A Battle at the Fingertips: The IMFish.net Archives Book 1

"Follow Me and I will make you become fishers of people." Mark 1:17Published in 2026, James C. Byerley’s debut novel in Christian Fiction Thrillers, A Battle at the Fingertips – the IMFish.Net Archives /Archive1, plunges readers into a spiritual battle set in the historical late 1990s. It swipes back to a time before social media and smartphones, when the World Wide Web was the new frontier.1996 - the WWW ushers in a war for souls amongst angelic and demonic influences. Weaving a web of good vs. evil, an epic spiritual battle boils over. One alliance envisions opportunities for outreach. Another employs arson. Anarchy. Persecution.Following a miraculous recovery from a car accident, high-powered executive Mark Aiden trades his corporate success for a spiritual calling as a Virtual Fisher. He joins forces with a visionary pastor to develop IMFish.Net, aiming to bring the isolated and broken closer to Jesus.However, in the web’s darker corners, Howard Lancaster and his anarchic ATH army orchestrate a calculated campaign of persecution, church arsons, and terror. Howard connects with the F.I.R.E. gang (Free Independents of the Religious Empire). As church arsons grip the nation, a "moral war" ignites, and false flags confuse. Aiden is thrust into a high-stakes battle where technology meets eternal mistakes, and surprisingly finds love where he would least expect.But Jesus’ glorification and omniscience sustain amid the clamor of darkness. Lessons unfold about His will to gather His body of searchers in the world He so loves. Reflectively, truth and technology spark conflict in our own spiritual skirmishes, unfolding at our fingertips. Discover how faith in Jesus can triumph through tragedy, when the Gospel is bait in the net, when God so wills.A Battle at the Fingertips is a Christian techno-thriller trilogy about isolation and God's grace. It places spiritual battles alongside early AI, demonstrating the power of divine truth against digital deception. The story portrays connectivity as a battleground for the soul and suggests truth can prevail through tragedy. From Burning Man to a glowing monitor, it reminds us that, despite technological advances, humans still crave Jesus and connectivity with Him and His church body.A Tale Thirty Years in the Making. The first in a planned trilogy, written in the mid-1990s and refined over decades, vividly depicts the early internet era—a time before social media polish, when message boards and IRC chat rooms offered both refuge for the lonely and a breeding ground for chaos.Each collection of "archives" advances 15 years, exploring different eras of technology and their impact. ABATF is the first in an emerging trilogy set at the dawn of the internet, at the turn of the millennium. The second setting in the series is 15 years later, in 2015, at the height of the social media boom. The third advances another 15 years, to 2030, as AI rapidly enters mainstream, everyday utility.Dive into the Archives Byerley has created – into how faith can survive the fire when a battle is fought at our fingertips.As an author and publisher at Illative House Press and a teacher, Byerley is married to his wife of 35 years and is the father of two. He has an MS degree in Secondary Education from Nova Southeastern University. He attended Colorado Christian University and the University of Colorado at Boulder in his undergraduate years and earned a BS degree in Journalism from Metropolitan State University of Denver.From 1995-2001, he was a regular attendee of the Colorado Christian Writers’ Conference and others. Recently, he has taken up writing again. His favorite author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky.He researched internet addiction and virtual communities, inspired by Howard Rheingold's "The Virtual Community" (1993). Read more