The New Project
Other than fiction and the occasional poem, I’ve never really been interested in writing anything else. Even though I’ve been told several times that it’s harder for an unpublished author to publish a novel than a nonfiction work, my heart has always been in telling a good story. Even though finishing Fallen Sparrows got to be a bit of a chore because of not being able to consistently keep writing it, I knew if I started writing something new I wanted it to be a novel.
Knights of the Blood is still very much alive as an idea, but it is more of a backburner idea now. That’s actually a good thing, since the research for the historical aspects of the novel are going to take a lot of time and taking more time will allow me to develop the story better before I start writing in earnest. What’s surprised me is the book that I am now hard at work on, because it is not only nonfiction but it also has the potential to completely upend my life in very exciting ways.
But first, a little background info. Over the holidays, I experimented with a very popular online matchmaking service that you may have heard of: eHarmony. I must say that the matches that I was notified of were by and large pretty good. The problem was that I couldn’t get any of them to talk to me. The guided communication process eHarmony uses is sound, but I could never get to a point where any of the young ladies I was matched with were willing to communicate openly, as opposed to the canned questions and responses that start the process. It was very frustrating. I knew that if I gave it more time, this would improve, but my finances were such that I could not renew my subscription for awhile. Then, as I thought about it more, I realized that any time that I have ever tried to make something happen for myself in this area, it never worked. I decided that if I got the money to renew my subscription again, I would instead give that amount to God in the form of an offering at my local church. I did that, and I haven’t looked back.
You see, this particular decision was a turning point for me. An epiphany, if you will. I realized that if it was in God’s plan for me to get married someday, He wanted to be the one to orchestrate it. What surprised me was that once I accepted this, I was perfectly content with it. What encouraged me in this was also realizing that being content as a single by no means meant that I had to give up my desire to be married someday.
It was from this realization that I started analyzing some other thoughts I had about being single. When I started putting them all together I realized I had enough material to write a book, and a book that would approach this material from a different perspective than any other book I had seen to date. That meant the book would not only sell, but help other people who have struggled with singleness like I have.
The theme is simple: Contentment in singleness without giving up. The premise: As singles, we set up mental roadblocks or attitudes that prevent us from serving God in our current circumstances. We need to learn to get past these roadblocks and change these attitudes and start serving God now, start serving each other now, rather than waiting for a life milestone that may come later rather than sooner, if at all. We need not give up looking for marriage, but it should not be our focus, else we will miss the blessings and opportunites that God wants to give us while we are single.
My current working title is 411-SINGLES: Contentment in Any Circumstance. The 411 is a reference to Philippians 4:11 where the Apostle Paul, himself a single, tells how he has learned to be content in any circumstance. The research and preparation is going so well, I’m getting ideas faster than I can write them down. I currently have three sets of surveys nearly ready (one for singles, one for married persons, and one for pastors/singles workers) that I hope to distribute in an effort to expand my research past my own experiences and make sure that the unique needs of other singles are being addressed also.
I’m excited. Potentially, this could turn into a Bible study series with video lessons, speaking opportunities, and who knows what else. My youth pastor friend, Bob Johnson likes to say, “See it big, keep it simple.” I’m starting with the book, and trusting God to do wonderful things with it. I personally can’t wait to see what happens.
A lot of tinkering
Hard to believe, but I’ve actually been able to update not just twice in one month, but twice in one week. Not bad, eh? The poetry section is fixed to better integrate with the new frames layout for the site. It’s also been given a new background, as the old poetry background didn’t work as well without it’s own navigation frame on the left. The frame boundaries aren’t as seamless as the background for the rest of the site, but since it looks like a paper crease I think it actually gives that part of the site a little more character. I’m happy with it.
The colors on the feedback forums have been adjusted to better match the color scheme for the rest of the site. A lot of trial and error there, but I was surprised at how well it looks. There’s still more to be done, however. There’s still some blue and silver in a lot of key places, and while it does look good, I’m still hoping to adjust them to match the rest of the site, too. They’re actual graphics, though, so I’ll have to run them through Paint Shop Pro, which will take some time. It’s possible I could end up designing replacement graphics of my own, but if it’s not too hard to just swap colors, I’ll probably just go with that for now as there really isn’t enough traffic to warrant that much work just yet.
I’ve also made a few minor changes. The “To Every Thing a Purpose” title on the sub-pages for the novel has been moved to the novel navigation frame. It’s a little less redundant, as well as providing a nice template for future novel sub-sites. A grammatical correction was made to the About Me page, and the Poetry intro page was updated. Oh, yeah, and I added a roll-over effect to all the links in the Poetry section, too. If FrontPage didn’t make all this so easy, I wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much done. Hope you enjoy the site. Thanks for stopping by!
Edit: It’s actually too bad the forums are down, in a way. I was pretty happy with the results of this tinkering. Now no one else will see it. Oh, well. Stupid hackers.
Not just one novel anymore
Finished the About Me page, which effectively completes the site. All that remains is to assign some search keywords to each of the pages so that people using Yahoo, Google, HotBot and other search engines can find my site. Since the Poetry section turned out so well, it’s likely I’ll eventually redesign the rest of the site in frames, though that will be after I’ve finalized the draft of the novel and started sending it out to publishers. I’ve also dug out a couple of my earlier short stories that are good enough to post on the site, so you’ll probably see those fairly soon.
Other than that, the only other news is that I’m over 90% certain what my next novel is going to be. The tentative title is Single Impact, since it will involve a singles Sunday School class like the one featured in To Every Thing a Purpose. Several characters may reappear in this new story, though that hasn’t been decided yet. While this is not intended to be a direct sequel to TETaP, this new story has the potential to be the beginning of a series. The only character name I’ve settled on is Holly Nichols, and her story has been lifted out of a previous story I wrote called The Avalon Brigade and will be retooled slightly for the Christian atmosphere of the new book. Not much more has been decided yet, and like any site redesigns, my current novel will remain my top priority. As always, keep this page bookmarked for any updates. I’m really excited about this one!
Edit: Wow. I hadn’t realized how long I’d been working on Fallen Sparrows. (What Single Impact had become.) I really should finish that.
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