This is a short post to let everyone know a few things:
1. I’m not dead. (I feel happy!)
2. After a long dry period I finally started writing again.
3. Here’s a free book and a debut novel.
Since # 1 is already obvious, let’s skip to # 3. I’m a member of a Facebook group of Christian authors. One of them is offering up the first ebook of his trilogy for free from Apr 23 to Apr 27. Here’s a brief description and the Amazon link:
Fremont and Sidney: A Story About a Bot and Its Boy (The Corebot Trilogy Book 1) by Thomas A. Wilson
Buried under an ancient battlefield and left for scrap, Combat Reconnaissance Robot N804rL awoke to a world it didn’t understand. The heavily damaged quantum machine needed answers. On its quest for clarity, a teen boy named Sidney, a runaway girl named Twila, and a domestic service robot named Khalid join the adventure to make sense of it all.
In this clean, faith-friendly story, these unlikely friends fight against greedy gangsters, corrupt politicians, and a crumbling society in desperate need of a fresh start.
Fremont and Sidney is a fast-paced tale that takes an honest look at overcoming adversity–even when it hurts.
Just click on the photo above to download the free ebook.
There’s another author who has released her first ever novel. This one also has a young protagonist, a teenage girl named Zee, and is Christian Fantasy. (A great genre, in my biased but accurate opinion.) It’s not free, but is indeed very much a bargain at its current price. Again, just click the photo to see for yourself:
Seriously, check those out. I’ve just started reading the second one and it’s a page turner. I’ve downloaded the first, but will have to get to it a little later since I can’t read all the books in my ‘to be read’ pile at once. (Oh, if only I could.)
Now on to other things.
Sometimes the hardest part to making a newsletter or blog post like this is coming up with a title. This time I chose ‘A wing and a prayer… and books’.
I chose the latter part for obvious reasons. The ‘wing and a prayer’ part came because of the sounds outside my window yesterday and today. You see, I live near a town with a yearly Spring festival. Often the Blue Angels will come and we’re treated to an air show.
This is the first year they’ve been able to come in a while, and yesterday they were doing test runs. Today there appears to be a Huey looping out over the house. (For those who don’t know it’s a type of helicopter). I believe they are giving rides to folks. I’m sure there’s a fee but hey, if you’ve never ridden in a chopper or jumped out of a perfectly good airplane I can personally recommend both. Today my wife and I are going to the airshow. I’m looking forward to it, but also taking earplugs. (Update – we did not actually go. The turnout was so incredibly good that we decided to come back home and watch what we wanted from here. In other words – the traffic was crazy!)
So that’s how I came up with the title – the Blue Angels are winging their way through the sky and that expression just came to mind. Then I started wondering what the expression means. According to the website writingexplained.org, the expression ‘A wing and a prayer’ means: “Relying solely on luck to get out of a difficult situation.”
They also supplied the origin: “This expression originated during World War II. It appeared in a film called The Flying Tigers in the year 1942. One of the pilots in the military had lost one wing of his plane, so he was trying to land using only one wing and a prayer.”
Suddenly I found myself taking issue with the whole idea behind the expression. My prayers are definitely NOT merely a backstop or sidekick to luck, nor a synonym for it. My prayers are powerful! Whether I feel like they are or not. And that’s because the One I’m praying to is the maker of the Universe.
So, to bring it all back around and land this thing, I’ve also been praying. Not beautiful, eloquent prayers (those adjectives are subjective anyway), but short, to the point, sometimes desperate, and often just small exhausted pleas for help.
After a while, just like the plane in yesterday’s test runs, which stalled in a nosedive only to pull up in a glorious climb at what seemed the last possible instance, I feel like my life has swept up from a steep drop, and I’m finally on a better trajectory.
Which I attribute to those little cries for help. Or, more specifically, the answer to those cries by the One who hears me.
One evidence (to me at least) that things are getting better is point number 2, way back at the beginning of this rambling discourse: I finally started writing again.
I’m writing in spurts and sputters at this point, but it is progress. I’ve returned to a story I started a few years ago. The tale itself has taken a new direction, and it feels like this small course change will make all the difference in the overall quality and feel of the novel.
Time will tell on that point. (And I’ll be sending out snippets to select readers soon.)
Anyway, I’d better go now. Please know that I appreciate your time and patience. Thanks for reading this and for everything else. And check out those books I recommended. I think many of you will like them, and if you don’t you can blame me, while congratulating yourself for helping out a few independent authors. Y’all rock!
Peace and God bless,
John Stacy Worth