Ron Echols | Updates

Everyone Is Pretending They’re Fine and It’s Exhausting

Ron Echols — Sun, 4 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

At some point we all agreed to this weird social contract where the correct answer to “How are you?” is “Good,” even if your life currently feels like a browser with 37 tabs open and one of them is screaming.

Nobody wants the real answer.

You could say, “I’m barely holding it together and I don’t know why my left eye keeps twitching,” and they’d still reply, “Nice! Anyway—”

So we smile.

We say “busy” like it’s a personality trait.

We add words like grateful and blessed to sentences that are clearly doing a lot of emotional heavy lifting.

The problem isn’t that people are lying.

It’s that everyone’s lying at the same time.

Which means we’re all walking around thinking we’re the only ones struggling while surrounded by people who are also struggling but pretending not to.

That’s why burnout doesn’t look dramatic.

It looks like forgetting what day it is.

It looks like staring at the fridge even though you’re not hungry.

It looks like being tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix.

The wild part?

The moment someone finally says, “Honestly? I’m not great,” the room exhales.

Because permission is contagious.

So maybe the bravest thing you can do today isn’t pushing harder or staying positive or pretending you’ve got it all handled.

Maybe it’s just answering honestly,

even if the answer is messy.

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Why Every Author Secretly Hates Their Own Writing

Ron Echols — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s something nobody tells you before you start writing:

you’re going to hate everything you write at least once.

Sometimes twice.

Sometimes constantly.

It’s not a flaw, it’s the default setting.

You read someone else’s book and think, “Wow, this is brilliant.”

You read your own and think, “Who allowed this? Did a raccoon get into my keyboard?”

This is because your brain is a jerk.

It knows what you meant to write. The epic, flawless version of the scene that played like a movie in your head.

Then you sit down to type it, and what comes out looks like it was translated from English to German to Morse code and back to English by someone who’s never met you.

And the worst part?

Readers will tell you, “This part was so powerful,” and you’ll smile while thinking, “Really? THAT paragraph? The one I wrote at 2 a.m. while eating stale cereal and questioning my entire existence?”

Here’s the truth:

You hate your writing because you’ve seen the behind-the-scenes.

You watched yourself struggle for every sentence.

Meanwhile, everyone else only sees the finished product, not the 47 deleted versions or the moment you laid face-down on the carpet rethinking your life choices.

So don’t trust your brain on this.

It’s not a reliable critic.

It’s the same voice that once convinced you your past bad decisions were a good idea.

Writers hate their own work because they’re too close to it.

Readers love it because they aren’t.

And somewhere between those two realities is the actual truth:

Your writing is better than you think,

you’re tougher than you realize,

and the part you almost deleted is probably the part someone else needed.

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The Curse of Being the “Responsible One”

Ron Echols — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Joseph in The Last Adam is the guy everyone relies on because he looks like he has it together.

You know this guy.

The one who fixes the sink, pays the bills on time, and somehow becomes the designated driver at every party without anyone actually asking.

Responsibility gravitates toward him like metal to a magnet.

He doesn’t volunteer; he just ends up holding things because no one else will.

And the universe loves people like Joseph.

Not in the “reward them” way. More in the “pile more weight on them until they crack like a pretzel stick” way.

Joseph doesn’t get visions or angelic pep talks.

He gets anxiety, construction deadlines, and the sudden realization that the woman he loves is carrying something that will redraw the entire universe.

Meanwhile, he’s expected to just… deal with it.

Calmly.

Supportively.

Heroically.

Like he hasn’t been awake since 3 a.m. doing mental math about how he became the stepfather of God.

What’s wild is that Joseph never asked for any of this.

He wasn’t hunting destiny.

He wasn’t trying to be chosen.

He was just trying to build a house, marry the girl, and keep life simple. Which is exactly why he gets dragged into the cosmic deep end.

That’s the quiet message buried in his story:

The world doesn’t fall apart because you weren’t responsible enough.

It falls apart because you’re human, and being human was never the problem.

Joseph doesn’t save the world.

He just shows up, terrified, confused, and completely unprepared.

And somehow, that’s enough.

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Mary Wouldn’t Have Made It on Social Media

Ron Echols — Sat, 8 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

If Mary lived today, nobody would believe her.

She’d post something vague like, “Big changes coming. Feeling blessed.”

And people would reply, “Congrats, girl" or "New job?”

She’d get dragged on Reddit for “attention-seeking.”

Some guy in the comments would write a six-paragraph essay about how statistically, immaculate conceptions are “impossible” which, like, yes, @trollingmike, that’s the point.

The algorithms would bury her story because it’s not “engaging” enough. No dance, no controversy, no unboxing. Or simply "fake news."

Just a young woman saying, “Something miraculous is happening to me, and I’m scared, but trying to trust it.”

And we’d scroll right past it.

When I wrote Mary Levitt in The Last Adam, that’s what I wanted to capture. Not holiness, but the exhaustion of being human in a world that’s forgotten how to listen.

Mary’s story isn’t about perfection.

It’s about believing something good could still come from a life that feels ordinary, messy, and unverified.

Because faith doesn’t trend.

It doesn’t go viral.

It just keeps showing up. Even when nobody’s hitting “like.”

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Do Angels Walk Among Us Today?

Ron Echols — Thu, 6 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Let’s be honest, if angels really did walk among us today, most of us wouldn’t notice.

We picture angels as glowing and majestic, but if one showed up like that now, people would assume it’s a TikTok filter or a Marvel promo stunt. Someone would try to collab. Someone else would try to cancel them.

That’s the problem. We expect the divine to make an entrance when, most of the time, it just shows up quietly.

The barista who covered your drink because you looked wrecked.

The friend who called at the exact moment you decided you were done trying.

The stranger who slowed down so you could merge.

No flaming sword. No trumpets. Just small mercy disguised as coincidence.

That’s what The Last Adam taught me while writing it: angels aren’t just celestial hitmen or glowing therapists. They’re reminders that maybe heaven hasn’t given up on us yet. It just learned to blend in.

So yeah, maybe the next time someone holds the door, don’t just say thanks.

Maybe say, “Nice wings,” and mean it.

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The Day I Almost Quit Writing

Ron Echols — Thu, 6 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There was a night, around draft number six or maybe twelve, (who’s counting) when I seriously considered deleting the entire manuscript and pretending the whole thing was a fever dream.

At that point, The Last Adam had ballooned into a 500-page theological action movie written by a guy who couldn’t even decide if angels should wear tactical gear or Armani. I told myself, “Ron, you can’t write this. It’s too weird. People want cozy romances and thrillers about lawyers, not celestial warfare and modern Messiahs.”

Then I realized: everything that’s ever mattered in my life started with someone thinking it was a dumb idea.

The Wright brothers? Dumb idea.

Wi-Fi on airplanes? Dumb idea.

Jesus saying “Love your enemies”? Universally voted dumbest idea of the century.

But those ideas changed the world.

So I stopped worrying about whether my story was too strange and started worrying about whether it was true. Not factual truth, but emotional truth. The kind that makes you whisper “ouch” even when you’re smiling.

That night, I didn’t quit. I just changed one line. And that one line changed the next hundred pages.

Sometimes persistence doesn’t look heroic. Sometimes it just looks like staying in the chair five minutes longer than you wanted you to.

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Who is this guy?

Ron Echols — Thu, 6 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Every story begins with an idea. But somewhere along the way, the idea starts talking back.

For me, that moment came when Deacon showed up.

He wasn’t in the book outline. He wasn’t planned. He just appeared. Broken, angry, and carrying more guilt than one man should. I remember writing his first scene by the fire, feeling like I was overhearing a confession I wasn’t supposed to hear. That’s when I realized The Last Adam wasn’t just about light versus darkness, it was about how grace can reach you, even when someone’s given up on it.

That’s the thing about writing a story like this: Mary’s quiet courage, Joseph’s doubt, Raphael’s defiance , they all began to reveal pieces of what it means to be human, even for those who aren’t.

Sometimes people ask me how I created such a large world... angels, demons, politics, faith, science... all colliding.

The truth is, I didn’t “create” it all at once. I built it one paragraph at a time. One character at a time. Each driven by a question I couldn’t stop asking: What if the presence of Christ had not yet appeared on earth, and If the divine walked among us again, would we recognize it?

And as I continue writing, I’m learning that the hardest battles aren’t fought with swords or special powers. They’re fought inside us, every day, between who we are and who God means for us to be.

Until next time!

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The Beginning of a Story That Never Left Me for 14 years

Ron Echols — Thu, 6 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve always been fascinated by what happens when faith meets the modern world. The Last Adam was born from that fascination. I began asking myself questions late one night...what if the story of Jesus happened today? What if the divine entered our world again, not through ancient prophecy, but through a woman and a builder from Los Angeles, and a world in the tightening grip of the devil?

Those questions wouldn’t let me sleep. For the next 14 years, they became voices, scenes, characters. Mary, Joseph, Raphael, Deacon all caught in a battle between heaven and hell that feels closer than we’d like to admit.

When I started writing, I didn’t set out to reimagine scripture. I wanted to explore the tension between humanity and divinity, between love and fear, between the faith we inherit and the faith we choose.

Now that The Last Adam is preparing for release, I’m both nervous and grateful. This book is a reflection of how I see the world: broken, beautiful, but still worth saving.

If you’ve ever wrestled with belief, with loss, or with hope itself . I think you’ll find something familiar in these pages.

This is just the beginning.

Welcome to the journey!

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