I wanted to know the meaning of life. I wanted to know how to live - Serpent Box taught me how to live.

I began with a question, I wanted to know about a boy I saw in a photograph. The book was sparked by a single moment captured on a thin membrane of film. This question led me to discover the Holiness movement, and led to an even greater question - the question of faith and God.

Serpent Box explores faith and God through fervent believers who claim God manifests in us physically via the Holy Ghost. If what they believed was true, then perhaps what I believed about the world was also true.

I began with, who is this boy, who are these people, is there a God? But what I was really after was, is the soul real? Am I real? Do I exist?

And this is Jacob Flint's question. Who am I? That is the great question of our species. It is the only question worth answering, not just in literature, but in life, yet it cannot be answered within the life that asks it.

Serpent Box has brought me closer to the answer.

What made you write this book?

I wrote Serpent Box in response to a nagging question I had about a photograph of a boy. The photograph depicted a child holding a serpent in a box and a jar of poison - and it haunted me, because there was something in the eyes of that boy which seemed to beg for recognition. They spoke to me, those eyes, and I had to know who this boy was and why he chose to lead the life of a sign follower. Since I could not find an answer to that question, I invented one. Serpent Box is the answer to that and many other questions that haunted me.

What do you want readers to take away with them after reading the book?

I hope that readers leave the world of Serpent Box feeling as if they had been some place and seen some things they had never experienced before. I hope they are able to see Jacob Flint's life and environment through his eyes and my own, so that they might appreciate the beauty of our mystical and mysterious world. But mostly I hope that Serpent Box readers will be reminded that we all have within us the power to change lives and help one another to live. Life is a gift and a miracle, and one does not have to handle snakes or even believe in God in order to feel the joy of living or the power of love.