Tag: His Mercy Endureth Forever

Well, I’ve Got the Last Page, at Least!

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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Well, I now know the last page of His Mercy Endureth Forever, the last stop on the journey. Usually the Lord gives it to me in a burst, but this time He slowly pulled me into it. Like, I had the idea before I realized it was the idea I’d been looking for. I can’t honestly say when that realization came to me. It came quietly. I think it must have been yesterday sometime–that, or during my last night’s sleep.

Now I’ve got to get there, to that last stop on the journey. There are still a few points in the story that demand to be settled. I think I need to do it in about 20-25 more pages. I hope to accomplish it next week.

And yes, I will leave plot threads that will permit me to connect to a new book next spring. God willing.

Another Shameless Commercial Message

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As we try not to stew over what the doctor will say to us tomorrow, Patty’s recording my quarterly book sales statement. I haven’t the heart to look at it.

But say-hey, as Willie Mays would say! My books make great Christmas presents! For family members, friends, and casual acquaintances. For anybody. Give ’em Bell Mountain and get ’em hooked on the whole series. The books can’t do their job unless a lot of people read them. Unless maybe there’s one person out there who reads them and gets inspired to do something great.

Meanwhile, in sweater, coat, and hood, I’m out there every day it doesn’t rain, trying to finish writing His Mercy Endureth Forever: six hand-written pages today, and my hands are like ice. At the rate I’m going, I hope to finish sometime next week. Give God the glory for that!

And please don’t tell me you never heard of Willie Mays.

With My Last Ounce of Oomph…

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Actually, I think I lost that ounce this afternoon.

But it’s come down to this: I’m pretty sure I’d better finish writing His Mercy Endureth Forever by the end of next week, or it’ll just be too cold outside to write anything. And indoors it’s nuisance phone calls all day and other distractions.

I’ve pushed myself hard this week: and again the weird sensation of being pulled along by the story. Like when you hook into a really big fish at night and it starts towing your rowboat away like the anchor wasn’t there at all. The last time we had that experience, the fish’s head finally came up out of the water and it proved to be a large shark.

I still don’t know what I’m going to see when this book’s climax comes up out of the dark water. I just pray it happens sometime in the next twenty or thirty pages of manuscript.

Writing in the Cold

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I’m happy to report that Patty feels much better today, thanks to lot of sleep and to your prayers–please keep ’em coming. Maybe we’ll make it to the doctor’s tomorrow. It depends on how she’s feeling.

Meanwhile, I heated myself up with a bike ride up the hill and have been out there in the cold, scribbling away.

Now the problem is that a few of my characters have asserted themselves in ways I hadn’t been expecting and pulled some fast ones on me, and I’m just writing to keep up. I suppose I ought to thank them for that: it should make the story rather livelier–as long as I don’t drop the ball. I hope I can live up to their confidence in me.

(Uh-oh, he’s losin’ it–talking about his fictional characters as if they were real…)

I do appreciate your prayers for my writing. If, in spite of all the obstacles I’ve had to deal with, this book gets finished and turns out well, to God be the glory: I certainly haven’t had that much to do with it.

I’m almost warmed up enough to go back out and resume my labors.

Beat the Cold

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Two weeks ago I was trying to beat the heat. Now it’s the cold.

I don’t normally try to work on my book on Sunday, but for once it wasn’t raining, and with more rain forecast for tomorrow, I thought I’d better at least try. Only problem–the cold. I mean, it’s kind of hard when the ink doesn’t want to come out of the pen; and shivering makes my handwriting still worse.

Brilliant idea–put on a sweater, with my winter coat on top of that, and gloves, and take my bike out for a ride up a very long hill. I thought that might warm me up, and I was right, it did. Which gave me almost two hours’ writing time when I got back.

I rely on the Lord to empower me to write my books, and this time, Lord, I’m gonna need a lot of help. I still don’t have the climax of His Mercy Endureth Forever, and there’s lots and lots of wild stuff going on in Obann. Some of the characters have done things I wasn’t expecting. I’m starting to feel like the writers of an Akira Kurosawa movie: they never knew where the director was going to make them go.

Lord Orth, if you only knew what kind of trouble you get me into–!

Still Working!

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The sun has come out, unexpectedly, so I have to seize the moment and get out there with my legal pad, to continue my work on Bell Mountain No. 12, His Mercy Endureth Forever. Unlike Agatha Christie, pictured above, I can’t write fiction indoors. As I write, I have to try to inhabit a world that doesn’t, in fact, exist; and I can’t do that if I keep getting robo-calls from “Your Debt Partner” and various resorts that try to convince me that I’ve been there before and really liked it.

We have a black walnut tree in the yard which day and night bombards us with nuts the size of baseballs. Thanks to the incessant rain, the nuts have begun to rot while still on the tree. A lot of them go “splat!” instead of “pow!” when they hit the ground: icky black goo all over the place. But even that is less distracting than the robo-calls.

I still don’t have the climax to this story, still waiting for the Lord to show it to me. I feel like I’m chipping away at a great block of marble to get at the shape that waits inside, with no idea of what that shape will be. Your guess is as good as mine. Suffice it to say that currently hellzapoppin in Obann.

Well, back to work! I hope the nuts keep missing me: a few of them this morning were… adjacent.

It’s Not So Easy to Write a Book

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We didn’t make it to the doctor today, but please keep praying for us.

Meanwhile, I’m racing the calendar to get His Mercy Endureth Forever written before it gets too cold outside to write.

I have this weird sense of being powerfully pulled toward the story’s climax without knowing what that climax is. I rely on the Lord to give me the story, and sometimes He doesn’t let me know what I’m going to write until I write it. Without giving anything away, suffice it to say that hellzapoppin in Obann and I have no idea at all, how it’s going to turn out. That makes it somewhat stressful.

I didn’t know how The Fugitive Prince would end until one evening, while walking just a few blocks to get our Chinese food for supper, He gave me the whole thing, all at once–wham! Writing The Thunder King, I had the climax first, before the beginning of the story. And I received the climax of The Last Banquet, all at once, as I walked upstairs to the bedroom. So I never know what to expect or when to expect it.

And so, today, a little more blog, a bite to eat, and back to work. Please, Lord–help me bring the story to my readers; for I write these in your service. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

It’s Finally Sunny Again

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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I’ve lost an awful lot of time due to bad weather, but the sun is finally out again, I can’t ride my bike because of a flat tire (I told the guy not to over-inflate it!), so I’m out there trying to play catch-up on my current book, His Mercy Endureth Forever (Bell Mountain No. 12). As for The Temptation, we’re waiting on Kirk DouPonce’s cover art.

Meanwhile, the story is hurtling toward a climax–and I don’t know what it’s going to be. The Lord will tell me when I’m not expecting it. But poor Obann, what a mess! A savage horde of Hyena Men has invaded the country, and Jack and Ellayne somehow have to smuggle Lord Orth into the city so he can call Obann to repentance before it’s too late. I have no idea whether he’ll succeed.

A brief thought on fantasy-writing in general:

Overcome the temptation to give your characters names that are just too far out for the reader to stomach. If your fantasy novel starts sounding like a Russian novel translated by someone from Venus, you’re doing it wrong. I once read a Lawrence Sanders book in which the hero was named Jack Smack and the heroine, a femme fatale, Clementine Cadiddlehopper or something like that. I found those names detracting from the conviction of the story. So don’t do that.

Beat the Heat

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If I don’t stop blogging and get out there and start writing, it’ll soon be too hot to write. And then the cold weather will have settled in before I can finish the book–ah, fanabla!

I reckon (as Helki would say) I’m about halfway done with His Mercy Endureth Forever, Book No. 12 of my Bell Mountain series. I have absolutely no idea what the climax is going to be. The Lord will tell me when I least expect it: He likes to surprise me.

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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I can’t write fiction indoors anymore. I don’t know why, and I’d be interested to hear any theories on the subject; but the fact is that I just can’t get my mind into my fictional world of Obann if I’m sitting at a table, surrounded by walls, with the phone ringing (and it’s always a call I’d rather not receive–“Hi! This is Sheryl from Meshuggah Resorts, and our records show you had a wonderful time two years ago at our Sphagnum House Motel,” etc. All a load of ridiculous lies. So glad I got up to answer that!)

Just now the problem is that it’s been raining buckets for four days in a row, I haven’t been able to get back to work on my book, and I’m losing track of my hyenas. Now I hardly know where they’ll turn up next. And Jack and Martis have just had a very close call–I think that was last Wednesday. My momentum is not where I’d like it to be.

His Mercy Endureth Forever is, I reckon, nearly halfway finished. Oh, for a sunny day tomorrow!

Well, I’m writing this novel in the Lord’s service, and I’ll have to leave the weather up to Him.