March 2024: Here’s the update of what I’m working on.
I have resumed work on a Bible study series. Based on adult Sunday school classes I taught over the last several years, and am still teaching, it is on Holy Week. It has been a multi-year study during the Lenten and Easter seasons. 2020, via video conference, was on what is called the Olivet Discourse. 2021 was on the Last Supper. 2022 was Gethsemane and the Jewish trials. Earlier in 2023 was the Roman trial and the crucifixion. Now I’m going back to the beginning and writing the parts I taught but didn’t at the time write.
This will be my main work through who knows when. I finished Vol. 1 in December 2023 and published it in January 2024. I have now moved on to Part 8, writing it simultaneously with teaching it. Vols. 2 will be my main work in April to June, 2024, and Vol. 3 right after that. Vols 4, 5, 6, and 7 are done. I have proofread and done one editing pass through those later volumes. I hope they need no more than a quick read-through then will be ready to publish. I wish I had thought this would be a good writing project back when I taught Parts 1, 2, and 3 in 2019, and 2020.
Update 1 Aug 2024: Volume 2 is finished and in the process of being edited. I anticipate publication before the end of Sept 2024.
Two other series of novels have come to mind, series which I have planned out, even writing some plot elements, but haven’t begun writing yet. One is to be called The Alfred Cottage Mysteries. It will be a series of cozy mysteries, but with a twist. A young man begins researching his, and his new wife’s, genealogy, and finds mysteries to be solved. I have this planned as about a ten book series, but that’s not definite. It could be longer or shorter depending on how it goes. The first one is tentatively titled: Alfred Cottage and the Coroner’s Inquest. I shared this series idea with the Scribblers & Scribes, my critique group, and they thought it sounded good.
The second series will be about a group of stock traders, working off Wall Street. It will draw from my stock trading experience, though will be equally about the people involved as about the stock trading. The series could be about ten books. The first one is tentatively titled Catch A Falling Knife. I have no plans on when I might start these two series. Years ago I thought it might be as early as 2021, which obviously didn’t happened. So I’m not going to set a time frame. Perhaps I will in the next update of this page.
I have “written” and taught several other Bible studies or small group studies to our adult Sunday school class at church, now called a Life Group. These are all in a different stage of completion. Some have just the outline and the notes I used to teach. Others have just a weekly handout for the class. Some have both a handout and teaching notes. In general these could be submitted for consideration by a publisher, but have much work to be done to make them submittable—that is, really ready to be published. Here they are. The one we did for Holy Week in 2021 is actually fairly far along (no title yet). I’m debating moving to that as soon as I finish my two current projects.
– Life on a Yo Yo: Learning from Peter’s Ups and Downs (14 lessons)
– The Dynamic Duo: Lessons from the Lives of Elijah and Elisha (18 lessons)
– Sacred Moments: A Study of the Christian Sacraments (10 lessons)
– Isaiah (a 20 lesson overview of the whole book). I have actually created document files for this and begun to write it for publication.
– What One Thing is Strongest? (5 lessons in the apocrypha book 1 Esdras)
– Entrusted To My Care: a study through 1st and 2nd Timothy, developed and taught in 2016-17 and again in 2019.
– Lesser-Known People of the Bible (10 lessons)
– Good King, Bad King (outlining now complete; about 14 lessons)
– To Exile and Back: A Study of the Jewish Nation’s Exile to Babylon (16 lessons planned). I have actually worked on the outline of this, along with some research, in 2017. I’m not ready to start really working on it yet, but I’m getting closer. I’m not sure it will be as many as 16 lessons.
– A Bible study on the Psalms has come to mind lately. All I’ve done on it so far is accumulate a couple of sources and begin reading them.
And sometime in the near future, hopefully in 2025, I’ll write and publish Volume 3 in The Forest Throne series, tentatively titled You Can’t Change The Past. I hope to be working on that in the summer of 2024. Meanwhile, I’ve started to document ideas about the plot.