What's the Difference Between a Cult and a Religion?

About one-hundred years, as the old joke suggests. Seriously, think about all the religions that have come about in the last few centuries: Mormonism, the Hare Krishnas, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and Scientology to name a few. They were all considered (and some are still considered today) cults at the time of their founding and in most cases for decades after.

About a year before the Covid pandemic, I was contemplating the affects of climate change and what would happen if things got so bad society as we know it completely collapsed. A quick succession of thoughts followed. Who or what would fill the void? How would anyone survive if the incredibly complex yet fragile techno-society upon which we all depend ceased to exist? Hence the seeds of my fourth novel, The Gardens of Eden, were born.

Looking at every timeframe in human history, the answer to one of these questions became immediately apparent. A new religion would spring up and its followers would band together to survive the struggle. I realized I had the makings of a trilogy. The first book would cover the creation of the cult before the collapse of society. The second book the immediate aftermath of societal collapse. And the third would be about one-hundred years in the future when we could see how the cult evolved into a full-blown religion.

Part of the fun of being an author is you can dictate all of the variables in the fictional world that your characters have to live in. I also realized that embarking on the journey of writing this trilogy would take me through three different genres: contemporary fiction, post-apocalyptic eco-disaster, and speculative future fiction. I know these aren't definitive literary genres, but you get the point.

The Gardens of Eden settled down into more of an eco-thriller that happened to take place in a cult. I knew I was onto something when the Covid pandemic hit while I was still writing the manuscript. I had this weird feeling that I was writing history and not just fiction. I published it in September of 2020, at the height of the economic chaos and before there was a vaccine for anyone to argue about..

I've been working on the sequel, Eden Awakens, on and off for the last five years. In the meantime, I've written and published my fifth novel, Chapter One, and completed another as yet unpublished manuscript (I'll tell you about that one in a future post). I'm about two-thirds done with this sequel and it's getting interesting. As Steven King famously said, "I keep writing because I want to know how the story ends." Me too. Let me know if you want more details before I publish it. I'll definitely advertise for advance copies in advance of the final publishing date.