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“The Story” – Connecting with the Author of Life

Sep 10

Yesterday a tweet from Rich Stearns (@RichStearns) of World Vision led me to daydream this conversation with Jesus:

ME: Jesus, if you were a novelist, what kind of story would you write?

JESUS: Oh, funny you should ask. I wrote this story with two of my relatives. [He winks, and hands me a book called "The Holy Bible."]

We'll return to this scene in a moment, but first I'll share the Stearns' tweet that inspired it:

Stearns calls The Story (published by Zondervan) the "narrative of God's relationship with his followers" and "a great overview of God's work." If you think this sounds like the Bible, I think you're mostly right. On the other hand, if the Bible doesn't seem like a coherent story to you, we've hit the point of my daydream.

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For a whole heap of reasons it can be difficult to see the overarching story that runs through Scripture. And even if we glimpse God's story, it can still be hard to see what it means for our everyday lives. I'd wager this relates to Stearns' recommendation of The Story.

The Skinny on The Story

The Story presents God's story in one seamless narrative — like a novel. The storyline is chronological from Genesis through Revelation, using verses from the NIV translation. Read Chapter 1 of The Story

I especially recommend The Story to you if…

Sometimes you're unsure how Scripture relates to your own life, or…
You love God's big story, and you're looking for a new way to engage with Scripture. Or…
If you're curious about the Bible but find it kind of intimidating, or…
To you the Bible feels like a puzzle, and you want to know more about how the pieces fit.

Beyond the Novel (The Story Music Tour and More)

The Story is a multi-part experience that goes beyond the novel. You can learn more at www.thestory.com but I want to give you a quick heads up on the music tour. Coming later this year, it will feature music inspired by The Story and performed by Stephen Curtis Chapman, Newsboys, Francesca Battistelli, Natalie Grant, Selah, and Anthem Lights. I'm excited that Zondervan is partnering with World Vision, Proper Management, WOW, and these artists to pull this tour together!

Most of the music tour details are still under wraps, but you'll be among the first to know more if you go Like The Story Facebook Page.

(-Adam Forrest, Zondervan Internet Team. This post does not represent the views of Zondervan or any of its partners and representatives. The writer's opinions are his own, and he's sharing them for information and entertainment purposes only. Whatever else an opinion would "be for" Adam doesn't know, but he's just saying…)

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Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, by Alison Strobel

May 12

In this guest post, novelist Alison Strobel explores the mystery of how our bodies and beliefs affect each other. This theme appears in Alison's latest novel, The Heart of Memory, which also examines the difference between emotional faith and life-giving truth. Read more from Alison on emotion and truth in her guest post …And Therein Lies the Truth.

About ten years ago, back before I'd even finished writing my first novel, I read an article in People Magazine that made me think, "Now there’s an idea for a book!" It talked about organ transplant recipients who began experiencing strange changes in personal taste (food, music, etc.) and memories of things they knew they'd never actually experienced. One man developed a sudden appreciation for the violin. Another, a craving for beer and chicken wings when she'd never liked either one. Still another found himself moved to tears by a recording artist whose music he'd never liked before. One kept having dreams of blinding lights swinging into his vision, accompanied by a feeling of intense fear.

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Through some detective work they each managed to contact their donors' families—and discovered these new memories and preferences actually came from the donors themselves. One had been a violinist who actually died clutching his instrument. One had been a biker with a steady diet of—you guessed it—beer and chicken wings. One had been a huge fan of the singer Sade. And the dream of blinding lights? They were likely the last thing the donor had seen before a car collided head-on with his in the middle of the night.

When the time came to start my research, I feared I wouldn't find anything else about this phenomenon, because I'd never read of anything else like it outside of that one article. As it turns out, there is very little written on the subject—in fact, much of the medical world dismisses such experiences as bunk. But then I read a book called The Heart's Code. The author, psychologist Paul Pearsall, kicks off the book talking about his own heart attack—and all the signs his body tried to give him beforehand that something was dreadfully wrong. He didn't heed the signs, and it nearly killed him. He posits in his book that our body has more 'intelligence' than we give it credit for, and shares research that supports his theory.

A Civil War Story: Karl Bacon on Writing “An Eye for Glory”

Apr 12

Guest post by Karl Bacon, whose first novel An Eye for Glory: The Civil War Chronicles of a Citizen Soldier just hit stores. In this post Bacon discusses his goals for writing Civil War fiction, how he immersed himself into the mindset of his characters, and the realities of being a "pantser"…

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God." -Philippians 4:6

Pantser, noun; A writer who depends less on planning than on instinct and inspiration; one who doesn't know the story they're going to write until the storty starts happening.

I first heard the term "pantser" a couple of years ago and immediately thought, "Hey, that's me, a seat-of-the-pants writer." When I began writing An Eye for Glory, I was employed by a Swiss machine tool company in the development of some fairly sophisticated metalworking applications, mostly for the medical and electronic fields. I never gave a thought to becoming a writer, and never studied writing, except for those boring required courses in college, but I believed the Lord was leading me to tell the story of Michael Gabriel Palmer. I began to write in 1998, never thinking a published novel would be the end result, and from word one, I set three goals for the story:
(1) Honor the Lord Jesus Christ
(2) Honor those who served by getting the history right
(3) Write the best piece of literature I possibly could.

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It took ten years to complete the story. Research rabbit trails often took days or weeks to resolve. I read extensively about the history of the Connecticut regiment Michael Palmer would enlist in. I read about every battle in the story and visited each battlefield at least twice. How did the battle play out over this land? I tried to find the exact spot where Michael would have been. What would he have seen and heard and done? Sometimes I just sat still, soaking up the atmosphere of the place, so I might better bring that atmosphere to life on the page.

When it came to the actual writing, I essentially began to tell Michael Palmer's story as I thought he would have written it. I experimented with first person and third person points of view, and quickly settled on first person, because Michael's story is an intensely personal one, a man writing to his grown children twenty years after the events occurred. I read diaries of soldiers from the war, as much for the historical content as for the use of language, from which I developed Michael's manner of writing and speaking.

A Place of Peace: The Inspiration Behind the Story

Dec 15

Guest post by novelist Amy Clipston. Amy shares about her new book, A Place of Peace, in the normal type below; and in the Bold type, she shares about life events which have laid this story on her heart.

A Place of Peace is the third installment of my Kauffman Amish Bakery Series, featuring an Amish family in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

My fascination with the Amish way of life began after my father, a German immigrant, told me that the Amish speak the same dialect as my German relatives. I visited Lancaster as a child, and their culture made an impression on me.

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In A Place of Peace, tragedy brings Miriam Lapp back to her family’s Amish community, the place where she left her family, here identity, and her heart.

Amidst Miriam’s grief over her mother’s death, and the consequences of painful lies from her past, Miriam is forced to face the people who rejected her. Losing her one-time fiancé and being shunned by her father becomes an excruciating test of her faith.

Mary DeMuth and Her Novel ‘Daisy Chain’ Featured by Chuck Colson on BreakPoint

May 05

Chuck Colson, in his May 5 BreakPoint commentary, praised Mary DeMuth’s novel Daisy Chain as a “good example” of how to effectively address the subject of abuse in the church through the arts. Read Chuck’s commentary here.

"I’m not a big fan of 'message' books, where the writer neglects his or her craft and just concentrates on pushing an agenda. But Mary DeMuth is not that kind of writer," writes Colson. "Her books are beautifully and sensitively written, and her characters are realistic and well-developed. She has a true gift for showing how God’s light can penetrate even the darkest of situations, and start to turn lives around. Even her villains are not beyond the reach of God’s grace."

DeMuth recently launched a new website (blog.myfamilysecrets.org) to help people post their secrets anonymously and start the healing process. DeMuth handles each posted secret with anonymity and discretion.

DeMuth, who has wrestled with her own family secrets, knows the importance of sharing sharing them. She dared to share her own family secrets in her nonfiction books, paving the way for healing and freedom.

“So many of us live with secrets that haunt us, keep us awake at night or noodle their way into our lives. Some secrets are funny (think: embarrassing moments). Some are tragic. But many hold us captive,” says DeMuth. “In my latest novel Daisy Chain, many characters harbor secrets, but only a few are brave enough to bring them to the light of day and find freedom. It’s my hope that this site will become a community for many, and that thousands of folks will experience freedom when they’ve shared their family secret.”

Daisy Chain is one of three novels written by DeMuth. Her other two novels garnered honors as previous American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year finalists. She has also authored several non-fiction books.

Technorati tags: familiy secrets, Chuck Colson, BreakPoint, abuse, author, Mary DeMuth, Daisy Chain, healing, freedom, Zondervan

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First Novel Contest

Jul 10

Coming soon! Bookmark this blog posting. We will be posting up more details in the coming days.

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