The podcast is the same idea with the microphone instead of the page

The clearest evidence that this is a genuine approach rather than a marketing description of two novels is that Bryant did it in audio first, with real people, and with considerably more to lose.

The premise

Upside Down Church takes religion, spirituality, and especially the Christian Church, and turns them over, by letting non-believers be the preacher, the pastor, the priest. Thirteen episodes, published between February and May 2022. On the feed the host is credited as the heretic.

It is exactly the novels' move. Hand the telling to the side that does not usually get to tell it, then do not intervene.

Why it is harder with a person

A demon in a novel says what the author decides. A guest says whatever they like, and the host who invited them has to sit there while they say it. There is no revision pass.

The longest episode, at forty nine minutes, is the one that proves the premise was serious rather than a format.

What it costs the host

Handing over the telling is not a neutral act when the person doing it is a pastor. A clergyman who lets a sceptic preach is spending his own credibility to do it, and some of his audience will not give it back.

That is the same bet the books make in miniature. A children's author who narrates from the demon's side is trusting the reader to arrive at the right place without being steered, and accepting that some parents will look at the cover and decline. Both choices cost something up front and both are made for the same reason: the alternative is a version nobody finishes.

What he is publishing now

That archive is closed. The current show is I Am Bryant, which is sermons recorded where he preaches them in San Antonio, roughly monthly since October 2025. Different format, same person, and the shortest way to hear what the author of these books actually sounds like.

The sermons are not the books and do not pretend to be. They are the direct version of what the books do sideways, which makes them a useful check: if you want to know what the author actually thinks before handing his fiction to a child, twenty minutes of him saying it plainly is available for free.

Recent episodes have run through Matthew, Acts, John and Luke. Nothing on the feed is aimed at children.

Why both shows are on this site at all

An author page that lists only the products is a shop. The reason the podcast sits alongside the books here is that it is the evidence: it shows the same instinct being applied for years, in public, in a format where it was harder and where nothing could be revised afterwards.

Anybody can describe their own novels as thoughtful. Fewer people have a decade of recordings of themselves handing the microphone to the other side.