Andrew Catallo 8/29/26 Andrew Catallo 8/29/26

Christians and Goblins: A Look at Inspirations and Faith

Why put Christianity in your Dark Fantasy

The answer is simple: I love fantasy. I love books/movies like Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Sabriel and The Seventh Tower. All these and more inspire me towards fantasy, as does it to many others. But why add Christianity? Is it compatible with fantasy?

Well, yes, quite so; God is everywhere; He inspires us, He protects us, He is the light in the dark. But evil is a whole other thing. Technically, evil is anything that’s against God. So I created creatures like the Fae of the woods in Death by Exorcist and the Goblin Duke in Blood Rose. I made these creatures not only sentient but also able to choose their own path. Yet they choose evil.

As a Christian, I created a challenge of faith for one of my characters in particular, Jacob Kane, an exorcist with a dark past. He is flawed like the heroes of the Bible, like Noah, Samson, and Peter. Or Thomas, David, and Solomon. I could list all their feats and just as great their overcoming their flaws. Jacob has welling emotions towards evil. Anger, hate, mistrust. Who do we know that hasn’t felt that while watching the news? Yet he is a man of God, doing works in his name. And that’s the thing about the bible its full of flawed men and women. All brought up by the one true God. Disagree if you like, but the heroes journy is biblical. An ideal hero would be King David against the odds; he slew a giant, grew favor in the great king of the land, Saul. And later took up his throne. Only later to fall from favor in a sin of lust and murder. Sounds like a modern tale to me. And yet God said that David was a man after his own heart. You see, even after the hero falls, he rises to God a hero, and we all know his name. This is why a Flawed hero is a strong choice for a faith-based hero.

Goblins Goblins Goblins

Yes I have goblins in every story included in my book In A Dark Light. Most notably in Blood Rose and Goblin Boy. To start off, why not talk about the first story. Blood Rose is about a woman who's more than she seems, in fact one that’s used to doing the dark deeds of a hero. In this story, we have a world run by goblins. The goblin king who sent his hordes throughout the world, conquering and devouring all mankind. And if you but take a look in my story, you’ll see how corrupt the world really is. The goblins need to eat the living is a foul contrast to the hero's journey. They are cruel and callous things. Throughout the story, you see the fear and hate of these creatures from the victim’s point of view

The Hell Cerena goes through with all the intent I could put is the darkest, most painful suffering I could manage as a first story. Whether you find it too dark or not ill leave it up to.

Now to turn those ideas right on their head, I present to you the final story in my collection, Goblin Boy

His name is Rags, a young boy taken in by goblins in his infancy. Now, how do these goblins compare to the mighty goblins of Blood Rose? For comparisons in size and intelligence its oparent The red Goblins of Goblin Boy are rather small and weak. But their redeeming factor is in what is simply known as Love and companionship. They raised food to be their friend. How strange is that? Not that strange at all if you look at it from a more familiar point of view; we have pets. We even have pets the same species as the food we eat. Like fish, we eat tuna and salmon, but not goldfish. Thankfully, Rags is not a goldfish, or his friends Brigs and Thasher, particularly Thasher, would have gotten him into more trouble or worse.

Why Dark Fantasy?

This is a good question. Why do I choose to use Dark fantasy in my stories instead of just fantasy? While I’d love to have something as pure as C.S. Lewis’s Narnia. I have some pieces of it, but I don’t know enough to be confident enough to put that much weight of faith and goodness in a story. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m currently writing a light-hearted Christian Fantasy Adventure. More to be said later on. But why do I go towards the darkness? It’s very simple: after a certain age in my childhood, I craved something with greater stakes. There’s a difference in children’s stories now and from the 80s-90s. I watched the X-Men that had dark, gritty elements in a kids’ show. People died, or at least were thought to be. The pilot has this very element I won’t spoil, but the dark tone was there. Or from another show/movie, watching your hero die, like in Transformers: The death of Optimus Prime, which hits heavier now with His voice actor Peter Cullen’s passing this week. They did it again in the Live action Movies and it did hurt, but not like the first time. The death of Optimus Prime was more drawn out and emotional in the children’s cartoon, and even as a kid, it hurt. Though that being sci-fi does drag from my point. But still, inspiration comes from pain. And joy can be found in the dark.

Game of thrones youd think, would have been a great influence on me, but it really wasn’t. Game of Thrones has themes of lust and corruption, lewdness and debauchery. This didn’t interest me. But violence is always interesting. People love watching a god fight. Look at gladiators; they fight for the crowd’s favor and even sometimes to the death. It’s all about popularity, and dark fantasy is getting very popular.

Though that may not be the type I like, I love fantasy with dark themes, like Lord of the Rings and The Wizard of Oz. You might not have noticed, but you see good and evil. But it’s written lighter than it seems. I like swords and monsters and adventure. What man wasn’t a little boy who didn’t want to go out into the woods with a sword and a bow? There are many of us. Much more than you’d think.

The Dark in the lord of the Rings is all about threat and worry. But you have big, tough companions you can imagine yourself to be. Honestly, look at The Legend of Zelda; it’s the same idea and has been going strong for forever.

Did you know that The Wizard of Oz is Dark? Why yes, it is. There’s the cowardly lion who has to eat, and that nature is explained to Dorothy in their encounter. There’s the Hungry tiger that just wants to eat a baby. Yes, very strange. I remember one scene where this dragon was on the other side of a cave, unable to reach young Dorothy. He pleaded and begged for Dorothy and friends to come closer so he could eat her, and in the most deadpan way, Dorothy says something. Like “NO I don’t think I’d like that” (I’m paraphrasing). You see, the story is dark, but the hero reacts as a child would about having broccoli. That’s something I love: dark with light brought together and made for six-year-olds. How outstanding. The books are free on YouTube; I laugh at how childlike yet dark it is. Basically a scary story written whimsically.

Now that you know why I like it, tell me why you like a little dark in your fantasy in the comments

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Andrew Catallo 7/25/26 Andrew Catallo 7/25/26

How I Wrote It. In A Dark Light.

Join me on a journey threw my process of writing my debut works In A Dark Light

How I wrote it …

How indeed. Let me first recognize the strengths and weaknesses of my book In A Dark Light. The overall strength is the creative bursts I’ve had throughout each story in this book. I’m the type of person who is constantly using the notes app on my phone. I wrote each story in a fast-paced push to the end. One of notice is the short story Death By Exorcist. This story is, as you can tell, about an exorcist named Jacob Kane and his exploits in a village in Ireland. The story started as a vague idea and a character name I came up with in my teens. I wrote this short story starting from 8 pm to 5 pm the next day. It was such a creative rush. I took a few breaks to eat and shower. But I spent most of my time writing; it was such a high of heightened thoughts and ideas. By the time I finished it, I was so proud of my work that I rushed to have someone read it. The other stories, Blood Rose and Goblin Boy, were written at a much more reasonable pace, but every time I wrote, I was obsessed. In the story. I would spend many nights up late, if not through to the morning.

Now, to bring up the weakness of my little story collection

. I have little experience. The first time I wrote a story to its completion was back in College. I went to Mount Ida College to study graphic design. With the idea of making comic books. Which will be discussed in a later blog. The stories I wrote were Blood and Darkness, a short story about a reaper at the end of times, or so it seems. I had fun with it. I also thought of this character as a teen, like so many others. The next story was called Loss. This story is about a knight during the Battle of Agincourt. The hero is a disappointing knight who meets a friend from his past he thought was long dead, and is fighting for the other side. This was also a short story with the challenge of not making it supernatural. It was snuck in a little, but I got the ok from the teacher. The other trouble I had was my spelling and grammar, which was quite the struggle. I had to rewrite this several times to get it right. I did have a relative edit the first draft of the first two stories. Being Blood Rose and Death By Exorcist. The feedback I got was helpful, but it was far from professional. I did reach out to many editors but ultimately settled for Grammarly. This software is the cheapest option, as it’s free, but it has a paid option to work on the grammar and spelling to a higher degree. This was a good option, and I would recommend it to indie writers who can’t afford a $3k editor. It’s not perfect at all, though I wrote the book without auto-correct because Pages has a setting where it edits as you write, and I didn’t want to have to check my work for unwanted auto-corrections I wrote thirty pages ago. So I went through edits multiple times until I was satisfied, which was frustrating because I did pay for Premium and it missed a lot. But besides that, my only other problem is marketing, which will be accomplished by this blog and many more..

Step by step

My process for writing starts with a random thought that gets written down, as said before in the note app. I get ideas usually from a single line of inspiration, such as Death by Exorcist, which was my love for Christianity and Irish mythology. If you’ve explored my website, you’d see the link to Fae Letter Books. It’s basically a dropship bookstore with an Irish theme. With no surprise, if you saw how pale I am, you’d be right in guessing that I’m part Irish. But I won’t go into my ancestry at this moment. I literally went from a character type to a theme, and as I said before, I went on a binge. Not to go over all my stories, but another example would be my third story, Goblin Boy. First thought was to have a boy raised by goblins. Then I went from a burst of inspiration to the notes app for a few days? Or was it hours? idk. I created a family for young Rags. yes thats his name, which I later realized that I’ve heard of another goblin with that name halfway through my book. The Wandering Inn. But that’s the only comparison, thankfully. So for Rags’ family, I created good influences like his grandmother Nama, who is supportive and wise. And than theres the Bad influence member named Thasher. Like when he used Rags as bait to catch the mighty beast known as Meatwich. As you can see, these goblins are not good at names. Hence, naming a human baby Rags. The next step was world-building. I would do a process called mind mapping. The way I used it was to connect events. There’s a way to do it to show cause and effect in bubbles on your page. It’s a great process. As I went, I held in the back of my mind a few characters I was eager to add. For example, the stranger in Goblin Boy, or the build-up to the big villain at the end of each story.

How to write an ending

The most exciting part of the story is, of course, the climax. I won’t go into details for spoiler reasons. But how best to write it? In a binge, like with Death By Exorcist, I had a setup at the beginning of the story, and I leaned into it. If I had to write it again, I would have made it more interesting, but oh well, it’s on paper now. For the other stories, I had an image I wanted to bring to life, both very scary. Hence the T plus rating. I thought I wanted to leave my audience with a little bit of dread and excitement that lingers. But how do you write an ending? Well, you need the story setup from the very beginning with breadcrumbs not obviously written along the way. I’ll tell you of another story. My first story in my writing career, since after college, the story known as Legend Of The Red Eyed Devil.

Failure is ok

So this story I conceived way, way back in around highschool age. Probably about 15-17. It starts with a character I gave The nick name Devil. Now Devil’s real name became Abel Callos. Abel for my religious connection to my life, and Callos because it looks kinda like my name if you squint hard enough; the allo in my name stands out, and they both start with a C. With this story, I held in all my thoughts and beliefs about morality. I don’t believe in fighting dirty even at the cost of my life. Will I hold to it? No idea. So I hate modern military tactics, especially the use of guns. I was full of such hope and hatred. That I put it into my character over the years. My twin has the opposing belief most people have, so I got a contrast, which took the form of a new character nicknamed God. I got the name from a movie that I can’t remember the name of. There was a character whose call sign was God because he had full control of the battlefield as a sniper. so there for I created God, aka Kyle Graves. Now you’d think I’d give these two a huge rivalry in my book, but they barely met once or twice. That’s called wasted potential. One thing I did do was pull a few of the other characters I made as a teen, all the themes and powers. And it culminated in an info dump after info dump story. And it was so hard to read that nobody I gave it to could finish it, except my brother, who could barely stand it, and he made a point of it. In fact, I couldn’t read it at all. It was as difficult a book that I ever read. But I did learn something. One: create new characters, and two: don’t put myself in them because that’s a standard that can never be lived up to in a debut indie book. What I also did was constantly reread my story just to make sure it was readable. This got harder with longer stories like Goblin Boy, but I built those reading muscles as I went on.

Encouragements.

What I would say to new authors to be is that the first story is still better than keeping the ideas in your head. The inspiration bursts should be used as they come to their full growth. Otherwise, you’ll feel like you missed a great opportunity. And you may worry to never find it again. But I’m telling you you will, over and over again. One thing I like to do is what I’ve been saying all along: take notes as soon as you get the idea. Unless you are driving or at work. But I always managed to sneak some note-taking in wherever I go, like at a stoplight or when you're by yourself. I’ve been caught many times taking notes at work, and I was too scared to do so while driving. But thankfully, I can hold onto that thought for a while. And I tell you to hold onto that thought. And if you forget, then well, it wasn’t that important anyway. If it can’t linger with you, how will it with the reader? But do as you do. And be safe and enthusiastic.. One final thought I would like to leave with you is that its ok if you can’t afford support for your book or if you weren’t very good in English class in high school. its best to express yourself in a medium that feels right to you. For me it’s art (I’m not very good) and writing (working on it). If you keep a thought in your head, it’ll die there, and it won’t be anywhere near as fulfilling as its birth on the page. Publishing my works was so exciting that I did it too fast and had to do one of my many edits. Even now I’ve made improvements. Such as making a new cover by hand instead of relying on clip art, or, hopefully you never do this, but AI art. I was so disappointed in myself that I finally created one on the Sketchbook app on my phone, and boy is it beautiful. At least to me, and hopefully to you as well. In conclusion, I hope you express yourself as I did and will continue to do, and make the most of your work because even if it fails, it’ll be a success just to get it published.

Notes:

Where to publish - Amazon KDP is a good option for beginners. So is Barnes and Noble Press. But if you want more expansion, I recommend IngramSpark. But Amazon has the best customer service, with the others being nonexistent most of the time.

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(note) - FaeLetterBooks.com is gone; it is now in the process of becoming TheBookandPen.com. Keep updated by following me on my social media

Thank you, and I hope you like my books and spread the word about the worlds I create.

-Andrew Catallo