Ben-Adam has already lived one life, unsuccessfully as he claims. Now he must try again in an afterlife in a land that knows no sun—the Tumulus, a vast underworld populated by a race of demons. Inexplicable to him or any of the fiendish denizens of this domain are how he arrived and why he is the only human ever to fall into their company. Alone and in need of means to sustain himself he gains a measure of security, finding employment with Dark Lantern Constructs & Forgery, a massive construction company/steel mill. This company has recently won a bid on a bridge project, one meant to lead back to the surface of the demons’ world and ultimately Shamayim, their former paradise.

In this satirical fantasy Ben writes of his misadventures as a common laborer with the uncommon ancillary duty of burning his fellow workers with molten steel to arouse them from their apathy. This unsavory task, coupled with his own uniqueness of humanity and personality, painfully ostracizes Ben from his coworkers, and his days become perpetual battles. His aims are paradoxical: struggling for acceptance without compromising his moral integrity; striving to build an exit uncertain what world lies beyond and whether he is prepared to face it; letting people be free to think and act as they best see fit while wishing they would change; and stubbornly yearning to find meaning in an existence seemingly bereft of any. His discourse and observations are a mix of gravitas and levity reflecting the pathos and absurdism he experiences.

Beneath the novel’s sometimes bleakness—of friends that seem more often like foes, a world complacent with its own ignorance, and a dispassionate Universe that appears to step on every dream he dares to undertake, Ben’s attitude is stubbornly defiant, hopeful, and life-affirming, always looking for an opportunity to make himself and his possible future readers laugh.

A Magnificent Madness and the Line in the Sand is the first volume of my two books in their completed series. The story focuses on themes of alienation, bigotry, religious tolerance, the need for diversity and the inherent and inviolable right we possess to be different, temptation, moral paradoxes, a search for knowledge, meaning, and miracles hidden behind the banality and drudgery of the common work day, the perpetual struggle of passion versus apathy, and the shifting sands but ultimately firm bedrock and transformative power of friendship.

This novel has undergone professional developmental and light line editing. It was inspired by the ironic reversals present in William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and A Memorable Fancy. I would best describe this work as one being very serious and very comical. As a satirical fantasy (or fantastical satire if you prefer), it does not fall neatly into many mainstream genres. It has strong elements of science fiction in that I made great effort to research geology, metallurgy, botany, mycology, chemistry, engineering, and architecture to flesh out a fantastical world in a way that seems plausible. It is a work of spirituality strongly influenced by emotion, objective reasoning (I would like to dare to hope), the human experience, and the many and varied religions of the world. This and its deep plunge into the psychology (and in some cases the psycho-ology) of its characters bring it into the realm of literary fiction. My hope is that it contains elements that any casual reader or die hard fan of any singular genre will find footing with. Yes, even you Harlequin novel nibblers, know that passion in its most bare and pragmatic sense is what makes a hero able to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and a romantic simply an idealist who sees the world as it could be, and walks through any hell in an effort to make it so.