Masculine Christian Fiction
The Coppersmith has continued to climb in the rankings, as almost 1,700 copies were downloaded overnight. We have now completely surpassed the high-water mark set by Jefferson’s Road: The Spirit of Resistance, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see us bump up against 10,000 by the end of the promotion (around 2 am EST).
Here are some screen shots:
Many thanks to everyone who’s tweeted, liked, mentioned, and downloaded the book! I hope it scares the snot outta you!
This has to be one of the craziest months I think I’ve ever experienced, writing-wise, that is. Not only are we in the midst of this major publicity push for The Spirit of Resistance, resulting in a readership that is shooting exponentially through the roof, but my publisher for The Lost Scrolls has been cranking down hard on the publicity there, as well.
I just got off the phone with Irene Watson, doing my first “live” interview for The Lost Scrolls. That was fun – a little nerve-wracking, if I do say so. The whole time I’m talking I’m experiencing this, “Oh Jesus, please keep me from saying something stoopid!” kind of feeling, and just kind of babbling on. Well, there’s a first time for everything. If I do come off as an idiot, it’s probably accurate, but I’ll still blame the overnight shift and four hours sleep I’ve had.
Here are some of my favorite pictures from this month so far:
Okay, it’s fairly obvious (since you’re here) that I’ve changed the look of the blog. So what do you think? I’ve got a listing of all the current titles available on the front, with some tantalizing images of future covers that I’ve worked up as well. The navigation should be a little smoother, too.
Soon I’ll be incorporating a few more elements (though I’m doing this at work right now, so I don’t have access to everything on my hard drive), including regular newsletters and polls (yeah, as in, “What would you like to see finished first,” or “What stories do you like best,” etc.), as well as (hopefully, if I can swing it) a chart that shows the progress of my various projects.
I think, by the time we’re done, this is gonna be an awesome site to call home. I hope you come back and check often and chat. Lemme know what you think!
Well, this has been exciting for me. Got to go and spend a day at Canandaigua Lake with the family today. Took the laptop in lieu of a book, and in the hours under the sun, when I wasn’t in the water, I worked steadily on The Autographs (note the new title. I’ll explain in a minute). The net result is I finished chapter fourteen and made substantial progress on chapter fifteen, such that I am about a third done. I put in a little more than 1500 words today. Wow. If I did that consistently, I could write a complete novel in two and a half months (taking time off for weekends, of course) 😉
So, the new title: A few weeks ago, while driving south to visit Stony Brook State Park near Dansville, NY, I was thinking about the storyline behind Autograph. Essentially it has revolved around what happens when someone discovers the autograph of St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Most of the story takes place in Turkey (it’s kinda fun, if a little hard, to write about a place I’ve never been to. Thank God for Google). But I’ve wanted to develop the story more, see if it couldn’t take me to other places as well.
Then the epiphany. What if the scroll they discover in Turkey isn’t the autograph itself, but rather a map, or rather a letter or list of some kind that tells of the location of the autographs. The mythology behind this is drawn from 2 Timothy, where Paul tells Timothy, in verse 13, “When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments.” I want to suggest Paul himself was compiling a canon, and the scrolls and parchments were the original autographs of what he and possibly some others had written.
Anyway, now I have my characters hopping all over Turkey, Syria, and possibly Lebanon, before coming back to the United States. It’s pretty exciting. Additionally, they’re taking on their own lives and beginning to do some rather unexpected stuff.
I’m feeling pretty good about this story. I’m looking forward to having the finished draft in my hands.
It has been a busy past week and a half. In addition to now recording our Sunday messages and being able to upload them to the church website, as well as uploading a weekly blog entry on the site, I’ve also been gearing up for a new series we’re doing called The Justice League – a series of character studies from the book of Judges. I’ll play off of similarities between some of the more famous Marvel and DC Comics superheroes (no, I’m not going to distinguish between who belongs in which universe. All you comic-book purists can just deal with it!) and some of the more famous Judges from that period of Israel’s history.
Additionally, I finally have a job interview! It’s a bit less than what I was making at the paper, but assuming I’m hired, I can supplement our income by delivering papers or some other side job until we’re able to pay bills through writing and/or church work. At least it’s a foot in the door.
And at last, the real reason I’ve been somewhat absent from my blog and from the forums… (drumroll)… I’m writing! Woohoo!
At this point I am actively working on both St. Jude and Autograph, which I’m enjoying immensely. I’ve done some more work on the screenplay, but it isn’t holding my attention right now the way these two novels are. St. Jude is delightfully dark and moody, and Autograph is fast-paced and fun – kinda like Indiana Jones meets The DaVinci Code. Yes, when it comes time to sell the book, I’ll have to find some other comparison. No agent wants to hear a writer say, “My book is the next DaVinci Code.” I’ve heard that a number of times already.
I don’t have any earthshaking expectations for Autograph. I’m mostly writing it ’cause it’s fun. Yes, it deals with forgiveness and even biblical archaeology, but it doesn’t have a larger point to make other than a fun road trip. It’s mind candy.
St. Jude, of course, is all about making a point. It’s a sermon on grace, without being a sermon, of course. I’ll post an excerpt for y’all to take a look at in the near future. As always, feel free to comment on it.
But since the day is short, and since I don’t have much of this unexpected vacation left, I’m going to sign off for now and get back to work! Later!
So last night (well, actually a good part of yesterday) I buckled down on my screenplay Age of Reason, and managed to push out another fifteen pages or so of writing. I’m rather pleased with myself right now, thank you very much.
The only problem I see with the story at the moment is that the movie will be too short. I’m told you can expect about one minute of film per page of screenplay. I will have about 60 pages as the outline stands currently. An hour is respectable, but not enough. I was hoping for a decent hour and a half.
I don’t want to pad the movie unnecessarily, but this has caused me to wonder what else in the story line needs further development. I don’t want the story to go off track from the main thrust, and yet I think I can probably accomplish both ends by showing how the crisis of faith has affected more people than just two families.
In fact, I just realized I have two additional characters (one of whom serves as an antagonist) for whom I’ve shown practically no developing scenes whatsoever. Now I just have to figure out what to write and how to weave it into the outline.
I’ve been using a USScriptSmart Gold template for Microsoft Word for the screenplay. It’s useful in that it helps with the formatting while being completely free of charge (hey, I’m still essentially unemployed. Free is very important to me). The downside is that it makes inserting anything new into the script very difficult, as it doesn’t automatically adjust for page breaks. I’ll have to spend a significant amount of time reformatting this document once it’s done to satisfaction. Oh well. Someday (when I have money to spend) I’ll invest in a decent screenwriting software program.
In the meantime, I’m just about better than half done. Cool. Soon, I’ll just have to worry about selling the script. Woohoo.