Like JR Norman, I have wanted to be a writer since my senior year of college. I spent decades writing without seriously pursuing publication.

My first published work is a book about God that is not religious. My second book is a fictional novel about truth. I’ve always loved irony and am guilty of overthinking everything.

I came up with the idea for Welcome to The Grand Illusion in 2024 and began researching how to write a novel. Today’s publishing industry makes it easy to write and self-publish a book. What happens after that is where it gets complicated.

I self-published a short book I wrote in the 1990s called Believe God. I did this simply to learn the process of publishing a book. However, since Welcome to The Grand Illusion is a nontraditional book, I chose to work with a hybrid publisher, and the original version was released in December 2025. I soon realized that the hybrid publishing experience was not what I had expected. I ended up redoing almost everything myself and relaunching the book.

I was writing books because these unique ideas have been rattling around in my head most of my life… and now I can share them with others. Not to convince anyone of anything, but to share the joy of thinking… thinking differently.

The Welcome to The Grand Illusion project officially launched in June 2026. After early reviews said the blog posts read too much like a manifesto, I revised the book several times. My goal was to tell the story of one man’s search for truth and understanding, and the current version is much closer to my original vision—a rookie mistake, perhaps, but a useful one.

The Welcome to The Grand Illusion project is not just the book, eBook, and audiobook. It is philosophical fiction written to start a conversation. The website keeps the conversation going—not providing answers, but asking questions inspired by JR Norman.

The vision includes a trilogy of books:

• Welcome to The Grand Illusion–The World Is Not What It Seems (Available now)

• Grand Illusion Flatland–The World is Not What We Perceive (Available late 2026)

• Grand Illusion Eternity–The World is Only the Beginning (Available early 2027)

The goal is not simply to tell a story. The goal is exploring truth, meaning, and the human search for understanding reality in a way that encourages readers to think. Rather than tell readers what to think, fictional stories invite conversations—declarations of truth invite arguments.

JR’s journey draws heavily from experiences and questions that have shaped my own life. Like many first novels, the line between autobiography and fiction is intentionally thin. I have always been one that needs to understand; after a lifetime of asking questions, I finally found an outlet to turn these questions into a conversation.

The ASK JR page on the website will address selected questions and comments from readers. JR Norman is a fictional character who likes to write about his discovery of things that could be true—this could be fun.

If the book or website sparks a meaningful conversation, share it with someone else. The goal has never been to win arguments. It’s to become better at asking questions worth exploring together.

Truth is seldom found through arguments; it is more often discovered through conversation.