The Bible has the best stories.
The Bible has the best stories.
I’ve been sharing research images for The Giant Slayer on Facebook (and gathering them on Pinterest) to help curious and studious readers get even more accurate in their imaginings about life 3,000 years ago. This post collects all my notes about Chapter One: Bethlehem. Late summer, 1028bce in one handy location. David carried himself as stiff and straight as a dried stalk […]
One of the major difficulties in writing an imaginatively expanded version of the story of David from the Bible (and trying to still keep it biblical) is the utter lack of precision in the source materials when it came to time. When did all this stuff happen? Not having the exact dates is fine for […]
This all started over 3,000 years ago, when the story of David and Saul took place–Saul was born around 1076BCE, and David around 1040BCE. But this particular retelling started in 2011, when I reached the story of David in 1 Samuel in my read-the-Bible-all-the-way-through project. I was engrossed by what I was reading and regularly […]
Please pronounce the been in the title with verve and so it rhymes with seen. This is so it will take part in an event that I didn’t witness, but have heard about enough times that I might as well have. A Canadian friend was in a play at his U.S. college in which he had to utter […]
Or, the pleasures and perils of writing about three thousand years ago. As the publication date for The Giant Slayer gets closer and closer, I’ve been taking care of what seem like thousands of details. Besides all the super-fussy stuff like registering ISBNs, I’ve written a glossary and a discussion guide, and started a Facebook author page (insert craven […]
This is a brief post to alert my readers to my appearance on Lisa Colon DeLay’s podcast: Spark My Muse. (Click on the title of the podcast to be led to it; you will have to crank the sound on your listening device when the podcast gets to the interview.) We talk about my upcoming book, The […]
I’m going to say this straight out, rather than ease you and me into it, and possibly lose some of you in the process: I believe that God communicated with me with words. It was last fall, just as I was realizing that all the work I’d put into the David and Saul story was […]
According to this great TED talk by Andrew Stanton (of Toy Story and WALL-E fame), Mr. Rogers carried this quote around in his wallet: “There isn’t anyone you couldn’t learn to love, once you’ve heard they story.” In the last twenty years, readers have definitely grown to love all kinds of characters who’ve traditionally been villains: vampires, […]