John Walter Sorflaten holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Cinema Arts and Humanities, a Master’s Degree in Education, and a PhD in Visual Studies. Being born and brought up in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, John also has many decades of experience as a usability engineer.

His friends and family consider him to be a classic INTJ personality. Moreover, John Sorflaten hails from Norwegian descent but has no accent. Even though his profession falls more on the technical side, his passion for writing insightful blogs on how to make human-computer interaction easier and enjoyable makes him a writer-to-be-dealt-with. Google it. Or Bing it. Or whatever.

Moreover, John Sorflaten has a flair for both the technical and creative. He can be analytical and still pursue artistic endeavors like making poems and films (documentaries and drama). What’s more, John’s day-to-day routine involves enjoying creation, meditating, and deriving profound conclusions about the nature of life before going to bed!

John recently visited his hometown of Saint Cloud, Minnesota, after 67 years. And on his journey, he drove by the house where he lived when he was in the 3rd to 8th grade. He got to see the house his father built on the edge of town at the time, near the forest. He only recently realized that his father made this house so that his kids could play in that forest and John could deliver newspapers near the edge of town. Or maybe the land was cheaper.

Apart from the obvious nostalgia, John describes living in his childhood home as “A profound influence that set the tone for the rest of my life. I had the privilege of seeing nature’s grandeur right next to my house. It was a blessing and overwhelming experience!”

Talking about his past, John left the military in the middle of 1972. And by the end of that year, he had traveled to Califoria and Spain for to complete his training as a teacher of  Transcendental Meditation ™. Life after that, in his words, became “easier and more fulfilling.” He still practices TM to this day and credits it as one of the most positive changes of his life in addition to two marriages, two children, and five cats. And writing a novel or two with help.

The idea of “Thrall Conspiracy Solar Conjunction” came to John’s mind when he cognizred a unique riddle. The riddle was that a hero was told by his dying mother that he was born out of time. After contemplating on this riddle for a while, John asked himself, What is the answer to this riddle? How is that possible? Is it EVEN possible? Not long after that, the book took its literal shape.

In his contemplation, John realized that there were only two places on the Earth where all the time zones in the world flew together. So, just what time is it at the North (or South) pole? “Aha,” he said. Eventually, John was able to answer this riddle and thought, This answer is amazing! The riddle and its answer should be a part of a book!

He stumbled upon a historical instance that could support that riddle by remembering a particular event on August 23rd, 1968. The nuclear submarine “Nautilus” passed over the North Pole at 11:15 PM using an Eastern Standard Time clock. He then thought, What if I could write a novel based on the North Pole, The Nautilus, and someone being born? And the rest was, as they say, history. 

The inspiration for the main character of Thrall Conspiracy Solar Conjunction, “Isaac Newfield,” came from the Old Testament (Genesis). In the legend of Genesis, Abraham was instructed by God to demonstrate his piety by sacrificing his son, not an animal, as was the custom. 

Isaac’s mother had given birth to him after menopause despite being infertile. As told, an angel came down and informed Abraham and his wife that they would have a son. After hearing this, Abraham laughed, and before long, Isaac was born. Because of this, Abraham named his son “Isaac,” which means “he laughs.”

As the story goes, angels told Abraham to fulfill God’s wish and sacrifice Isaac. But right before that critical moment, he was instructed by God to not sacrifice his son. Believe it or not, his story is discussed not only by theologians but also by very interesting people like Carl Jung, the renowned psychologist.

Carl Jung describes the commitment to sacrifice Isaac as symbolic of sacrificing selfish claims–a form of self-sacrifice.  Apart from Jung, the illustrious 19th-century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard also wrote about this story in his book Fear and Trembling.

However, Kierkegaard defines the story in a completely different context to Jung. Kierkegaard defined the event as a potential “murder” but also evidence that a bigger picture like Abraham’s can work wonders.  In other words, philosophically, the name Isaac has a lot of baggage, and his story has a special significance, especially when it comes to forces beyond our control.

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