Hello there!

It’s been a while since I posted for something that wasn’t a Tomorrow’s Edge Tuesday or a Quest of Fire Friday. Yesterday was something extra special. Besides it being Reformation Day and Halloween, yesterday marked a HUGE anniversary for me. Ten years ago today, my first novel, Destitutio Quod Remissio, was published! It’s a story about a Roman Senator who is secretly a Christian during Emperor Diocletian’s persecutions in AD 303. His secret is betrayed, and he loses everything. In the midst of putting together a new life, he has to face the conflict of whether to pursue revenge or emulate Christ’s forgiveness for those who wronged him. All the more when he discovers how deep the betrayal went and that his decision will impact all the believers in Rome. If you would like to check it out, there’s a link at the end of this post, otherwise, fair warning this is a pretty long post.

October 31, 2014 was a huge day for a boy who had aspired to been writing stories since nine years-old and been through the querying trenches about four years when DQR—as I call it—won The Crossbooks Writing Contest Grand Prize. The prize included having the book published by CrossBooks which billed itself as a hybrid subsidiary publisher of LifeWay. Growing up attending a Southern Baptist Church, that was a pretty big deal to me. Not to mention, the book was supposed to get a huge amount of marketing materials pitched in for it.

If you go to Amazon or any other retailer though you won’t find CrossBooks listed as the publisher nor my 10/31/2014 publication date (though you can if you root around on its GoodReads page). That’s because DQR wasn’t even out a full year before LifeWay closed down CrossBooks. That was the first major blow I had as a writer and my first reminder that nothing, not even a book being published is forever. How did I handle this you might ask? Well, to be blunt, I panicked. DQR had been featured by my state’s largest newspaper in a full color article and chosen for review by the Historical Novel Society and I was supposed to be checking off another box on my dream list by having a booth at the WV Book Festival. I had dreamed of doing that ever since I was in fourth grade and went there to get a book about the Civil War from school signed by its author–which I thought as a kid meant you had made it as an author.

So, when CrossBooks offered the chance to just push the book over to West Bow Press (a vanity press) to keep the book in print, I took it. It was free for me based on the terms with CrossBooks and I hadn’t learned any of the hard lessons I have since. But that’s for another post that I’ll probably title “What Not to Do In Publishing”. I could probably write a book on all the mistakes I’ve made over the years, but I don’t think I can totally count this one as a mistake, either for going with CrossBooks or for doing the quick emergency raft of West Bow Press, because DQR out of all the books I’ve been privileged to write is pretty special.

It started as a short story for a creative writing course in college. I don’t remember how it came to me except that I felt very strongly about writing a story about a person living out Colossians 3:12-13:

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

So, I did, and I was super nervous about having a very faith-filled story critiqued by my secular university peers and professor. But an amazing thing happened. They loved it. There were suggestions for improvements, but it was received shockingly well. In fact, one girl who was also a turned out to be a believer told me I should make it into a novel. Which quickly gained assent from multiple other students who also offered help in various ways to make that happen. I left class that day in shock. For context, by this point I had given up my dreams of being a writer for a more “realistic” career in computer engineering. I’d also not seriously considered that this story could be more than just an assignment for that class. Soon after I realized something that changed my life. 1924 Olympic gold medal sprinter Eric Liddell is credited as saying, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast! And when I run I feel his pleasure.” That is what I came to recognize was happening when I wrote. I felt His pleasure. It was like the movie Pleasantville when its world of black and white suddenly begins having vibrant colors increasingly appear.

Fast forward to my final year as an undergrad and I applied and was accepted to a capstone writing course in which I wanted to use DQR as my final project. That whole semester (during which I also had the inspiration to write Day Moon) was beautiful to me. I wrote way more of the book than I was required to complete the course and soaked up all of the advice the TA for the course offered as she read my chapter drafts and gave me one-on-one feedback. That course culminated in me having to give a reading from DQR to English program faculty and family and friends of my classmates. My parents also drove three hours just to hear me do my reading as well. That was important for me because it was the first time I did public speaking and didn’t just tolerate it or muddle through it or wing it and hope for the best. I was thrilled by it. Ever since, I’ve felt that if it’s about writing I can get up and talk to whomever I need to and do it happily. I get nervous in the lead up, but I’ve been blessed every time that I’ve done it since that day to just be at genuine ease when it’s time to talk storytelling.

After that was a whirlwind of rejected query letters and life moving on without me being an author for two more years. All of that, I hope, makes clear why when DQR won that contest I was over the moon and didn’t hesitate, couldn’t hesitate, to have it published.

And then the other shoe dropped, but after it lifted again, my dream wasn’t crushed. I went to the WV Book Festival as an author for the first time in October 2015 (see the pic of my booth back then!) And in spite of having a super low-budget display and not knowing anything I was doing in terms of being an author, DQR did great and I made some friends and readers who still check in on my writing all these years later. Having DQR in print but with West Bow Press meant I needed to learn the ins and outs of being an indie author and fast. Which got me on the path to seeking reviews, writing better queries, better back cover copy, and so on. It also meant that I started getting exposed to feedback for DQR that I hadn’t expected but treasure to this day. There are some reviews snippets that mean a lot to me in the images, but one of the biggest things that I got in terms of feedback was people telling me that the story made a difference in their heart. That it made them see things differently, encouraged and challenged them. Which is absolutely what I always want from the things I get to write. So, what is the next chapter for me? I don’t know, but always, 100%, I want to be a brush in the Master Artist’s hand. And now and for all the days the Lord blesses me to write, I want it all to be for soli Deo gloria.

Thank you for sticking with me to finish of this extra-long post and for all the readers who have supported me these past ten years, thank you so much! Lord willing, there are just as many and more stories He has placed on my heart to tell and I can’t wait to share them with you. Now and evermore, may the Lord bless and be with you.