Saturday, July 31, 2010

Like Reviewing Free Books?

I would love to get the word out about my short story collection, Birds, Bees, and Church Trailer Thieves.
SO, if you have a cool blog and like to read and review books, then I would love to give you a free copy of mine to review on your blog!
Please email me at ev3177@mindspring.com. The first 10 responses will get free books. (Hint - if I nominated you as an excellent blogger, you've got a really good shot at a free book!).

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Forgiven, from Birds, Bees, & Church Trailer Thieves.

Kinetic Church in Concord, NC, ran a billboard campaign several years ago now. I wrote a story based on their campaign, the fourth story in my book. This is the story which gave me the phrase "church trailer thieves" for the title.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Third Story

This story is a short short that uses the life cycle of daffodils as its structuring metaphor.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Second Story

My second story in the collection Birds, Bees, and Church Trailer Thieves is titled Seagull. It is set in the future, on the Outer Banks of NC, after the total collapse of the ocean ecosystem. While it is entirely fictional, it is true that we are overfishing the ocean to great extremes and our trash piles are acidifying the ocean at a rate that is beyond the ocean's compensating mechanisms.
The story focuses on a young girl who is facing her future and must make a decision.

Friday, July 23, 2010

The book is coming out soon!

So I've submitted the final proofs of the book and should be receiving a copy for approval in a couple of weeks. This is very exciting news!
As we wait, I'll be posting some photos of summaries of my stories in this collection, Birds, Bees, and Church Trailer Thieves.

Bullhorn. This short short is a description of a man who takes time out of his regular routine to be a street preacher. Inspired by the Nooma video by Rob Bell, it is an attempt to understand the desperation of the nameless man.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Versatile Bloggers!

My online friend Katharine Grubb, of 10-Minute Writer fame, nominated me for a Most Versatile Blogger award. THANK YOU!! I'm very honored. Since I just posted to my personal blog (thebaylesses.blogspot.com), I'll post my thanks on this blog.
Next step: List 7 things about myself, and then nominate up to 15 more bloggers for the award and notify them. Sounds like fun!
1. I'm eagerly awaiting my first published book, a self-published short story collection titled Birds, Bees, and Church Trailer Thieves.
2. I'm currently working on my first novel, a book that focuses on the efforts of a mother and daughter to deal with the world as it collapses around them: specifically, the dystopian forces at work are the elimination of all family planning methods (birth control, etc.), the collapse of the ocean ecosphere, and a total corn crop failure. But at its core, it's a work of hope.
3. I just returned from a week long spiritual retreat at a Conyers, GA Monastery. It was wonderful. And a requirement of my job (I have the best job ever). Speaking of jobs, I am employed as a "pastor-of-all-work" at my church, Evergreen Community Church.
4. If it wouldn't cause me major health problems, I would only eat bread, chocolate, tea, and Coke.
5. I have quite an obsession with the TV show Fringe. Some consider it unhealthy. I think it's a great show, with great acting, and a wonderfully creative plot line. I love sci-fi in general, although I stick to the classics: Star Wars, X-Files, Star Trek (all of it), the Dune book series. Sci-fi and fantasy are great vehicles for dealing with universal themes in unique ways. Yet I don't write sci-fi. The closest I've come is dystopian futures.
6. I love to garden, but my thumb is not very green. It's slowly turning green, just not as fast as I would like. I garden flowers, not food. Part of my problem is the voles in my backyard. I'm too soft-hearted to kill them, but I really need to find a way to keep them away from my plants!!
7. While voles earn my mercy, I hate and fear spiders and will kill any that are unfortunate enough to cross my path. In the fall, when orb-weavers are spinning their huge and gorgeous webs, I walk around the house with a stick in front of me to avoid any close encounters. (shudder).

OK, now, up to 15 awesome versatile bloggers:
1. Beth Parent at Onward Hoe
2. Kerry Smith at Donde estan mis pantalones
3. K.M. Weiland at Wordplay
4. Erin Brown at Oh Fortuna
5. Nadine at Wormhole Riders, for excellent in-depth Fringe reports!
6. Joel Hoffman at God Didn't Say That, especially if you like in-depth discussions about Bible translations
7. Ben Stroup & Robert Benson at The Long Pew
8. Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like
9. Meredith at Stranded Science
10. Sue at Confessions of a Tired Supergirl