Tag: The Wind from Heaven

It’s Tanystropheus Time!

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All right, I give up on the nooze today, I totally give up. I’m old enough to remember when serious people used to run for president, but now it’s a freak show. I know it’s part of my job to cover nooze, but I’m sick of writing about these people. Bob Knight has a column on townhall.com today about questions he’d ask them if he were moderating one of their debates. I would ask, in addition to those, the following:

“What are you doing out of your straitjacket?”

“How many times a day do you sing ‘Imagine’?”

“What terrible thing happened to you in your childhood, to make you turn out like this?”

And so enough’s enough. And that means… well, what time is it, boys and girls? What time is it?

It’s Tanystropheus time!

I’m so happy I finally found one of these in an unexplored, uninhabited region of Lintum Forest. I don’t bother with the evolution fairy tales: this animal was just plain cool. Nothing like it before or since. It makes its debut in the story I’m currently writing, The Wind From Heaven–which, I say, is galloping like mad to some destination yet unknown to me. I can hardly wait to see what happens next.

More Progress

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I went to the bike shop this morning and got my tire replaced, then settled down to write.

The Wind From Heaven is galloping along, and I won’t find out where we’re going till we get there. Ice Age hyenas on the rampage, mysterious strangers from an unknown continent, frantic efforts to make peace before another war can start, a venture into a legendary region of Lintum Forest where no one dares to go, savage barbarians in search of a heathen god–no wonder I’m tired at the end of the day.

But it’s better than writing up the nooze. And if I’m not too beat after supper, I can unwind with a bike ride.

Racing the Rain Again

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It looks like the wind from heaven is about to blow some heavy rain our way, so I’d better get out there and write what I can before it rains.

When Ellayne shinnied down the vine into “the cellar beneath the cellar,” she had no idea what they were going to find down there. I know how she felt: the book I’m writing now, The Wind From Heaven, is very much like that. Follow where the spirit leads you and see what you can find.

Monday I was totally at an impasse, had to stop writing for the day because I had no idea, no idea at all, what Lord Chutt was going to do in response to the position in which he found himself (all his own fault, I might add). Tuesday I came out, said a prayer for guidance, lit my cigar–and botta-bing, botta-boom! It just came out of my pen, that chunk of the story, as if it had been there all the time.

I ask the Lord to give me the story He wants me to tell, and so far He has–through twelve books, going on thirteen.

‘The Narnia Code’ by Michael Ward–and ‘Bell Mountain’

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In 2011 I reviewed this book for Chalcedon, The Narnia Code by Michael Ward, chaplain of St. Peter’s College, Oxford–who said, “The Narnia books are much more Christian than we’ve realized.”

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/book-review-the-narnia-code-by-michael-ward

He also said this: “If only we had eyes to see it, we would notice the divine plan in seemingly meaningless events.”

Less than an hour before I read this, I was writing of Obst, the teacher, and Obst had this thought: The wind of heaven is blowing all sorts of people in all different directions, and to us it looks like chaos and confusion: but not to God. God never loses His grip on the reins of history, and He guides it where He will.

I’ve always said my Bell Mountain books are smarter than I am; and Obst certainly is. It’s not like I consciously think these things up and then put the words in my characters’ mouths. Those are words God gives me.

For which I give Him all the glory.

Ford Plant Memories

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Sitting outside in the blistering heat today, writing The Wind From Heaven, called up memories of summers in the Ford plant. My father worked there all his working life, and my brother and I had summer jobs there to pay for college.

Here are the three hottest jobs I ever had.

Anything on the welding section of the assembly line. That place was hot even in the dead of winter; but in the summer, watch out. We were expected to gulp salt tablets and keep on spot-welding. If it got to be 120 degrees, they sent us home. Didn’t want anybody keeling over.

The wheel car. This was a boxcar packed almost to the brim with wheel rims. You climbed into the claustrophobic space on top of the cargo and they put a basket in front of the door, and you put the wheels into the basket until the car was empty. How hot was that? I had shoes with rubber soles that melted.

The water test. You’d think this would be a treat, driving a car through water jets that sprayed it from every direction. All you had to do was make a note of any leaks. But first you had to go out to the parking lot and fetch one of the cars that had been baking there all day. Then you tightly closed all the windows and the vents so you could drive it through the water test. You were expected to resist the temptation to open the windows and let the water in. By the time you emerged from the water test tunnel, you were so soaking wet from sweat, you couldn’t have gotten any wetter if you’d gone through the tunnel on roller skates.

As Rudyard Kipling wrote, “The heat would make your bloomin’ eyebrows crawl.” I don’t know how many times mine tried to crawl away, but I always caught them.

P.S.–They closed the plant some years ago and then dynamited it out of existence to make room for a shopping mall. For those of us who had missed the notification that there was going to be a colossal big explosion, it was a rather exciting Sunday morning.

One of *Those Days

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For a change, today is neither boiling hot nor battered by torrential rains and explosive thunderstorms. So I went out and wrote half a dozen pages of The Wind From Heaven, and then decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather by going for a bike ride.

So much for that. Flat tire. Had to walk the bike home a mile in the blazing sun. Totally shot, can’t pump it back up, have to take it to the shop and get a new tire, ka-ching, ka-ching…

“See, Byron? This is why I can’t offer a bike as the prize in a comment contest. Bicycles are false friends. They never pass up and opportunity to do you wrong.”

Oh, yeesh, am I hot! Just pouring sweat in buckets. I want to go home. (“Dude, you are home!”) Where’s the Reset button on this day?

I wonder if it’s safe to use my car…

How Much Can I Write Before It Rains?

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If this blog seems a bit light on nooze today, it’s because I have to use the time to work on Bell Mountain No. 13, The Wind From Heaven–a wind which is blowing my characters this way and that, some of them to places that they never knew existed.

With a dozen chapters written so far, I have no idea where the story is going to take me: I just hang on for dear life and hope I’m still hanging on when it gets there. I ask the Lord every day to give me the story that He wants me to tell, and do my best to tell it. Good thing I’ve got really sharp editors to back me up!

We have thunderstorms in our afternoon forecast, so I’d better get out there as soon as I can. There’s an unexplored sector of Lintum Forest waiting for me, a crazy man who’s gotten a nation of barbarians to think he’s a god, and a fleet of ships turning up from no one knows where… among other things.

That’s All, Folks!

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See this balloon with all the air let out of it. That’s me!

I’ve just finished typing the first half-dozen chapters of The Wind From Heaven, 10,000 words and change–it has sunk me deep into the typo zone–and submitting it to Susan, my editor.

Next up: write that humongous article about Internet censorship for Chalcedon. The deadline looms. Still no word from any of you who have experienced Internet censorship. I hate to go on without you, but what can I do?

I must rest!

See you later, when it’s cat video time.

Mr. Nature: An Improbable Critter

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Jambo! Mr. Nature here; and today our safari takes us to an unexplored corner of Lintum Forest, by way of the Triassic Period. It will feature in Bell Mountain No. 13, The Wind From Heaven, which I’m writing now.

Behold Tanystropheus, with its improbably long neck. This fossil was so weird, that when its first pieces were discovered, the scientist thought it might be wing bones from a pterodactyl. But eventually enough pieces were found to yield the reconstruction pictured above.

How did this animal live? There’s nothing even close to it around today, no living creature to compare it to. Did it squat on the shore and use its long neck as a kind of fishing pole? There aren’t enough bones in the neck to make it very flexible. So the answer is, we just don’t know.

Our Lord is a highly versatile Creator!

 

Yow! Eight Pages!

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A beautiful day, cool and sunny, after it rained all day yesterday–and I just couldn’t wait to get outside and resume work on Bell Mountain No. 13, The Wind From Heaven.

That wind was blowing for me–eight pages, whoosh! I usually average around three, or four on a good day. So this day was special.

All right, I knew what this chapter was going to be about: just as often, I don’t. Man, when Lord Chutt finds out what happened in this chapter, he’ll hit the ceiling. The poor guy’s had a lot of unsettling surprises lately: sometimes it’s tough to be the villain.

May my work be fruitful in your service, Lord.