Friday, April 26, 2019
The Legacy of Writing (A Seriously Write Blog)
Robin Patchen beat me to it. I was going to write a post that would have been eerily similar to hers, so I’ll refrain from stirring those roiling waters of writing for yourself versus writing for your readers again. (You can read her post here…after you’re finished with mine, of course!)
One part I was going to include in my post on that subject was how your writing will, whether you like it or not, become your legacy. What do I mean by that?
One evening, we visited my oldest daughter and her family. As soon as we walked in, my nine-year old grandson informed me that he had pestered my daughter incessantly until she finally caved in and allowed him to utilize her computer (keep in mind she was in nursing school at this time, and deadlines were approaching). He wanted her laptop so he could “write a book.”
You can read the remainder of the article HERE!
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Interview for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
I recently was invited along with seven other authors to answer some questions for an upcoming article that will appear in The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. The article, geared for teens, tackles the
Me wearing my granddaughter's sunglasses at a Bar-b-q restaurant |
When did you know you wanted to be
a writer?
It really kind of grew
into a passion. There really wasn’t one “Aha!” moment. No shooting star,
skywriting finger of God, message in a bottle, nothing like that. I just
started getting ideas, and the urge to get them down on paper would not
relinquish.
What is your educational
background?
I have a B.A. from
Houghton College (Houghton, NY) in Bible, with a minor in theology. I have an
M.A. in Christian Studies from Wesley Biblical Seminary (Jackson, MS), and an
M.Ed. in Educational Leadership from National-Louis University (Wheeling, IL).
I also have taken several courses from the School of Hard Knocks. J
How long did you write before you
considered yourself professional?
I still feel that’s an
ongoing pursuit. My friends and fellow writers probably see me as a
professional, now with five books published, three more on the way and
contracted, and a literary agent. However, there is always room to grow, learn,
and gain perspective on your own writing, for you’re never quite as good as you
think you are.
What were some of the milestones
on the way?
I currently have Book 4 of
my Blake Meyer Thriller Series available in pre-order! It releases April 25. I
also have the last two books of the series and another standalone novel
contracted. All three will be out between Dec. 2019 and the fall of 2020. I
have also submitted the first two novels I wrote (The Serpent’s Grasp & 30
Days Hath Revenge) to contests, because I wanted to see how my writing
measured up. The Serpent’s Grasp was
my debut novel, and it won the 2013 Selah Award at the Blue Ridge Mountains
Christian Writers Conference for First Fiction. My second novel (30 Days) was a Silver Medalist in the
2013 Reader’s Favorite competition in the Christian Fiction category. So, with
that success, I’m planning on submitting my standalone novel, The Letters, to any and every Christian
contest out there when it comes out in January 2020.
What is the most rewarding?
Most rewarding? To see my
grandchildren take an interest in reading and writing because “Papa T” is an
author. That’s better than any review I could receive, although good reviews are
like the dessert!
What advice do you have for a high
school student who is considering a career in writing?
Pay very close attention
in English class. As an assistant principal in a high school, I know what I’m
talking about. The writer’s tools are words. His nailing, her sawing becomes
the sentence. The sentences are pieced together to make a structure we call
story. However, the story is the blueprint, from which all the other parts are
derived. So, listen to your English teachers. Learn the language. Subjects.
Verbs. Strong verbs. Weak verbs. Direct and indirect objects. All those things
that cause your classmates’ eyes to glaze over are the diamonds, the pearls,
for a budding writer. Then, pay attention in your other classes, too, for you
never know what bit of information from a science class or a history lesson may
spark something in your imagination that causes a story to emerge.
Please give a brief statement of
the kind of writing you do and who you write for.
I write suspense
thrillers. The Serpent’s Grasp is a Jurassic Park meets Jaws kind of book. The Blake Meyer Series is for those who love
the TV show 24 with Jack Bauer. Yet,
my upcoming book, The Letters, is set at Christmas, and has been called “A Christmas Carol-esque” by some readers
with a strong, redemptive message. As for who I write for, I write
for everybody. But mostly, I write for me. It’s what I love to do. Some people
like gardening. Others like fishing. I like writing.
Until next time!
Kevin
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
Author Behind the Story - Sandra Glahn
I was recently in a classroom wherein the teacher asked the students, who were all standing in a circle (participating in what is called a Restorative Practice circle), to describe their spring break in three words or less. Since I was in the room, I thought it would be fun, so I participated at the teacher's request.
Several answers were similar and could be summed up with these three responses: "Boring." "Went to Beach." "Stayed at home." When it got to me, my answer was, "Busy. Busy. Busy." We had just helped our middle daughter's family move three hours away in preparation for a new job (ministry) adventure. This coupled with writing, family life, yard work, and that thing called sleep, there was little time to do anything else but be busy...on of all things, a break.
Enter our next guest. I'm sure she knows all about being busy with life's requests, demands, and everyday requirements. So, pull up a chair, have a sit, and let us welcome to the Florida front porch professor and author, Dr. Sandra Glahn!
Hi, Sandra! Give us a quick bio. In fifty words or less, who is Sandra Glahn?
I’m a seminary professor, author, journalist, Hufflepuff, Enneagram 9 who loves to advocate for thinking that transforms, especially as it relates to art, literature, gender, and first-century backgrounds/history.
Before you ever got a notion of becoming a writer/author, how old were you, and what were you doing in that time of your life?
Thank you, readers, for stopping by today! Feel free to share this interview (and any of the others on this blog site) with family and friends. Who knows, you may "turn them on" to a new author they may have not known existed otherwise. :-)
Until next time,
Kevin
www.ckevinthompson.com/
(And don't miss Kevin's new release, When the Clock Strikes Fourteen (A Blake Meyer Thriller - Book 4! It's out in pre-order now...Release Date is April 25th!)
Several answers were similar and could be summed up with these three responses: "Boring." "Went to Beach." "Stayed at home." When it got to me, my answer was, "Busy. Busy. Busy." We had just helped our middle daughter's family move three hours away in preparation for a new job (ministry) adventure. This coupled with writing, family life, yard work, and that thing called sleep, there was little time to do anything else but be busy...on of all things, a break.
Enter our next guest. I'm sure she knows all about being busy with life's requests, demands, and everyday requirements. So, pull up a chair, have a sit, and let us welcome to the Florida front porch professor and author, Dr. Sandra Glahn!
Hi, Sandra! Give us a quick bio. In fifty words or less, who is Sandra Glahn?
I’m a seminary professor, author, journalist, Hufflepuff, Enneagram 9 who loves to advocate for thinking that transforms, especially as it relates to art, literature, gender, and first-century backgrounds/history.
I have to admit, I had to look up the Enneagram 9 thing. I had never heard of it. Now that I know what it is, I'm an Enneagram 45 (that's all of them added together, because I can identify with at least one of those descriptions in each of the nine categories. Probably not how it really works, but I've learned I don't always operate as designed, either.)
Before you ever got a notion of becoming a writer/author, how old were you, and what were you doing in that time of your life?
When I was in the second grade, my teacher believed I could write. So she gave
me a personalized assignment: I had to write her a new story daily. She never
made corrections, but rather exclaimed about how brilliant I was. Third grade
came as a shock when I had a teacher who corrected me. But by then it was too
late—I had the writing bug.
Still I had missed something
essential. When I was in sixth grade, my family moved from Keizer, Oregon, to an
urban setting two miles outside of Washington, D.C. I loved that I finally had friends to hang
out with in the neighborhood. So I set out to gather the kids on my block to
present a play I was going to write. And I got enthusiastic response. So I sat
down at my parents’ typewriter, whipped the paper in… and stared at the page.
In that moment I realized words would not simply form a plot by themselves. A
story had to have characters, setting, and action that led somewhere. I had
never noticed someone had to create all those elements—and in drama, they had
to happen without the background info a story can provide. I went to the
library and found a play we could use so I wouldn’t have to produce one
overnight. And I started paying attention to “story” and how it worked.
What educational background do you
have?
I started high school in Arlington, Virginia. But in April of my junior year,
my mountain-climber dad took early retirement from the government so he could return
to the Pacific Northwest. I wore my cap and gown in Albany, Oregon. But ASAP I
headed back to the DC area to college and my boyfriend. After we married and
finished our bachelor’s degrees, we moved to Dallas so my guy could attend grad
school. And I got hired by a big financial-services corporation and assigned to
a boss who believed I could write—even though I had no formal training. He sent
me to get some training on the company dime. And I became publications editor
for an in-house magazine and started freelancing on the side.
When the company sold, I opened a writing
business and started taking writing classes at Dallas Theological Seminary
(DTS)—which has an arts and culture program. I had no intention of getting a degree.
But if you “enroll and pass” enough times at a grad school, turns out you’ve
earned a degree. So I got a master’s in theology with an emphasis in Media Arts
and Ministry. And I began teaching writers there on the side, thanks to my
portfolio.
Then I started my PhD at the University of
Texas at Dallas in the Arts and Humanities—Aesthetic Studies. An Aesthetic
Studies degree requires a three-part emphasis—art, philosophy, and history. For
history I chose Ephesus from BC 100 to AD 100; for art I chose literature/the novel
(by then I was publishing medical suspense); and for philosophy I chose the
history of ideas about gender. Today I’m interim chair of the department at DTS
where I started taking classes, working to help students integrate the arts/culture
and theology.
I’m going to give you a shotgun
list of favorites. List your favorite in each category and then tell us in one
sentence why it is your favorite.
Favorite
Song of All-Time: The Doobie Brothers’ “Listen to the Music.” Greatness.
Favorite
Non-Fiction Book (other than your own & besides the Bible): Gospel Women is an academic book that
looks at the named women in the Gospels. Seeing how badly we, especially in the
West, have misunderstood some of them influenced my decision to serve as
general editor of Vindicating the Vixens.
Favorite
Bible Verse:
I love Lamentations 3:22–23 at its most poetic in the English language—rendered
in the King James Version (KJV): “It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not
consumed, because his compassions fail not.
They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” Plus the hymn
that puts these lines to music.
Favorite
Movie:
Three Days of the Condor, Robert Redford version; I love mystery + espionage.
There’s no actor who can pull off subtlety like Redford.
Favorite
Actor or Actress: I’m partial to Harrison Ford. Star Wars is the gold
standard.
Favorite
TV Show:
My current favorite is Madame Secretary. I love learning government and civics
via story vs. listening to lectures. And I appreciate that the show has a
character who quotes Aquinas like it’s no big deal.
Favorite Novel
(other than your own): I adore The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. I once read the Amazon
reviews—there were hundreds of them—and many reviewers claimed the book had
moved them from atheism to belief in God.
Favorite Author
(other than you): Eugene Peterson, best known for translating “The
Message,” has, methinks, the best pastoral helps in the world. Like…his book on
Jonah, Under the Unpredictable Plant, is
witty and wise. His stuff on subversive spirituality…so much great content.
Favorite
Sport:
I live in Dallas. Duh. Football.
Favorite
Team (Can be any sport, any level): I’ve been a Cowboys fan since long before I
moved to Texas. So I come by my fandom honestly.
Favorite
Subject in School Growing Up: Whatever had the best teacher. Seventh grade,
English. Eighth grade, Science. Ninth
grade, Yearbook. Seeing a pattern here? Nope? Yeah, it was the teacher, not the
subject.
Favorite
Subject Now:
Give me history—those reclaiming women, especially. Even an academic book like Gender and Jim Crow. History and English
are the best preps possible for a writer—the learning of the rules and the
introduction to endless stories.
Favorite
Teacher in School: My second-grade teacher at Keizer Elementary, Miss
Fikan (later Mrs. McLaughlin), believed I could write. I wish I could find her
to tell her how she inspired me.
Favorite
Time of the Year: I love Thanksgiving with sweaters after the long
Texas sweat-fests called July and August. No pretense or obligation to give in
that holiday—just show up with great food to eat more great food and enjoy
people you love. (We lived in the Fort Worth area for six months. Everybody said it was a dry heat. They lied.)
Favorite
Place to Vacation: Grand Teton National Park is the most beautiful
place on earth. Dornan’s for breakfast outside looking up at the range; hiking
around Jenny Lake; dogsledding in the winter; powder-blue birds; elk drinking
water while steam rises around their ankles.
Favorite
Drink:
Tall soy mocha, no whip.
Favorite
Food:
I adore dark chocolate. But there is
also this carbonara served by a restaurant in Orvieto, Italy, that makes me
swoon.
Do you have a
favorite line from a movie or book? If so, what is it and explain why it is
special to you?
I love the part in The Velveteen Rabbit about becoming real. And the “grace” scene in Les Mis when the old man hands over the
candlesticks to the thief. But even more than these, I love the scene in A Wrinkle in Time where Meg realizes
that perfect love casts out fear. I remember where I was standing as a sixth
grader when I read that, because the truth of it hit me with so much force. It
was several years before I realized L’Engle was weaving in a line from Scripture.
The Tale of Two Cities had the same
effect on me when one man laid down his life for another.
Don't you love it when literature takes Biblical truth and weaves it into the story, bringing it alive? Besides
storytelling, what talents do you have?
I love to sing. And I love to teach—but not in
the conventional lecture format. Immersive learning. One course I created for
DTS is “Medieval Art and Spirituality,” held biennially in Italy. We stay in
monasteries, learn to read visual encyclopedias (i.e., cathedrals), and have
long, deep conversations with scholars surrounded by local wines and pasta. The
whole world is our classroom as we explore Aquinas and Dante and Catherine and
mosaics and Roman ruins.
On the even years, I take
students to the UK to explore “British Authors, Biblical Themes.” Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Austen, Donne, Herbert, Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton… I can hardly
wait to teach these courses every year, because I love seeing my students’ eyes
light up learning the content in embodied ways. For my Creative Writing course,
I deliver a workshop in live time across the world—so now students don’t have
to move to Dallas, but we still get that great in-the-moment, face-to-face
feedback. I seem to have an inner GPS that helps me find the intersection of
what people need to know and how they can best learn it. Also, I am good at
discerning the difference between lousy and great chocolate. And I have a
talent for finding good coffee shops.
Hmm...I need one of those kind of jobs...
Tell us about what
project you are currently working on.
I co-teach a seminary course on sexual ethics that looks at gender issues
(e.g., male/female norms and stereotypes, LGBT issues, trans-sexuality), porn,
and all sorts of other challenges related to life in the body that ministry
leaders need to better understand. I’m working as a general editor on that
compilation, with each chapter written by someone whose expertise lies in the
subject of the chapter or in Biblical Studies relating to the topic. So I’m
more curator than writer—though some writers do need more help with prose than
others. The book has the super exciting title, Sexual Ethics.
Tell us about your writing
day. How do you go about writing?
I start the day with a cup of coffee, and I try to complete a few pages in a
published Bible study—rather than a devotional. I like the straight-up text,
not a commentary about the text. In
addition to deepening my faith walk, Bible reading affects the syntax and meter
of my prose. Often after reading, I head for the gym, where I listen to Audible
books while sweating. I listen to a wide range from The Nightingale to Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility to a Great Courses option on the Middle Ages. All
of this I consider part of the writing process.
Mid-mornings is my peak butt-in-chair time. And I’m
terrible at writing in snatches. I need blocks of uninterrupted time with no
technology except my laptop—often offline. Not easy to pull off. I answer
endless e-mails; these force me to write but suck the soul out of me. Though
sometimes I copy what I’ve written to someone in an e-mail and use it in other
prose. After dinner, I get back to the laptop to create.
That’s daily. But weekly, I work hard always to have
one day off from doing any work—including writing. The day is generally Saturday
evening to Sunday evening. That Sabbath for down time in my life is key to both
my sanity and my writing creativity. A friend once observed that the thing that
makes lace beautiful is the holes; and like lace, I have to have holes in my
life, or my life and what I produce lack beauty.
Has your writing crossed
over into other areas? If so, how? If not, will it?
I’m probably my agent’s nightmare, because I
don’t stick with one genre (though he never complains). But my writing students
love that I can connect them with publishers and editors I’ve worked with
producing Bible studies, academic works, trade books, corporate publications,
magazines, and websites. From my start with a corporate publication, I
branched out to freelance non-fiction. From there I added books. I wrote a
couple on infertility and pregnancy loss (When
Empty Arms Become a Heavy Burden [Kregel] and The Infertility Companion [Zondervan]); and one for married
couples—Sexual Intimacy in Marriage (Kregel),
due out soon in its fourth edition. One of my coauthored novels, Lethal Harvest, garnered a Christy
nomination. And my most recent novel was Informed
Consent (Cook).
I especially love the
non-fiction compilation I mentioned, Vindicating
the Vixens: Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified, and Marginalized Women of the
Bible (Kregel Academic). Profits on that benefit the International Justice
Mission. The book was released last year in the height of #MeToo and
#ChurchToo, even though I’ve been working on it for ten years and had nothing
to do with the timing. It was thrilling to see God use the work of sixteen
scholars to help readers revisit the stories of a select group of women whose
old, old stories we need to see through less prejudiced eyes. And in the middle
of all these projects, I’ve written the Coffee Cup Bible Study series, which
has eleven titles. The most recent is Earl
Grey with Ephesians. I love variety more than I love one genre. Can you
tell?
If you had one person you could
meet (think ONLY Bible characters here) and could spend as much time as you
wanted with that individual, who would it be besides Jesus?
In terms of my writing and academic life, time with the apostle Paul would
certainly help solve some mysteries in his writing! But in terms of simply
hanging out, I’d go for the woman at the well in Samaria. In the
post-Reformation West, we picture her as this young, flirtatious thang. But
prior to the Reformation, she had a reputation as a solid widow. She even has a
name and a post-script to her story in the Eastern Orthodox tradition: the martyr
Photina (Svetlana).
Every Easter preachers remind people that
women in Palestine were not a happening thing in courts of law. Yet when we
teach John 4 about this woman, suddenly we say she dragged five men into
divorce court before shacking up with #6. Since the number-one cause of death
for men at the time was war, it’s much more likely this woman had her heart
broken multiple times by men killed in action before she had to share a husband
as a concubine in order to eat.
Jesus is so subtle about his identity,
refusing to answer John the Baptist directly when he sends his people to ask if
Jesus is the actual Messiah. The Lord keeps deflecting or telling people not to
tell everybody when he heals them—the crowds are big enough to impede him as it
is. But to this woman who is holding out hope that when Messiah comes, he will
explain everything, Jesus comes right out and says it: Ego eimi. That’s Koine Greek for I AM (John 4:26), the very name of
God (Exodus 3:4). With her, Jesus is willing to risk his disciples wondering why
he would bother talking to a woman (v. 27). So I’d love to talk to her
myself—or rather, listen to her tell her story.
What’s the craziest thing you have
ever done?
I backpacked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back when I had not worked
out to prepare. I was 27 years old and considered my body indestructible. My
dad and father-in-law, both of whom were over 65 years, handled that trek
better than I did. Oh, the arrogance! It was so dumb. Months went by before I
could go down stairs without pain in my knees.
Why do you live where you live?
I’m a fifth-generation Oregonian living in Dallas, Texas. What is up with that?
Do I get beauty withdrawal symptoms? Absolutely. I’ve lived in “Big D” for more
than thirty years, and sometimes I still experience culture shock in this
gun-totin’, gas guzzlin’, chaw-chewin’ place. When I recycle, sometimes people
look at me cross-eyed. And when people insist, “Everything’s bigger in Texas,”
I mutter “except mountains and rivers.” But we love our jobs and the people
with whom we’ve established decades of friendship here. And our daughter is
Texas-born and -bred. So we hoard frequent-flier miles like squirrels with nuts
and travel as much as possible.
Is
there anything else you’d like to share with our readers about you, or anything
we didn’t cover?
I love to write. And I’ve found when it comes to biblical
content that writing helps me clarify what I believe. Someone once asked
Madeleine L’Engle if her faith influences her writing, and she said it’s the
other way around—her writing influences her faith. The same is true for me. If
my prose lacks clarity, it’s usually because I myself have some fuzziness in my
thinking, so I have to go back and figure out what I actually believe.
I love the flexible hours and spaces of writing. If I wake
up at 3 am with an idea, I can write. If I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Italy,
I can do my work. I can write in my jammies. I can work from a hospital bed. I
can do work I love virtually anywhere in the world—once on a boat in the expanse
of ocean between the Galapagos Islands, where my father-in-law wanted to take a
bucket-list trip. I could write when I stayed home with a young child, and God
willing, I’ll still write when I’m old and frail.
I love this quote: "If my prose lacks clarity, it’s usually because I myself have some fuzziness in my thinking, so I have to go back and figure out what I actually believe." I'm in that very boat right now as I contemplate writing a non-fiction work on The Sermon on the Mount.
Sandra, it's been a pleasure! And I'm sure our readers will wish to look up your writing ministry online, so where can they find you?
They can find me here:
Website: www.aspire2.com
Latest Book, Vindicating the Vixens
Twitter: @SandraGlahn
Thank you, readers, for stopping by today! Feel free to share this interview (and any of the others on this blog site) with family and friends. Who knows, you may "turn them on" to a new author they may have not known existed otherwise. :-)
Until next time,
Kevin
www.ckevinthompson.com/
(And don't miss Kevin's new release, When the Clock Strikes Fourteen (A Blake Meyer Thriller - Book 4! It's out in pre-order now...Release Date is April 25th!)
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