Age to Age

     I'll wager that you read the first chapter of my novel and immediately decided, "Fantasy!" I understand completely. Who has ever heard of humans living hundreds of years or the mysterious Nephilim? They don't exist anywhere in our experience. It's easy to come to the "fantasy" conclusion when you read about them.

     Except . . .


     I found the often-overlooked details mentioned above in the first book of the Bible. The novel City of a Thousand Gods is not fantasy. The novel is biblical fiction based on solid fact.


     Where did I get the preposterous idea people ever lived upwards of 1,000 years? Genesis chapter five outlines the life-spans of pre-Flood men from Adam to Noah. Adam lived 930 years; Seth 912. Noah's grandfather, Methuselah, hung around the longest -- until age 969. Enoch was the youngerster who did not have to die, because God took him alive from the earth at age 365. Genesis 5:24 says so.


     Noah didn't even become a father until after 500. Then he had three sons in quick succession.


     And that tidbit about Noah, combined with the fact that the majority of those men fathered first sons somewhere in the vicinity of 100 years of age, tells us that they were all still young by our standards and enjoying good health when their chornological ages rivaled that of our California redwoods. (Don't you wonder how old they were at the onset of puberty?)


    Did the writer of Genesis (Scholars believe Moses wrote the book as God directed.) have a different way of reckenoning time?


    No.


     If you do the math in Genesis Chapter 11, you'll discover that Shem's pre-Flood body out-lasted  many of his descendants and was still around when the Israelites followed Joseph to Egypt. I assume that's why Joseph's father, Jacob, told Pharoah that the 130 years he had "sojourned" had been "few and evil" and he had not "attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers" (see Gen.47:9). His great-something grandfather Shem was still alive.

     Which begs the question: Why did men live so long back then? There are several theories.


    One group of vegetarians today teaches that men began living shorter lives after the Flood because no one ate meat until then. And meat shortens one's life.


    While I don't know if meat shortens lives or not, I think people ate meat before the Flood.

• When God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, he killed animals to provide clothing for them. And God never wastes anything. (Remember the baskets of leftovers Jesus gathered when he fed the 5,000 in the New Testament? No waste.) So I doubt God wasted animals just to make a couple of cute outfits for his rebellious kids. I think it likely that Adam and Eve ate the meat.
• Later, Abel's sacrifice to the Lord consisted of the "firstborn of his flock and their fat portions."
• We know Abel killed his sacrifice because one can't bring "fat portions" from a live animal. Abel's pleasing sacrifice foreshadowed the sacrifices God commanded throughout the Old Testament where he instructed his people to eat the sacrificed first-born in his presence. I believe Abel and his parents were eating meat long before Noah's Flood.

     For those reasons, I think it unlikely that eating only fruit and veggies gave those people long lives.


     Another theory to explain pre-Flood longevity is based on the sixth verse in Genesis where God created an "expanse" (the sky) to separate "waters from the waters." We know the waters below the expanse eventually became oceans. Some theologians speculate that the waters above the expanse formed a protective canopy that prevented people from aging until it fell to earth when the "windows of heaven were opened" during the Flood (see Gen. 6:11).


     I subscribe to that theory since it sounds the most logical to me. After the canopy disappeared, all bets were off and now it's wrinkle city for the rest of us during our "few and evil" years on this planet.


     Fortunately, eternal life is just around the corner.


     But before any of us depart, I hope you'll meet me here again in a day or two and we'll discuss the Nephilim. Very interesting stuff.

Read the first two chapters of the novel at

http://cityofathousandgods.blogspot.com/ 

  

The Cement of Routine Plus a Sneak Peek

As I get older, I sink further into the cement of routine. It holds me fast. Alluding to the movie starring Bill Murray, my husband refers to our lives  -- his and mine -- as Groundhog Day, which is unfortunately appropriate.

Every morning, I wake up early, make myself a skinny sugarfree haznut hot latte and drink the coffee while I read and underline three chapters of the Bible. That finished, I pour another cup of coffee, add liquid Coffee Mate and chat with my mother who lives in a darling apartment in a retirement home across the country from me. 

Each day she answers my call with, "Hello, Jeannie. Your brother already called." Then she tells me she didn't want to go down to breakfast so she brought a cup of milk up from the dining room the night before and ate a bowl of flakes (not dry cereal, flakes) in her room for breakfast. "Because a few flakes don't cost that much." Next she tells me she went to bed the night before at seven-thirty and read for a few minutes to help her get drowsy so she could sleep.

After fifteen minutes I tell her I need to get to work. At that point she summarizes the call and reminds me that she brought a cup of milk up the night before and ate flakes and  . . . We have the same exact conversation every single morning because at eighty-nine, my mother has sunk deeper into routine than I have.

But this morning was different. When I called at the usual time, she had just gotten up and she wasn't dressed yet. Flakes hadn't even made it to the table. I congratulated her for being able to sleep so long. She agreed good sound sleep was nice, but said she had no trouble sleeping even though she's getting older. Her health must be better than she always thought, she said. We talked for awhile about how wonderful it is to have good health.

Conversation over, I resorted to my usual, "Well, I guess I better get to work." and told her I loved her.

"Oh," she said before I could hang up. "I read a little of your book last night."

I had sent her a hard copy of the manuscript a couple weeks ago. "You did? Did you like it?"

"Yes, I went to bed to read for a few minutes and first thing I knew it was midnight."

No wonder she got up late!

Are you laughing? Because I was. When I explained to her that she may not have gotten as much sleep as she thought since she spent so long reading, we both had a good laugh.

So I thought . . . If my mother loved the book so much it kept her awake rather than helping her go to sleep, maybe you'd want to take a peek at the first chapter. (Yes, I know she's my mommy and required to like it, but that doesn't mean the book isn't as good as she thinks.) I've pasted it onto another blog and listed the blog's address below. If you'll go there, maybe the chapter will whet your appetite for the upcoming newspaper series.

I'm on pins and needles waiting to hear what you think of the chapter so I hope you'll leave a comment either on that blog or on this one. http://cityofathousandgods.blogspot.com/

And I hope you'll like the chapter enough to tell your friends to check it out.

Why My Novel Will Run as a Free Series on the Internet

I can't remember when the idea first sparked in my brain that I might offer my biblical fiction City of a Thousand Gods, The Story of Noah's Daughter-in-Law as a free series on the Internet newspaper the Cypress Times. But I clearly remember ten years ago when several editor-friends tried to dissuade me from writing biblical fiction at all.

Back then I had completed three chapters of the novel. I carried them to an Oregon writers conference where I was teaching a couple of classes. One editor looked over my work and pronounced the writing "strong" but the genre hopeless. "Biblical fiction is a hard sell," she told me. Writing the novel would be a waste of time.

I knew she was right. I should drop the project.


But the notion that God wanted me to write this particular novel for some reason I may never understand niggled at me. So I wrote another chapter -- and subsequently lost it somewhere in the depths of my computer. Then a signed contract for a different book distracted me and over the next few years I forgot about the novel while I worked to meet deadline after deadline.


When I commenced the writing again two years ago, I hoped maybe times had changed. I heard about a best-selling biblical fiction from Barbour. And Tyndale had some really good biblical fiction sellers. And Francine Rivers still sold well. Someone would want my novel, right?


But once I finally got around to contacting publishers I was disappointed. An in-house review at one publisher reported concerning my novel: "Jeannie at her best . . . which is the top of just about anyone's game." But they decided against publishing it because they were afraid of the genre. These days publishers can't afford to publish a book they aren't sure will sell and readers want a biblical author they already trust. Three or four other publishers said essentially the same thing.


That may be when the idea hit. I'd never heard of anyone launching a novel as a serial on the Internet. Would it work? Would modern readers accustomed to sound bites and short articles return day after day for new installments or would they get bored and stop reading? (I still don't know the answer to that, but I did hear that Stardoll ran a novel as a series last Fall.)

After praying more about it, the Lord showed me the ideas had come from him -- the idea for the end-of-the-world topic as well as the idea to offer the book on the Internet. I decided I would follow God's leading and I had just "set my face" to obey when an unexpected temptation popped up. 

A publisher contacted me out of the blue about publishing a book about pumpkins I'd wanted to do for a long, long time. And this at a time when the children's market was slammed tightly shut! Even stranger, I had not told the publisher about the book. I sent the managing editor a card with the above picture just to let her know how much I appreciated her and she picked up on the fact that I had a book with those illustrations.

The story was written and over half the illustrations were finished, but they wanted the book too soon, by Fall 2011. If I stopped to complete the pumpkin book it would be the same old story: Drop the novel I thought God was telling me to write and publish the book I'd been wanting to do for so long.

Isn't Satan clever?

Though I knew I might never have another oppportunity to do Pumpkins Party All Night, I let discussions slide and kept writing about Shem and his wife.

I saw only one hitch, one more possible temptation. There were still two or three publishers who hadn't replied to my query about the novel. They hadn't said if they wanted the novel or not. What would I do if one of them offered to publish the book, but would not do so if I ran the entire novel at no charge on the Internet?


After a brief mental struggle, I made up my mind that if a publisher emailed to say they wanted to publish the novel I'd be happy. But if that same company stipulated they wouldn't publish the book if I posted it on the Internet, I'd say thanks but no thanks. Because I firmly believe this is the way God wants me to offer my first novel. Even though this novel may be my best writing ever.

I have no idea why God planned things this way and I may never figure out why, but I'm thrilled to be walking the path I believe God has laid out for me. I can't wait for March 7th when the Cypress Times begins running the first chapter. This blog is icing on the cake for me -- an opportunity to chat with you about Noah and his Last Days and how they relate to us.

City of a Thousand Gods

Welcome! I can't wait to chat with you about my novel, City of a Thousand Gods, The Story of Noah's Daughter-in-Law! I just finished the last chapter. Not kidding! If I'd been writing with pen and ink like writers of old, the novel would still be wet. The Internet is amazing, isn't it?

I started writing this novel nearly ten years ago because I felt God prompting me to do so. But book contracts got in the way and every time I began writing, I'd have to lay this project aside to meet  deadlines for other books. Then two and a half years ago, my husband fell ill and for three days we didn't know if he would live or die. I stopped all writing and did nothing but care for him for several months.

Two years ago, with Ray well enough to play basketball three times weekly again, I picked up the novel and I've been working on it ever since. Until last week.

Because I'm an artist, I really wanted to paint my own cover for the book. I had a series of fourteen large oil paintings based on the story of Noah that I painted about fifteen years ago. Those paintings once hung behind glass in the Ape House at the Portland Oregon Zoo for a couple of months. (I'll save the very colorful anecdote of one large ape throwing feces at me while I put up the paintings for another time. Suffice it to say, apes are not art lovers. Or else they have delusions of grandeur and resent the accurate biblical account of Creation.) Later the series traveled to Texas for a show at the Biblical Arts Museum which later burned to the ground. Fortunately, my paintings made it home safely before the fire and I never sold them. Which means I still have most of them and hoped one might work as a cover. Unfortunately most of those paintings looked more like illustrations for children's books than something suitable for an adult novel.

Eventually, I took a detail from one of them and distorted it in Photoshop hoping it would make a suitable cover. But when I sent it to an author-friend in Tulsa, she threw a fit. (In deference to the fact that she is a very-godly-pastor's-wife-Christian-author and otherwise quite sweet, I won't mention Mary Englund Murphy's name.) 

That's the cover she hated. "It' doen't fit," said. "A cover with a female main character has to have that character on the front. Furthermore the image needs the city." I reluctantly agreed with her, complained about her in my thoughts for an hour or so, then tried a cover featuring a woman's face. That attempt turned out so badly I refuse to even show it to you.

My friend Ann Varnum, who's been a television show host for nearly thirty years in Dothan, Alabama said the woman on that cover looked wicked. Very wicked. I agreed with her, too, though I didn't want too. So I tried to find a photo of my daughter that might work on a cover. I have several of her posing with my friend Kim's camels. (If you watch any national news, about Thanksgiving 2010 you would have seen Kim Dilworth and her camel Moses, who fell into a sink hole, all over the news for about three days.) I also have photos of Tori with our own cows and Kim's sheep, and maybe even a little piglet -- all very appropriate for an ark cover. But becauseTori has the nasty habit of smiling broadly in every photo, I couldn't find one that would work. Look at that smile! Tsk. Tsk.

Then I thought of my sweet daughter-in-law and my grandson, Titus. I could include not only the main female character, but her doomed baby as well. I used them as models and added the city with Flood waters just beginning to drown the buildings. When I added the ark to the background I managed a cover I liked. At least a little. And Kirsten didn't complain once that I changed her blonde straight into coppery curls. As a matter of fact, she said she rather enjoys the new look. That cover appears below without text.

Next blog we'll talk about my reasons for deciding to run my novel as a completely free serial on the Internet on The Cypress Times beginning the first week in March. That's right. A free, full length, four hundred page wonderfully exciting biblical thriller /romance. Unbelievable, isn't it? Tell your friends about the book and my blog and I'll see you right here next time.