It was kind of a side project, just a thing to do.
Then it became a thing to publish. But Bradford D. Acton, a 23-year-old who graduated from Auburn University earlier this month, still has a hard time believing it.
"I really didn’t tell anybody about it. You just never take it seriously because you never think it’s going to be a book," said Acton, a member of The Church at Brook Hills, Birmingham, in Birmingham Baptist Association.
But as of November of last year, his first novel, "Memories of Kaos: The Lost Sons of God," is a book — and a very "powerful" one, according to those who have read it.
Stacy Baker was one of the first.
A member of Tate Publishing’s acquisitions staff, Baker recommended Acton’s book for publication. Of the thousands of manuscripts the Christian-based publishing organization receives in a given year, that only happens 9 percent of the time, according to Tate’s associate director of marketing, Terry Cordingley.
Acton "asks the reader to step into a thought process that allows the reader to have fresh eyes. He is a fantastic storyteller as well. These two things combined make for a powerful novel," Baker said.
According to Acton and his fans — including Rick Burgess and Bill "Bubba" Bussey of radio’s Rick & Bubba Show — the force of the book lies in the originality of the story, which paints a provocative narrative of Lucifer’s (or Satan’s) rebellion against God.
Acton said it is the issue of man that inspires the rebellion. "The angels have been around. They’re all that exist besides God, and they’re in this paradise setting. They don’t know anything about humanity or the temporal world. Humanity starts off as a rumor, and it just blows their minds."
Though he is quick to point out that the book is strictly intended as a work of fiction, Acton said the story is inspired, in part, by just how little the Bible reveals of the rebellion in terms of details.
"Scripture is pretty vague along those lines," said Acton, who will begin attending Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C., in August. "So I present the idea behind it as a sort of fight for survival, as if Satan were saying, ‘God is going to replace us.’"
He described Satan as the story’s antagonist, while the title character, an angel named Kaos, is the protagonist. But there is more to the story than Satan just going after power and glory. "That happens, of course, but I couldn’t get around the idea that that was all there was. Satan’s certainly not stupid," Acton said, noting the novel examines possible other motives for the rebellion.
He said reaction to the book has been very positive. Just after his guest appearance on The Rick & Bubba Show earlier this year, a Birmingham-area Barnes & Noble sold out of books for him to sign at an author’s event. Acton ran out to his car to get 20 copies of his own and sold out of those as well.
"Just this morning, a girl told me she took it home to her teenage brother who didn’t like to read and that he later called her up and told her he’d just read 100 pages of this book and couldn’t put it down," he said. "I’m thrilled to hear that anybody has read it but especially people who hate to read."
The book can be ordered online at Barnesandnoble.com, Amazon.com and TatePublishing.com.
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