Jonah Baird is a Christian author from Fresno, California, and the founder of Clean Lantern Books. He writes speculative fiction about mercy, faith, restoration, and the difficult roads people take before finding their way home.
FF: When did you know you wanted to be a writer? What drew you to the horror genre in particular?
I think I wanted to be a writer long before I knew how to actually be one. My mind has always played scenes out almost like a movie. I can see where the characters are standing, how they move, what they say, and sometimes even where the “camera” would be. The hard part was learning how to get all of that out of my head and onto the page in a way another person could experience.
As for horror, I was drawn to it because it gives you room to look directly at things people normally do not want to look at. Deception, pride, spiritual emptiness, what people are capable of doing to one another, and what happens when something good is twisted into something evil. I am not interested in darkness just for the sake of darkness. For me, horror works best when there is something morally solid underneath it. The darkness has to mean something. In Soulless, it gave me a way to explore what rebellion against God might look like in a world where humanity can no longer blame poverty, broken government, war, or bad circumstances.
FF: Who are some of your favorite authors and how have they inspired your writing or you personally?
Tolkien is an obvious one for me. The Lord of the Rings had a huge influence on how I think about morality, ethics, courage, and what a writer can accomplish when the story is morally grounded. His world is enormous, but it never loses sight of the importance of ordinary people making difficult choices.
C.S. Lewis is another major influence, especially The Screwtape Letters. That book helped me think more carefully about the tactics of the accuser—how temptation and spiritual warfare do not always arrive looking obviously evil. Sometimes something is twisted just enough that a person can convince himself it is reasonable.
H.G. Wells was also a big influence on me. I read The Time Machine as a kid, and it blew my mind. It helped shape the way I think about science fiction, time, unfamiliar worlds, and how a setting can carry an idea. And then there is Norton Juster, who wrote The Phantom Tollbooth. I read that around fifth or sixth grade. The way he took abstract concepts and almost turned them into characters and places really inspired my creativity. It showed me that ideas themselves could become part of the world of a story.
Those are probably the main four when it comes to how I learned to think creatively.
FF: There are a lot of misconceptions about the end times in today’s society. How does Soulless help to bring clarity or truth to some of these confusing questions?
One of the biggest questions behind Soulless comes from Revelation 20. Christ has ruled for a thousand years. Satan is released, and somehow he is still able to deceive the nations into rebelling. When you first read that, it can be hard to understand. How could anyone live in that kind of world, see the results of Christ’s rule, and still turn against Him?
That is really what the book wrestles with. I think people sometimes assume that if humanity just had the right government, enough resources, no war, no hunger, and no obvious injustice, then people would naturally become good. But Scripture shows that the human problem goes deeper than circumstances. A person can accept that Christ is there. A person can accept that He is King. That does not automatically mean that person has surrendered to Him. I also did not want to treat Revelation like a codebook where the only goal is identifying dates, political leaders, or whatever headline happens to be in the news. It is about faithfulness. It is about deception, judgment, perseverance, and the final defeat of evil.
Soulless is still a novel. I am not claiming that every fictional detail is exactly how the future will unfold. But I wanted the central spiritual problem to be taken seriously.
FF: How did researching the end times strengthen or challenge your belief that God is good and faithful?
I will be honest: I did not begin the research angry at God or suspicious of Him. I have always loved God. I came into it already believing that He is good and that His reasons for judgment are sound. What the research did was crystallize that belief. As I studied Revelation more closely, I started understanding some of the imagery better—the dragon, the beasts, what different figures represented, and how those images connect to the larger story of Scripture. It stopped feeling like a collection of strange images and started becoming more connected.
It also made me think more deeply about how patient God is with humanity. By the time final judgment comes, it is not because God has acted impulsively or refused to show mercy. Humanity has been given truth, warning, provision, and opportunity after opportunity. Looking at what humanity has done, what we continue to do, and what Scripture says we will still choose in the future did not weaken my faith in God’s goodness. It made me understand more clearly why His judgment is not separate from His goodness. God is faithful even when humanity is not.
FF: Were there any Bible verses or passages besides Revelations 20 that were particularly impactful to you when writing Soulless?
Genesis was very important, especially the Garden. The accuser’s hatred of God and humanity did not begin near the end of history. It goes all the way back to the beginning. That connection mattered because I wanted the enemy in Soulless to feel like the same being Scripture presents, not just a generic villain or a devil with horns standing in the background.
That was much more difficult than I expected. I wanted to portray his pride, his hatred, his intelligence, and his ability to deceive without making him flat. But even his multidimensionality had to remain rooted in Scripture. The more accurately he was portrayed, the more chilling he became.
The Gospel of John was also important, especially in how the book handles deception and the nature of the liar. It influenced some things near the end of the novel that I cannot explain without spoiling them. Romans 1 and 2 mattered too, because they show how people can know truth and still suppress it, trade it away, or reshape it into something more comfortable.
And one of the hardest parts of writing the accuser was dealing with the way he uses Scripture itself. He does not always tell a complete lie. Sometimes he takes something true, removes it from its real context, and twists it just enough to make the lie sound holy or reasonable. Writing that meant I had to understand the real context myself. I could not convincingly show him twisting Scripture if I was not intimate with what the passage actually meant. That was difficult, but it also forced me to study more carefully.
FF: If readers walked away from your story with one key idea, what would you want them to remember?
Acceptance does not always mean surrender. That is simple to say, but there is a lot inside it. A person can accept that Jesus exists. A person can accept that He is ruling. A person can even benefit from everything His rule provides. That does not mean the person has surrendered his life to Christ or acknowledged Him as Lord and Savior.
You see something similar in the story of Moses and the Israelites. God rains bread from heaven. Water comes from the rock. They see things that should be undeniable. They believe for a little while, and then they fall back into fear, anger, unbelief, or demands for another sign. Seeing something supernatural does not automatically build faith on a firm foundation.
Jesus talks about the difference between building on rock and building on sand. A person can be surrounded by signs, blessings, and evidence, but if there is no real surrender underneath it, the structure still falls. That is a large part of the argument inside Soulless. The later generations of the Millennium can accept the world Christ has built while still refusing the most basic and important act: giving themselves to Him.
FF: What can readers expect from you next? Are there any other novels in the works?
They can definitely expect more books, more fanfiction, and more projects from me. I have also been playing with the idea of a multi-book series set in the already-established New Jerusalem—and then taking the story beyond that. That is about all I am going to say for now.
