Judging

The Messengers books are based on the Bible as you can tell. :) I was thinking about something this week. Words have power. Proverbs 18:21(KJV) Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

What I was thinking about specifically was that demons can use the words we speak against us as a weapon. When Nathan confronted David over killing Uriah the Hittite, Nathan told him a parable. David judged the bad man in the parable but was really judging his own actions.

Luke 11:53-54(CJB)  53 As Yeshua left that place, the Torah-teachers and the P'rushim began to oppose him bitterly and to provoke him to express his views on all sorts of subjects, 54 laying traps to catch him in something he might say.

They were trying to trap him with his own words. I think we tend to trap ourselves by our words and release spiritual hindrances without knowing it. If we speak judgment against someone else, demons can use the verdict to lay traps for us. I try to speak only blessings into my life and no curses. It's a lot harder than I thought it would be. A lot of our common expressions are self-condemning.

So, how can I convey something like this in a book without being preachy? If you pay attention to what full Messengers say, you'll notice that none of them says something like, "I'm afraid that's not possible." or "I can't do that, I'm afraid." They never say, "That just kills me." Other characters use those kinds of self-cursing expressions but not Messengers. They don't invite fear spirits and spirits of violence into their lives. It's not an obvious or in-your-face kind of a thing, but it tries to be Biblically consistent.

Combined Edition

This is going to be short today. My 30 days of letting the sequel book rest ended yesterday. I started going through it last night. So far so good.

There's an intrepid reader who really, really wants a combined paperback edition of the series. While I was letting the sequel rest, I got most of the work done on that. It's like a thousand small steps. There's not much left except going through it and correcting formatting changes that had to be made to combine them into a single volume. The biggest thing is font size. In order to meet page count restrictions, I had to use a smaller font, which I applied globally that affected chapter title size. I have to manually change them all back. Easy but time consuming. Same thing with the beginning character of each chapter. After that it's little stuff. Except for the cover. I'd like to have better cover art.
A combined Kindle version is pretty much automatic.

I could always use prayer. The roadblocks seem endless. I need a breakthrough.

Words of wisdom: The journey of a thousand steps is less than a mile.

No Smoking

I need multiple miracles that I've been praying for. However, as I've mentioned before, not much seems to work in the desert. Mostly, it's been a lot of waiting while trying to do all the right things. It's very difficult and very discouraging. I was at church the other night, when I started thinking about when I smoked as a teenager, lo these many years ago. By the way, going to a service helps keep the devil off my back even if there's nothing special in the message for me. Spiritual attacks are diminished somehow. Watching something on TV isn't the same.

I smoked for several years as a teen before I quit at 20. I'd tried quitting various times before that last time. It took three months. During those three months, I craved a cigarette every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every fortnight of every month. I sure got a lot of reading done trying to distract myself from the constant struggle not to smoke. It's easy to say but almost impossible to describe how hard those three months were. It was a non-stop battle.

Then one day three months after I quit, it was like a switch was flipped. I no longer craved cigarettes. It was literally an overnight thing. Smoking wasn't part of my life any more. A few short years after that, I had to remember that I used to smoke. When people talked about smoking or needing a cigarette, I didn't relate to it anymore to the point where I actually had to remember smoking. At first I wouldn't even think about when I used to smoke. Why would I? It's the same way today. It's like, "Oh, yeah, I used to smoke."

So, while I was sitting in that service, I suddenly realized something I didn't consider when I was trying to quit smoking. That epic, three-month struggle was resisting the devil to get him to flee. It didn't happen overnight, but he did flee in the end. Today I have permanent victory over cigarettes if I want it. I'm sure I could somehow smoke again, but the victory is mine to maintain.

Maybe these miracles I've been praying and waiting for are like quitting smoking. Maybe there's some kind of satanic hindrance that I have to resist through to reach the victory. There seemed to be a set time period for quitting smoking. Maybe some of the hindrance today has a set time to end. If you've been struggling to get an answer, maybe it's the same for you.

Winning

I'm on a K.M. Weiland mailing list. Every month there's a drawing that I didn't notice in which four people on the mailing list win an ebook of their choice. I was one of the winners for November! I already had all her books except Jane Eyre: Writer's Digest Annotated Classics. I've wanted it in paperback, but Writer's Digest books always seem to be overpriced. I subscribe to their magazine and get their emails, so I know.

I responded to the notification email telling me I'd won and asked for the Jane Eyre book. It turned out that it's the only one she can't send an ebook for. Future winners will be notified of that. :) However, and this is the reason I even brought it up at all, she offered to send me a paperback edition instead. She even asked if that was ok. Of course, it was! That's the one I've been wanting/needing anyway, but she didn't know that. I offered to pay postage on it. She wouldn't let me. What an awesome thing to do and what a nice gal.

Another reason I bring this up is that I've been in this desert for several years where almost nothing seems to work. The spiritual attacks and hindrances seem endless. I've been needing a breakthrough in the worst way and massive amounts of prayer. This year especially has been awful. Winning this book so unexpectedly and having it work out to get the edition I preferred/needed is the biggest thing that's gone right in I don't know when. It's the complete opposite of how things have been going for so long. Right after that I won $10, no purchase necessary. I'm really hoping these are signposts that the end of the desert is near.

Book Stuff
I finished going through the rough draft again. It's resting for 30 days.
NaNoWriMo did not happen for me this year. I wanted to do it, but my outline wasn't in a good place yet, and I was still working on the rough draft. It took longer than I thought. There was no point in forcing it. I've already done two books this year. It's not something I felt that I absolutely had to do. Maybe next year.

Lake Stop

That's a Christmas tree topper I saw at Walmart. Sorry it's blurry. It was a quick cell phone pic at low res. Why does that look so familiar? I can't imagine who thought this was appropriate for Christmas or who authorized it for sale. Creeping sharia.

Below are pics of a local lake I took today. I'd never been on the back side before. In the second picture you can just make out the line of the road going by. They even have a small beach. I spent about ten minutes there and saw maybe 5 people.

Book Stuff
I'm still going through the rough draft, but I'm almost done with the latest pass.

Moles as Food?

I don't think eight adult moles would fit in a jar that small, do you? They're said to taste vile.
I see a lot of weird food at Walmart.

I could use a lot of prayer, if you want to pray for me. :) The hindrances and obstacles lately have been enormous.

I went through the rough draft on the first sequel book again fixing and polishing. I let it rest a few days and got some work done on the outline for the next two books in the series. As mentioned previously, I'm trying to focus on structure more instead of pantsing so much, not that it's wrong. It's just less efficient. The second paragraph of that article is the one that describes pantsing. It's not pulling people's pants down. I haven't read all the article btw, but I probably will.

I don't know if I'll work on the next book for NaNoWriMo or not. It depends on the obstacles. Once I get enough work done on the current one, I need to let it rest about a month. November might be good for getting a head start on book 2. The outline's going pretty well. I have all the major events in place(and settings) unless a great idea strikes that would change something. There's more work to be done, though. My goal is to go through the rough draft again before November and work on the outline on the side. If it sounds like I go through it a lot, it could be worse.

A lot of people listen to music when writing to set the right mood. Something I'm going to experiment with is an ambient sound program. I have one that has sounds for different locations like cafes, plains, various water environments, various city street settings, forests, etc. If I'm writing a scene in which someone's in a cafe, would having cafe sounds on in the background evoke more details in my mind making for richer text? Or would it just be a distraction? We'll see.

Maps, Dramatis Personæ and Wiki

An intrepid reader suggested the Messengers series needs a map or maps and a character list. I agree. To do either requires going through the entire series. Job one would be compiling a list of the names of every character. I don't know how many there are, but it's a lot. Job two would be making a note of where the story says the cities/nations are in relation to each other. The nations are easy, but I don't remember where every minor city is in relation to the others. However, right now getting the first book of the sequel done and out the door has to be a higher priority.
Something I've been wanting to do is make a study guide for the series, which would dig beneath the allegory and unearth the spiritual truths behind it. Some of it's pretty obvious, but some is more hidden. It makes sense to work on that at the same time as the maps and the character list and have it be one big project. I don't know when I'll get to those.

Wiki
Behind the scenes I have various writing projects planned. Messengers includes the sequel, the space era novel(and possible sequel), maybe a Calliope novel or novella if I can ever figure out a story for that that works, and maybe one other idea set about 300 years after Call to War. There's a request for something set in the Marhelan War. I also have the mystery/romance and maybe a followup book. I have a SciFi space trilogy set in our universe that may end up being a single book instead, because I only have a good story idea for book 3 so far. To keep up with all this, I've discovered I need a personal wiki on my PC rather than the scattered document files I have now. I've downloaded a couple to test, Wikipad and Zim. At this point Zim is the hands-down winner, but that's because it's so much easier to use. I want to give Wikipad a better chance, though I'm ready to tie it to a cotton ball and throw it through the window.
If I'm going to make a personal wiki, I may as well make a public wiki for readers, right? I've been looking into that and may have a solution. Once I get it going, I'll spring it on you one day.

Sequel Stuff
I've gone through the rough draft and fixed a lot of things. I had three sections that needed to be deleted and at least one that needed to be added. An example of a deleted section would be a scene in which a minor character reported to another minor character who went to a major character and summarized the report and gave his impression of the situation. The scene where the minor character talks to the major character is essential, but the other scene didn't add much. The information it contained was included in the summary to the major character. It detracted more than it added. On a smaller scale this is something I have to do with dialogue, too. Is something repeated or paraphrased a second time? It has to be fixed.
I had to add a scene and probably will add another, but I need to go through the rough draft again and make sure it's really necessary to the story. While I'm doing that, I'm going to have to change a character. I had a Messenger from Revolutionary War times early in the book who never appears again. A more important character makes an appearance near the end. He really should've been at the beginning, too. Fixing that is more than doing a find and replace on the name. Dialogue has to be altered. I also have to change the setting for two scenes. Both are for character reasons.

I know it's taking forever, but getting a rough draft ready involves a lot more than spelling and grammar and polishing things. Moving those two scenes will strengthen three different character portrayals and add variety to the series. There are numerous little things that have to be hammered out. It all takes time. Nevertheless, I'm hoping to get it out the door before the end of the year or January at the latest. It depends on whether something unexpected happens.