When I first learned to read, I couldn’t believe it. How did Roald Dahl do it? With no more than little black marks on a page, he filled my imagination with the wildest things. It felt like magic.
Curious, I picked up a pencil to try a story of my own and found that I could do it, too. I’ve been writing ever since.
“The best description of my career as a writer is, ‘At play in the fields of the Lord.’”
Fiction
Down to Earth
a novel
Elijah Youngblood is the black sheep of a harsh, legalistic church in rural Louisiana. Brother Ronny, the preacher, wants to make him into a fisher of men, but Elijah just wants to fish for bass. Despite the church’s rejection of his earthly-minded questions and doubts, Georgia, the preacher’s daughter, finds a freedom with Elijah that she has never known in her austere home.
Choosing exile rather than abandoning his ‘down to earth’ faith, Elijah finds refuge in the woods and water, inevitably leading him to a trailer park of misfits, who begin to flourish as a result of his company. Even so, before the well-being of the trailer park and his future with Georgia can be secured, Elijah will have to find a way to get through Brother Ronny, who has no intentions of backing down from the so-called ‘redneck prophet.’
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“My subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil.”
Subversive Stories
The Parables as Modern Short Stories
Literally translated, a parable is “cast alongside.” Parables are not like other truth-telling methods. Preaching aims to proclaim. Teaching aims to clarify and organize. Parables, however, are indirect. Rather than hitting you between the eyes like a good sermon, a parable fights dirty, attacking you from behind when you aren’t looking. It is willing to forego some of its clarity for the sake of creativity. It gives up the right to proclaim and goes undercover as a story about everyday things.
In the hands of Jesus, however, such “subversive” tactics are used with the most loving and trustworthy intentions. The point of this book is to follow after him in this, interpreting and expanding his parables into modern short stories.
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“There comes a time when [the writer] falls so in love with an idea that he begins to gallop, steam, pant, rave, and write from the heart, in spite of himself . . . he tatters quills by the dozen and, hours later, emerges ruinous from the bed of creation looking as if he had channeled an avalanche through his house.”
The Inlet
a children’s novel
Pap is a perplexing man. He lives by himself in the country but considers himself “cultured.” He has a rich sense of humor but can use it ruthlessly. He has extravagant taste and yet – his most enduring quality – he is a man of thrift.
The story begins when family conflict sends Pap’s grandchildren to him for the summer, a man they barely know, in a place they’ve never been. He provides no entertainment except the outdoors, where there are few rules, unlimited freedom, and no adult supervision. As interesting as he is, they are unsure whether they trust him or even like him.
To survive the summer, his grandchildren will have to learn an independence that is beyond their years and a way of life that is foreign to their generation. When Pap faces a crisis of his own, he has no choice but to depend upon help from an unexpected source, his grandchildren. At the heart of what threatens and blesses them all is the wild, natural world of the Inlet.
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“And that’s what writing is all about. The love of the stranger.”
Nonfiction
Resurrecting Beauty
a Portrait of Jesus Christ
Truth has a hard time making its way to the heart without the assistance of beauty. That is why the Gospel stories are written the way they are – full of beauty. Unfortunately our focus on truth has often excluded beauty, leaving many of us half-hearted creatures, full of knowledge that has not made its way to the heart, disrupting worship and growth.
Without sacrificing truth, this “portrait” of Jesus re-tells the death and resurrection accounts with the staggering beauty of the Savior front and center and everything else faded into the background. The aim of this book is not to inform, apply, or prove anything, but to display the beauty of Jesus in a way that moves truth from head to heart. Its ultimate aim, in other words, is worship.
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“Writing is really quite simple; all you have to do is sit down at your typewriter and open a vein.”
My Soul Waits
The Life of Nun Hmung
From lumberjack in the Burmese jungle to a traveling evangelist in the streets of Yangon, from American seminary student to Burmese Bible college principal, Nun Hmung is an ordinary man with an extraordinary story. This is a true tale of humble waiting, radical trust, and miraculous provision. Written in partnership with Myanmar Evangelical Bible College, all profits from this work are donated to MEBC.
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“I don’t know why I write, exactly. Catharsis, the itch to make something shapely and permanent, the attempt to stare God in the eye, the attempt to connect deeply to other men and women, because I can’t help myself, because there is something elevating in art, because I feel myself at my best when I am writing.”
Contact
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