For my birthday, I asked for a book several friends had recommended—and I’m so glad I did. Lately, I’ve become rather impressed with this little book (187 pages). Because each chapter is topical, focusing on a specific sin, I’ve been first going to the chapters that address areas I know are a struggle for me. The book is Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate by Jerry Bridges. If you’ve never read it, I highly recommend you go get a copy. Now and then you may find me referring to it here because that’s how impressed I am with it—and how much it has stirred my thinking about several key areas of my life. And how I love passing on its truths to others. Yesterday, I was reading the chapter about anxiety and frustration and came across this wonderful quotation from John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace.” “[One of the…
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“How can I get started in novel writing?” Someone recently asked me this question, and my mind swam with a myriad of thoughts and questions. Such an elementary question forced me to stomp on my mental brakes and flash back about thirty years to the days when I filled notebooks with all sorts of strange tales with my childlike, loopy handwriting. What the questioner really wanted to know was, How can I publish novels? But the answer to that question—and what a big question it is—is only part of the journey. So let’s start at the beginning. Before anyone should seriously pursue novel publication in any formal sense, I believe he or she should first ask the following five questions: 1. Do I love fiction? To be a great writer of fiction, you must first be a great lover of it. I firmly believe that. You’ll need extraordinary perseverance not…
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It is nose-numbing winter near Flint, Michigan. There’s a reason why it’s been called one of the murder capitals of the world. More murders are committed there than even Baghdad. I zip up, push my way through double doors, and leave the elementary school behind, carefully guiding my booted feet down ice-slick steps. The subzero wind chafes my cheeks and stings my eyes until they swim. If had looked at myself in a mirror, rosy cheeks would have glowed back at me. But I don’t seek a mirror. I’m not really sure what I’m looking for. Or where I’m going. Maybe I’m not really going anywhere. Wait. Yes, I am. I turn right and head toward . . . Snow. Dunes of it everywhere. All across the playground. Remnants of the latest storm. I come up short. Staining the snow at my feet pools red Kool-Aid. Lot of it. Something tells…
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When I look back at my childhood and evaluate what ignited the first spark of interest in writing mystery/suspense fiction, Hardy Boys books come to mind. In fact, for quite a while, those hardcover books were practically an obsession for me. They are so closely connected to the biggest joys of my childhood that I can’t even look at one without a lump forming in my throat. During the seventies I found them at Toys “R” Us and our Hudson’s department store for $2.50 each. I’d save up my allowance from weeding the garden and study the list of books inside the back cover, wanting to buy just the right one. I was never disappointed. I remember lying on my back at one end of our pop-up camper, engrossed in the latest caper. There I’d read for hours. Lost in another world. Trying to guess what the ending might be.…
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