James Alan Anderson
.
I have long since been retired, but I still possess all of my physical and mental faculties. I developed a passion for electronics and radio communication in the early 1960s, and that led to a career as a professional engineer in the field of telecommunications after graduation from university. I have been married to my wife Julie for 41 years and we have three adult children and three grandchildren. I am an electronics hobbyist, I hold an amateur radio license, and have been on the air for over three decades. I used to scuba dive in my younger years and my wife and I made a number of trips south to a few exotic locations so that I could engage in that passion. I try to keep in shape by taking some extended cycling outings whenever the weather is favourable. We also did a fair bit of canoeing and camping when our kids were younger.
I began The Threefold Cord Series in June 2015 after reading a portion of an e-book account of one person’s trials and tribulations he suffered as a youth due to the toxic family environment brought about by his parents’ membership in the Worldwide Church of God. His account resonated strongly with me as my wife and I had been long-time members of that radical religious sect. Then out of the blue something suddenly occurred to me: perhaps I could write a fictional story based on somewhat similar circumstances as that particular author had described in his book.
I had previously written numerous articles and manuscripts, mostly about abuse in high-controlling religious sects, and how my wife and I had been duped, lied to, and financially exploited by the Worldwide Church of God. After we exited that church in 1998, I engaged in a process of extensive research into the inner workings of both our former church and other high-controlling religious organizations. What I wrote as a result of that research was never published, and only one of my writings was long enough to be classified as a full-length book. After that, I wrote comparatively little until the first book in what would become the Threefold Cord Series got under way.
All of my previous written endeavours were non-fictional accounts, and it was a bit of a stretch for me to think that I could successfully undertake writing a fiction story. But as I had the inspiration, plenty of background material and experiences from our many years in a cult-like church environment, I was confident that I could pull off my ambitious writing project. I had no idea where this writing project would take me, and I most certainly didn’t foresee the eventual creation of multiple sequels to the original story.
Some of the events depicted throughout the story series were inspired by real happenings, including a few of my own childhood acts of mischievous behaviour. The fireworks incident in Part 1 (Book 1) actually happened albeit with somewhat less dramatic effect than what is depicted in the story. The air rifle “ass-assin” episode in a later chapter also has a real-world equivalent. And one of my characters in Book 4 reenacts one of the stupidest things I ever did as a child - a bizarre incident that involves a clothesline.
While it is best to read the books in sequence, each of the sequels can be read on an individual basis, in particular Book 4 - Breaking Point, and Book 5 - Menace From the Past. Both of the latter sequels incorporate a detailed Prologue that puts the reader completely in the picture as to past happenings.
The Threefold Cord series contains several story threads, the most predominant of which is the subject of religious cults, and specifically, the damaging effects of such religious organizations on young people. However, since the series is also a coming-of-age saga, I have had to balance the subject of religious cults with the everyday happenings that all young people experience as they mature into adulthood. It can be a tricky balancing act indeed to weave together the mundane components of everyday life with the traumas that some of my characters have to deal with due to their troubled past lives, as well as including some humour, suspense, mystery, tragedy, and even some magical realism. Fantasy and reality often co-exist throughout the series as telepathic communication and psychic phenomena are featured.
The entire series, including the yet unpublished Book 6, Reunion, spans a period of twenty-one years, ranging from 1947 to 1968. The era within which the series takes place is a time when there were few electronic distractions: no Internet, no social media, no smartphones, in fact no cell phones period! Some readers may not relate to the need for operator-assisted long-distance telephone calls, “collect calls” (where the called party agrees to pay the long distance charges), and within the first three books, no television in the household either. It was indeed a simpler time, and it was the era that I grew up in. I was born in November 1946, and two of the principal characters in the series were born in January 1947.
There is a tendency among many baby boomers like myself, to reminisce about the “good old days”, the 1950s in particular, and to sugar-coat the memories of their childhood years. It was an era when kids played outdoors, even in the winter months, and when children could roam freely much of the time without adult supervision. That was the life I lived, and naturally, I relate to the environment within which my characters experience childhood and their occasionally tumultuous adolescent years.
However, I was blithely unaware of the many ills that were endemic to that era. The only thing that scared me silly back then was the polio epidemic, and I was deathly afraid of contracting it and ending up in an iron lung for the rest of my life. However, the Salk vaccine put an end to that concern, and even though I hated getting a needle jabbed into my arm (and who doesn’t?), I endured it gladly.
In many respects, I lived the idyllic 1950s childhood that was often depicted in a number of ‘50s TV sitcoms. Shows such as Leave It to Beaver, and Father Knows Best, were considered by many to be totally unrepresentative of real family life, and each episode always concluded with a happy ending. At least not everything in my early years had a happy ending. I got into big trouble more than once, and as was the case for so many of my friends, I was soundly spanked for my misdemeanors.
Other past events that put a damper on my overly idealistic recollections of childhood in the 1950s included:
Getting repeatedly bullied at school, reviled school teachers who remain unpleasant memories to this day, trips to the principal’s office, report cards showing failures, bouts of measles, mumps, scarlet fever, Asian flu (I was sicker than a dog with complications for over three weeks), tonsillitis (and subsequent tonsil removal surgery), vision and dental issues (braces), a weird dental accident (which inspired an incident in Book 4), tree climbing mishaps, and of course, the usual bike accidents and occasional disputes that led to fist fights.
But thank God I never got polio!
At the time, I had little awareness of what was going on in the outside world, including the so-called “Red Scare”, but I did hear something about people building fallout shelters. As a young child, I was insulated from practically all of the bad news stories of the day. I mainly concerned myself with “kid things”, and spent many hours playing outdoors with my friends. I had terrific parents and lived in a typical 1950s middle class suburban home, but as I was an only child, I got rather lonely at times when my friends weren’t around. So in my early childhood years, during my lonely moments, I would conjure up an imaginary sibling, a twin brother, who I named Robert. Many decades later, I would bring “Robert” back to life as one of the principal characters in The Threefold Cord Series. As well, in the series, Robert’s identical twin brother Kevin takes on many of my personal characteristics.
I am well aware that my idealism about the era I grew up in was misplaced. I had no idea about so many negative issues of the 1950s and ‘60s that had been uncovered decades afterward. The residential schools fiasco was unknown to me, there were the usual racial hatreds and discrimination, and many families were torn apart by the scourges of alcoholism and wife abuse. I had a vague awareness about a distant conflict in a place called Korea, but I had no idea where Korea was or what the conflict was all about. Health issues also abounded as no one realized the consequences of smoking, which practically all adults did, including my parents. It was the norm and no one questioned it. Smoking was the primary cause of my dad’s ongoing poor health and his untimely death at age 60.
However, in writing the series, I chose to avoid most of the negative issues that are now understood to be inclusive of the era within which the series takes place. The Threefold Cord Series provides the reader with an escape from our twenty-first-century over-communicated world into a simpler era that is devoid of many familiar modern-day issues. However, it is also a world within which my characters have to face troubles of a different sort, particularly with respect to abuse from high-controlling religious organizations or better said – religious cults. While my principal characters are kind hearted and personable for the most part, they inevitably get themselves into some trouble more than once. However, unlike the idealized ‘50s sitcom character Beaver Cleaver, they will occasionally turn the air blue with certain “bad words” whenever someone or something provokes them to anger.
I have avoided making references to the racist attitudes of the day, particularly with respect to Indigenous people. My characters and their families are not racists and make no racist comments even though in the first book, The Threefold Cord, the twins lament that their abusive father won’t let them play wrestle or play “Cowboys and Indians” games. However, such games were games that we all played back then, so the term is mentioned only a couple of times.
It seems that some people are so easily offended, that it is increasingly difficult to write a book that deals with a few sensitive topics or issues that won’t generate “outrage” over something that might offend a reader’s sensibilities. I have tried to be reasonably “politically correct” by and large, but there are a few exceptions, especially in instances when the twin brothers make references to “fat boy Raymond”. Raymond is the twins’ much hated older sibling who continually bullies them and makes their lives miserable at times. Such epithets aren’t based on what is currently referred to as “fat shaming”, rather they are generated by the intense hatred that the twins have for their abusive sibling. Their foul language is based on provocation, but in that era, children often tended to resort to cruel unprovoked taunting and derogatory “fatty fatty two by four” nonsense ditties. I confess that I was one of the offenders, so in this particular case, I decided to retain a few “politically incorrect” expressions for the sake of authenticity.
Revised 2024 editions of Book 1, The Threefold Cord, and Book 4, Breaking Point, have recently been issued with revised cover designs and minor changes to the interior text. The manuscript for the final book in the series, Reunion, is complete, and I estimate that it will be published in early 2025.
As I am resident in Canada, I have used Canadian spelling for certain words such as humour instead of humor, honour instead of honor, favourite instead of favorite, and so forth.
Regardless of future sales figures, the creative writing endeavour has been very rewarding for me personally. Since the manuscripts had already been written (six of them) prior to publication, publishing at least a few of them has been a measure of success in itself.
I have long since been retired, but I still possess all of my physical and mental faculties. I developed a passion for electronics and radio communication in the early 1960s, and that led to a career as a professional engineer in the field of telecommunications after graduation from university. I have been married to my wife Julie for 41 years and we have three adult children and three grandchildren. I am an electronics hobbyist, I hold an amateur radio license, and have been on the air for over three decades. I used to scuba dive in my younger years and my wife and I made a number of trips south to a few exotic locations so that I could engage in that passion. I try to keep in shape by taking some extended cycling outings whenever the weather is favourable. We also did a fair bit of canoeing and camping when our kids were younger.
I began The Threefold Cord Series in June 2015 after reading a portion of an e-book account of one person’s trials and tribulations he suffered as a youth due to the toxic family environment brought about by his parents’ membership in the Worldwide Church of God. His account resonated strongly with me as my wife and I had been long-time members of that radical religious sect. Then out of the blue something suddenly occurred to me: perhaps I could write a fictional story based on somewhat similar circumstances as that particular author had described in his book.
I had previously written numerous articles and manuscripts, mostly about abuse in high-controlling religious sects, and how my wife and I had been duped, lied to, and financially exploited by the Worldwide Church of God. After we exited that church in 1998, I engaged in a process of extensive research into the inner workings of both our former church and other high-controlling religious organizations. What I wrote as a result of that research was never published, and only one of my writings was long enough to be classified as a full-length book. After that, I wrote comparatively little until the first book in what would become the Threefold Cord Series got under way.
All of my previous written endeavours were non-fictional accounts, and it was a bit of a stretch for me to think that I could successfully undertake writing a fiction story. But as I had the inspiration, plenty of background material and experiences from our many years in a cult-like church environment, I was confident that I could pull off my ambitious writing project. I had no idea where this writing project would take me, and I most certainly didn’t foresee the eventual creation of multiple sequels to the original story.
Some of the events depicted throughout the story series were inspired by real happenings, including a few of my own childhood acts of mischievous behaviour. The fireworks incident in Part 1 (Book 1) actually happened albeit with somewhat less dramatic effect than what is depicted in the story. The air rifle “ass-assin” episode in a later chapter also has a real-world equivalent. And one of my characters in Book 4 reenacts one of the stupidest things I ever did as a child - a bizarre incident that involves a clothesline.
While it is best to read the books in sequence, each of the sequels can be read on an individual basis, in particular Book 4 - Breaking Point, and Book 5 - Menace From the Past. Both of the latter sequels incorporate a detailed Prologue that puts the reader completely in the picture as to past happenings.
The Threefold Cord series contains several story threads, the most predominant of which is the subject of religious cults, and specifically, the damaging effects of such religious organizations on young people. However, since the series is also a coming-of-age saga, I have had to balance the subject of religious cults with the everyday happenings that all young people experience as they mature into adulthood. It can be a tricky balancing act indeed to weave together the mundane components of everyday life with the traumas that some of my characters have to deal with due to their troubled past lives, as well as including some humour, suspense, mystery, tragedy, and even some magical realism. Fantasy and reality often co-exist throughout the series as telepathic communication and psychic phenomena are featured.
The entire series, including the yet unpublished Book 6, Reunion, spans a period of twenty-one years, ranging from 1947 to 1968. The era within which the series takes place is a time when there were few electronic distractions: no Internet, no social media, no smartphones, in fact no cell phones period! Some readers may not relate to the need for operator-assisted long-distance telephone calls, “collect calls” (where the called party agrees to pay the long distance charges), and within the first three books, no television in the household either. It was indeed a simpler time, and it was the era that I grew up in. I was born in November 1946, and two of the principal characters in the series were born in January 1947.
There is a tendency among many baby boomers like myself, to reminisce about the “good old days”, the 1950s in particular, and to sugar-coat the memories of their childhood years. It was an era when kids played outdoors, even in the winter months, and when children could roam freely much of the time without adult supervision. That was the life I lived, and naturally, I relate to the environment within which my characters experience childhood and their occasionally tumultuous adolescent years.
However, I was blithely unaware of the many ills that were endemic to that era. The only thing that scared me silly back then was the polio epidemic, and I was deathly afraid of contracting it and ending up in an iron lung for the rest of my life. However, the Salk vaccine put an end to that concern, and even though I hated getting a needle jabbed into my arm (and who doesn’t?), I endured it gladly.
In many respects, I lived the idyllic 1950s childhood that was often depicted in a number of ‘50s TV sitcoms. Shows such as Leave It to Beaver, and Father Knows Best, were considered by many to be totally unrepresentative of real family life, and each episode always concluded with a happy ending. At least not everything in my early years had a happy ending. I got into big trouble more than once, and as was the case for so many of my friends, I was soundly spanked for my misdemeanors.
Other past events that put a damper on my overly idealistic recollections of childhood in the 1950s included:
Getting repeatedly bullied at school, reviled school teachers who remain unpleasant memories to this day, trips to the principal’s office, report cards showing failures, bouts of measles, mumps, scarlet fever, Asian flu (I was sicker than a dog with complications for over three weeks), tonsillitis (and subsequent tonsil removal surgery), vision and dental issues (braces), a weird dental accident (which inspired an incident in Book 4), tree climbing mishaps, and of course, the usual bike accidents and occasional disputes that led to fist fights.
But thank God I never got polio!
At the time, I had little awareness of what was going on in the outside world, including the so-called “Red Scare”, but I did hear something about people building fallout shelters. As a young child, I was insulated from practically all of the bad news stories of the day. I mainly concerned myself with “kid things”, and spent many hours playing outdoors with my friends. I had terrific parents and lived in a typical 1950s middle class suburban home, but as I was an only child, I got rather lonely at times when my friends weren’t around. So in my early childhood years, during my lonely moments, I would conjure up an imaginary sibling, a twin brother, who I named Robert. Many decades later, I would bring “Robert” back to life as one of the principal characters in The Threefold Cord Series. As well, in the series, Robert’s identical twin brother Kevin takes on many of my personal characteristics.
I am well aware that my idealism about the era I grew up in was misplaced. I had no idea about so many negative issues of the 1950s and ‘60s that had been uncovered decades afterward. The residential schools fiasco was unknown to me, there were the usual racial hatreds and discrimination, and many families were torn apart by the scourges of alcoholism and wife abuse. I had a vague awareness about a distant conflict in a place called Korea, but I had no idea where Korea was or what the conflict was all about. Health issues also abounded as no one realized the consequences of smoking, which practically all adults did, including my parents. It was the norm and no one questioned it. Smoking was the primary cause of my dad’s ongoing poor health and his untimely death at age 60.
However, in writing the series, I chose to avoid most of the negative issues that are now understood to be inclusive of the era within which the series takes place. The Threefold Cord Series provides the reader with an escape from our twenty-first-century over-communicated world into a simpler era that is devoid of many familiar modern-day issues. However, it is also a world within which my characters have to face troubles of a different sort, particularly with respect to abuse from high-controlling religious organizations or better said – religious cults. While my principal characters are kind hearted and personable for the most part, they inevitably get themselves into some trouble more than once. However, unlike the idealized ‘50s sitcom character Beaver Cleaver, they will occasionally turn the air blue with certain “bad words” whenever someone or something provokes them to anger.
I have avoided making references to the racist attitudes of the day, particularly with respect to Indigenous people. My characters and their families are not racists and make no racist comments even though in the first book, The Threefold Cord, the twins lament that their abusive father won’t let them play wrestle or play “Cowboys and Indians” games. However, such games were games that we all played back then, so the term is mentioned only a couple of times.
It seems that some people are so easily offended, that it is increasingly difficult to write a book that deals with a few sensitive topics or issues that won’t generate “outrage” over something that might offend a reader’s sensibilities. I have tried to be reasonably “politically correct” by and large, but there are a few exceptions, especially in instances when the twin brothers make references to “fat boy Raymond”. Raymond is the twins’ much hated older sibling who continually bullies them and makes their lives miserable at times. Such epithets aren’t based on what is currently referred to as “fat shaming”, rather they are generated by the intense hatred that the twins have for their abusive sibling. Their foul language is based on provocation, but in that era, children often tended to resort to cruel unprovoked taunting and derogatory “fatty fatty two by four” nonsense ditties. I confess that I was one of the offenders, so in this particular case, I decided to retain a few “politically incorrect” expressions for the sake of authenticity.
Revised 2024 editions of Book 1, The Threefold Cord, and Book 4, Breaking Point, have recently been issued with revised cover designs and minor changes to the interior text. The manuscript for the final book in the series, Reunion, is complete, and I estimate that it will be published in early 2025.
As I am resident in Canada, I have used Canadian spelling for certain words such as humour instead of humor, honour instead of honor, favourite instead of favorite, and so forth.
Regardless of future sales figures, the creative writing endeavour has been very rewarding for me personally. Since the manuscripts had already been written (six of them) prior to publication, publishing at least a few of them has been a measure of success in itself.
