Dear Brother Faith Seed

Dear Brother Faith Seed,

I saw you on Christian TV asking for a $1,000 "faith seed" to help further your ministry. You said if I sent you $1,000, I would receive a blessing of $10,000, $100,000, $1,000,000 or, who knows, maybe even $10,000,000. There was just no telling. It sounded farfetched, but your testimony and the testimonials of other people that you presented about how God did it it for you were very impressive. By the end of the show, you had me convinced to send you a $1,000 faith seed. Unfortunately, I'm unable to do that at this time. However, I've figured out a way that would allow me to send you much more than a mere $1,000.

Since the testimony from your own mouth before so many witnesses clearly demonstrates you have the faith to make this work, I know you'll be able to take advantage of this opportunity. Instead of me sending you $1,000 and receiving at least $10,000 from God, you will send me the $10,000 blessing up front. I call this a "faith bush." Like a burning bush, your faith to send me $10,000 will shine like a light in a desert world as an example of faith to everyone.

Once I receive the $10,000, I will immediately tithe $1,000 to your ministry for which I would receive a blessing. I will also send you the $1,000 faith seed you requested in the first place! After receiving $10,000 from you, my faith would be extremely strong, and I would be ready to receive a blessing of $10,000, $100,000, $1,000,000 or, who knows, maybe $10,000,000. There's just no telling, is there? Once I receive the minimum $10,000 return on my faith seed, I will send you $9,000. Thus you would have the $10,000 back from me plus my $1,000 tithe plus whatever blessing you received for sending the faith bush in the first place. Because I'm much less fortunate than you financially, the $10,000 faith bush you send me will enable you to receive additional blessings on that merit alone. You could receive $100,000, $1,000,000, $10,000,000 or, who knows, maybe even $100,000,000. There's just no telling.

If I received even more money, I would tithe the extra blessing into your ministry and give even more faith seeds, which would cause me to receive even more blessings. This would start a blessing cycle that would allow me give untold amounts of money to your ministry. Think of what an exciting new outreach program this would be!

Knowing how strong your faith is in sowing financial seeds, I anticipate hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Matthew Jenkins

99 Luftballons

99 Luftballons by Nena was one of the songs I liked in the 80s, and it's aged well. (English version: 99 Red Balloons.) It made the "news" last weekend on Yahoo after someone did a cover of it using red balloons as instruments. I didn't particularly care for it but a tip of the cap for the work that went into it. The German version was always cooler by the way. Never let them tell you otherwise, because they're wrong!

Some things can only be written in certain time periods. That song was a Cold War song the same way WarGames was a Cold War movie. They captured the threat of nuclear holocaust that loomed over us all the time. How do you explain the zeitgeist of it to someone who didn't live through it? There's nothing like it in today's culture. Terrorism? Too local and limited. Climate change: too vague and debunkable. Global thermonuclear war was big and civilization ending. It could have happened overnight with no warning. We'll never wake up one morning and gasp in horror to find the glaciers melted and the beaches flooded. And if we did, would it end civilization? No.

One thing today and Cold War times have in common is conspiracies. Back then they were communist conspiracies. Today they're government conspiracies. Why can't Sept 11 simply be an attack by religious fanatics? Government incompetence explains it. Why all the alternative theories?
Isaiah 8:12 Do not speak of a cabal, for everything this people speaks of is a cabal; do not fear what they fear and do not be overwhelmed by it.
Later it would turn out the Cold War was largely propaganda. The Soviet Union was decades behind the U.S. technologically. Having the government lie to me about that creates instant skepticism about terrorism and climate change. Mmhmm. Been there, done that. And don't forget. Al Gore bought a building in San Francisco at sea level.

Anyway. One of the hard things about Messengers is capturing the zeitgeist of an era. King Afton's time has a different spirit than King Terfel's. Even the time after the return of the gifts should be different than the period immediately before it. That's one of the things I'm focusing on for the sequel. If it's another world with another culture, it should feel that way. There should be a touch of kulturkampf for the reader. I got to use zeitgeist and kulturkampf at the same time. What a beautiful day.

I'm also focusing on little things. Does Ceinwen have a hobby? She was a herb healer and later a seamstress, but what does she do on the weekends? When Joe builds the house, it's mentioned in passing that he needs north light for painting, but he never has time to do that. In the space novel, we'll see some of his paintings. Maybe we should see one now in the sequel.

What I'm Not Working On
Something I'm not working on is a parody about a man named Hairy Plodder. Hairy's a balding, middle-aged wizard who used to have adventures but now spends most of his time drinking. He's put on weight since his younger days, and his drinking has gotten him banned from setting foot on the campus of Swinecorns, his old wizarding school. With all the gold he inherited from his parents, he bought the house where he grew up. He gets drunk and passes out under the stairs where he used to sleep. Times were tough then, but it reminds him of when he was young and had so much potential. While not drinking, he runs around trying to rescue people who don't need rescuing, because he's convinced an evil wizard named Moldemart had a son who's out to destroy the people around him.
I bet it would be a best seller.

Trudging Forward

This is a pair of shorts I picked up earlier in the summer. The stitching for a buttonhole is there, but there's no hole for the button. Cutting one was easy. Then I found out the zipper was broken. This is kind of symbolic of how the whole year's been. I'm really looking forward to some kind of breakthrough.

Somewhere around June I changed prices on books 2, 3 and 4 to 99 cents for a while. I forgot to mention it the other day, but they're now back to normal price, $2.99. Amazon wanted me to go $3.99 for maximum profit. Interesting, but no. I'm starting to see a lot of books for $3.99. Still, no.

The mystery/romance is in a state of hibernation while I decide what to do with it based on a piece of negative feedback concerning an aspect of the story. At one point there's a bit of supernatural intervention to make sure the heroine chooses the right romantic interest. In so many words, a test reader didn't think marriage is important enough for God to do that, or people wouldn't be marrying the wrong person all the time. Personally, I think God intervenes all the time. It's just not as blatant as I portrayed it. I've been leaning toward making it less supernatural and more like what we see in real life.
I would've gotten more done if I hadn't broken a tooth and had to wait until I could get an appointment. Talk about tired. I felt worn out almost all the time. I'm feeling better but not 100%.
I follow this guy on twitter who has tons of money. One Sunday he tweeted that he broke a tooth. About five hours later he tweeted again that the dentist had fixed it. Dentists around here don't work on Fridays much less Sundays. Wouldn't it be nice to have that kind of money? :)

I've been working on the sequel, although the tooth interfered a lot. I'm trying to raise the quality of my work. Something I'm paying a lot of attention to is structure. Novels, plays and movies typically follow a standard 3-act structure, which can be broken down into minute details that I wasn't aware of until recently. Book 1 has two distinct storylines. I wasn't sure if the whole book should be in three acts or if each storyline should. I asked story structure guru, K.M. Weiland, who wrote a book on structure and was generous enough to answer my questions. There's more than one way to do it. I'm treating each storyline almost like it's its own book. Is hearing this like watching sausage being made? My approach was to make two extra copies of the rough draft and cut them up until each held one storyline. I've gone through one. I'm still going through the other.
It's been hard not to make corrections, so I've kept the master file open in the background. In one place a character is talking candidly about the past. There's a sentence that said, "I've evil done things" instead of "I've done evil things." How does that happen? That's probably the worst thing I've found. If it doesn't sound great, it's a rough draft sentence. It may not make it to the final draft. Literally every sentence has to be gone over.

Until next time.