The God Conspiracy
Derek Gilbert returns to Podiobooks.com today! Those who enjoyed is strong narration skills — he’s a radio pro — on Iron Dragons will find his new serialized audiobook a bit different. With that auspicious intro, we present The God Conspiracy:
One e-mail. Five lines. 4,000 dead.
And it is only just beginning…
When a small boy in Iowa forwards a mysterious email from ‘God’ to a small group of friends, he unwittingly releases a trigger that sends blood pouring throughout his farming community.
Thousands more are dead across the country in dozens of simultaneous terror attacks and the government blames fundamentalists who want to trigger the Apocalypse.
FBI Agent Joe Unes reluctantly teams with reclusive Internet radio host Barney Ison (from Sharon K. Gilbert’s The Armageddon Strain) to expose the plot — and discovers that he’s not contending against flesh and blood.
The first five episodes of this thriller are in the default feed. Historically, Derek has been great about regular updates. But I still prefer a custom feed. It’ll put episodes “on hold” if I’m unable to listen for a period of time. No need letting them pile up. Hooray for the cloud!
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June 14th, 2009 at 9:38 am
very cool story so far. i have no idea what direction it is going. but very good.
June 26th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Wow…! Captivating.. Scary… Edge of your seat..
Cant wait to here more..
June 28th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
[...] Derek Gilbert’s The God Conspiracy [...]
July 9th, 2009 at 5:08 am
Compelling story..Living, breathing characters..
I am fairly new to podiobooks and found a few that captivated me and then a dry spell of nothing really grabbing me.
This one does the job..
My biggest beef is that it’s not finished yet and I have to wait!
July 19th, 2009 at 5:46 am
Derek, you have a wonderful voice! Your characters are sufficiently quirky to make them memorable and the story is intriguing. However there is also strong christian content and I generally find christian fiction to be too exclusionary to enjoy. Your writing is good. I’ll continue to listen and hope that the story plays out to be more provoking than a christian morality tale. Thanks for presenting your work in this format.
July 20th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Hi, Jane: I’m a Bible-believing Christian, and I agree with your assessment of most Christian fiction.
I won’t hide what I believe to appeal to a broader audience, but I hope you’ll find that not all the Christians are lily-white and some of the good guys don’t address their beliefs at all. In other words, I’d be interested to see whether you think I’ve succeeded in not letting the characters’ beliefs overwhelm the story.
Frankly, I think a lot of church-goers will have more issues with the theology my wife and I are writing into the Laodicea Chronicles series than agnostics and non-believers. Our former publisher had a real problem with the UFOs, crop circles, and — especially during the Bush years — any hint that the government might be working against us instead of for us.
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Thanks for the comment Derek. More crop circles and UFOs please! (just kidding). Your reference to being a little at odds with your religious community and publisher made me recall my wedding. I’m Jewish and married a fallen Catholic a few decades ago. After the (very short) ceremony, his family was a little disappointed that there wasn’t more “theater” and mine was still digesting that we had a woman Rabbi. Sometimes you can’t please anybody (but yourself)! But I can see that being more of a drawback in publishing. I’ll be sure to drop you feedback again after the final chapter.
July 25th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Great stuff Derek. But can ya hurry up and finish it cause me and my wife are hanging out for the rest of it!!!
July 26th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Thanks, Pete! But you’ll have to wait–that’s my evil plan!
The book is just now at Amazon.com and we’re pitching to bookstores, so I’ll hold to one 15 to 30-minute episode a week until it’s done. At that rate, it will conclude sometime in November.
July 29th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Great work, Pete. It took some digging through the mostly crappy podcasts on the Zune network to find some gems and your work is definitely one of them! Feels like good movie material as well, sort of in the spirit of “Know1ng”. Keep it up!
July 29th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Great work, Mr. Gilbert. It took some digging through the mostly crappy podcasts on the Zune network to find some gems and your work is definitely one of them! Feels like good movie material as well, sort of in the spirit of “Know1ng”. Keep it up!
August 12th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Very good storytelling, but when I got to the part where the weapons of mass destruction were moved from Iraq to some other bad Arab place I realized that this was the bad dream of some crazy Christian nutter.
August 18th, 2009 at 4:47 am
Will: Well, you’re right–I am a crazy Christian nutter. Most of my Christian friends think so because I’m no fan of the Republican Party, George W. Bush, or the War
That Will Never EndOn Terror.However, the information about Iraq’s WMD is accurate. I suggest reading the research of John Loftus, the former Justice Department attorney who documented the assistance given by the CIA and MI6 to Nazis and the Muslim Brotherhood after WWII. You’ll find the article about Saddam’s WMD program here.
Conclusion: While the war in Iraq was most certainly justified on false pretenses, the “Bush lied, people died” absolutists are also wrong. Which means, of course, that EVERYBODY thinks I’m nuts when we discuss the topic.
August 26th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
How can I order the audiobook ” The God Conspiracy” online?
September 24th, 2009 at 10:14 am
Whaaaat I like about this:First the production: Good narration: clearly audible voice and good intonation. Plus: a good story that keeps you wondering what the title is all about (and more than that). Also with good quips (in the right places). Well done! A very satisfying listen.
September 24th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Great narration! Very good sound quality, very clear without alot of volume jumping. Also sounds like you have done your research quite well before hand. Characters are laid out very well and the story flows quickly, but not to fast to leave the listener behind. Nice job.
September 28th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
It seems to me that this is evangelical, fundamentalist preaching disguised as a “thriller” novel. If I wanted to hear a “Left Behind”-type novel, I would have searched under ‘religion’. Anyone can write what they want, but it would have been nice if the description had at least mentioned the heavy emphasis on religiosity. The story is OK but honestly I can’t get past chapter 12 – it’s absurd how much presching is involved; it actually interferes with the quality of the narrative. I think I’ll switch to the “God Delusion”!
October 9th, 2009 at 5:49 am
fascinating book. couldnt stop listening. only i wish the theme music was a decibel or two lower. Good book.
October 13th, 2009 at 11:08 am
I’ve enjoyed this book so far and in answer to PenMacD I’d say that there’s a difference between a story that actually preaches and a story that is an action story but has a Christian viewpoint.
October 16th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
God, guns and geeks!
October 20th, 2009 at 10:23 am
did you skip episode 23 or mislabel?
November 14th, 2009 at 1:02 am
The story is entertaining (although disturbing at times – but not in a bad way) and the narration was very well done. I didn’t mind the religious bent as it suited the characters (mind you, I don’t know people who are demonstrably religious so I’m not a good judge and I have no supernatural belief).
November 15th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
It did suit the characters… until the conspiracy theorist showed up and started attributing things to God, as well. That’s where I got off the train.
November 16th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Hey Derek, I did stick around for the end. The story was well paced, and as I said before, wonderfully produced and presented but I was a little disappointed with the end. Your “The End?” wrap up, has sequel written all over it, but for me, the religion was a little too strong. Good luck, though. You write well and I wish you success.
November 26th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
I didn’t like it. It felt like almost all characters were constantly talking about god without anyone pointing out that there was absolutely no evidence for super natural causes. Most audiobooks use a sound when changing scenes but this one had none or I didn’t hear it. That made it difficult to follow what was happening. This is my first audiobook from about 40 that I could barely follow.
But the biggest problem was the religion. It really takes you out of the story and there was absolutely no reason to put religion in the story.
February 25th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Ok. I liked the story. Very decent to listen to. I travel a lot and love to read, but paging through a novel and drive are not real congruent to a safe trip. You have a very good pleasing voice over the speakers in my pickup. The religious message was just fine. It was important to the story line. Non-Christians should not be offended. I would like to add one critical point. You need to have a girlfriend or a female do some of the voices. I am great at impersonating folks and wish you would have asked me to do the Indian fellow and the Texas senator’s voice. No charge, no strings and I will do it on the next one. It made it hard to follow without the voice shift in some parts, and you did not too a real good job of doing the Indian fellows voice. Shoot me an e-mail and I can help a bit.