Book Advance Campaign
A while back, I told my readers what I’d prefer to be doing and it’s this: writing a new novel. Since I believe in asking for what one wants, I created a Give Send Go campaign to that end.
I realize that I haven’t always been consistent about offering content. As you know, there have been two recent departures in my family, but if I blamed my silence on that, I’d be lying.
My silence is entirely my fault and my problem. The reason I try to instill faith in others is because it’s my constant battle: to shake off the old notion of who God is and of my old misconceptions about His personality.
I think we all have to fight that battle and if you walk too long in unbelief - like I did even after I started calling myself a Christian - it becomes more difficult to shake off because you become accustomed to the Enemy telling you “he doesn’t care about you” or “he doesn’t exist” or “nobody cares about your work.” And, remember, the Enemy relies on you being silent and being stagnant. But God rewards action.
Additionally, the Enemy uses shame and division. In the comments of my post, A Question, one of the Enemy’s servants continues to spew racial insults at me. But, in reality, those types of attacks are easy to deal with because how miserable does one have to be to act like that? One ends up feeling sorry for such a creature - at least I do. (I’ll block him at some point; meanwhile, I’ll just let him keep providing me with content.)
My inner battles are much more, shall we say, kinetic.
Here’s my plan for the second novel. It will feature one or more characters from my first novel, Tale of the Tigers. It won’t be one of the main characters, and the plot will be vastly different from my first offering.
(By the way, I’m aware that Founding Members of this newsletter are owed an autographed copy of ToTT; there are five of you and I haven’t forgotten. If you are one of those, feel free to email me your preferred mailing address.)
I started writing ToTT in the early 90s. Sensing that I needed a little more life experience, I set it aside for a bit, then picked it up again around 2007, but it stalled again. Then when my great-aunt Alma got sick, I took care of her for a while at home, and that’s when I got it completed.
I self-published and I learned a lot during the process, the main lesson being: don’t trust your editor. I ended up having to re-edit the entire thing myself and I’m sure that there are still some mistakes in the final product. It is what it is.
I plan to be a lot more disciplined and methodical this time around. I will have a daily schedule. Content for this space comes first and 1-2 hours for the new project.
Why am I doing this? Because I don’t want to have to do anything else other than serve the Lord and exercise. My military retirement is exactly the same amount as my rent and, sometimes I or my landlord go without. I don’t want that anymore.
Side note: when some of my posts here were for paid subscribers only, I got a lot of complaints, so I made all the posts here free - a leap of faith.
So here I am stepping out in faith once again. I’m going to post this essay on the Give Send Go site as well.
Many of you have read ToTT and I hope that you are excited to see what I can come up with next.
I'm glad you are going to write fiction again. I was proud to get your first book, I happily paid for the privilege, authors need to be paid for their work. I donated the book to our local library when we moved into town and downsized our home library. I have not checked to see if they still have it. It has been a year or two since I've been in the public library as I read on my Kindle app now so I can enlarge the type. I hope it has been well read.
I currently have two boxes of books to go to the library again as somehow we do accumulate a lot of books. At our age it is time to share them, meaning they kids won't have to worry about getting rid of them when we are gone. (But in the meantime we still buy books, especially the scientist in the family.)