Some news related to the upcoming Signs & Wonders!

​Interested in a timeline of the events leading up to and surrounding the plot of Signs & Wonders? I've got you.

Click through to check out the rough version of author notes. I don't have a release date for you today, but I'd love to hear if the timeline and author notes spark your interest!

Author’s Notes (working draft)

Growing up in Arkansas in the midst of the Satanic Panic, I was far more like Charlie than Leah. We owned a Ouija board, were a lapsed Catholic family, and I was the kid who bought a copy of The Satanic Bible on a band trip when we stopped in Little Rock at McCain Mall. Even though that book was purchased at a Walden Books, one of my friends was horrified that I bought it. She slipped me a copy of The Satan Seller, and she was upset when I told her how I found it entertaining. She’d hoped, of course, that the book would wake me up to the dangerous waters I was wading into. She wasn’t alone. The fundamentalist girls used to cross the street to keep from passing me on the sidewalk on campus at the University of Central Arkansas. Probably because I was a neo-hippie feminist in the Honors College more than anything, but I did have a classmate or two freak out about my dabbling in harmless New Age practices.

Arkansas has never been a place open to those who didn’t fit the norm when it came to belief systems. In 1991, Wiccan priest Terry Riley began holding services in secret in the Jonesboro area. In June of 1993, he opened a store, The Magick Moon. Unfortunately for him, that was the same summer that three little boys—Christopher Byers, Michael Moore, and Stevie Branch—were horribly murdered in nearby West Memphis, Arkansas, and the people in his community turned on him. He persevered, however, and was recently featured in an Arkansas Times article showing how things have changed (See Kenneth Heard’s “’Here come the witches’: How congregants in the Southern Delta Church of Wicca found acceptance” from the April 15, 2024 blog).

It is impossible to talk about Satanic Panic in Arkansas without the WM3 case. Echols, Baldwin, and Miskelley were immediately convicted in the court of popular opinion and in the trials that followed. And, as with other SRA cases across the United States, there has never been any physical evidence to support the state’s case against them. Thirty-one years later, the state of Arkansas continues to put roadblocks in the way of testing physical evidence in the case. And despite the lack of evidence people in Arkansas and elsewhere continue to maintain the guilt of the three convicted. If you’re looking for more information on this case, Mara Leveritt’s Devil’s Knot (2002) and Dark Spell (2014) are great resources from a true investigative reporter who has been looking into the case from the beginning. While many late-comers have used the sensationalism of the trials to make a name for themselves, Leveritt’s work and the sixth season of Truth and Justice with Bob Ruff and the Oxygen mini-series spawned by his look into the case, The Forgotten West Memphis 3 are where I would direct anyone asking how to learn about the case. Damien Echols’ Life After Death (2012) is also an interesting read. All of these sources will help establish the environment of fear and suspicion Leah and Charlie grew up in.

Leah’s story is fiction, but there are some incredibly good memoirs out there that show there are real women in situations like hers. Obviously, Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free by Linda Klein first appeared on shelves in September of 2018. Others I can recommend are Alice Greczyn’s Wayward: A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare and Sexual Purity (2021), Counting the Cost: A Memoir (2023) by Jill Duggar, and On Her Knees: Memoir of a Prayerful Jezebel (2021) by Brenda Marie Davies (Joshua Harris wrote the forward). Josh Harris also participated in the 2018 documentary I Survived I Kissed Dating Goodbye, which provides not only a fascinating look at the earlier book Leah wishes to recommend to her student, but that also shares stories of people who were hurt by the book and the ideology.

Some of the most revealing sources for the Satanic Panic in general included the first episode of Sarah Marshall’s podcast You’re Wrong About, which actually ran a few months before the opening scene of the novel. Later podcasts that you’ll find interesting on the topic include the 2020 CBC True Crime: Satanic Panic series.

While I was looking backward at the Satanic Panic phenomenon, Q-Anon and the New Apostolic Reformation showed up on my radar, as did this generation’s satanic ritual abuse (SRA) survivors’ poster girl, Teal Swan. Watching YouTube videos of Swan, in particular the 2014 interview with Chris Oswalt, led me to realize that Satanic Panic never ended. I fell down a rabbit hole of real-life events that led to that moment Leah has in front of Baphomet. Once I realized what led to that moment, Leah’s character became far more real and less of a caricature.

One of the most remarkable documentaries I’ve seen since working on this book is the 2024 film Bad Faith. While books like Douglas & Pivec’s A New Apostolic Reformation? A Biblical Response to a Worldwide Movement do deep dives into the NAR, films like Bad Faith and Jesus Camp (2006) are far more accessible sources for most people who want a snapshot of how Dominionism and the notion of “spiritual warfare” play out in politics and in the lives of children.

If you’re looking for documentaries related to Satanic Panic, check out the recent Satan Wants You (2023), which does a deep dive into the ways Michelle Remembers kicked off the first wave. One of the people featured is Debbie Nathan, author of Satan’s Silence (2001). You can also see the actual unveiling of Baphomet on the Arkansas Capitol grounds in Hail Satan? (2019). Note that I inflated the crowd size and the whole vibe. Compared to the reality of the rally, Leah’s perception is far darker and more sinister to show her emotional reaction to the event.

Finally, I did a lot of exploration and research on the topic of memory. We can’t really talk about trauma or about accounts of abuse without considering how memory works. This is especially true with things like Satanic Ritual Abuse, as there’s no evidence that shows any of it existed. Mike Warnke’s “memoirs” about his involvement in organized Satanism were soundly debunked by the Christian magazine Cornerstone in 1992. Despite that, in 1993 when three little boys were murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas, Satanism and the occult were offered up as the cause, and Damien Echols was made the boogeyman. Key books on memory that informed my thinking for this book include Elizabeth Loftus’ The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse (St. Martin’s Press, 2013). Also, Lawrence Wright’s book Remembering Satan: A Case of Recovered Memory and the Shattering of an American Family is the heart-breaking tale of Paul Ingram, a sheriff, accused of abusing his children as part of his involvement in a satanic ring. He had no memory of the events, but was convinced he must have repressed them. Richard Ofshe (who has also worked with the WM3 case) concluded the memories were “discovered” through faulty interrogation practices that included self-hypnosis.

As you probably have guessed from the fraction of my sources shared here, the novel is like the head of a pin curated from a vast mountain of source material. Hopefully, witnessing these fictional characters come to terms with their biases and misconceptions will help readers question their own. Having spent the last few years with Leah and Charlie, I can honestly say this story is merely a scratch on the surface of this complex topic.

As a reminder, here's the current back cover copy:


Signs & Wonders is a captivating tale of two childhood friends who reconnect after twenty years apart. Charlie is now an accomplished reporter, while Leah has become a devoted member of a non-denominational evangelical church.

When the old friends reunite, Charlie uncovers unsettling truths about its inner workings and the dangers Leah faces. Meanwhile, Leah grapples with her faith and loyalty to the church and its leaders as she confronts the reality of the organization's true nature. Their reunion forces them to question their beliefs and priorities, and they must decide whether their friendship is strong enough to withstand the challenges they face.

In a world where faith and reason collide, Signs & Wonders is a story of redemption, courage, and the extraordinary, where the line between reality and fantasy is blurred, and nothing is quite as it seems.