I‘ve written before about how, though I do not write explicitly Christian fiction and people from all kinds of backgrounds and views have enjoyed Herezoth, my stories do come from my deep-rooted faith, and they build upon a natural law ethos.

I realized recently how/why it is that book two, The Magic Council, is my favorite.

At Mass the other day, we sang a particular hymn during the offertory whose lyrics come from 1 Corinithians, the introduction to St. Paul’s famous “hymn to love.”

The lyrics went, “Set your heart on the higher gifts, the gifts that come from your Maker in heaven. These three gifts are all that remain: faith, hope, and love. And the greatest is love.”

And I realized that, utterly unconsciously and unintentionally, the books of my trilogy correspond in their way to these three theological virtues, as we Catholics call them.

Book one, The Crimson League, deeply explores the theme of hope in hopeless times. I mean, the subtitle my publisher suggested was “The Fight for Hope.”

Book three explores the theme of faith as trust, on a natural/human level. If you take the king as an analogy of sorts for God, faith is totally there in a deep sense that I have been drawing out through edits without understanding that was what I was doing.

Book two, The Magic Council, is the book that is about love–love in various shapes and form, but always as a willingness to sacrifice and suffer for the good of another.

The greatest is love. And that’s why, I think, book two has always been my favorite–though I love the structure and development of book three a lot, watching two generations come together, having each character find his or her place and purpose, and seeing everything come to a head.

You can learn more about my books here on the blog or at www.herezothtrilogy.com.