The Man Behind Daniel Penn

The Man Behind Daniel Penn:
The Question Jay Left Behind

The Man Behind Daniel Penn. If you’ve started following Countdown to Armageddon, or you’re considering picking up The Book of Daniel, there is something you should know. Daniel Penn is fictional. Part of him came from someone very real. His name was Jason. But we all called him Jay.

For many years, Jay was part of our regular Friday-night group. Most weeks, everyone ended up at my house. We played games, talked shit, laughed, argued, watched the latest movies, and wasted hours doing absolutely nothing productive.

It was gloriously stupid.

Jay was one of us. He was not some tragic figure waiting for a sad ending. He was my friend. More importantly, he was our friend.

The Lie Jay Believed

Jay was an agnostic. He also had legal problems and carried the consequences of the choices he had made. Also, he never forgave himself.

Over time, he started believing those choices had placed him beyond redemption. He believed he had gone too far. Whatever road back might exist for other people, he no longer thought he could access.

I disagreed.

But people can repeat something about themselves until it begins feeling like an established fact. The immutable truth. Guilt becomes identity. Regret and self-loathing metastasize into hopelessness. And it skews your reality, twisting it around into knots so tight you cannot tell where to begin untying.

Eventually, Jay took his own life.

So Close, But So Far Away

I was on duty that day. I was standing at the firehouse, helping the volunteers with a carnival fundraiser. Jay lived just two blocks away. Roughly 1,800 feet. Approximately a five-minute walk.

I’m not sure if it was before or after the call went out for his address, but I thought about Jay. I wanted to give him a call or stop by because it had been weeks since I talked to him. Months since the last time he hung out with the crew. I decided to call him after the carnival closed that night and rattle his cage.

However, I knew some of the EMTs who responded to the call. What they told me afterward has stayed with me ever since. That was sixteen years ago.

At the end, Jay apparently changed his mind. He called 911 for help. But they did not get there in time to save his life. Jay was gone. He left us far behind.

Had I known, I could have run there long before the ambulances and police arrived.

Jay’s Final Moments

I cannot tell you what Jay thought during those final moments. I cannot tell you what he believed. And I cannot tell you what happened between him and God. Nobody can. Nobody here knows.

I can only hope and pray that when he changed his mind, he also called out for salvation.

That is why the dedication in Countdown to Armageddon Book I: The Book of Daniel includes these words:

Dedicated to my friend, “Jay,”
who believed he was beyond redemption.

I pray that in his final moments,
when he tried to change his mind,
he also found mercy and salvation.

The Man Behind Daniel Penn:
Why Daniel Penn Is Really Jason Daniel Penn

There is another tribute to Jay buried deeper inside the story. Daniel Penn’s full name is Jason Daniel Penn. There is a reason for that, and it was deliberate.

Penn is not a fictional copy of Jay. Their lives are different, and their personalities are different. Because Daniel Penn became his own character long ago.

But The Man Behind Daniel Penn left a live grenade of a question that became a part of Daniel Penn.

Can someone truly go so far, without jail time, that redemption is no longer possible?

That question smolders and burns beneath much of Countdown to Armageddon.

Where Two Jasons Converge

Penn begins the story carrying more baggage than weapons and military experience. He also carries dead friends, anger, guilt, doubt, failed relationships, and things he cannot explain.

He does not begin with tidy Sunday School faith. Far from it. And he does not have everything figured out. Another sappy trope avoided. So most of the time, he barely has time for questions.

Penn keeps moving because somebody needs him. There is always another mission, another threat, or another person who needs protecting. Also, stopping means facing everything he has buried. Everything he keeps running from.

Penn is extremely good at avoiding that part.

Redemption Does Not Erase Consequences

One of the cruelest lies someone can believe is simple:

There is no redemption, no forgiveness, no salvation for me.

“I screwed up too badly. I hurt too many people. God would never want me. Maybe other people can be forgiven, but not me.”

Jay believed something close to that.

Bullshit.

I Wish He Had Believed Differently

Christian faith does not teach that redemption belongs only to people with relatively clean records. But the truth is, none of us can earn it. That is the entire point.

However, redemption doesn’t make consequences vanish. Because it doesn’t magically undo stupidity, damaged relationships, or cranial-rectal inversions. But it does mean that those bad choices do not have to own everything that comes after the fact.

Failure does not get the final vote. You just get to repeat the lesson until you learn from it. That idea became an integral part of Daniel Penn.

It is also one reason Countdown to Armageddon contains so much darkness. But it was never a series of connected stories about hopelessness and despair.

On Darkness and Evil

There are monsters, demons, and evil in these books. Some are obvious. Others are harder to see. Because sometimes the baddies wear the same uniform and look completely human.

Darkness can hide in each of us. It can look like guilt, pride, fear, revenge, jealousy, coveting, violence, and murder simply because one can. Hopelessness may be the biggest lie and monster of them all.

The Man Behind Daniel Penn: The Question Jay Left Behind

Jay never got to read The Book of Daniel.

I wish he had.

I wish I could hand him a copy of it, The Dogs of War, and Blood Moon Rising. I can already imagine him finding something to give me shit about.

He would have bitched about Penn. Laughed at Cox verbally skinning Bueller and Kriggs. Talked about the antics at NAS Key West. Scoffed at Lazarus. Drooled over the TH-36A Shawnee Heavy Troop Transport and the advanced body armor system. Became animated over the Book I battles at La Villa del Ortiz, Los Mochis, and 77 Westing. Loved the major Book II battles: The Battle of The Kennel and the Great Raid. Complained about the Chimeras, while asking a thousand questions about them. And full-force tapped Juan and Pablo over the heads with a heavy, blunt object.

He probably would have hated Ezekiel in Book II. Tortured me over Chimera Jaguar, Tesla. Loved to hate Steve in Book III. Get excited about the KillBots, Kriggs’ felony-grade projects, and Bueller being an accomplice to the madness. He also would have made a rash of jokes about Canadian bacon when the Canadians appear in Book II. Laughed his ass off over the obstacle course and more.

Instead, he never will.

The Memory of The Man Behind Daniel Penn Lives On

So, in part, he lives on in Daniel Penn. His memory lives in the dedication at the beginning of Book I. But the question he left behind continues through the books and stories:

What if you are not beyond redemption? What if all it takes is asking Jesus to forgive you and inviting the Holy Spirit into your life?

Maybe Jay could no longer believe that.

Maybe someone reading this or the book still can.

You still have choices while you are alive.

And your worst chapter of life does not have to become your ending.