Category Archives: Bible study

Bible study, book reviews

Giving Up On A Book

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I rarely, rarely, start a book and don’t finish it. Sometimes I put it aside for a while, either because another book requires I read it, or because the book is not to my liking and I have to be in just the right mood to finish it. But I have just laid aside a book, unfinished, and placed it in the sale/donation pile. I won’t pick it up again.

Sorry, Messieurs Whitcomb and Morris, but your book didn’t speak to me. I abandon it and exile it to the sale/giveaway table.

A while ago I went looking for a book I was pretty sure was in a certain spot on our downstairs bookshelves, about the biblical book of Genesis, one I’ve been planning on reading but had kept putting off. But when I looked, I couldn’t find it. Another book was more or less in the place I thought that book was: The Genesis Flood. Fine, I thought. I’ll read that one since I found it and worry about the other one later.

Big mistake. TGF turned out to be a difficult book to read. It is filled with scientific names. It is also, to a great extent, composed of quotes from many sources rather than the authors’ own words. I have read books like that before, and large blocks of quotes tend to make the book difficult. Maybe boring.

I think the authors were building up to the creation of the world as having taken six literal days, rather than six periods of time. I think. They were holding their conclusions close to the chest. They began the book by looking at the different theories of historical geology, and how geologists have interpreted data throughout the ages, and why these different interpretations were insufficient to explain the data. I found this section not as well written as I would have liked, and was glad it was over.

But the next section, where they started to explain how the biblical flood explained the inconsistencies in the geological data wasn’t any better. I concluded these authors weren’t writing for me, or to be a popular book, but rather a scholarly book for geologists. I’ve read a couple of such books before. I finished them, but found them most difficult to get through.

Will I ever find the book I was looking for? Maybe I’m confusing The Genesis Flood for the book I was looking for. Or maybe it’s in a box somewhere. Ah, well, I have plenty of other books to read, so no need to spend a lot of time searching right now.

Bible study, Church History Novels, goals, self-publishing, Sharon Williams short stories, Writing

September Progress, October Goals

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October 1, falling on a Friday—a regular blogging day for me—is the perfect day for recording what I accomplished in September, and for establishing some goals for October. Here’s the progress.

  1. Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Done, though one Saturday I realized I had totally forgotten to post anything on Friday, so I got a post up a day late. And one Monday post, that I wrote the previous Friday, accidentally got posted on that Friday, #usererror. But every regular blogging day was covered. To help me be a little more regular with my posting, I actually have four blog posts started as drafts.
  2. Wrap up my research project on our church’s charter members. Done! Wednesday I made a final tweak in the list of probable charter members. I started putting my notes into usable form, which I should finish doing in October.
  3. Finish “Foxtrot Alpha Tango”, the short story I’ve been working on for two or three months. Done! I finished this around Sept 20 and sent it by e-mail to my critique group.
  4. Link the books in my Church History Novels series on Amazon. This is an easy process. I’ve been holding off until the new covers were done, but it’s time to just do it. No, I didn’t do this. Shame on me. It’s an easy task. I guess I was hoping to have the covers re-done first, so I kept putting it off. Back on the to-do list for this month.
  5. I still have a few more tweaks to do on the church centennial book. I’m going to work on it after I finish this post and may finish them today (Friday afternoon). Done! Though see what I put in my October goals.
  6. Attend my writers’ groups. At the moment all three are scheduled. Done! One was cancelled, the other two met in person and I attended. I also attended two meetings of a weekly on-line writing group. I don’t know whether I’ll be a regular there, but it was good.
  7. Document one Bible study idea I had and put it in the queue. Done! I recorded it in my journal. At some point I’ll have to transfer it to an ideas folder, either on paper or on the computer, but at least it’s documented and I’ve been able to let my mind sort of forget it. 

Alright, September was a productive month. I event added a couple of thousand words to my next work-in-progress, something I hadn’t planned on. Now, what about October? Be bold, or be cautious, in my goals. I’m just going to type and see how it comes out.

  1. Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. I have a couple of conflicts coming up, so maybe those pre-written and to-be-scheduled posts will come in handy.
  2. Work on my work-in-progress, The Forest Throne. I can’t remember what I’ve written about that here. I may have to include a post on it. I won’t give a specific word count goal for now. Possibly I’ll edit this in a week or so.
  3. Link the four novels in my Church History novels series. Why do I keep putting this off?
  4. Begin formatting the church Centennial book. I received one of three outside contributions and pasted it in. I have a promise of receiving the other two very soon. Meanwhile, I’m proofreading the book, which has caused me to realize I have three blanks to be filled in. They are just names and dates, but, still, they will require a little work. I hope to have that done today or tomorrow. Then the formatting and photograph additions will begin. Possibly I will have the formatting done by the end of October and will be ready to go to print.
  5. Attend writers groups this month. I’m not sure how many it will be. I may have conflicts with the meeting dates of two of my regular groups. Maybe I’ll be able to get in on the new group a couple of times.
  6. Publish “Foxtrot Alpha Tango”, once I get critiques back from the Scribblers & Scribes. I have one back already. Publishing will mean cover creation, but I’m already pulling ideas together.
  7. Take a look at, but don’t necessarily write more on, the Bible study I was working on during the spring and early summer. I’ve been so busy with other things I don’t remember where I left off. Since I might start it soon, as in two months or so, it would be good to have it swimming around in my mind even now, occupying a few gray cells.

That’s enough. As with last month, there’s always the chance that something else could pop up.

Bible study, Christianity, Documenting America, Health, History, home improvements, reading, Sharon Williams short stories, Writing

Post Not Ready

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Six ads running for this, getting impressions, clicks, and a few sales. Other promotion is bearing fruit.

This morning I went outside to work shortly after I got up at 6:45 a.m. The temperature was 60°, and it felt good. I planned to work a half hour, mainly cleaning up a few things and pulling a few weeds from the backyard. When I did what I wanted and went inside, I was surprised to find I’d worked more than 45 minutes. I was way past scheduled time for my blog post, but I wasn’t worried about it since I had a post partially started—two posts actually—and thus could post it quickly once I got to it.

Alas, I finally came to my dashboard here, found there was only one post, and realized it is no where ready to be posted. Bad memory I have.

So here I am with nothing prepared to say. I could talk about any number of things off the cuff: what I’m writing, what I’m reading, how book sales are, what I’m doing for book sales promotion, life in general. I guess I could tackle all of those.

I’m still working on little changes to the church centennial book. I got some new information yesterday that will require a minor change. I also have decided to double-check a couple of places in the book. One I’m fairly sure will require a change, the other one maybe or maybe not. Still, I come closer to done on this every day.  Also, my short story inches along. Every couple of days I open the file, re-read it to remember where I was, and add a few hundred words. I need an uninterrupted , undistracted couple of hours to finish it.

For reading, my time is taken up with Way Truth Life, the book for our Life Group lessons. I’m also reading a book on the Genesis flood. Sorry, I don’t remember the exact title, except that it might be The Genesis Flood. It is a scholarly work from the late 50s-early 60s. I’m not enjoying it a whole lot, but will stay with it a while longer. As to recently finished books, I have four sitting here on my work table waiting for me to write my book reviews.

Book sales are good in September. So far I have 14 sales outright, and I think two accesses from Kindle Unlimited with both people finishing the book. This is my first time to have KU reads (not many of my books are in KU), and I need to figure how to account for them in my stats. I suppose as 2 sales, bringing the total to 16. That’s a good start to the month.

Sometime soon I’ll make a presentation to the local Civil War Roundtable. That will be my first author event since June 2019.

I have been a little more active in book promotion the last week. I still have my Amazon ads running for three books, and they seem to be generating sales. I contacted two influencers in our denomination, both men I’ve interacted with in the past, about giving a shout out to Acts Of Faith. I heard back from one on Friday and he is going to put a promo in his next newsletter.  Another promotional item concerns my Civil War book, Documenting America: The Civil War Edition. Back in July I gave a copy of it to the president of the local Civil War Roundtable. I heard back from him yesterday. He liked the book and wants me to make a presentation to the Roundtable. I don’t yet know when that will be, but should know today or tomorrow. So book promotion is in progress and, at least a little, seems to be working.

Life in general is good. I’m still having trouble losing weight, but in general my weight is dropping very slowly. My blood sugars have been under control, though just a little higher than I’d like. This morning’s was good. My right knee has been hurting more of late. Perhaps replacement surgery will have to be moved up. Although, the last three or four days I’ve done a few different things to try and ease the pain and it seems to be working. Four nights of good sleep in a row. Yardwork is in much better shape than in past years. Household projects are slowly being done. My devotional life remains consistent, with room for improvement.

Life goes on. I’ll have a better post on Friday, and will start getting some of these book reviews done.

Bible study, Christianity, Documenting America, goals, Writing

Writing Goals for August 2021

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No new work on this, except to link the three main volumes in a series. I sold 4 copies of The Civil War Edition in the last ten days. More about that in another post.

Well, July came and went without me establishing any writing goals. Yes, you astute observers will have noticed that I didn’t post goals at the beginning of July nor give a recap of how I did with my June goals. When July started we were busy heading to Chicago for a family event. I prepared a few posts ahead of time and scheduled them to post while we were away. Writing progress and new goals wasn’t something I could write early.

But here are my June goals and how I did on them over a two month period. You can get through them then see my August goals after that.

  1. Finish the church anniversary book. I think I’m doing well on this, and should be able to add the final portions and declare it done by the end of the month. …I have some more interviews to conduct, which may hold it up, and some contributions by some others. I won’t say that I’ll have those contributions, but without these interviews the book won’t be done. The book is DONE! I’m at the point where I am so far ahead of schedule with it that, if I had to go to press today I would be satisfied with it. However, since I still have time available, I will continue to tweak it. Maybe do a few more interviews, work on some more photos, etc. It will still be an August goal, and probably every month going forward until it goes to print.
  2. Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. With this post I’m well on my way toward achieving that. I achieved this goal.
  3. Explore a little more the linking of a series together on Amazon. I have four series among my Amazon publications, none currently linked.  This was on my list of things to do last month but didn’t get done. Not only did I explore this, but I managed to get two series created, linking existing publications with their related publications. That was the Danny Tompkins short stories and the Sharon Williams Fonseca short stories. No, wait, it was three series. I also linked my Documenting American non-fiction books into a series.
  4. Work on this website, creating a new landing page and updating some content. I did not do this, technophobia taking over I suppose. I don’t think this is a difficult thing to do, but I put it off and allowed other things to fill the time.
  5. Work with the cover designer concerning new covers for the Church History Novels series. This is somewhat out of my control, based on her schedule. I haven’t checked with her in a couple of weeks. I stayed in touch with the cover creator. She has had a very busy summer, interning somewhere. She contacted me last week to say she is just about ready to get back to them and wanted the print book dimensions. So this is good news, and a goal sort of met.
  6. Watch some Amazon videos on how to better do Amazon ads. They keep sending me e-mails about available webinars, several of which look beneficial. I’d like to watch at least one a week. Goal partially met. I watched two Amazon advertising webinars. They weren’t very helpful. I also re-took the 5-day Amazon Ad Profit Challenge in July, the fourth time I’ve gone through it. I created six ads for Acts Of Faith, bringing me up to 16 ads running. Are they profitable? I’ll cover that in a future post.
  7. Continue work on the next volume of Documenting America. I’m still mainly in the reading for research phase, though I also did some of the book planning and created the book file. I want to at least complete the basic reading (40 more pages) and move on to some other sources. I think that is very do-able. I did finish reading the source materials. I also add somethings to the book file and even began the process of editing down the source documents. But, I would have to say I did not complete this goal.
Six ads running. Not a lot if impressions or clicks, and only one sale in July.

So all in all, June and July, while not stellar with accomplishments, did have their moments. Lack of July goals has reflected in that lack of accomplishment.

Now, time to set some goals for August.

  1. Continue to tweak the church anniversary book. I can think of only two more interviews to do. I may add in photos this month. I have a bunch in the file now, but have more I could add. As I do this, I will first format the book for print dimensions. That will let me bring in photos at the right size.
  2. Finish a short story in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series, tentatively titled “Foxtrot Alpha Tango”. I wrote four pages in July to share with the Scribblers & Scribes critique group when we met that month. With just under 2,000 words written, I believe it’s 2/3 done.
  3. Work on the middle grade novel I started in July. The Forest Throne is technically to be co-authored by my oldest grandson, though I’ll do most of the writing and he will edit it, helping me to understand what 10-13 year old boys like. I wrote the first chapter of this in July and sent it to him for comments, receiving his approbation of the sample. I’d like to add another 5,000 words to it this month to go with the 1350 written so far. I’ve brainstormed out most of the plot but not specific scenes.
  4. Blog twice a week, as always.
  5. Do some work on my website. I’m not sure what, but I have to overcome this technophobia and improve it.
  6. Attend meetings of my three writing groups, assuming they don’t get cancelled because of local corona virus outbreaks.
  7. If the cover artist gets the covers re-done, re-publish the three older church history novels, updating them for new copyright info and list of works, as well as link them in a series.

That’s it. See you in September with a progress update.

America, Bible study, book reviews, Christianity

Book Review: The Harbinger

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While we were in Orlando in May-early June, we took a morning to go to a Books-a-Million store near where we needed to pick up some first aid supplies. Lynda cut her foot on a barnacle-encrusted rock at the beach and had stitches. I also needed to take care of something at the pharmacy. Our errand completed, we went around the corner to the book store.

This book has an important message for the USA, but they way that message is presented rates it 2-stars from me.

That’s a favorite activity of mine, to go to a book store (or a library works just as well) and browse, select, read while drinking coffee, and probably not buy. On this day I bought a writer’s magazine, and Lynda bought The Harbinger by Jonathan Cahn. Cahn is a Messianic Jew, and Lynda listens to his podcasts. I’ve listened some too, but haven’t heard them enough, or paid attention enough (I’m always multi-tasking) to get a good feel for what his message is. This book was our evening reading for much of June.

The subtitle of the book is “The Ancient Mystery That Hold The Secret of America’s Future”. The book essentially draws out parallels that Cahn sees between Isaiah 9:10-11 and the events of 9-11 and the years since then. It’s a warning—a harbinger—for America, to turn back to God.

In Isaiah, God’s protection was prophesied to be removed from Israel (the Northern Kingdom) and, because their response to God’s rebuke was incomplete, another judgment would fall on Israel. This happened to Israel, just as Isaiah prophesied.

The literary technique used by Cahn is a dialog, or actually two dialogs, between Nouriel and 1) an investigative reporter named Ana and 2) an unnamed prophet. It was this prophet who gave Nouriel a series of seals. Nouriel had to investigate what the seals meant. As he followed the clues, the prophet would suddenly appear and help him to understand what the seals meant, what Israel went through, and what the USA was going through.

I find it difficult to find any fault with what Cahn says in the book concerning the fate of the USA. He could well be right that we are on a declining leg of our up and down history, and there may not be a future up leg. Our zenith may indeed have happened and it’s all down from here. Cahn doesn’t lay out a litany of what’s wrong with America. Simply that we as a nation have turned away from God; that 9-11 was evidence that the hand of God’s protection has been removed from us; that we did not respond to that warning with repentance and turning but with defiance and bravado; that other judgments have come upon us and are still coming. I won’t say he’s incorrect about any of those. The book was copyrighted in 2011, and much has happened since then.

However, Cahn’s literary vehicle was not good. In fact, I’d call it bad. The dialogs between Nouriel and the prophet and Nouriel and the reporter were tedious and repetitive.  The seals were a contrivance to build the story on. A simple statement of the message Cahn wants to give (Wake up, America! Wasn’t 9-11 enough? Wasn’t the Panic of 2008 enough?) could have been given in 100 pages or less instead of the 253 pages in the paperback we read.

He could have avoided the silliness of the seals. He could have spared us the endless dialog, and scenes of lower Manhattan or of various places in Washington D.C., where Nouriel and the prophet met up. Rabbi Cahn, if you read this, those things detracted from your message, they didn’t add to it.

It seemed that every night as we read, and I waded through the dialog or descriptions of what was on a fictitious seal, I would say aloud, “Well, he just lost 5 stars,” or “No way I can give this 4 stars.” In fact, if I post a review on Amazon, I will likely give it 2 stars. It would be 1 star for organization and writing, but higher for message.

In my mind, this book is not a keeper. I don’t ever plan on reading it again. Lynda will likely want to keep it. So on the shelf it will go.

Bible study, book reviews, Christianity

Book Review: “Daniel”

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As we continue to try to whittle down our inventory of books by pulling some off the shelf or out of piles that look like they will be good to read but not necessary to keep, my wife pulled Daniel off the shelf. It’s a Bible commentary volume by J. Vernon McGee, based on his radio “Through The Bible” broadcasts.

Every now and then I would catch McGee’s program while driving in the Kansas City area back in the late 70s/early 80s. Years and years later, in the first decade of this century (I think), I would catch it again sometimes. I enjoyed the program. The latter round was just a re-broadcast of the earlier programs, with a new intro added.  I think Lynda picked up this book at a yard sale or thrift store. I know we didn’t buy it new.

It was an okay book. McGee’s broadcasts were for the layman and, since this volume is said to be more or less a transcript of his broadcasts (slightly modified as would be needed for a book), it’s easily read and provides some good information and explanations of the book of Daniel. I’ve read many other commentaries as I do my Bible studies and prepare to teach adult Sunday school, and find them almost written for scholars by scholars, not for laymen. This aspect of the book I liked.

I found the organization difficult. Where Daniel had his visions or where he interpreted the dreams of others, McGee put the  commentary of the interpretations with the dreams/visions, rather than hold them for the verses of the explanations. Then, when he got to the verses of the explanations, he had nothing to say but to repeat what he had already said. It seems to me that if the Bible is clear, the commentator shouldn’t have to say much. Of, if the Bible repeats itself (as it sometimes does), the commentator should say little. McGee did that to some extent, but perhaps not enough.

In his defense, it’s a tough thing to write a commentary in a repetitive situation. I don’t think I could do any better. McGee also did a good job sorting out the historical context. The Bible doesn’t give a list of the Babylonian kings, or those of the Medes and Persians. That has to be obtained from non-biblical sources. McGee gives that info—a good thing.

Right after reading McGee’s book, we got out the Matthew Henry concise commentary and Daniel read that, sort of as an exercise. When I’ve used Henry’s commentary before, I found it different than others, having more of a insights for living a Christian life feel to it than just a technical explanation of the Bible. I thought, therefore, we might gain some of those insights. Alas, it wasn’t as good for that purpose as I hoped it would be. It’s still a good commentary; just not something you can read as sort of a devotional.

I’m glad we read McGee’s book. I give it either 3 or 4 stars. But it is not a keeper. Today it will go on the sale/donate table. Nor will I go out of my way to acquire any others in the series. It’s good, but not good enough in our era of dis-accumulation.

Bible study, Documenting America, Sharon Williams short stories

Which Of Five Projects?

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The Teachings is published. Now, what next?

It was about nine years ago—or maybe eight—when I finished writing and publishing a book, I forget which one now. I could probably look back at posts on this blog to see which one. But my point is that I didn’t have the next book or story planned. I didn’t know what I was going to do next.

I had several things in mind that I wanted to write, things that I had outlined at least in part. Which to do? I decided to write the first chapter of each and see which one seemed right. I did this for four full-length books. One just seemed to flow with no trouble at all. One was really labored. The other two were in between. So I wrote the one where the words flowed best and set the others aside until later.

A second Bible study? Might that be next?

That’s where I am now. I finished writing The Teachings in February and published it in May. Since then I’ve been working on the book of the history of our church in advance of our 100th anniversary. I’ve been kind of poking along on it, since the deadline is so far out. I might finish it this month—the words, that is. Illustrations will take a little longer. I do a little on it almost every day. But the end is in sight. Time to be thinking about the next project.

But what to do? As I said before, I don’t have any real sense of what it should be. Therefore, I now plan to do what I did before: write something of each of the projects and see which one seems to flow easiest; that will then be the one I write. What are those projects, and where do they stand at this time?

First is a Bible study. Our Life Group studied the Last Supper over Lent and Easter this year. As I prepared lessons, I wrote notes that would go into a Bible study. Since I teach only every other week, I didn’t tackle this from beginning to end, but as I studied for the weeks I taught and as I took time to do it. In preparation for this post, I looked at my files and find them confusing. I have three Bible study files. The one most recently saved is clearly not the most complete, based on word count. I’ll have to somehow merge the files. My best guess is that I have a little over 8,000 words written. The full study will almost certainly need 30,000 words.

Second is the next volume in my Documenting America series, tentatively titled Run-up To Revolution. As I’ve said before, I completed the basic reading for research, but have yet to do any actual writing. I started outlining the book, and accessing source documents for editing. There’s a lot of work there. But, I actually have two chapters that are borrowed from the first Documenting America book (with a few edits). I expect this book to run 45-50,000 words.

I’ve left Sharon alone for a while. Maybe it’s time to add #6 to the series. It will be set in Saudi Arabia.

Third is a short story in my Sharon Williams Fonseca, Unconventional CIA Agent series. The story line has been rolling around in my head for some time. Sunday and Monday I decided to begin writing it. It currently stands at about 1,100 words, with 6,000 words the probable length. This writing went very easy.

Fourth is the story I mentioned in my last post, The Forest Throne. A short-ish book for 10-14 year olds, this will be my first time writing for other than an adult audience. I’ve brainstormed some of this but am not 100 percent sure how it will come together nor how long it will be. According to plan, I began writing this on Tuesday. the words flowed easy. I worked at it only an hour or so, and was surprised to find I’d written almost 1,400 words.

So what is going to be next? Darned if I know. It will be either the short story or The Forest Throne. I’ll have to write a little more in each. You can be sure I’ll say something about it here.

Bible study, Church History Novels, Documenting America, goals

May Writing Progress

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This month, due to busyness with some alternate activities, I’m going to split my writing progress for this month and writing goals for next month into two posts. Today will be  May writing progress; Friday will be June writing goals.

  1. Republish the three prior books in the Church History Novels series. This will be the contents, adding information for the full series, including links to all the books. The switch of the covers to be consistent across the series may not happen this month, so the full process may take a little longer. I didn’t get this done. Don’t have the covers yet, though I thought I would. Hopefully soon, at which time I should be able to do this quickly.
  2. Create, in Amazon KDP, a true series of these books. People have told me this is easy to do. After I get the content updated, I may tackle this, even if the covers aren’t ready to go yet. And, if I’m successful at that, I’ll create true series for my two short story series. And for the Documenting America series. Did not do his. I guess I was waiting on something, though not sure what. Maybe I can do this next month.
  3. Continue work on the church anniversary book. I’m not going to set a word goal, since I can’t seem to meet the word goals I set. By the end of the month I would like to have all my interviews done, information from those interviews worked into the book. I also want to have basic information added to all chapters. This was my main writing endeavor this month. While I don’t feel like I spent enough time on it, I spent a fair amount. I’m now over 20,000 words in a book I thought would be 12-15,000. The end is not yet. I have four more chapters to write and about four more people to interview. The largest chapter, where I look at the church decade by decade, is done (except for photos). The remaining chapters are short and should go quickly. I feel really good about this project.
  4. Continue work on the Bible study. In some ways, this is fill-in work when my mind can’t wrap around other writing tasks. That tells me that maybe my heart isn’t really in this project. Or maybe it means I simply need to get other things off my plate before I can really concentrate on it. I looked at this briefly early in the month, and may have added a few hundred words. I think I also brainstormed it a little. But, I let this slide while other writing and many life events and activities took precedence.
  5. Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday. I ought to be able to do this. Done, done, done.
  6. Continue research reading for the next Documenting America I’ve read over 100 pages so far, with around 200 to go. I made major progress on this, as I didn’t do a lot of other reading this month. I’m down to about 50 pages to read in my main source book. I also started the file for the book, finding a couple of source documents and creating a  computer file for them.

So, all in all, I’d say it was a good month—not great, but good.

Look for my June goals in Friday’s post.

Bible study, book reviews, Christianity

Book Review: Sacred Invitation

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Not a bad book, but I can’t give it any more than 3 stars.

I didn’t plan on buying our denomination’s Lenten devotional book this year. We’ve bought them the last couple of years and, while helpful, we are trying not to add to our possessions and I thought maybe we could do without. But I relented and bought it.

Sacred Invitation Lenten Devotions Inspired by The Book of Common Prayer promised something different than past years. The Book of Common Prayer is an old thing, and old things aren’t always that bad. I was looking forward to it.

Each day included scripture reading: morning pslam[s], evening psalm[s], Old Testament Scripture, gospel reading, epistle reading. Then a devotional tied to those scriptures (most typically to the gospel reading for the day), a series of probing questions, and a prayer. My wife and I read these aloud, me doing the reading, her listening. Mostly in the evenings, and not timely. We lost a number of days when our grandchildren were here. I think we finished it two or three weeks after Easter. We read all the scriptures for the day and the book contents for the day at a single sitting.

The book was better than past year Lenten devotionals our pub house put out, but somehow, for me, this still didn’t get the job done. I give it just three stars.  The scriptures chosen were mostly not from Holy Week, or the buildup to it. They were more anticipation scripture passages, or maybe preparation. That’s fine, I guess, as Lent is a season of preparation in anticipation of Easter.

The devotionals, I thought, were much better written than past years. Except both of the two authors seemed to go out of their way to avoid using the male pronoun for God.  If I can find an example, I’ll edit it in at this point.

What puzzled me is how this book ties in to the Book of Common Prayer. The prayers weren’t from it, the devotionals weren’t from it, the probing questions weren’t from it. I assumed the scriptures had to be.  But I think they are not. The Psalms chosen, for example, included many repetitions. As I read them I often said, “This is just about like one I read before.” When we finished the book I checked and, sure enough, many of the Pslams were repeated, one five times. I don’t expect that the Book of Common Prayer would repeat like that.

So, where does this book stand? I’m glad we read it, but it is not a keeper. It will go out to the sell/giveaway place in the garage. After four disappointing years in a row with these books, I think I will skip next year’s.

Bible study, Church History Novels, Documenting America, The Teachings, Writing

April Writing Progress; May Goals

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The last day of April and my regular blogging day fell on the same day. It seemed like a good day to post my writing progress for April and goals for May that day, but then I decided to post that piece on harmony. It’s still close to the beginning of the month, so here it is. First, my April results.

  1. Publish The Teachings. All that is left are various publishing tasks, including: e-book TOC; adding two maps, one of which needs modification; writing the back cover copy; writing the Amazon page text; formatting the print book (well, the e-book too, which is far easier); and uploading to Amazon. I think this is very doable. This is done! I published the e-book on April 13 and the print book on April 25. It all went pretty easy.
  2. Republish the three earlier church history novels with new covers and a list of my works. One of the covers is ready. Hopefully the other two will be soon. This is not done. Too many things came up this month, both for me and the cover designer.
  3. Expand the church anniversary book to at least 15,000 words and hopefully 20,000 words. I made progress on this, but didn’t hit my word targets. I’m 13,300 words right now. I’m pleased with the progress, however, as I did a number of interviews with members of the congregations and began incorporating their information into the text.
  4. Blog twice a week. It’s doable. No travel planned this month. Did this.
  5. Do some research on the next Documenting America volume. I won’t commit to how much, but I have to get going on it. For my afternoon reading I have been reading for this research. I’ve done about 100 pages of reading so far, identifying documents to use in the book. I’ve searched for and found on-line a couple of these documents and loaded them into a file for the book. This is a long way away from truly starting on the book, but it is progress.
  6. Look again at the Bible study I was working on in February and early March, and decide if that is going to be my next book or if something else is. I spent some time on this, adding some words, perhaps settling on a format. I’ve decided that this probably is a viable project. I will be spending time on this next month.

So that’s April. What about May? I’m just now beginning to think of this month, but can say a few things based on last month.

  1. Republish the three prior books in the Church History Novels series. This will be the contents, adding information for the full series, including links to all the books. The switch of the covers to be consistent across the series may not happen this month, so the full process may take a little longer.
  2. Create, in Amazon KDP, a true series of these books. People have told me this is easy to do. After I get the content updated, I may tackle this, even if the covers aren’t ready to go yet. And, if I’m successful at that, I’ll create true series for my two short story series. And for the Documenting America
  3. Continue work on the church anniversary book. I’m not going to set a word goal, since I can’t seem to meet the word goals I set. By the end of the month I would like to have all my interviews done, information from those interviews worked into the book. I also want to have basic information added to all chapters.
  4. Continue work on the Bible study. In some ways, this is fill-in work when my mind can’t wrap around other writing tasks. That tells me that maybe my heart isn’t really in this project. Or maybe it means I simply need to get other things off my plate before I can really concentrate on it.
  5. Blog twice a week, Monday and Friday. I ought to be able to do this.
  6. Continue research reading for the next Documenting America I’ve read over 100 pages so far, with around 200 to go.