Local author Matthew McHenry had a specific purpose for writing his second book, “The Exalter: Free To Serve.” “The purpose for me writing this book isn’t about anything other than enjoying a really fantastic read that gets your mind thinking and just makes you want to turn the page and be like, ‘Wow! This is amazing!’” McHenry said in an interview Monday afternoon. “And then it makes you question what’s going on today and especially in light of so many violent news reports and just the kind of feeling we all have of needing to prep our basement because we feel that things are maybe not going as planned or the world is coming to an end any day.” “The Exalter,” a fiction novel based on the Book of Revelations from the Bible, was recently released. Copies of the book can be found online at tatepublishing.com, ebay.com or amazon.com It’s also available on Kindle through Tate Publishing. McHenry grew up in Leesburg and graduated from Warsaw Community High School in 2001. After graduating, he started his first job at R. R. Donnelley and went to college full time for the next several years. After some time, he and his wife, Christine, moved to her home state of Pennsylvania. He finished his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice online at University of Phoenix. While in Pennsylvania, he was a corrections officer for a “pretty nasty prison,” he said. After getting a taste of what his degree would look like, McHenry decided it was not for him. “It’s just not family oriented and it’s basically like the movie ‘Groundhog Day’ with Bill Murray. Every day is the same. You go there and you just feel like you’re doing time,” he said. He and his wife moved back to Indiana. He is now studying to get a computer certification as a prerequisite to get into Western Governors University to get a bachelor’s degree in information technology. McHenry said he published his first book, “Released: The Way Out,” in about 2011. “That first book is something that I worked on for years,” he said. “It was really just a personal journal. I thought, ‘How many of us really know anything about our dad?’ It’s not like many men keep journals on our family. I just thought I was going to start writing about my life. And then I looked at it and thought, ‘Well, I changed my life around pretty seriously from somebody who had been involved in drinking and drugs.’ I had a real bad lifestyle.” He started making those decisions in high school but turned his life around. So for his first book he decided to make it a narrative of his testimony. He bought a book called the “Christian Marketing Guide” and found Tate Publishing. Tate offers first-time authors some really good incentives, he said, so he sent a copy of his book to them. A week later, Tate sent McHenry a contract. He felt honored that they were interested in his book. For the next year he worked on the book to get everything finalized and get the book out there. “After doing so, I thought, ‘I’m done. This is a testimony. Joel Steen and Joyce Meyer are the ones that sell books. I’m probably not going to get out there,’” he said. Christine encouraged him to write another book. He thought about it and decided to write about something that’s incredibly boring to most people but he found interesting. “And that is the Book of Revelation. There are movies based on it and I’ve looked at that. I’ll be honest, when I watch some of that, being who I am, just kind of bored by it, I just thought I want something that has a story, something that is thrilling. I want something that is a real page turner. I want to know what happens next. There’s scandal, there are questions,” he said. That’s when he starting writing “The Exalter.” “But I made it more futuristic. I made it to the point where it’s like this is what society might look like or this is what could have happened in a fiction-based area based on non-fiction things that I believe in,” McHenry said. “But I didn’t make this book so that it’s just churchy and only relative to people who go to church. I made it attractive to anyone so they can read it. Yeah, there’s some religion stuff in it, but it’s not ridiculous or to the point where I need to get a cheese grater because it’s getting cheesy.” According to the synopsis of the book on the back cover, The Exalter says he is God. Under his rule, he promises to end violence and solve all economic turmoil. Those unwilling to accept the Exalter as their new leader and worship him as God in human form are forced to be slaves to the believers. Under the Exalter’s rule, these men and women are known as Derogates. A man named Nicolai struggles with the battles in his personal life. As his work becomes routine and his own wife begins to slip away from him, he feels that his life under the Exalter is meaningless. Droughts, natural phenomenon and other events cause Nicolai and others to doubt the Exalter. McHenry said he wants his readers to want to read further to find out what happens next. He set the book up so if there was a demand for more, he could write two or more books in the series. As of now, he said he’s not working on a sequel. McHenry started working on “The Exalter” in 2012. It took him a year to write it. He submitted it to the publisher in 2013. “I had a really excellent editing team who really challenged me to kick this book up another notch,” McHenry said. He wrote, rewrote, edited and re-edited the book. Even after it was published, he made more changes. “I think, for me, I have more of a chance of being successful with this book than a testimonial. If I find I can get readers to go from this book to my first book – awesome,” McHenry said. “That’s the goal.” While he currently doesn’t have a website or Facebook page for his book, people can follow him on Twitter at MatthewNHenry
