Liz Mitchell: That is the big one, isn't it? Like the Ocean Moves was released 07/07/2017 and at the time, I thought it would take two or three years to produce the sequel. Looking back now at such naivety and innocence, I sincerely wish it had been so simple. But in the time that it took to write the first book and begin the second, I'd gone back to work full time managing a small company in Nashville. Paired with a commute, three children, three dogs, and a husband, life was busier than I'd planned. Two months after I published LTOM, I was in the first of a series of rear-end collisions. In 2019 I was in three more. So many whiplash injuries in such a short period of time wrecked my body, causing disc damage in my cervical spine and assigning me to fifteen months of physical therapy. I didn't write a single word during that time. Didn't even open it up. I had to fight through that valley and slug through hard days of pain and weakness. During that time period I also became acquainted with a new monster: anxiety. I knew people who had battled anxiety, but I had absolutely no concept of how truly crippling and life-changing it can be. In my typical fashion I got up every day and went to work, crying all the way there and all the way home. I did a lot of praying and worshipping and seeking on those commutes. So if you saw me rolling toward downtown Nashville a tear-streaked, snotty mess five days a week, it's because I was battling my Goliath over and over again. In March of 2020 I was finally released from physical therapy and right into a world pandemic. Everything changed for everyone at that point, didn't it? But I was blessed with a job that was essential and found myself working more than ever during that time period. At that point the sequel was written, but needed editing. I thought I'd be able to produce it that same year. Why not, right? Half the world's population was stuck at home and bored to tears. Sounded like a great time to publish a book to me! But I just couldn't get it out. Couldn't press through. Something wasn't right. I felt the Lord telling me to keep it on pause, like it had been during my time of recovery. I didn't like that plan. But I trusted him. Then on May 3, 2021, I walked out of my bathroom and found my husband face down in the floor, unconscious. He had suffered an unexplained medical event and when he fell, he hit head first, causing a major concussion. Life separated for me at that point; before his fall and after. The after was hard. The after weighed us down with too many unknowns and challenges. It felt like stumbling around in dizzy circles in a wasteland where nothing looked familiar and no one could tell us the way home. We pressed on through that wasteland and over time my husband got much better. Many would never know he has suffered so much. But I know. And our children know. And walking through such an intense time period as a family ratcheted the anxiety for all of us up to new heights. That wasteland stretched on as far as we could see and I had no idea how to navigate, no idea how to steer my family through so many days and nights that in honesty, felt like Hell to me. During those months my editor, Terri, excelled at badgering me. We were college roommates and traveled a lot as students, so she knew me well. Every single day she texted to see how we were doing. Many times I couldn't find the bandwidth to say much, but that woman is stubborn and knows no limits when it comes to fighting for what she loves and believes in. So she fought for me and she fought for the sequel, pushing, needling, elbowing, pulling me through the hardest season of my life one text, one phone call, and one email at a time. And I did get through it. What I can tell you is that in that season of such intensity and pain, I dug deep. The place in which we found ourselves had no living water, no provision for nourishment and life. We had to dig deeper to find the wells of Holy Spirit that move, that billow, that rise in swells and tides that turn and bring us up out of the Hell we find ourselves in on this Earth and into the throne room where healing takes place, where life is renewed, and where finally, the next part of our stories are written.

Liz: I wish I could tell you that I am so very brilliant that all my plans work out just the way I hoped on and off the page. But the truth is I worked through several versions of the story before landing on the one that took its shape and became Sound the Alarm. One of the greatest benefits of being a Christian in any setting is that we have the ability, the right, to call on our God for help in any situation. And when artists of any kind apply that to what they're creating, whoa. Things happen we never expected! For me, asking Holy Spirit to join my writing process and be inspiration and guidance can sometimes hijack the story I think I'm writing and push it into something entirely different. For the sequel in particular, it pushed it into harder scenes than what I had anticipated.

Liz: Years ago I had a dream. In it I was standing in rubble, large hunks of concrete or rocks were all around me. I was with a group of Christians who had survived something brutal and we knew that danger was near. We were scared. And then angels came to us, holding out the Book of David. They instructed us to read the book out loud and when we did, we were given the ability to fly. One by one the group of Christian survivors spoke aloud words from the Book of David and one by one, were able to fly with the angels in the air around us. Then I turned around and saw the sky, a vibrant purple, split from top to bottom. It was like a curtain opening, allowing the most brilliant, consuming light to spill from the sky to the mess of the rubble around us. And I knew. I knew that Jesus was coming at that moment. It was finally time. And then I woke up. The dream has never fully left me. I combined it with other experiences and dreams I've had to form the plot, transferring that idea of freedom coming from the spoken Word into the mess of our world, bringing Heaven to Earth and changing everything.

Liz: Writing the scenes in Hell were the most challenging for me. In the first book, forming Jesus as a character was excruciating for me. That is the one thing I absolutely did not want to mess up! But in the second book, I loved writing the scenes in Heaven. It's fun to ask Holy Spirit to help you imagine Heaven - the things you can see and hear and almost touch in your mind's eye are filled with such hopeful beauty that you don't want to leave that moment in time. But asking Holy Spirit to help you imagine Hell is a whole different experience. It's dark and lonely and filled with pain. I hated going to that place and writing from it. But it was crucial. I can't show my readers the glory of Heaven without also showing them the anguish of Hell.

Liz: The world we live in is cruel. It's broken in a way that often breaks us as well. But when we ask Jesus to become our Savior and we place our belief and our trust in Him, we are no longer citizens of this world and we are no longer under the curse of the fall of Man. One of the hardest lessons I've ever had to learn is that we do not get to choose who Daddy God is merciful to and who he is not. His grace is a thing of enormous weight and beauty that we can't fully comprehend. We most certainly cannot measure it and portion it out to those whose sins we see and experience. There are people in this world who are deceived so fully that Hell operates through them in ways that scar the rest of us and carve out great hollows of pain that echo through generations. We see it time and time again in the Old Testament - the long reach of evil when it's allowed free reign. But we see something else in the Old Testament: the preparation for our salvation, our atonement, our forgiveness. We see from the moment sin entered the world in Genesis that God was prepared to make a way Home for us. All of us. We do not condemn one another to Hell. That is a power only God has. But we do have the power to share his love with the unlovable. There are so many broken people in this world. Sometimes the corruption and evil seems insurmountable. But the truth is that we aren't called to conquer the evil in this world. It's already been done. We are called to point the way to the One who conquered it.

Liz: It's impossible not to know people who have sins that are "out loud" and colorful enough for the world to see. It's difficult to carry that noise around and not bow beneath the weight of it, constantly forcing yourself to remember your sins and require of yourself penance that God never asked for. As a believer who knows grace, seeing those people who continually refuse themselves forgiveness and feel that they must suffer and carry the memory of their sins always at the forefront of their minds is heartbreaking. I wanted to write a story of redemption that was real and dealt with real pain, real issues. Jesus didn't die for North Americans on Sunday mornings. He died for the world, the whole world, with all its menace and malice, all its evil incarnate that steals, kills, and destroys. And if we don't allow Jesus to be Lord of it ALL and bring redemption to ALL, what kind of God are we really serving?

Liz: I see one more book for certain. I'd like to push the story forward with all the characters from the first two books and a few more.

Liz: If I could have one legacy that my books leave for this world, it would be to reveal to those who do not yet understand that we are flesh and spirit. We do not live in only one world; we live continually in the duality of physical realm and spiritual realm realities. One influences the other, one is fed by the other, and we must live and operate in both. As Christians we are covered by the new covenant of Christ that defines us as spiritual beings. But we live in this messy physical world also. When we only have our eyes focused on one, we're missing half the experience of living. We miss half of reality, half of truth, half of knowing, and half of ourselves. There's always more! But the fullness of life in Christ doesn't come from apathetic, lukewarm Christianity. It comes from on-fire people who do not compromise their faith and their love for God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Liz: The Torchbearer Series is significant. I don't know what the Lord's plans are for it, how he will use it to further the Kingdom. But I've asked him to and I believe that he will. This second book, the "little book that could," has a purpose. There's a song recorded and performed by Misty Edwards, a prophetic worshipper out of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, called People Get Ready. It's an in-your-face, rattle-the-enemy's-cages kind of song that I've loved for a long time. In a live recording of that song, Misty sang forth a prophetic phrase: Sound the alarm. When the Lord began to form this book within me, the sound of her voice crying out those words echoed in me day and night. It's the title, but I hope that it is also the underscored take-away. We are the Light in this world. We are the people of the Resurrection. We are the presence of Heaven in these last days. We must sound the alarm. We must write about King Jesus, sing about him, speak about him, testify about him, and sound the alarm that now is the time for salvation. Now is the time for repentance and forgiveness. If we do not sound the alarm in these last days, we damn the world around us and all who come after.