Fiction

Chris’ first book Heart of Stone came out under the pseudonym of John Haworth in 1988, followed a year later by Rock of Refuge. They were published by Monarch in the UK, and then in the USA by Crossway where they sold around 80,000 copies and gained him some nice remarks in Christianity Today. They were also translated into Swedish and German. The books are long out of print but you can still find them on the Kindle store, now under his own name. Click on the pictures for the links (we’ve given the UK ones but you can find them on Amazon.com as well).

Lamb Among the Stars

In the late 1990s Chris began to make a new career in writing and editing, in particular for the Christian market. So (now under his own name), the first books in the The Lamb Among the Stars series were published. Lamb Among the Stars has variously been categorised as fantasy or science fiction: he prefers to think of it as an alternative reality set in the distant future. A fan quipped that it was as if Tolkien and C. S. Lewis had collaborated on the script of Star Wars; Chris thinks that a bit over the top.

The series consists of three volumes, alas now out of print: The Shadow and Night, The Dark Foundations and The Infinite Day. Their publishing history is a little complicated though. Briefly, if you are looking for old copies, the first volume in the series started life as two paperbacks: The Shadow at Evening (2002), and The Power of the Night (2003). They were published first in the UK and then taken up by Tyndale Publishing in the US, both aimed at a ‘youth’ market. So far, so good.

Now comes the twist.

Chris wrote a third volume, The Dark Foundations. But Tyndale took the courageous step of deciding that the series wasn’t just for youth (well, lots of much older people were reading it), so they’d go for the general market, and decided to publish it instead as a hardback.

To match, they republished the first two books as one hardback volume: The Shadow and Night. The Dark Foundations was published at the same time in a matching hardback. The concluding volume The Infinite Day brought the series to that that staple of fantasy publications, a trilogy.

 Although you can now only find the hardbacks as ‘used’ copies (and beware, there are people out there who are actively hunting them), they are all still available as e-Books. Just go to the Kindle store of your country. You can even now buy all three books together as a collection.

Incidentally, in a quite regrettable oversight, no one has bought the film rights.

Chris is currently working on a fun fiction book, which if he can get it to go where he wants it go do, will delight (and annoy) lots of people. If you’re interested in picking up the rights, contact him.

Questions?

As The Lamb Among the Stars series became more widely read, particularly in the United States, people started to ask about the theological basis on which the books are written. For an answer, go Chris’ response at Puritans in Space.

If anyone is interested in commenting on the Lamb among the Stars series there is a Facebook group dedicated to it. (You’ll have to sign in to see it.)