I wrote a book...

I began this story in my early twenties. It started out as something I would image as I was going to sleep—my version of counting sheep. I read a book about Jesus as my devotional each morning, and when I was finished, I’d start over. Well, certain things started popping at me; most notably the spies throughout Jesus’ ministry. I’m pretty sure that spy craft doesn’t include hanging around, asking obvious question trying to trap someone.
 
The book is not retelling the story of Jesus—we had to wait for nearly fifty years for The Chosen to arrive on the scene to accomplish that—but about a teenager all ready to impress the Sanhedrin with the best ways to stop Jesus. Think Ben-Hur: action, adventure, romance, all with my best shot at telling a “You Are There” story.
 
I actually started writing this down in 1986-7 when I first encounter the Apple IIe computer lab at my school in Modesto. Before that, my errors on a typewriter outweighed the correct ones and my handwriting wasn’t even legible to me after the first 24 hours, so I’d been relating this as an oral tale for about 12 years.
 
I finished the novel while I was teaching at a new school in Santa Cruz. I sent it out to family and some friends. They all congratulated me and said nice things about the book. Then I sent it to Michael Karman, a developmental editor with ESRI. He decorated my first chapter with so much red, blue, green, and black ink that I couldn’t see the original words. 
 
Shortly after this I moved to Sitka, Alaska, with Michael’s words echoing in my mind—that the rewriting be much more difficult than writing it in the first place. Since I was teaching in a one-room school, I did not even have a moment of time, but two or three times a year I would drive to the road’s end (fifteen miles total) and skip church so I could write about the spies at were trying to stop Jesus.
 
After teaching I moved to Malaysia to volunteer as a “missionary orchestra director.” With the oppressive heat and humidity I suffered headaches during church, especially when the long service was in Malay. One time when the church bulletin had some empty pages I starting writing. I don’t know why this made a difference, but the headache was gone. So, anytime the sermon was in Malay, I wrote. Likely those around me figured that I was taking sermon notes.
 
Finally, after 39 years and seventeen rewrites later, the book is in print.