her music career. So Catholicism is a main topic. This is autobiographical because I was raised Roman Catholic. The Catholic church described...is the church I was raised in....although it was in Buffalo....and the church here in the novel is in Easton, Pennsylvania.
The second main theme....and the third part of the novel is that Isaac decides that he wants to own and operate a Christian bookstore in his hometown....right there on the boardwalk. Ocean City N. J. is one of our most frequented vacations towns. My wife and I owned and operated a Christian bookstore as I was writing this. I worked full time....and spent my off time at the store. My wife helped out in her free time. It lasted a couple of years....was a great blessing to me....and hopefully to some others.
So....if you have been reading these posts for a while.....and wondered why I mention Christian bookstores so much....now you know. I know that it sounds boring....a novel about a Christian bookstore....and I'm sure it will be boring....unless God wants to get that message through on the great evangelistic purpose that these bookstores served....and the great loss it has been to America in that we in essence no longer have them.
Note: I had a commercial produced for the bookstore....and it played on our local and very popular Christian radio station....WORD FM. They were very helpful in this....as it began with the sound of a hammer pounding a nail....supposedly Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the church door at the castle Wittenberg. There were customers that came to our town from all over the Pittsburgh area....and I had some wonderful experiences....of which I'll just mention one. A man was passing through the area....visiting family....on his way to seminary in Michigan. We had a nice talk....and I wound up just giving him a book....Valley of Vision....a Banner of Truth book of Puritan prayers edited by Arthur Bennett. A few months later there was a message on the bookstore's answering machine....from that young seminary student. The book had changed his theology....and he wanted me to know how thankful he was.
