N.A. Hart
In 2011, when I reached the story of David in 1 Samuel in my read-the-Bible-all-the-way-through project, I was engrossed by what I was reading and regularly went way beyond my usual chapter or two a day. I’d been reading middle grade and young adult fiction for many years (Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Charlie Bone), and I kept seeing echoes of those stories in David’s. Why couldn’t my then-12-year-old son experience the Bible as exciting as I was seeing it? David was the original Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Percy Jackson–the boy plucked out of obscurity because of his connection to something larger than himself to do what nobody else could do when he was still so young. But the Bible is written in formal language without the level of detail that kids connect to.
So I thought I might take my love of middle grade fiction, my love of the Bible, my love of research, and my skill in telling Bible stories to kids and re-tell the story of David, adding in some of those feels-like details, some expanded and natural dialogue, some internal dialogue, and other things that would make it feel like a fully fleshed-out story for contemporary kids.
I thought it might take me 6 months. Ha!
The more I wrote, the more details I craved, the more precision I needed. It took two years to write and edit it and work with my Old Testament consultant, and then another two years of submitting to agents and publishers and dealing with rejection before choosing myself and deciding to independently publish it. If you’re good at math, you’ll notice that 2011 + 4 = 2015, and we are now in 2019.
Well, traumatic life events intervened and I wound up (to push the David comparison too far) wandering in the wilderness for four years. But I persevered, and here is the result: a story about fear and faith, trouble and trust told in alternating points of view. It is the first in what will be a trilogy, following David from a boy of 12 until his death.
So I thought I might take my love of middle grade fiction, my love of the Bible, my love of research, and my skill in telling Bible stories to kids and re-tell the story of David, adding in some of those feels-like details, some expanded and natural dialogue, some internal dialogue, and other things that would make it feel like a fully fleshed-out story for contemporary kids.
I thought it might take me 6 months. Ha!
The more I wrote, the more details I craved, the more precision I needed. It took two years to write and edit it and work with my Old Testament consultant, and then another two years of submitting to agents and publishers and dealing with rejection before choosing myself and deciding to independently publish it. If you’re good at math, you’ll notice that 2011 + 4 = 2015, and we are now in 2019.
Well, traumatic life events intervened and I wound up (to push the David comparison too far) wandering in the wilderness for four years. But I persevered, and here is the result: a story about fear and faith, trouble and trust told in alternating points of view. It is the first in what will be a trilogy, following David from a boy of 12 until his death.
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