About the Author

David “Scott” Fields II, our Senior Writer, was raised in the farming community of Prineville, Oregon. It was here during long summer walks along the endless pastures of the surrounding farms that Mr. Fields first discovered his love of storytelling. He would spend these walks making up countless stories that he would then relate to his friends and family in all sorts of imaginary adventures, and a few even made it onto paper. The very first of these was Green Elephant, which Mr. Fields wrote at the tender age of 8. Inspired by an outstanding third grade teacher and his mom’s collection of glass elephants, the young author put pencil, pen and crayon to paper and quickly had his first masterpiece. “I knew even then that this was only the beginning,” says Fields, and he was quite right. Drawing his inspiration from such authors as C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Rudyard Kipling, countless stories began to flow from his pen. The crowning achievement of these is his Chronicles of the Imagination series.

Fields describes the beginning of Chronicles of the Imagination saying, “It all began one day on the fourth grade playground at Ochoco Elementary School in Prineville under what I called the elephant tree. Bored that day and with no friends around, I created the character Sparkey Moonbeam – a young, talking bear cub from the icy planet Staranana. From there the ideas just exploded and Staranana took on a life of its own. Recesses from that point on would often take my friends and me to Staranana for great adventures battling the evil Lizard Face or flying on the backs of dragons. For me, it was non-stop fun and imagination. Eventually though, I became too old for make-believe, but the idea of Staranana never died. I knew it was time for my beloved ice-planet to exist in another form, and so I wrote my first full length novel, Chronicles of the Imagination: Staranana.”

In homage to those early make-believe games, Staranana and the novels to follow include all the original characters Fields created in the fourth grade – Sparkey Moonbeam, Lizard Face, etc. – and a version of Fields himself is featured, called Isaiah Scott Fields in the novels with the nickname “Scotty.” Even several of his family members and friends will encounter versions of themselves in the novel. Says Fields, “I could have changed the names of all the characters, and including myself as a main character was something I thought long and hard about, but in the end it just did not seem right to change anything. I wanted to preserve Staranana as it was, and I am glad I did.”

Mr. Fields’ first novel, Staranana, was published in 2008 by Thrive Christian Press, followed thereafter by the novels Lizard Face, Old Covenant, New Covenant, The Noble Dragons, The Emperor’s Passage, and the novella The Betrayal of Kelcott. Regarding all these works, as a Bible-believing, born again Christian, Fields has insisted that all his books are written to the glory of Christ, and every book in his series has a gospel centered theme. In fact, in the novels Old Covenant and New Covenant, the characters from Staranana travel back in time to experience the events of the Bible firsthand. Combined, these two novels are nearly 1,200 pages of Christ-glorifying adventure.

As a Christian writer, however, Fields was not content to just write fiction. So in 2013 he entered the world of freelance article writing, focusing specifically on stories about missionaries. These articles were published in various forms including multiple blogs and a printed niche newspaper. Ultimately this all culminated in the creation of this online newspaper, The Believer’s Byline, which Fields seeks to fill with Christian news, teachings, and Christ-honoring content.

When asked about his future as a writer and the end of the Chronicles of the Imagination series, Fields says, “As C.S. Lewis once told a young fan of the Chronicles of Narnia, when this story stops telling itself to me inside my head, that’s when I’ll end it. However, I haven’t foreseen that day yet. As for the rest of my writing career, I always have something in the works and I always want to be sure to share the stories of Christ’s faithful servants. As for when I’ll stop writing, well, when I get to be 99 I’ll think about stopping…maybe.”