About the Book
Book: Frogman Puck Origins: The Rising Tides
Author: Joel Chanaca
Genre: Christian Sci-Fi / Action & Adventure (Teen & Young Adult)
Release Date: September, 2025
Frogman Puck Origins: The Rising Tides
The Legends Awaken: A Hero’s Dream Quest
Embark on an exhilarating journey beneath the waves—where dreams awaken, faith is tested, and a new kind of hero begins to rise.
Frogman Puck Origins introduces readers to Puck, an ordinary boy with an extraordinary dream: to explore the hidden world beneath the surface. What begins as curiosity about mysterious scuba gear in a neighbor’s shed becomes a life-changing adventure—one that carries him from the dreamlike stillness of lily pad ponds into the awe-inspiring reality of deep underwater exploration.
As Puck learns to scuba dive, he uncovers hidden strengths, long-buried secrets, and a mission far greater than he ever imagined. With each descent, the boundary between dream and destiny blurs, drawing him into a world of courage, stewardship, teamwork, and biblical truth.
Told through a unique blend of immersive prose and cinematic illustrations, the story visually mirrors Puck’s growth—shifting from the hazy wonder of childhood imagination to vivid, hyper-realistic underwater missions that place readers right beside him.
Perfect for fans of discovery, mystery, faith-based adventure, and clean action storytelling, Frogman Puck Origins: The Rising Tides is the beginning of an illustrated hero’s journey where imagination meets purpose—and the depths hold more than secrets.
Click here to get your copy!
About the Author
Joel Chanaca is a four-time Global Book Awards–winning author whose stories blend adventure, heart, humor, and faith. His work has been recognized across multiple categories, including Humor and Heart, Children’s Books, and Teen & Young Adult Action & Adventure—celebrating storytelling that inspires without compromising imagination or excitement.
Alongside his writing career, Joel serves as a game warden with over twenty-six years of experience in wildlife law enforcement and public safety. His lifelong connection to the outdoors—shaped by years of camping, fishing, canoeing, scuba diving, and animal care—deeply informs the authenticity and spirit of his stories.
Joel is the creator of the Frogman Puck illustrated novel series, a cinematic, faith-based adventure world designed to engage reluctant readers, families, and young adults alike. The series pairs full narrative storytelling with rich illustrations to reawaken wonder, visual imagination, and purpose-driven heroism.
In 2025, Joel also released a newly illustrated edition of Patches the Cat Is a Thief, bringing fresh life to the award-winning story that first captured readers’ hearts.
Whether crafting lighthearted animal tales or epic underwater adventures, Joel’s work consistently reflects themes of character, stewardship, courage, friendship, and hope.
“The elements of design are all around us. If we pause long enough to look, we can see how God has made a place for us. Beyond the wonders of the earth, His plan reaches into eternity.”
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More from Joel
When I set out to write Frogman Puck Origins, I wanted to bring something genuinely new to readers, both those who read constantly and those who sometimes struggle to stay engaged. I envisioned an all-new, fully illustrated novel featuring clean, epic superheroes, told in a way that feels fresh, immersive, and meaningful.
Most superhero stories begin with accidents, mistakes, or powers gained by touching a mysterious artifact. In the world of Frogman Puck, the heroes’ origins are different. Their abilities are forged through purpose, hard work, teamwork, faith, and ingenious design. The story begins with the roots of child-like memories and grows into something much larger, showing how character is built long before power is ever used.
At its heart, Frogman Puck Origins is designed to do two things at once. It invites older readers back to the wonder, curiosity, and imagination of their youth, while encouraging younger readers to dream big, work hard, and plant good seeds that will grow into strong character. It is a story about becoming, not just becoming powerful, but becoming grounded, courageous, and faithful.
The series taps into riddles, adventure, super abilities, and deep friendships, all presented in a format unlike anything else currently on the market. Readers can expect wall-crawling, SCUBA diving, flying, underwater tunnels, octopods, secret labs, personally designed base headquarters, and fierce battles between darkness and light. Every element is layered to reward curiosity and keep pages turning.
Frogman Puck Origins is only the beginning. As the series continues, the world expands, the stakes rise, and the heroes are tested in ways that challenge not only their strength but their values and faith. It is a story built to entertain, inspire, and stay with readers long after the final page.
The Frogman Puck Series is a cinematic, faith-based adventure that grows in depth and intensity with each installment. Origins begins as a dream-driven journey into underwater exploration, where curiosity, mentorship, and imagination awaken a young hero’s calling. Resurgent accelerates into a full-scale action narrative, introducing advanced symbiotic technology, global stakes, and a coordinated enemy operating in the shadows. Reckoning brings the story to its most complex and consequential phase, revealing hidden systems beneath the surface of the world itself and challenging the heroes to confront truth, deception, and sacrifice on a global scale. Across all three books, the series blends illustrated storytelling, clean action, and biblical themes to explore stewardship, courage, faith, and what it means to answer a call—one step, one mission, and one choice at a time.
God Bless, Joel Chanaca
Interview with the Author
How do you select the names of your characters?
Character names are a mix of real-life inspiration and meaningful symbolism. Several of the main characters are inspired by people I have worked with during my career as a game warden. Many of those experiences involved real-world problems with cinematic intensity. Those moments later influenced the structure and realism behind this Christian action-adventure series.
The opposing forces are often named according to defining traits or spiritual symbolism. Eclipse seeks to block the Light and obscure truth. Dr. Vex is twisted in his interpretation of creation. Shatterborne represents the tearing down of foundations. Terrablight reflects the destruction of what is good and alive in God’s creation. Ironshade has a hardened exterior and a calloused heart.
RIPTIDE, the criminal organization, is intentionally the opposite of Team TIDES. TIDES stands for teamwork, integrity, dedication, excellence, and service. RIPTIDE represents selfish ambition, deception, instability, speed without direction, and serving only the self. Even the names reflect the deeper message.
Because I was a reluctant reader growing up, symbolism helps anchor meaning. If a young reader does not catch every layer the first time, the names still plant seeds. That matters in Biblical worldview fiction. It allows the story to operate on multiple levels.
What was your hardest scene to write?
Without giving everything away, the most challenging scenes are usually the action sequences.
One major underground extraction and two encounters with ancient beasts of legend required careful pacing, clarity, and emotional weight. Action must move fast, especially in faith-based sci-fi and underwater exploration stories, but it also has to carry meaning. Intensity without purpose becomes noise.
Balancing high-stakes missions with spiritual depth takes time and precision. I want readers to feel the urgency while also understanding what is being tested internally. Courage, leadership, teamwork, and faith under pressure all have to move together.
What is your favorite childhood book?
I loved The Chronicles of Narnia and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It is hard to separate them.
Narnia shaped my understanding of faith woven into adventure. It showed me that Christian fantasy could carry eternal truth without losing imagination. Twenty Thousand Leagues captured the wonder of underwater exploration and mystery. That sense of discovery deeply influenced the SCUBA diving elements and submerged missions in Frogman Puck Origins and the books that followed.
As a reluctant reader who preferred action and visuals, those stories met me where I was. They moved. They explored. They did not feel slow or heavy. That experience shaped how I approach Christian illustrated novels today. I want the pacing to engage active kids, but the depth to reward thoughtful readers of all ages.
If you had to do something differently as a child or teenager to become a better writer as an adult, what would you do?
Focus.
Learning when to dream and when to apply myself in the moment would have made a difference. Foundations matter. What you build early supports everything that comes later.
I was very active. I was SCUBA diving, surfing, training in Christian martial arts, camping, boating, fishing, and hunting. Those experiences shaped the realism in the series. But learning earlier how to discipline my attention would have strengthened my development. I learned to focus and apply it. This scene is in Frogman Puck Origins, the fish tank.
Over time, I realized that nothing is wasted. What you are studying, practicing, or even struggling with now may connect to something much larger later. That lesson shows up repeatedly in this clean teen fiction series. Growth is rarely instant. It is built.
What comes first, the plot or the characters?
For the Frogman Puck series, it was Puck.
Puck shaped the world. He shaped the team. But his faith shaped him. From that foundation, the plot expanded outward.
The series is not built on spectacle alone. It is built on character formation. Strong men, strong women, mentors, God-fearing leadership, and teenagers learning how to work together all shape the direction of the story. Sometimes the boys do not have the upper hand in their joking or problem-solving. Each character plays a role. Each one grows.
That balance matters. Christian books for young adults should not exclude girls.
And stories centered on courage and discipline should still allow humor, friendship, and humility.
Who is the author you most admire in your genre?
I appreciate Chuck Black. I admire his clarity and the way he presents Biblical themes through powerful storytelling.
He demonstrates that Christian action adventure can be both direct in its message and compelling in its execution. That combination influenced how I structure tension and moral contrast within the Frogman Puck universe.
What do you like to do when you are not writing?
I serve as a game warden. My work involves enforcing natural resource laws, conducting public presentations, teaching safety and education programs, and assisting in removing abandoned vessels from Myrtle Beach.
It is active, challenging work that often carries the same themes found in the books. Protection. Stewardship. Responsibility. Leadership under pressure.
That real-world experience adds realism to this faith-centered action-adventure series. The underwater recovery operations and conservation themes in Frogman Puck Origins were shaped directly by what I have seen and lived.
If you could invite one person to dinner, whom would it be and what would you cook?
The most humbling and meaningful dinner would be with Christ.
I would prepare a traditional Passover meal. It would be reverent and deeply significant, centered on remembrance and fulfillment. Communion would not simply be symbolic in that setting. It would be personal.
Everything in this series ultimately points back to that finished work. The action, the design, the leadership, the sacrifice. It all rests there.
Blog Stops
A Modern Day Fairy Tale, May 15 (Author Interview)
Books Less Travelled, May 16 (Author Interview)
History, Hope & Happily Ever After, May 17 (Author Interview)
Paula’s Pad of Inspiration, May 18 (Author Interview)
The Lofty Pages, May 19
Simple Harvest Reads, May 20 (Author Interview)
Artistic Nobody, May 21 (Author Interview)
Guild Master, May 22 (Author Interview)
Texas Book-aholic, May 22
Fiction Book Lover, May 23 (Author Interview)
Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, May 24
The Bookish Ledger, May 25 (Author Interview)
Vicky Sluiter, May 26 (Author Interview)
For the Love of Literature, May 27 (Author Interview)
Blogging With Carol, May 27
Tell Tale Book Reviews, May 28 (Author Interview)
Giveaway
To celebrate his tour, Joel is giving away the grand prize of a $50 Amazon gift card and an autographed copy of the book!!
Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.
https://gleam.io/c1Hae/frogman-puck-origins-the-rising-tides-celebration-tour-giveaway