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Following God’s Command

/ Greg Schaffer / Leave a comment

Earlier this year I announced the launch of the Weekly Bible Wrap Up podcast, where I go over the previous week’s Bible readings following a one-year Bible reading plan. I wasn’t sure of my “why” for doing it, only that I got the message that God wanted me to do it. When God asks, the best response is “Yes”!

I had no expectations, only to follow what I was commanded to do. Thus, every week, usually on time but occasionally a day (or as in this week, three days) late, I basically read my notes from the readings. I am sure I miss the mark sometimes, and sometimes I am lost to the meaning of some verses. Reading King James doesn’t help the matter either. But I plug on. Here are a few lessons I have learned along the way:

  1. This is an exercise in faithfulness.
  2. Because of number 1, listener count is not a goal.
  3. However, for each listener I feel a sense of responsibility to continue.
  4. I have felt like quitting many times, but see numbers 1 and 3.
  5. Using Anchor by Spotify and my phone makes production easy.
  6. I have become a more intentional Bible reader.
  7. Because of number 6, I understand the Bible more.

Today I also had an epiphany. As I stated on the episode I recorded a few hours ago, I occasionally revisit my pain from my failed first marriage. Even though that happened 30 years ago, the pain never fades; I just learn to deal with it by submerging it in my being. But somewhat like the Vulcans and the imbalance caused by Ponn-Far, it seems that I periodically need to revisit that pain intensely to purge it. It reminds me of a saying from my college years – “you need to go crazy some of the time, otherwise you’ll go crazy all of the time”. Last night I intentionally revisited that pain, though I didn’t know why, only that I have the feeing that God leads me to a message or revelation when this happens.

I found the why this morning. I had to catch up on two days of readings before recording, which meant beginning Hosea. There I was reminded of the premise of God comparing His relationship with Israel to Hosea’s with his unfaithful wife Gomer, and therefore the reason last night of revisiting my pain. By doing so, I more acutely understood, even felt God’s pain with Israel’s unfaithfulness through Hosea.

Experiences like that continue to teach me to seek and follow God’s plan for me, not just long term but this day, this hour, and this minute. I hope you too constantly look for God’s plan for your life, and don’t save those thoughts only for Sunday.

Announcing the Weekly Bible Wrap Up Podcast

/ Greg Schaffer / Leave a comment

In my last post, I mentioned how podcasting is another form of indie publishing. That was a prelude to a calling that at that time I was just beginning to understand, and have since developed into a final product called The Weekly Bible Wrap Up at https://anchor.fm/weekly-bible-wrap-up.

I’ll start with context because I think it’s important with any story, interpretation, or opinion. Because this podcast is not just about summarizing the Bible, I think it’s important to have context behind that to try to understand the intent and the communication and the message of the person delivering that and that goes to when reading the Bible – understand the context when it was written.

I grew up Catholic, but non practicing, in that we didn’t go to church regularly. It was only when I was about 16 that I reached out to the Catholic Church to learn more, as a young adult on my own. My first Communion and my confirmation were later than those going through the faith I went through that as a young adult, and some might argue that that actually makes it more impactful because you’re making a decision as an adult.

As a practicing Catholic and was pretty good about maintaining attendance with church, but really didn’t connect well with the whole environment. I felt like I was doing something as an obligation, like I had to go to church because I wanted to get to heaven. That was the only reason why I was doing any of that. It’s like “Well, here I am, putting in my time so that when I die you can see the attendance sheet and yay Greg, you can go through, that’s great.

Not exactly the most fulfilling way to look at the entire Bible and the faith.

I drifted away from the Catholic Church. But through a rather spontaneous or perhaps planned (I don’t believe anything is a coincidence) circumstance, I was invited to attend an interdenominational church in Murfreesboro, TN called World Outreach Church, and this was about 13 or 14 years ago.

Now you must understand a little bit more about context too. I grew up in the north, New York. I was a Yankee obviously, moved down to the South about almost 30 years ago and have claimed Tennessee as my home. I love it in Tennessee. It’s just been very fulfilling for me here. There’s a whole host of reasons why I really feel that I’ve reached my own personal promised land.

And in the south, they call it the Bible Belt and there’s reasons for that, you know? In some cases, there are large, very large churches and World Outreach being one of them. I accepted the invitation and went, but in the beginning, I didn’t see it as “real” church.

I saw it more as like a Christian Community Center type thing gathering. I didn’t get the holding of hands in the air. I didn’t get any of that. But it was nice, and the people seemed nice, and so I stayed.

And I did resonate with the first sermon that I ever heard from Pastor Alan Jackson. In fact, my friend introduced me to him right after that first service and I told Pastor Allen him that I was floored by his message. If you’ve heard Pastor Jackson speak, you know he has an excellent and sometimes self-deprecating sense of humor and I think his response was somewhere along the lines of, “Well, sometimes when I preach people end up on the floor.” In other words, he puts them to sleep. That was my introduction to him personally.

I started to attend world outreach more and more and then around this time is when I met my wife. Before we got married her and I started to attend together. We were regular in our attendance off and on, off and on, and became slowly over time more on than off and something was happening within us. Several years ago, I think about six years ago we joined the choir and that certainly opened up more about the church.

What was happening to me was that I was understanding and growing in this concept of a personal relationship with Christ. I always thought that that was sort of like marketing mumbo jumbo from the extreme evangelicals. But it really, really resonated with me.

Every year the church does a weekly well daily rather Bible reading. The idea is that if you read the Bible for 10 or 15 minutes a day, you will get through. And I use those words on purpose because I’ll explain why I said that in just a moment you will get through the Bible within a year. I thought, well, I’ve never read the entire Bible. I probably should if I really want to get a better understanding about what it is that I believe. Plus, Pastor Jackson had kind of implanted in my mind that you can’t really understand the New Testament without really understanding the Old Testament. That makes sense, and makes more sense as you read the Bible.

I began listening on my commute. I would commute one day to a remote office about little more than two hours one way, and that would be my day that I would catch up on the Bible. During the commute, I would listen to a podcast called the Daily Audio Bible and it was my introduction into the regularity of the Bible. I was trying to catch up on all the daily readings for the week in one day. With all the Bible readings, because I’m a type A personality, I wanted to make sure I was staying on schedule, because I wanted to get through the Bible.

There’s a problem with those words – get through. It signifies an obligation, really, nothing different than what ended up turning me off from the Catholic Church.

But God was working through me, and after two years or three years of passively listening to the Bible, whether it be driving or then I got into a better habit of doing it daily. Sometimes I still had to catch up, but I would listen while I was working out. It was still in the list of priorities, a background thing, but at least it was on my list of priorities of things I was doing.

I think I’m into my 4th year now of reading (not listening to) the Bible. The first year I did it, it was the same methodology. I would read one day, and then I’d skip a few days and then I’d be like, “Oh gosh, I have to catch up and I go through it really fast and then yay, I could check that off and move on.”

At the beginning of the pandemic, I became a lot more intentional about this. I made two changes. First, every morning, first thing in the morning, I would read my Bible. I wouldn’t put it in some other place on my schedule whenever I had a chance to do it. I would make that the priority.

The second change is I began to write notes about it. Now sometimes I’d write down verses. Sometimes I write down feelings or opinions, or where I’ve seen things in relation to today’s modern culture. That was all just for me. It took two years, but I filled a 200-page composition book with daily notes. It helped me to focus on being more intentional when I was reading the Bible. I was reading and trying to absorb it.

Then I changed the translation. I don’t remember the first couple of iterations NIV was one of them. Maybe I read NIV twice in a row and then switched to Living Bible, which was a much easier read. After that I thought, well, I probably should go in the exact opposite direction and read King James. Old English that makes it for a very difficult reading, but I bought the Holman King James Version Study Bible. They do a wonderful job of explaining not only what some of the English means, but also what some of the Bible means, like what are they getting at here? Why are they doing this?

There’s so many elements in the Bible, so many rules. In Leviticus, for example, that when you’re reading Leviticus, talk about having to get through something, it seems like! It is a difficult read, but there is a reason, a structure, that makes perfect sense as to why these sacrifices were done as they were, given the context of when it was written.

During these years, in my day job in information security, I had started a few years ago a YouTube series called The Virtual CISO Moment (CISO stands for Chief Information Security Officer). The series began as a marketing strategy to try to get folks interested in the services we offer. Then that video series slowly. developed into more of an effort of giving back. I have more than 30 years of knowledge and experience in this field to share.

This year I put it up on Spotify and other platforms through a unique opportunity that came my way. Spotify was looking for amateur video content creators like me, those who have already demonstrated that they’ve done videos in the past that they wanted us to be the first wave of their new expanded video and audio podcast creation platform called Anchor.

The Virtual CISO Moment was accepted, and that accelerated my growth into the podcast space this year.

All of this was coming together for context as to why I’m doing this podcast. There are a few elements that have converged. First, I have learned and grown in reading and understanding the Bible, particularly through the intentionality of reading every morning and writing about it.

Second, I’ve learned about how to create a podcast efficiently. One of the first rules of podcasting I would say (I didn’t read this anywhere but may be common advice) is to be consistent about it, so I do this every week. That’s why a new episode drops every Sunday at 6 PM Central (US).

Third, I’ve gotten proficient at speaking into this big foam-covered microphone on a regular basis. I record three episodes per week of The Virtual CISO Moment. I don’t have microphone fear anymore.

I started to get the God-nudging beginning of May. “Hey, Greg. I think I want you to do something else.” That’s how I started in what I’m doing in my career now; five years ago, it was a God nudge, and you can learn more about that if you to the other podcast (first episode titled Genesis).

Here it was, another God message, the shoulder tap, a little whisper in the ear. “I’ve given you these talents. I’d like you to bring them together, for my purpose.”

And thus, The Weekly Bible Wrap Up was born. I don’t know how many people are going to listen to this, but if just one person listens, it’s worth it. I hope more will. I hope that this becomes for some people a vehicle to help bridge from that “I’ve got to get through the Bible” to “I’m living the Bible and I’m living the relationship.”

The one thing that I, nor any podcast, or preacher, or anybody (not even God) can give is the desire to begin. The desire comes from faith. You must believe, when reading the Bible, first and foremost that there is a God who created the universe and loves us.

If you go to the Bible looking immediately right out the gate for proof, chances are you won’t find it, because you’re reading it with the eye of its skeptic. But if you read it as a believer in God, it is amazing how it opens understanding.

I now look forward to reading my Bible every morning, it’s not something I have to get through because it seems like every day I gain more insight, I learn something new. I’m excited about it! I’m excited about this path that God has put me on. I hope it helps you.

Thank you for joining me on this journey. I’m certainly open to any feedback. I hope this podcast becomes a real blessing to you.

Post based on the transcript of the introductory episode of The Weekly Bible Wrap Up.

Iraq Invaded Kuwait 30 Years Ago Today

/ Greg Schaffer / Leave a comment

Thirty years ago today, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Today there is an initiative to build a memorial to commemorate and honor those who, as members of the Armed Forces, served on active duty in support of Operation Desert Storm or Operation Desert Shield. I was on beach in Florida that day in 1990 on a weekend Air Force trip when I heard of the invasion. I had no idea then how much that snippet of information would affect my life.

Logo+on+black+lo+resIn the summer of 1990, I was a newly married 23-year-old, preparing for what would be my fourth year of a five-year aerospace/mechanical engineering curriculum at the University at Buffalo. I had enlisted in the US Air Force Reserve the year before. My career goal was to fly planes. I’d get experience around aircraft as a C-130 cargo plan mechanic, then move to a pilot position flying something (I wasn’t sure what) once I had my undergraduate degree.

The reserve seemed like a great safe path to that experience, all while earning great money for part-time work. I volunteered for as many weekend trips as I could, as they paid well and were informative and fun. If there ever was a war, which I was sure there wouldn’t be because the Soviet Union had crumbled, we may be activated to fill in for the full timers that would go overseas to fight. But there wouldn’t be a war.

Wrong.

When the situation escalated to where we were sending troops overseas, slowly I realized that our unit could be activated, likely for stateside service. I wouldn’t be pleased about the inconvenience of putting off my college degree. I was eager to start being a full-time breadwinner. But if duty called, I’d respond.

Early in my college career, prior to joining the reserves, I had a conversation with a friend. He said that if there ever was a war that brought back the draft, he’d go to Canada. I couldn’t agree. I felt back then, as I do today, that so many of the blessings in my life were a direct result of the freedoms we have, fought for by many, some who paid the ultimate price. If my turn came, I’d go and pay my dues, I said with the confidence that it would never happen.

It did.

The message on the answering machine that late September day in 1990 was short and simple: I had a few days to report for duty for overseas assignment. Tears welled up in my wife’s eyes, and she asked, “What does it mean?” I didn’t have an answer, but I tried to be the rock I thought I had to be. “I guess I’ll be going on a three-month vacation to the land of the sand,” I said.

The truth is, I didn’t have to go. I could have pushed for a deferment because of my college status, as a few in our unit did. I never seriously considered that. I had made a commitment, and I would honor it.

That would become one of, if not the strongest defining moment in my life.

Desert Shield, and then Desert Storm, permanently shaped my life path and my perspectives. Some changes were good, some not-so-good. That’s life. Our characters are tested daily. I’d like to think that I have been more true to my character with every test partially because of my decision to not defer.

When we returned home from Desert Storm, it was flags and yellow ribbons everywhere. Americans were united. The mood of the country was good, and the ghosts of Vietnam had finally largely been put to rest (though some will always remain). That was the United States that encouraged me to serve.

Things are a lot different today.

I don’t know how it happened, though I, like everybody, have theories. I don’t have to tell anyone who was an adult then that we are more divided now than in 1991, or maybe in almost any time on our country’s history. If you don’t agree with the other side, your thoughts, positions, morality, and even standing of a human being are often questioned, if not completely berated. How did we come to this place?

I have experienced this firsthand, especially on Facebook (see my last blog post). I feel that I have lost my right to express my opinion. This is a topic for another post, another day. People are openly posting statements that are so blatantly full of hate. The worst part? I doubt that many, if not most can even see the hate. They take the worst possible aspect of the side they don’t like (you name the issue – politics, COVID, etc.) and automatically assume that if you don’t agree with them, you are the worst of the other side. And if that doesn’t work, the fallback is “if you’re silent, you’re complacent.”No middle ground, no consideration of discussion.

The United States of 1990 was one of differences, yes, but also one of compromise. We have lost much of the ability to discuss issues in a civil manner. Just open any news site. This is a very dangerous situation. Without discussion, divisions will widen. Our republic’s continuing existence isn’t guaranteed. It must be constantly attended to.

I haven’t lost all hope. If I were called back to defend the United States, I would serve, in whatever capacity I could. I love this country. I bleed red, white, and blue. But it won’t happen without fundamental changes in everyone’s hearts. And I believe that won’t happen without prayer. Lots of it. Honest, fervent, passionate.

God bless the USA.

The National Desert Storm and Desert Shield Memorial is a new national monument that has been approved by Congress and President Trump (March 2017) to be built by 2021 on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Visit http://www.ndswm.org/ for more information. Image from http://www.ndswm.org/

The Facebook Conundrum

/ Greg Schaffer / 2 Comments

I’m in the middle of a reboot of how I use Facebook, brought on by increasing frustration at the polarization of discussions. First, the problem, then the solution, I think, at least for me.

A bit of background. I have been a Facebook consumer and contributor for over ten years. I enjoyed the aspect of connecting with friends and coworkers and, later family (I was the first adopter for several years I believe in my family) and friends from years’ past. The latter was especially cool, connecting with people that I haven’t spoke to in years. Though my dad wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea at all, as he remarked “if I haven’t talked with them for so long, why would I want to start now?”

But the journey was blissful for the most part, as I enjoyed posts from people representing all phases of my life. Later, I followed various news organizations. Facebook became a primary news source for me in this internet age. Who watched the six-o’clock news anymore, anyway?

Then something odd happened, and not just for me, but for seemingly everyone. It must have been during one of the big elections, probably 2012, as by then Facebook had established its grip on Americana. People love to talk politics, but usually that’s reserved for bars and water coolers, not Thanksgiving or other family gatherings. Why? Because people can be very passionate about politics. But look out, now here comes Facebook, where anyone can broadcast their obviously correct opinion on anything to everyone!

If you have ever been on Facebook, you know what a mess that creates. Battle lines drawn, defriending, cutting people out of wills, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria… Many people smartly stopped talking politics altogether.

I had to be different.

This polarization really got to me in 2012. I couldn’t understand why people had to be off or on, and not a dimmer switch, varying between lightness and darkness. I don’t mean to imply that any position is darker than another, I’m just conveying variance. To address, I created a page on Facebook, The Moderate Party. I think two people joined. I think it’s still there, I haven’t done anything with it in years (maybe I need to return to it). Creating it though taught me how to do so, which has helped out my two businesses in their marketing strategies.

Elections come and go, and polarization subsides, like a regular ebb and flow. I realized I could navigate the waves well, because they were never extreme. Then came Donald Trump.

Trump is, at the very least, an interesting character. He may hold the world record for adjectives hurled his way, positive and negative, if such were tracked. Most, including likely Trump himself, expected Hillary Clinton to be elected in 2016. When that didn’t happen, the polarization went into warp drive.

Here it is, 2020, and I, like others, are faced with a huge decision for this presidential election. I like to look for answers, and opinions, and discussion. Such is hard to find face to face in the COVID-19 environment. I turned to Facebook.

At first, I’d posts questions and links with commentary, often from a conservative source (I am a conservative though like to think I’m open-minded). Often, they’d elicit polarized responses, so I shifted strategy, mainly posting links from mainly centrist (as objective as possible) news sites or calling out the bias if not. I hoped that it would prompt rational discussion.

It did not. Truthfully, some responses were blatantly hateful. No need to go into details, as probably most reading this have experienced similar, just that if you indicated you aligned with a particular position you were instantly labeled to the extreme. “Choose a side” people said. How to choose when you’re trying to have a civil discussion to form opinions that will then inform the decision?

Nothing worked, and my reaction was to step back from Facebook for my mental, spiritual, and physical health. Yes, this whole polarization and lack of common decency to not even try to see another side literally made me ill. I wasn’t sure if I’d leave Facebook completely.

That idea made me angry. I have every right to voice my opinion. I also have every right to defend and protect myself from bullies, even when it’s not the intent. Because those kinds of Facebook post responses are nothing less than bullying.

That’s where I’m at today. I don’t want to lose relationships from years ago, many rekindled through Facebook, but I also don’t want to be bullied because I have opinions and views that others may disagree with. I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do, so in the mean time I “rebooted” (posted Windows Blue Screen of Death, then HAL 9000 and a generic programming background as my profile and banner pictures to signify the reboot and the programming that we have all endured to bring us to this polarized point). Now it’s “The Daily Dog”, a picture of a dog usually from Unsplash. After all, who hates dogs? I’m trying to step back into Facebook politics discussions, but my first attempt had disappointing results. I’ll just leave it at that.

Maybe the loudest win. But that doesn’t mean the silent have changed their mind. In some cases, it likely has strengthened their resolve. Maybe I’ll post about that tomorrow – after I post a Chihuahua for The Daily Dog.

Photo by Richard Brutyo on Unsplash

My NaNoWriMo Experience

/ Greg Schaffer / Leave a comment

For those unfamiliar with the term, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, a “fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing” according to the NaNoWriMo website. I had heard of it before but had ignored primarily because whenever November had come around in years past was when I was in a writing lull. Capture

This year, I opted to participate for a few reasons. First, I was reminded of it from an email from IngramSpark, a service I’ve used to self-publish several of my works. IngramSpark had a promo to waive title setup fees by using a NaNoWriMo promo code, even if the work wasn’t produced during NaNoWriMo. I happened to have finished all of the pre-production for my novelette Childhood, so the timing was great. But the reminder also caused me to check out the NaNoWriMo site.

Second, I was gearing up to write Fatherhood, the full-length follow up to Childhood (which serves as a reader magnet to introduce the characters). Why not see if I could write 50,000 in a month?

A couple of caveats: I’m not endorsing the NaNoWriMo site – I used it to track my progress, nothing more, nothing less. I do plan to learn more of their mission but, honestly, writing 50,000 words in a month doesn’t leave much time for any other discretion time activities.

Also, I technically did not start at zero words. I had completed about 8,500 while I was working on Childhood this spring. However, because of changes to Childhood during the development editing process, I needed to rework those first six chapters, plus my outline. That’s reflected in the graph above; once I finished that (nine days in), I started to track.

As you can see, I made it, but not without a few significant pushes. I took a couple of days off from work around week three to write, completing over 5,000 each day. That helped to put me at a manageable but still difficult 2,800 or so per day pace to finish, which I stayed on consistently until the end. The last day was a Saturday, so I knew I could spend more time writing, and therefore took a break Friday. I knew at that time I’d make it.

A few lessons learned:

  • Having an outline was critical to success. I was determined not to write fluff. While this is obviously the first draft and will require much editing and revisions, the plot stayed on point because of the outline.
  • It became easier to write more. I got into a groove, a regular cadence of crafting a scene (typically 600-900 words), taking a break, then repeating until the goal was met.

This has also primed me to finish the novel draft this year. My previous novels have landed right around 80,000 words. With 30,000 to go, I launched another challenge for myself beginning December 2nd (I took the first off) – 1,000 words per day. Thus far, writing 1,000 per day has been relatively easy. I just completed one scene of 723 words and will complete the rest (part of the next scene) shortly after posting this.

Bottom line, for me NaNoWriMo helped kickstart my project. If all goes well, I will have completed an 80,000-word novel in two months, though in reality, it took ten months to prepare, including writing the novelette.

Childhood Cover Reveal and Offer

/ Greg Schaffer / Leave a comment

The cover is complete for Childhood the novelette prequel to my upcoming novel, Fatherhood. Childhood follows young Katie Whetley’s quest  to find her place in life as she grows up in the small West Tennessee town of Maynard. Childhood will be released later this year.

The good news is that you can get a free eBook copy of Childhood before it’s released! If you have enjoyed one of my previous novels (Forgiveness, Leaving Darkness) and write a review on either GoodReads or Amazon, I will send you the eBook file once completed. Just email me (greg.schaffer@secondchancebook.org) a link to the review and I will add you to the list. As always, I appreciate your support!

Time to Write

/ Greg Schaffer / Leave a comment

What is your best time to write? Without doubt, I find the early morning to be when my creative juices flow best. I’m not sure why that is, but I’m sure it’s in part due to being a morning person. I routinely wake up before 5 AM and am often in the office before seven. Incidentally, this is a complete flip from my college years. I joke that now I wake up around the time I used to go to sleep.federico-respini-314377-unsplash

I have daily writing goals measured in words, as with most authors, when I’m working on a novel. For me, since I have a full-time job (I own a small virtual CISO firm), I don’t have the luxury of time to have lofty goals of 5,000 words or more. No, for me if I can reach 1,000, on average, for weekday mornings that’s fine. Weekends I relax my goals somewhat; if family time permits, I’ll get in some time to lay down words, but if not, that’s fine. Balance is key.

Sometimes people assume that my job is highly technical but that’s not the case. Yes, there are technical elements for sure, but more so I focus on strategy and my clients’ business goals, not the minutia of what most people think about with regard to information security (firewalls, antivirus, and so on). At times I’m called on to invoke my writing skills as well, mostly when crafting policies and assessment reports. However, I  don’t get a chance to exercise my creative side, at least not in the creating fiction sense.

I think that’s a prime reason why I am a morning writer. By the time I’m thinking about, say,  how the GDPR may affect a client’s operation, my brain has shifted its creativity to security and privacy strategic mode. It’s more difficult for me to shift to creative writing in the middle of the day than to start at it fresh in the morning. Plus, and I have no proof to back this up, just a feeling, creative writing to start the day seems to fuel my mind for the other security and privacy tasks at hand.

Therefore, I try to block the first hour I arrive at my office for creative writing. It’s quiet as I’m usually one of the first to arrive at my office suite. I don’t have the distractions of writing at the home office. So long as I can resist the urge to check work email, if I can give myself an hour of uninterrupted time before tackling the day’s duties, I usually meet (or often exceed) the 1,000 word goal.

I wonder if a study has been performed to see when fiction writers prefer to practice their craft, and why – anyone know?

Photo by Federico Respini on Unsplash

The Next Project

/ Greg Schaffer / 1 Comment

(Below is from the About Me section)

I am a Christian, husband, father (to rescue dogs), veteran, and information security executive consultant. I write Christian novels about tough subjects and how God’s grace can lead us out of those situations to live the lives we are meant to live, usually from the male point of view. I am seeking an agent.

I wrote my first novel in high school. 0It sits in some nondescript box in my basement in its original form on various types of ruled paper. Then, I’d write using whatever I had available, including spiral notebooks. I always hated the messy edges tearing a page produced (however, I am by no means a connoisseur of neatness). That novel, The Balance of Power, dealt with a topic as weighty as the title and too heavy for a teenager, a Soviet internal takeover of the United States. One day I will read it again – and cringe.

I always seemed to have a project in mind, and when not thinking about a manuscript I drafted poetry. It’s not that I particularly liked poetry – I didn’t. In fact, I would probably say then I hated it. But I did like songs and envisioned each “poem” as the next Bruce Springsteen hit.

The second manuscript idea was also one over my head, another national emergency with the glorious title American Terrorist. I abandoned, or at least put on hold the idea because I thought the premise was not realistic. Then Oklahoma City happened. Rather ironically, during the time I pondered creating this novel, I drove past Timothy McVeigh’s house every day on the way to work. That one never made it past a few chicken scratch pages, likely also on spiral notebook paper and now having long returned to its elements in some landfill.

Novel attempt number three began in 1991 as a method to deal with my divorce. I found myself fantasizing about “what if” scenarios. What if we hadn’t married early? What could I have done differently to prevent the pain I struggled with daily? I needed to live that fantasy, at least through writing. I wrote in the basement wood-paneled bedroom of my post-divorce house I shared with three others, I wrote during lunch at work in my cubicle, and anywhere I could find a few free minutes away from the world.

After a couple of years, a move to the south, and recovering from divorce depression, I touted what I thought was a finished masterpiece of time travel and romance. I took a community education course on becoming published and excitedly wrote query letters to the dozens of agents whose contact information the instructor had provided as part of the class materials. I’d be having to make the hard choice of choosing which agent to represent Second Chance soon, I was sure.

Then they came. Rejection after rejection after rejection. One had the gall to tell me I should change the protagonist from male to female. Ha! This was my work, my life. No one would tell me what to write.

And so that manuscript returned to storage, likely in the same nondescript coffin for The Balance of Power. A few times over the next 15 years or so I attempted to resurrect it but the crushing realization that no one would want to publish Second Chance discouraged me from going further. My passion was meaningful writing, not crafting useless query letters.

Then a conversation with a colleague in 2012 changed that. He worked for Ingram and mentioned their new product called Ingram Spark, a complete self-publishing platform. At last, I could get my book published, even if not traditionally. My spark (no pun intended) for writing had returned.

I set about reviewing the manuscript, at first anticipating only a few tweaks and then this masterpiece would be available for all. Much had changed though since those sad basement days, and the original story seemed, well, bland. And mushy. And cutesy. Even the title evoked images of a Harlequin romance paperback. I was no Fabio, nor was I a romance writer. Minor tweaks became major rewrites.

I needed a lesson, but what? What was I passionate about? I didn’t spend too much time on this, as I knew the answer. Abortion is a much-debated issue, but to me abortion for convenience is murder. No one speaks for the child, but I could through this book. Second Chance became Forgiveness, and soon I joined the ranks of gazillions of other indie authors with a book available on Amazon.

My nativity hit again. I thought that simply by listing on Amazon and a few tweets coupled with a basic web page ensured sales success. While many who read the book offered very positive feedback, the truth is sales were close to non-existent. I had to do something to market the first book and in the process made in hindsight a bad decision. I immediately began another book, buying into the concept that the best way to market a book was to write another, and ignored all other marketing opportunities.

That was the beginning of my list of mistakes. In crafting Temptations of the Innocent, I created such a complicated world comprising of this life and a fictionalized (certainly not Biblically based) version of the afterlife. I didn’t stop there, adding in an antagonist who is pure evil (if not the devil himself) and a Soviet plot to infiltrate the Catholic church. I like to write about weighty subjects, remember? Sprinkle in a span of 80 years and several continents with a few historical events and figures (one character meets President Reagan), and you have a recipe for disaster.

Perhaps disaster is not the right descriptor. Temptations of the Innocent is (in my non-objective opinion of course) a well-thought out and intertwined story that tells the backstory of Forgiveness. Everything fits together and lays the groundwork for the planned third novel Redemption, the sequel to Forgiveness. It is just too complex a story. I didn’t market the book at all (see my marketing efforts for Forgiveness), and sales reflected that.

I was left exhausted and with no desire to write anything further, let alone the sequel. Then in January of 2017, I received a God nudge to pick up the pen again. I sketched out a three-act story on a piece of paper that would tell the story of healing through small group ministries. I had at that time been involved with one such ministry for several years and was very passionate about it, having seen firsthand the positive changes this eight-week group had on people willing to change.

I accepted God’s assignment and began to plan the story. I was determined not to repeat the mistakes of the first two novels. This one would follow a simple arc but would involve a weighty topic, necessary to show healing. I chose depression and began creating my third novel, Leaving Darkness.

This time, I did not self-publish solo though Ingram but rather contracted with WestBow (the assisted self-publishing division of Thomas Nelson). I worked with an independent development editor, a worthwhile expense. My goal for sales was not income but to get this in the hands of those struggling with depression so they may realize the path to healing through God’s grace, so I wanted this story to be the absolute best it could be. Leaving Darkness was published in the fall of 2018.