Sins of Our Fathers | Author Blog

It was released a while ago, but I finally updated to the newest version of WordPress. I like the new Dashboard. Very nice.

The English Major in me couldn’t help but groan and then laugh at this posting title I saw today while clicking through the want ads:

Three Year Old teacher Needed

Perhaps the class will be on discovering your inner child for forty and fifty somethings

Or on how to color outside the lines and use any surface for your canvas

Or how the loudest scream gets the most attention.

LOL I want to sit in on that class.

I’ve not heard anything since my last post on what the fiction editor who is currently reviewing my novel thinks of the manuscript.

And that’s okay. Such things move slowly. I know this.

But that’s doesn’t make waiting any easier

But that is the way of we humans, isn’t it.

At times I’m okay with waiting to hear anything. In the best of those times I could wait years. But then the seesaw of the human psyche changes and I itch with a need to know something.

Of course it doesn’t help that I am also waiting to hear on several chapters I sent to another editor on my current work in progress, a non-fiction book idea.

So when the seesaw tips it would seem I just can’t win

So the best thing to do is get off the seesaw and do some work and leave it all in God’s more than ample hands.

It’s funny. I pretty much put the final touches on, Sins of Our Fathers, a number of months back. Well, what I consider the final touches. I’m certain that once I can convince an editor to adopt my baby, that the editor will likely want me to retool some things.

Since then I’ve been focused on my current WIP (work in progress). Which is a non-fiction book idea. I’ve written four chapters of it and am editing those chapters. Once that’s done I’ll be sending them to an editor I ran the idea by at this year’s FCWC.

So I’ve been rather focused on that WIP, but it’s funny to me how some of the main characters in, Sins of Our Fathers, keep popping into my head. Once given life I guess they want to continue to occupy my thoughts. Which is okay, they’re characters I like after all.

I guess at some point they will be wanting some more plots to play with. I’ll have to see what I can come up with for them. Maybe that’s why they keep popping in and saying, “Hey!”

Of course they need to realize that they aren’t the only characters desiring free range on the page. Too bad there’s just one of me and 24 hours in the day.

Okay. I’m a writer. And oddly enough, I appear to be human.

This duplicity often times leads to stress and frustration. The writer in me wants to write frequently and repeatedly. Yet the human in me often finds the storms of life troubling and burdensome to the body, mind, and soul. When that happens the writer just can’t seem to think clearly enough to string more than a couple of semi-coherent words into more than mere pixels on the screen.

That’s where I’ve been during the last several weeks. Stressful things happening in my own life and the life of my church family.

The writer wants to write, but the human that finds it necessary to eat, live, and breathe needs to scrape together some pennies. Not only that, but being a warm body with a pulse means there is a need to work in fields that God asks me to tend with my time and hands.

The good thing about these times, these storms, is that they are fodder for the writer to draw upon when the writing time is available.

That said, I guess there really isn’t a duplicity at work here.

I’ve been reading from Psalms almost every day and I so love that book because it so sings of being a human in love with the Lord God, a human fallen in nature, struggling in life under all kinds of pressures and stress, but still able to recognize and praise God.

I try to start my mornings with those scriptures. I take the date, for example today is the 5th, and I read that Psalm. Then I add 30 to that number and read that Psalm which would be 35. Add 30 and read 65, and so forth until I’ve worked through the entire book.

It’s a wonderful way to start the day.

Well, I’ve got some time, so I’m going to try and write for the next hour or so.

Until next time.

Enter to win. – Hey, just want to alert you all to a free contest give-away from Active Christian Media. Stacy, over there, is giving away an awesome Archaeological Study Bible. Watch her YouTube video below for how to enter and win. The contest ends January 31st.

I just upgraded the WordPress blog software to the latest version, 2.1.2. That sort of thing always makes me nervous.

Everything looks to be functioning correctly on my end.

But should anyone find something weird, let me know. I would appreciate it.

Thanks.

I’m trying out a new thematic look for the blog.

I like it. Need to add some stuff to the sidebar yet.

What do you think?

This marks my first post to the Sins of Our Fathers weblog.

How cool is that? I’m excited. Blogging is something I love to do and have been doing since 2003 with my other blog, The Great Separation.

But this… this is something different.

Here I will be discussing my baby, my novel. And all that is going into getting it on a store shelf near you.

At least that’s the vision.

I’ve bled over my novel for some time. It is complete and at this moment I’m editing and getting input from my writers group, the Suncoast Christian Writers Group. Which, if your looking for a great group of Christians to step out upon the writer’s journey with, I highly recommend a writers group. If you’re in Florida’s Pinellas County area consider coming by and joining us.

Anyway, I’ve been hard at work putting together this blog and the main website. I’ve got to tell you, making the site was a blast! I really enjoyed it and comments so far have been encouraging. And yes, those are my eyes in the flash movie. It’s also my hand in the flash movie too.

Now that the site and blog are pretty much rolling, I’m looking at rewriting a chapter that takes place in the Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg and working on completing my book proposal.

Oh, yeah. I’m blessed to have a friend with a set of kayaks and we went out into the Intercoastal waterways to a spot where I have a scene in my book. Needless to say it wasn’t exactly how I pictured it from what I could see from a distance. Close up I realized I needed to rewrite that scene too. So that’s on the docket. Thanks, Jim!

Hmm… I think I need to get to it and everything else that a starving artist must do.

Until next time.