Bill Combs
I'm a sixty-something Southern boy, married with four kids and five grandchildren. If you automatically think "Redneck" you'd be half right. I cut and split my own wood and I'm at my happiest on my 1964 Ford tractor. However, I believe women are just as smart and capable as men, sometimes more so and look and smell a heckuva lot better. I don't believe in racism. We all bleed red, in my case red, white and blue. I believe we are all God's creation and He doesn't love me more than anyone else.
I've worked in industrial management (with a brief stint in car sales) all my life. I have a BA from UGA and can smoke the best pork butt you've ever had. I love football and classic movies. Give me Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland any day. I have a particular fondness for everyday people. I put my pants on one leg at a time and we all do, no matter what car we drive.
Just as classic film draws me in, so do classic books. I cut my teeth on Dickens and Hemingway. It's the stories and the people in them that grab my attention and my heart. I love good fiction but I also love reading diaries and journals from the people that lived it...anything from Esquemeling's buccaneer life to Siringo's cowboy adventures.
In my books I'm drawn to passionate and compassionate characters facing physical, spiritual and psychological conflict. I'm a sucker for love stories and happy endings but the world can be brutal and senseless and I don't shy away from that. A central theme is faith. It's blatant in some of my stories and subtle in others.
My newest: "The Edge Of Heaven", I'm reminded of the verse in 2 Corinthians that what is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal. So we take a look behind the curtain as narrated by a plucky guardian angel. Mike and Leigh Conley are a gorgeous young couple whose lives are shattered and are in for the fight of their lives. Their facing friends and enemies in mortal and supernatural form. Their faith is the key.
If you're looking for a big story with grand sweep and engaging characters try "Athena Rising" : The year is 2029. After an apocalyptic nuclear war women outnumber men four to one. Women decide they want to keep it that way. It's a new America and a new world where women are in total civic, military and political control. Just as we've seen panic buying behavior in the midst of this pandemic, imagine if a substantial part of the earth is literally blown back to the sixth century. In this novel, after sustained and horrific violence the survivors grasp at new paradigms of control and security. In this case it is world female domination.
"Redemption" was my first novel and is an intimate story about an ex-athlete who's lost the will to live and a young girl who's in trouble and alone. Their lives have been up-ended by tragic events and there is a determined preacher and a caring community that helps them both. The bigger picture is of course, that a benevolent God is directing things and in His mercy he brings people in our path to help us.
Life is a struggle and in that struggle men and women develop and reveal their true characters. We all face a customized, tailor-made set of challenges. How we respond to adversity and how we help others defines us.
