Sawyer at Daddy’s Graduation

Here’s a picture of the Aaron’s youngest baby from his graduation this past summer. It’s a test of a direct blog from my new Flickr account to here. Check it out via the link on the right, as there are pictures of Callie and Tyler there, too.

Well, it’s pretty obvious I haven’t been updating as often as I had planned, but between a dead car transmission, a kidney stone, a full schedule, and an auto accident about a week and a half ago, you can understand how some things tend to fall a little prioritywise. Yet I must say that through it all God has been faithful in all of these areas, including the book. People are still asking me how the book is progressing, and I am still finding people who are interested in reading it and giving me feedback. What’s even more incredible about that is that most of them are people who have approached me, both personally and via email, asking for a copy. One of them was responding to a post I had made on a Christian writers’ website back in May. May. For what precious little work has been done with the novel these past few months, our awesome God has not let the project fade away or die. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am richly and undeservedly blessed.

Ideas are still gelling for the next novel, and the main storyline is coming into focus. The next thing I write will be a short story entitled “Christmas Eve Mary”. Granted, it won’t be finished before December 25th, but I’ve been wanting to do a good Christmas story for a long time, and this idea even incorporates another idea I had come up with awhile back as well It will have a unique structure to it in that it takes place solely in one location with each of its scenes taking place on Christmas Eve of different years. I’ve already started a rough story sketch, which should hopefully give me a good idea how long it will end up being. The idea is to have something that, with little difficulty, should be adaptable into some kind of play. Whether or not it ever ends up being performed by anyone, I have no idea. It would be nice, but the biggest priority is fashioning a compelling story. Time will tell.

After the holidays and after things settle down a little bit, I hope to begin a redesign of the site and have everything in frames, much like the poetry section. That will enable the site to grow better as more stories are written so that it won’t be centered around one story. The old pages will stay up as a non-frames version of the site, should there be anyone who might prefer to view them that way. Granted, if you’re reading this, it’s probably as an archived update, as traffic is minimal at best right now. (That’s one reason I’m not concerned with frequent updates lately.) Traffic will definitely increase when I finally get published, and it’s better to have the site in place when that happens as opposed to having to come up with something afterwards and having no time to do it. The hosting rate is more than reasonable, and it provides a place for those interested in reading the book to download it. You can imagine how much paper and toner I’ve gone through giving out as many copies as I have already. I do have a couple really short stories I hope to post eventually, but I honestly don’t expect any more site updates until after the holidays. There’s just too many things going on right now.

Finally, Happy Birthday to my adorable niece, Callie, who is two years old tomorrow. The picture below is her “frownie face”. Quite the cutie, don’tcha think? Until next update, Merry Christmas and God Bless!

Edit: The Mary story also became part of Fallen Sparrows.