Bulldawg: How I Published a Book in a Day

Yesterday, I had a sudden burst of energy and a surplus of time. The end result? I now have a new book available on Amazon (both Kindle version and in paperback).

Before you get all impressed, let me clarify:

The book is a collection of short stories that I wrote a few years ago. I labored over them quite a long time, enjoying the act of creation, enjoying the chance to invent and inhabit a new (though familiar) world. They’re detective stories, inspired by the works of Raymond Chandler, creator of the famous P.I. Phillip Marlowe. Set in Athens, Georgia, they’re about a detective who comes back to the last place life made any sense – UGA – trying to start over again. Through five different, strange cases, he discovers that being a detective in a crazy college town is very interesting. They’re dark, gritty, punchy and, for better or worse, some of my most favorite things I’ve written.

Are the wholesome? No. They’re hard-boiled detective noir. They’re not for kids, people who dislike detective stories, or people who object to the use of ugly language and uglier portrayals of life.

Are they good? We’ll see. I wouldn’t have published them if I weren’t proud of them, and if a friend of mine didn’t convince me that they were worth putting out into the public sphere.

Are they cheap? As cheap as I could make them. Well, I suppose I could’ve given them away free, but they were the perfect set up for testing the digital marketplace as an independent author. If you don’t have to go through the gatekeepers, why should you?

Do I expect to make a lot of money? Not a bit. But I hope to be able to get some good feedback as a writer – I want to know what the people who read this blog might think of the experiment in fiction. I want to know if I have the kind of range necessary to tell bigger stories than just my own (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

I’ve already sold a few copies (thanks to my brother, my friend Ashton, and my friend Sarah) and that’s a nice feeling. It helps with the transition from my old life to my new one. God is sovereign, and He’s able to do more than I would’ve imagined.

Heck, He might even be pleased that I’m trying to stretch more than I’ve ever done before. Who knows?

So, as any self-published author is required to do, I’m gonna remind you one more time that my new book, Bulldawg: Detective Tales from the Classic City, is now available for Kindle or in paperback at Amazon. If you’re a Bulldog fan and know anything about Athens, especially Athens circa 1994-2000, then you’re in for a treat.

Help a fellow Dawg out by getting your copy, will ya?

Thoughts On Jon Acuff’s “Quitter”

I was finally able to track down a book I’ve been wanting to read for quite some time – Jon Acuff’s Quitter – and hunkered down to read it. If you don’t know Acuff, he came to prominence with his blog, Stuff Christians Like, and has turned his blog into a dream career of writing and speaking to people all over the country. Quitter is his second book as a member of Dave Ramsey’s Speakers Group, a collection of hand-picked communicators that work under the Dave Ramsey umbrella. Acuff is hysterical, thoughtful, and flat out good.

Acuff writes that his dream was to become an author and speaker who would share his insights with the world. He busted his butt putting in long hours to make SCL an immensely popular blog, and he continued busting his butt to make his dream come true. He wasn’t handed anything. He didn’t stumble upon dumb luck. He didn’t steal someone else’s idea and ride it fame. If you take five minutes you’ll see that everything he’s received has been a response to his hustle (a word he calls “a core element holding this entire book together”).

So, what does this praise mean? That he earned his dream. And upon reading his story, I realized he’d earned mine too.

Well, not exactly my dream. My dream is more about helping people understand that God is present in even the most mundane moments of everyday life (thus the title and focus of this blog). But in a broader sense, of being able to write and speaker and have your words motivate and inspire people, he got where I want to be. And reading his book, I felt like I could get there too.

Part of the book’s focus is encouraging dreamers to stick with their day jobs, especially since their day jobs can offer the stability needed when you want to launch a dream. Acuff does a great job of teaching his readers “how to fall in like with a job you don’t love” and seeing their present circumstances not as barriers to, but buttresses of, their dream job.

In practical terms, my job couldn’t be better for what I want to accomplish. I get to practice my content development, speaking, interpersonal relationship skills, writing, editing, and a host of other skills necessary to become a published author/speaker every week. I get to find my voice and develop my skill at reaching people with the message that beats within my heart.

So I’m 80% of the way there.

Where I get bogged down, and where Acuff’s book helped me tremendously, was the area of procrastinating perfectionism. I like things to be done as well as I can do them. And whenever I encounter situations that don’t allow for me to meet my dreamer standards, I tend to pull back and do nothing because it won’t be as good as it could be. Acuff challenges that notion with words that really cut me to the core: “90 percent perfect and shared with the world always changes more lives than 100 percent perfect and stuck in your head.” Stuff that’s better than average and shared beats stuff I’m endlessly trying to perfect and keeping on my laptop.

That moved me in such a deep way, because I’m often afraid that what I have to offer isn’t good enough, despite the fact that my career as of late tells me otherwise. I fall prey to the illusion that I’m not successful enough because I don’t have a book deal (or a book, for that matter), endless speaking engagements, and thousands of visitors to my blog everyday. Honestly, part of me read Jon Acuff’s story and thought, “That will never happen for me.”

But another part, a louder part, said, “Actually, it might. But you have to want it bad enough.”

I’ve flirted with the idea of writing for the longest time. I started this blog as a way to build my confidence, sharpen my skills and – let’s be honest – get vital feedback/confirmation that what I believed to be a talent really was something special. Did I expect people to flock to the blog? No. Did I hope like crazy that it would happen? Heck yes. Has it? No. But over the past few months, things have steadily progressed to the point that I need to commit myself to making my dream happen.

So, I’ve got the book part in mind (I’m not going to spill anything here, in order to keep the content separate in my mind) but I’m going to need some suggestions/help on how to go about getting speaking opportunities. I have no clue. In fact, I was so lost for ideas that I actually emailed Jon Acuff.

Dude – sorry for suddenly turning into your stalker. Seriously.

So if you have some ideas, or if your grandfather’s 3 person men’s group is in need of a speaker for their annual men’s conference in Neverheardofhere, Mississippi, feel free to comment below. I’m looking to dream big in 2013 – and act bigger.

God Isn’t Fair

I’ve been reading Andy Stanley’s book Deep & Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend. It’s a good read. If you’ve not picked it up, head to the local bookstore and flip through it a bit. Andy’s every bit as engaging on the page as he is in the pulpit, and the first section of the book alone is worth the read.

I’ve been Tweeting different lines that I think are particularly solid (don’t worry, I’ve been giving Andy credit) and today I came across something that really resonated with me. Here’s the line:

“Read the Gospels and you will have a difficult time finding even one example of Jesus being fair.”

That gave me pause. Jesus isn’t fair? How can that be? Isn’t he the fullness of God made man? Isn’t God fair? So wouldn’t that necessarily mean that Jesus had to be fair too? What the heck is going on here?

But Andy goes on to cite ample evidence from the Gospels: Jesus didn’t heal everyone, didn’t feed everyone, didn’t offer everyone immediate entrance into His Kingdom. He didn’t train everyone the way he did the Twelve, and even among that select few he pulled aside Peter, James and John for even deeper relationship. He was hard on the religious, gracious to the sinners, and constantly spoke in folksy stories that concealed the truth. Jesus waited until Lazarus died, then got on to Martha when she scolded him for waiting. He healed the blind man at Bethesda and left the other injured, broken people to simply watch the miracle pass them by. Heck, he let Judas pretend to be a good guy and steal money from the poor.

So what do you know?

Jesus isn’t fair.

This immediately made me think of something that I’d read earlier this week on CNN.com; it’s an iReport from a woman who is raising her children without religion. It’s fairly standard stuff, but what stood out to me were two things: first, that people had flagged the story as inappropriate and CNN, after careful review, rightly reinstated the story. The editors even went so far as to post a disclaimer that the story was flagged by readers as offensive and request that they stop doing so.

Second, the story stood out because the mother listed as one of the reasons she didn’t teach her kids about God is because God isn’t fair.

Here, read for yourself:

If God is fair, then why does he answer the silly prayers of some while allowing other, serious requests, to go unanswered? I have known people who pray that they can find money to buy new furniture. (Answered.) I have known people who pray to God to help them win a soccer match. (Answered.) Why are the prayers of parents with dying children not answered?

If God is fair, then why are some babies born with heart defects, autism, missing limbs or conjoined to another baby? Clearly, all men are not created equally. Why is a good man beaten senseless on the street while an evil man finds great wealth taking advantage of others? This is not fair. A game maker who allows luck to rule mankind’s existence has not created a fair game.

Between this mother’s view and Andy’s statement, I’ve been wondering: who says God is fair? Why do we think that? And if God isn’t fair, then what does that mean for how we understand him?

So what is fair? Most people think that fair means an even playing field, that no one person gets a leg up on anyone else. And that definition is true. (See here if you want to read what else fair means.) Fair means that no one gets special treatment; no one gets to circumvent the rules. My kids are masters of this concept already: if I allow my son to technically eat less than my daughter and still get a treat, Ella is quick to point out that my decision isn’t fair. “Why do I have to eat everything and he only has to eat something?”

I could point out that Jon’s smaller, therefore his belly is smaller. I could point out that Ella enjoys eating and always has, so the “clean your plate” standard for her isn’t exactly an onerous burden. I could even go so far as to say, “I’m the dad and I make the rules.”

The reality is, she won’t care. Because she will still feel slighted anyway.

And the truth of the matter is that, from her point of view, I am NOT being fair; but I am being just. Jon physically can’t eat as much as she can because he’s younger and his stomach’s smaller. Jon also is a painfully picky eater, and so getting him to meet even the relaxed standard I’ve set for him is a remarkably hard thing to do (and truthfully, he rarely ever meets it).

The problem, and it’s the foundation for what Andy was talking about with his “Jesus isn’t fair” observation, is the tension between truth and grace. Truth says that all people are under the same standard: we are measured against the holiness of God, a standard by which no man can be found righteous. Grace says that God will overlook our failures and count us as righteous by his Son. So on the one hand rules, but on the other one, grace. And since God made the rules, he knows and understands them best. So that means that, sometimes, he isn’t fair. Sometimes one person’s prayer is answered while another one isn’t.

But it doesn’t mean God is unjust. He can’t be. It would violate his character.

Look, I’d be a lying dirtbag if I said that I didn’t think God was unfair sometimes. I’d also be a lying dirtbag if I said that I didn’t want him to be unfair; the truth is, I want him to be unfair. I just want him unfair in my favor. But God isn’t like that. His justice won’t allow it. And so he doesn’t answer every prayer exactly the way we demand/expect/want. He doesn’t give everyone unlimited resources and perfect health and all of the other things that we want but don’t get (and secretly think we deserve); things that – once denied – lead us to labeling God unfair.

But no matter what we think, no matter how we frame it and present it, the reality is that if God is as Christianity and Judaism and Islam assert – the source from which all life flows and is sustained – then only he knows what is right and just and true and fair. And what he knows is beyond our limited capacity. And if we take Scripture at its word and believe the things that it reveals about him, about his nature and character and will, then we must admit to ourselves that he will do things we cannot understand. A limit that, for us, makes the trials and tragedies and triumphs of this life intense and powerful and beautiful.

There will be people who read this and rip it to shreds. I understand. I’m not trying to write a thesis here, no matter what the word count may tally. I’m trying to wrap my head around a tension that too often derails us as followers of Christ, as children of God. It’s a new area of thought for me, and so I welcome the challenges/opposing viewpoints/vicious trolling. The comments are open for your viewpoints and I welcome you to leave them. I’ll respond as I can.

I guess in the end, I come back to something my friend P. C. Frailey said to me on Twitter the other day: most people spend their time attacking a God that doesn’t exist. They point out flaws that God doesn’t have, because they define God as something he hasn’t revealed himself to be. In the end, they are beating against the air.

God is just. God is gracious. Sometimes that means he isn’t fair.

I think I can be okay with that.

Understanding Our Current Culture

**This is the manuscript from my sermon/lesson/seminar that I gave at my church last night. It was a bit heavy on the details, so a few people asked me to post it on the blog today. I’ve not edited it any, so it’s a bit long, but if you want to get the crux of it, just skip to the positive signs from our current culture. There is a lot to be hopeful for in the years to come.

Acts 17:16-34

I could spend a ton of time just dissecting this passage – it’s one of the favorites of Christian apologists everywhere – but I want to focus on a few key elements that I believe are applicable to Christianity today.

First of all, we read that Paul, while waiting for his compatriots, was in the marketplace in Athens. He wasn’t cloistered away from the world; he was moving around the city, looking, learning, listening. And what he saw provoked his spirit within him. Here’s what we should take away from this: we need to be aware of what’s going on in the world. Current events on the local, national, and global scale. We need to not just hear from the pulpit that the times, they are a changing; we need to be the eyes and ears on the ground informing the pulpit of what’s going on in our communities.

Take a moment and think: what are some of the changes that you’ve observed about your community? What are some of the changes you’ve observed about the USA? The world?

We need to be awake and aware of what’s going on around us, from the kids on our ball team to the soldiers in Afghanistan. And then we need to let what we see/hear/ observe provoke (stir, ignite) our spirits to act in the name of Christ.

Second, we read that Paul reasoned with the devout Jews and the philosophers. Reasoned means that Paul had thorough discussions with them; he engaged them on topics (and, knowing Paul, it was probably a wide range of topics) and discussed them from both the Christian and non-Christian angles. Remember – Paul wasn’t always a believer in Christ. He had knowledge and understanding of things beyond the church, and he applied that knowledge when he spoke with people.

But Paul always brought the conversation back to the Gospel. There wasn’t a topic that Paul couldn’t steer back to Jesus. Not in a non-sequitur way, where he just stopped talking about a topic and started talking about Christ, but in a way that showed the fullness of Paul’s faith: everything under the sun can be brought around to God because everything under the sun was made by God. There is a connection between life and faith that is powerful, if we will reveal it to those who can’t see it.

Finally, Paul was in tune with the cultural expressions of his day. He knew the Greek poets (Epimenides [v.28a] and Aratus [v. 28c]) and used them in his message about the Gospel. He was aware of the different gods being worshipped in the Athenian marketplace and wasn’t afraid to discuss them. He was familiar with the philosophical and rhetorical communication so common among the Areopagites, and used them to great effect in his speech to them.

Did Paul convert everyone? No. Did some ridicule him? Yes. But there were those who were persuaded by a brief encounter with Paul (Dionysius and Damaris) to abandon their ingrained cultural beliefs and accept the Gospel for their lives.

Part of the church’s mission and calling is to understand and witness to the culture in which it finds itself. While history compels us to often look back at the time of Rome as one of decadence and depravity, if we’re honest historically we can see a time of great opportunity. There was a vast interest in thought and philosophy, even religious discussion. It was a time of great leaps in technology and science. It was a time of uncertainty and fear.

In many ways, it was a time very much like the one we currently inhabit here in the U.S. Only our society is not responding to the Gospel the way Rome did. Many scholars and researchers have tried to explain why our culture is abandoning the Gospel as opposed to embracing it the way Rome did in the first century, and there are some things to consider: age, history, and abuse of power work against Christianity now, whereas with Paul, the faith was so new as to be an intellectual curiosity. We have progressed to heretofore unknown scientific understanding of the physical makeup of our universe, and have been subjected to the idea that divine impulse is not required for our existence.

We face a tough road. But part of why the faith isn’t as robust as it used to be is because the Christian church has – in many ways – removed itself from the marketplace, stopped reasoning with its contemporaries, and forgotten that everything can be connected to God.

Or, if I may be so blunt, we’ve gotten lazy. We’ve assumed that the world will come to us, instead of us going to them. That is wrong. Jesus said that there is no who seek Him, not even one. So we as a church must reset our minds and hearts to this truth: the only way to win the world to Christ is to take Christ to the world.

But what does that mean, take Christ to the world? Take Him where? Take Him how? I want to take just a few minutes to help you understand the marketplace, to understand our current culture, because if we can at least start there, we will discover the unlimited opportunities we have to share the Good News of Christ.

Keep in mind, these are generalizations of the broader culture. And while generalizations are just that – generalizations – there are some distinct features about the current culture that are very different from the church’s perception. Often, we talk about and focus on the negative side of things and lament the degradation or abandonment of past values. But the reality  is that the current culture, in many ways, offers the insightful church plenty of opportunities to bring in the younger generation. Thom and Jess Rainer, in their 2011 book “The Millennials” highlight some of the key positive characteristics of the current culture and the generation that drives it:

• The importance of family. Though most people are waiting until their later 20s and even 30s to get married, the commitment to marriage is deeper than ever. With the Millennial generation being significantly impacted by divorce, they are resolved to not enter into marriages that won’t last, are committed to making marriages work, and are advocates (or at the very least, non-obstructionist) for the idea of same-sex marriage.
• The importance of guidance. Many of the younger generation want older adults involved in their lives to offer guidance, wisdom and perspective. The primary folks they want mentoring them are their own parents; younger Americans desire to have parents who can be counted upon for more than just providing for physical needs. If parents aren’t able to step up to the plate (for whatever reason) the Millennial generation has no problem seeking out people with whom they can establish vital, life-long connections.
• The importance of their input on the future. Millennials don’t expect a free ride, and are in many cases contemptuous of that idea. They want to roll up their sleeves, get involved in the issues and challenges before them, and contribute ideas and solutions that help bring about resolution. They also want to be involved in projects and ministries that matter – that address problems in the real world, and help make the world a better place.
• The importance of priorities. This is not a workaholic generation. They are not going to put in the 60-80 hour work weeks of generations past, mainly because they saw how those types of conditions led to the destruction of their parents’ marriages. They are also not going to invest in ministries and activities that they don’t see as productive. Time is their number one currency, and they will invest in things that they understand as having great value, and not invest in things that are simply done “because they’ve always been done.” Vision and leadership are essential to getting them invested. This also translates into the importance of having a clear vision and expectation for those who follow that vision.
• The importance of communication. Some people decry the rise of the smartphone, Twitter, Facebook, etc. And there are some real dangers in this Internet Age that have to be accounted for. But this generation thrives on the ability to have access to information and communication at their fingertips. They are not shy about sharing their thoughts, engaging in dialogue, or seeking out expert answers to questions they may have. To reach them may not require “face time” in the traditional sense (home visits, etc), but it certainly requires leaders and mentors who are available via technology, and use that tech wisely.
• The importance of caring. This ties back in with their view of contributing to the future of the planet, but Millennials put a priority on caring. Naturally, being human, caring in the long term/big picture is much easier to establish and practice than caring in the short term/near picture. But at heart, this generation wants to take care of the planet, their neighbor, and their loved ones in the best way possible.
• The importance of authenticity. This generation distrusts institutions and authority, and with good reason. Millennials simply do not respond well to some one saying, “I’m in charge and I told you so.” They push back when they perceive error; they question as a way of learning; they desire someone to tell them the truth, not just about spiritual things, but about how deeply those spiritual things impact the everyday life. They want people who can admit their mistakes, own up to their need for grace, and offer grace and compassion without condescension. They will allow you to make judgments on their decisions if you have proven yourself to be someone they can trust. And that trust takes time to build.
• The unimportance of religion. The Millennial generation, this current culture, is the fastest growing population of “Nones” in recent history. Over 30 percent of the Millennial generation self-identifies as being non-religious, which includes everything from atheism to agnosticism to having no official ties to any particular type of religious organization. Church is not an obligation to which they will hold out of respect. They will not live by a certain ethical standard simply because a religious leader says so. But they will respond to spirituality, which can be a bad word, but offers an in-road to reach them. The idea of a Savior who knows them, loves them, and has a plan for their life is a powerful idea, especially when coupled with the transformative power of the Gospel (that Jesus doesn’t command you to do things to be saved; he saves you to do things).

While not everyone you meet will have all of these characteristics, a great many of the people you see each day at work, in the store, at the ball field, at the gym, in the bank, or on your street share at least a few of these traits. What we are called to do is be like Paul – to look, listen, and learn which people have which traits, and then engage them at that point. We don’t have to have all the answers, but we do have to believe that our faith in Christ can provide answers that are better than the world’s.

That’s really another message for another time, but I don’t want to leave you without a starting place. I’d like to recommend six books you can read over the course of this year that would do a lot to help you take advantage of the current culture.

• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
• The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel
• Is God Just a Human Invention? by Sean McDowell
• The Millennials by Thom and Jess Rainer
• You Lost Me by David Kinnaman
• The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard

I want you to pray for God to awaken in you an awareness of the world around you, to give you eyes to see opportunity instead of obstacle, to give you a heart for reaching out to the world instead of waiting for the world to come to you.

Father God, may we your people take seriously again your command to GO and reach the world.

My First Book Is Now Available For iPad and iPhone

The new cover for my book, Blue Like the Sky. Now available for your iPad and iPhone.

So I’ve written before about my first book, Blue Like the Sky, and how I published it through a company called Blurb. Like any good self-published and control freak author, I have gone back and done a little work on the book, adding some new content, changing the cover art, rearranging pictures–making it available as an ebook on your iPad or iPhone.

Yes, you read that correctly. Blue Like the Sky is now available as an iBook for $4.99.

I know not everyone has an iPad, but I’m pretty sure that a lot of folks have an iPhone. Regardless of which device you use, you can download my book to your iBooks and read me wherever you go!

And, no, that link won’t take you to the iTunes Bookstore. It’ll be at least two weeks before the book appears there. But it’s coming.

I’m a little fuzzy on this whole selling books thing, mainly because in just writing a couple of the sentences in this blog I’ve felt extremely narcissistic and self-aggrandizing. My ambition has always been to write and sell books, and hopefully be good enough to sell lots of books, but there’s just something in the self-promotion that feels creepy. Vaguely wrong. Immoral, even.

I know that all authors have to sell themselves if they want to make it, and nobody will buy what they don’t know is available, I suppose. But I guess for me, I don’t want to promote my stuff too much for the fear that people will resent the promotion and take it out on the book. And I’m really proud of Blue Like the Sky. It’s not groundbreaking in any literary sense, but it’s an honest walk through a man’s death with that man’s family. There may be people who need this book, and I don’t want to turn them off.

So here’s where I find myself. I’ll keep the link to my bookstore active, and I’ll let you know when the book is available in the iTunes Bookstore, but beyond that, I’m not going to mention this much, if any, again. If you like the work, you like the work. I would achieve greater satisfaction as an author in knowing that whatever books I sell come from people thinking enough of the work to recommend it to someone else, and so on. And if you enjoy enough to recommend it to a friend, hopefully you’ll enjoy it enough to write a rec on the website. But I’m not going to push.

I’m happy just knowing that my family has been blessed by the book, and knowing that 10 or 12 of you have been too. Everything else beyond that is gravy.

Thanks for reading–you are an encouragement to me. All the best to you.