B.A. Shields graduated in 1988 with high achievements in CAD, Advanced Computers, Robotics and a 4.0 in Logic. He then completed college courses in Basic, RPG-II and Advanced Programming. He worked for years as a systems designer and programmer as well as running his own computer business.
Author B.A. Shields
In 2000 B.A. Shields attended Seminary, where after four years he received full ordination as a Pastor, and began working in the First Baptist Church where he served for years as an Elder, then Pastor. In 2006 he, his family moved to a small town in Michigan where they started a Christian Bible Believer’s Church.
In 2007 B.A. Shields started a robotics community online which grew to over 3,000 members within a year and is still active today with members from all over the world.
B.A. Shields has authored works of fiction as well as technical manuals, religious books and over 200 theological essays. He is currently living in Northern Michigan with his wife and children where Pastors the local church he and his wife founded in 2006.
Biography: I was born in the industrial outskirts of Flint, Michigan in 1969. My father was an auto-worker as many were, and we enjoyed the typical life of an overworked and underpaid lower/middle class family.
I loved writing and creating stories as far back as I can remember, and I attribute this to the wonderful stories my Grandfather would tell to my siblings and I when we were young. He always had a wonderful tale of discovery, and adventure that made one want to pack their gear and head out to the unknown.
I wrote short stories and skits for my classmates and I to perform in elementary, which my teacher Mr. Coggin’s would occasionally allow us to perform for the rest of the class.
By middle school I had adventures burned into my thinking, from my grandfather’s stories as well as from hours of sci-fi adventures in cinema and on television. Captain Kirk’s jaunts through imagination, as well as Lost in Space, Star Wars, and the like, all fueled my creativeness. I will never forget when I watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom for the first time in the theater. Adventure was calling me.
I currently live in Northern Michigan with my wife and six children.
Personal Anecdotes: I began writing Pandemic Dawn in 2009 as a result of the continuing concerns I witnessed among people in general over the spread of yet another infectious disease, the “swine flu” or H1N1.
I still remember when AIDS first started destroying peoples lives, and the fears that came before and after they discovered how it was spreading, and just how deadly it really was.
Ever since the Black Death of the fourteenth century, man has recognized how fragile we truly are, and how a simple organism too small to see with the naked eye, could destroy life as we know it.
When I imagined the government testing on the population, I recall Saddam Husain’s testing on his own people which killed entire villages. I imagined the thoughts and fears of those who were helpless to a dictator’s whim, and just moments before being destroyed, were washing clothes, cooking lunch for thier families, and going about their daily routines.
I imagine, if our government split into two groups, one who remains loyal to its populous, while the other conforming into an uncontrollable dictatorship.
One of my personal fears in the wake of any devastation, whether by virus, infectious disease or nuclear disaster, is the thought of my family. How would I protect them, take care of them, support them in a new society where all the rules of life have changed?
With no law, no government, no order, how would one survive?
I believe that we are witnessing what would happen on a global scale if we examine Haiti and their devastation and suffering that they are currently enduring.
This alone brings all of my fears back into focus.