Why I Started Writing:

Storytelling was the family business. My late mother, Elinor Karpf-Hager, a screenwriter for nearly thirty years, was my teacher and eventual business partner in the entertainment industry. I began my storytelling as an actor and short-story contest winner as a child, transitioning to screenwriter as a young man. At midlife, I directed my writing passion toward marketing, fundraising, and teaching. Today, I return to fiction, telling stories in the name of Jesus. 

Authors Who Have Influenced Me:

Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, uses our dreams and defects to make the unbelievable inevitable. We would jump aboard a Kanamit saucer in “To Serve Man.” We would join the neighborhood mob in “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” And just like the cast of characters in every episode, we’d fall victim to the Serling twist in the end. 

Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, places dilemma and violence in beautiful murals, daring us to look away. In the novel version of Live and Let Die, the Caribbean’s undersea life captivates as 007 scuba-dives toward his assassination target. In the movie version of Goldfinger, Fort Knox’s inner sanctum dazzles as Bond battles to stop economic Armageddon. 

Ray Bradbury bridges our small-town past and space-age future, turning everyday people into astronauts, time-travelers, or dinosaur-hunters. In The Martian Chronicles, the Red Planet replaces the American West—desolate, dangerous, and irresistible. Killers, preachers, miners, and shopkeepers meet their fate on the frontier sixty million miles from Earth. Outer space isn’t exclusive to heroes like Buck Rogers or Luke Skywalker. According to Bradbury, it summons migrants like us. 

Books I Have Written:

In 2021, Elk Lake Publishing released my first Christian sci-fi novel, Brimstone 1. Christianity’s greatest revelation in twenty centuries is coming from the heavens—in the belly of a secret spaceship marked for destruction! If you love the Lord and you’re a fan of The Twilight Zone and James Bond (and by reading this page, you know that describes me!), I hope you’ll enjoy this book.

 

The Brimstone 1 Study Guide from Elk Lake is a companion to the novel with more than 500 questions and exercises in literary analysis, history, technology, vocabulary, and faith. The study guide is ideal for high-school level readers, college students, and Bible study/life groups.

Also released in 2021, my novelette “Basilica Obscura” was part of Elk Lake’s Christian space opera anthology Wonders of the Galaxy. In a dying spaceark, a Christian girl and humanist boy must lead civilization’s remnant to the new promised land, the planet Eden II. “Basilica Obscura” was a 2022 Realm Award finalist.

 

In 2022, Elk Lake published my second Christian sci-fi novel, The Deliverer. In a shattered America addicted to bloodsport, a Christian champion rises. Bren Van Allen is the Deliverer—top delivery driver, social media star, evangelist. If you love the Lord and you’re a fan of dystopian tales like The Hunger Games and Mad Max, hit the killing roads with The Deliverer!

What I'm Working On Now:

“Sinflowers,” a Christian sci-fi novelette. Dr. Macy Foster, a thirty-year-old plant geneticist, returns to her Minnesota farm town to test an experimental sunflower that removes nitrogen pollution from over-fertilized soil. What happens when the monstrous flowers start extracting “all the impurities from the land,” with the town’s secrets sculpted into their three-foot-wide faces?