Here’s what I’m working on. As you can see I’m working on far too many things, and need to learn to focus on those that have the best chance of being published.
At present I’m working on a new novel, tentatively titled China Tour. It’s about Roger and Sandra Browell, an American couple living as expatriates in Saudi Arabia, who take a vacation to Asia, including two weeks in China. While there, they encounter a Chinese man who wants to talk with them. They do so, and inadvertently give him some code words he is expecting from CIA agents, and they send him to the extraction point. Except it’s the wrong extraction point, as the dissident’s supervisor learns when the real agents show up.
The story follows the Brownwells and the agents through China as they attempt to salvage the situation and save the dissident’s life. A complicating factor is that the Brownwells took Chinese Bibles from the missionary in Hong Kong, to be delivered to a man in Beijing. Sandra is unwilling to abandon the Bible smuggling for the sake of participating in the CIA operation, so both missions go forward. Through this the Brownwell’s marriage, already on the rocks, is further compromised.
I began the writing in October 2012, and am hoping to finish the first draft around February 2013.
I’m searching for my next work-in-progress. It will be one of three things:
- a third short story in my series dealing with teenage grief at the loss of a parent.
- a sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People”.
- the next book in my church history novels series, which will follow the events in Doctor Luke’s Assistant.
It’s also possible I’ll decide to write a non-fiction book as a follow up to Documenting America.
Based on meetings with editors at the Write-To-Publish Conference in June 2011, I’m restructuring the book I had been calling Essential John Wesley into a series of shorter small group studies. This may be three, four, or five books of six lessons each. It seems that people nowadays don’t want long studies. That’s okay. I’ll be happy to publish four books instead of one.
Status: The series is planned. This just means breaking the larger book, which I had already planned, into logical smaller pieces. I had written one chapter and started a second, but will have to restructure this according to what the publisher is looking for. I should add that, although a publisher has shown interest, I have no guarantee that publisher will actually accept them. Update 20 June 2012: This project is on hold, as I have way too many things going on to work on it right now.
Update 16 Sept 2012: I’ve had this project on hold for some time, and don’t foresee starting it very soon.
I have “written” and taught several 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 submit-able—that is, really ready to be published. Here they are.
- 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 Moment: A Study of the Christian Sacrements (10 lessons)
- Isaiah (a 20 lesson overview of the whole book)
- What One Thing is Strongest? (5 lessons in the apocrypha book 1 Esdras)
- 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)
You can now 