Jason Queen's Blog

We are one month away from the release of "The World Comes To Mercy Creek". In celebration of that, and as a thank you to our loyal readers and supporters, we are offering my first novel, "My Life Was Mercy Creek" for FREE on Kindle through April 3rd.
This is a great time to let friends and family know about the book or for you to get the E-book if you haven't been able to.
FOR A FREE COPY OF "MY LIFE WAS MERCY CREEK" ON KINDLE, FOLLOW THIS LINK. And feel free to share this link with your friends and family. Thank you everyone for your support and encouragement over the last several months!
https://www.amazon.com/My.../dp/B08NH......

Moneyball is a movie that grew on me. Or maybe I grew on it. I didn't like it at first, but as the years passed and I watched it again, I began to like it. Now I love it. There are many great scenes in the movie, but one of my favorites is a great example of the subtle storytelling within the movie.
The scene opens with Scott Hatteberg, a catcher with a bad arm and no team, watching television at home in his darkened living room. His expression is empty. A Christmas tree is seen in the background. Scott's wife is in another room with their young daughter. Scott is alone, with his family only a few feet away. The phone rings and a few minutes later, the manager of the Oakland A's and a scout are in Scott's living room.
Long story short, they offer him an opportunity to play baseball again. It doesn't look like he thought it would, so throughout the scene, Scott had this confused look on his face. But when Billy and Ron leave, Scott turns his back to the camera, and you can tell by the look on his wife's face, as the little family of three hugs each other, that Scott is a man who has been given a second chance.
I love this scene for two reasons. I love seeing what people do with their second chances. I love it when someone rises from the ashes of their dreams and soars. I love it, man. I really do. The second reason I love this scene is the subtlety of it. The story unfolds in front of us and the weight and greatness of what we are watching sinks in slowly. If you blink, you might miss it. But if you don't miss it, you'll be glad you caught it, and you'll feel lucky that you did.
I want the stories I tell to make people feel the way that scene makes me feel. What kind of stories do you want to tell?

One of my favorite movies is Field of Dreams and a line from the movie haunted me for years. It's spoken by Moonlight Graham when Ray asks him how it felt to get to the Major leagues but never get a chance to play. Moonlight responds:
It was like coming this close to your
dreams, and then watching them brush
past you like a stranger in a crowd.
I had always dreamed of writing a book and being able to hold it in my hands and share it with my friends and families and maybe even a few strangers. But the older I got, the more and more I could relate to Moonlight Graham. I was letting my dream brush past me like a stranger in a crowd. One day I was thinking of this quote while at work and I asked myself what I could do to move myself a few steps TOWARD that stranger in a crowd instead of letting it move further away. So I went outside during my lunch break and sat in a parking lot in Harrisonburg, and wrote out the first page of what would eventually become "My Life Was Mercy Creek". After that day, I would write every day on my lunch break. And then I added in weekends. And then I began to get up early and write before work. And then I found more time and made more time. Everything I did brought me one step closer to that stranger, so I could stop it from brushing past me.
You know what I'm gonna ask. What can you do today to bring yourself one step closer to your dream? Don't let your dreams haunt you one more day.