The Bible has the best stories.
5 Biblical, low-memorization, low-rehearsal plays that include everyone who wants to participate. You don’t have to have a stunning display with professional sets and lights and live animals to tell the story of Jesus well. You just need a few volunteers willing to corral all the participants, and actors willing...
Cliffs and lyre music and swords and crowns–chapter 2 of The Giant Slayer in research notes and images.
I’ve been sharing research images for The Giant Slayer on Facebook and Pinterest to help curious and studious readers get even more accurate in their imaginings about life 3,000 years ago. This post collects all the notes about Chapter One: Bethlehem. Late summer, 1028bce in one handy location.
One of the major difficulties in writing an imaginatively expanded version of the story of David from the Bible (and trying to still keep it biblical) is the utter lack of precision in the source materials when it came to time. When did all this stuff happen? Not having the...
This all started over 3,000 years ago, when the story of David and Saul took place–Saul was born around 1076BCE, and David around 1040BCE. But this particular retelling started 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...
In The Giant Slayer (and subsequent books) I recreate the world of 1,000BCE in Israel. Youtube is a glorious friend; all I have to do is search for people hiking in any part of Israel and someone out there filmed it and put it online, so I can get sights and sounds. I can read a lot of books that contain snippets I can use about flora and fauna, camping in the wilderness, what it’s like inside a cave, what a shepherd’s life is like in countries where the kids still take the flocks out. But there’s one sense none of these help me get at: smell.
Or, the pleasures and perils of writing about three thousand years ago. As the publication date for The Giant Slayer gets closer and closer, I’ve been taking care of what seem like thousands of details. Besides all the super-fussy stuff like registering ISBNs, I’ve written a glossary and a discussion guide,...
This is a brief post to alert my readers to my appearance on Lisa Colon DeLay’s podcast: Spark My Muse. (Click on the title of the podcast to be led to it; you will have to crank the sound on your listening device when the podcast gets to the interview.) We...
I’m going to say this straight out, rather than ease you and me into it, and possibly lose some of you in the process: I believe that God communicated with me with words. It was last fall, just as I was realizing that all the work I’d put into the...
According to this great TED talk by Andrew Stanton (of Toy Story and WALL-E fame), Mr. Rogers carried this quote around in his wallet: “There isn’t anyone you couldn’t learn to love, once you’ve heard they story.” In the last twenty years, readers have definitely grown to love all kinds of characters...
“What I do” is turn the power of my imagination, my knowledge of story, and my historical research onto biblical stories in the hopes of developing a better and deeper understanding of who God is and what God wants of me by way of what God wanted of his followers...
I've been telling Bible stories to kids and teenagers for over twenty years. The Old Testament is my favorite because it’s full of real people who are mixed bags of failure and faithfulness, fear and trust—just like I am. My father was an entrepreneur, so I never intended to be one, but I've wound up a proud indie publisher.
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