It's Still a Merry Christmas

When my Mom was a kid, she and her sisters would grab a bucket and walk to the Reading Railroad yard at Wayne Junction. They would walk up and down the tracks, picking up stray pieces of coal.

That's how they heated their house at Christmas.

My Dad came home from The War and worked as a second-shift machinist at a factory in Philadelphia. He came home for lunch at 8:00 each evening ... worked until after midnight. Never complained.

By the time my Mom and Dad passed away, they had enjoyed a house in the suburbs, with a pool. Dad had bought, and discarded, his Cadillac. They had travelled to Europe, the South Pacific and most places in between.

And they had a son who went to college.

Times change. God's soverign will never does.

The banking system may implode. All of us may be living through the greatest economic catastrophy since the Great Depression (don't know what was so great about it). And such a calamity would certainly strike the publishing industry as well, limiting resources and opportunities.

But people not only survived the Great Depression. Some prospered during. Some prospered after.

The people of Israel stood at the edge of the Red Sea, Pharoh's army braying at their backs, and they praised God. Before the water moved. They sang songs of praise.

Thats what we need for encouragement.

The water will move.

Until then, it's our job to praise God and do what he gives our hands to do. Whether that's picking up coal along the railroad tracks, or working at our craft ... making ourselves the best writers in the world.

If we have faith, this will be our best Christmas ever.

May God bless us ... every one.

Sunsets Don't Last Very Long

One of the benefits of recently moving (if there are any benefits of moving ... where did all this 'stuff' come from?) is that, for the first time in our 30 years of marriage, I have a real, functional office. With bookcases, for all my collected rare (or just old) books. And a private place to write.

Another benefit of this office is that it has windows that overlook the Hudson River. Very rare ... and very peaceful. A true blessing.

I was sitting here yesterday evening, working on my next book - Scorpion Pass - as the sun was setting over the Jersey Palisades. One of those dramatic moments when a reality of life strikes.

Sunsets don't last very long.

There are many changes, rapid changes, in the evolution of a sunset. From early hues to hot orange to fading pink and then, ultimately, grey clouds and darkness.

Life is like that, isn't it. It doesn't last very long.

Childhood doesn't last very long. High School seems like an eternity when you're going through it but, really, that doesn't last long either. College goes by in a blur (probably too many evenings at the Rathskeller); "the best years of your life" are generally missed in a rush to establish a career ... and then you're old.

Early hues to hot orange to fading pink then, ultimately, grey hair and darkness.

I tend to miss too much of life. Spend too much time lamenting the past or looking to the future.

That's too bad. Because sunsets don't last very long. Yesterday, I caught some of it. But I was too busy to sit and watch the whole thing. Too often, that's the story of my life.

Don't miss Christmas. Make it the best one ever. And say Happy Birthday to Jesus.

An early Christmas Present

Pastor Jim Cymbala of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Church had a few words to share after Brooklyn Tab’s Christmas concert this past weekend. Something for us to consider in the last dash to Christmas.

There are at least three reasons – in addition to the redemption of mankind from the sentence of sin – Jesus Christ choose to be born in Bethlehem, to become a man like us.
The first, said Pastor Cymbala, is that God loves you. A simple statement, yet often so hard to personally accept. God might love everybody else, but can He really love me?

Yeah … God loves you. If you were the only son (or daughter) of Adam throughout all time, Jesus would have become flesh and blood just for you. God loves you. That is His character.

Second is that God feels what you feel. The Bible tells us that God is Creator of all things, including man. It also tells us that God feels our pain, our loneliness and our discouragement. God feels what you feel.

And, because He loves you, there is the third reason. Jesus came into this world to give us hope. The hope that comes from the fact that God loves us, God feels what we feel and God cares so much about us that he asked His son to become our Redeemer to give us hope.

And so, we have Christmas.

***

I’ve held off on a November newsletter because things were moving along rapidly at Kregel Publications regarding the release date of The Sacred Cipher and I wanted to make sure I shared solid information.

While Kregel is still working to lock down its production schedule for the spring, it appears The Sacred Cipher will be released to bookstores in May.

The folks at Kregel have been great, and very encouraging. According to the marketing department, Sacred Cipher is one of their “lead titles for the season” and they are being very deliberate to ensure its success. What a blessing!

I have seen one result of Kregel’s commitment to The Sacred Cipher – the cover design. It is stunning … dramatic … and really cool. Kregel engaged an outside designer/artist to work on the cover and rejected two initial designs until they got the design they wanted.

So, my first Christmas present this year is one I'll share with you ... the official cover of The Sacred Cipher. Cool or what! Keep an eye out for the January newsletter. I hope to have a lot more details to share with you by then.

From the Brennans – may you and your family be blessed with joy, peace and God’s rest this Christmas.

Terry, Andrea, Meghan and Matthew

Merry Christmas!

October Newsletter - Dallas, here we come!

Hi,

My intention is to make this a short, monthly update to keep you informed and help get you excited about upcoming books.

So, to the news ....

My first novel, The Sacred Cipher, will be released by Kregel Publications in April. I knew it was going to be in the spring, but now we know it will be April - the first month of Kregel's fiscal year. That's exciting.

(this is an experiment ... below is a drawing - very small version - of my attempt to draw the secret scroll which is at the heart of The Sacred Cipher. The symbols are my rendition of Demotic, the third language on the Rosetta Stone. Check out the book to learn more!)

It's also exciting that Kregel has designated Sacred Cipher as part of its "A" list of releases this spring, which I believe means it will receive prominent promotion in Kregel's catalog and focused attention by Kregel's sales force.

But what's really exciting is that Kregel has decided to fly me down to Dallas in March for the first Christian Book Expo which promises to be the largest gathering of Christian book sellers and Christian book publishers in the nation.

Christian Book Expo is a convention sponsored by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA). The Expo was created to raise awareness of Christian authors, books, and publishers following interviews with 15 publishing CEOs and 23 Christian publishing houses who wanted a consumer-based show that would connect with actual readers.

So the Expo will be open to the general public. There will be a huge exhibit floor with publishers booths, as well as workshops, evening programming, author signings ... and media coverage. Kregel's plan is to have Sacred Cipher available at the Book Expo, to have signage and promotions for Sacred Cipher in the booth, have me do a book signing and possibly even a reading and reserve some booth time for me to do a "meet and greet" with the folks at the show. Wow! Isn't that cool?

My agent, Rachelle Gardner, said some authors get really freaked out when they go to a book show and there's really big pictures of them and their book covers.

Me? I'm already really freaked out.

We are just receiving so much favor and grace with this book - it is clearly a God thing and not a Terry thing. Important to keep in mind, I think, come March.

The folks at Kregel have been absolutely fantastic to work with. I couldn't have asked for more. We should get our first look at the book's cover sometime early next month. That will be the subject of next month's newsletter.

In the meantime, this week I submitted the edited and revised manuscript for my second novel, Hunger's Ransom, to my agent and she will be forwarding it to the Kregel staff. We're hopeful it will be reviewed, and accepted, at Kregel's editorial staff meeting in November. Stay tuned.

And I've just begun work on the sequel to Sacred Cipher, a book called Scorpion Pass. Pray for me that I can get a good jump on this book over the next eight weeks.

Okay, that's enough.

Stay tuned for more exciting adventures of "Terry Through Book Land" - probably late night, community-access time on the Jewelry Channel.

Ciao, baby ...

Terry

Seven Years Ago Today ... Not so Cool

I'm exhausted, but I figured I had better pop my head up here ... just in case anyone is checking in.

The chances of that are better today than last week.

Tuesday I sent out a blast email to 165 addresses ... the initial venture in what I hope will be a newsletter. The blast email announced to those I know - well, some, and barely - that my first novel will be published by Kregel Publications in the spring:

The Sacred Cipher

History's Greatest Secret May Be Tomorrow's Greatest Threat

Of course, at the bottom of each of those 165 emails was my contact information, including my blog address.

I think I've gotten about 70 responses to the blast email thus far. That's 70 people who may have been curious enough to check out this blog site, only to find out that I haven't been here for the past couple of weeks. Not good.

So, for anybody who's checking in - here I am!

Now, do I have anything to say? That is always the question.

Try this on for size.

My wife and I live on the Lower East Side of New York City, in a wildly popular and trendy neighborhood nicknamed NoLita (North of Little Italy). It's a cool place. We don't live in a cool place. We live in The Bowery Mission, which clothes and feeds and rescues the homeless and addicted. A wonderful place ... a place of miracles ... but not always a 'cool' place to live.

(As an aside, and just to give you a glimpse of how cool this neighborhood has become, a building two blocks away was just gut renovated. Five story, pretty old brick building that was derelict for the entire 11 years I've been here - until now. Sits on the corner of Spring and Elizabeth Streets. The owner has converted the building into six, full-floor condos ... perhaps 2,000 square feet each - maybe more. The price? Starting at $6 million each! That's how cool .)

Anyway, back to the point.

I was coming home the other night ... may have been Monday ... and as I crossed Bowery and walked toward the entrance to The Mission, my attention was caught by something to my right. I turned. And looked into the sky.

Up into the darkness of the night were two shafts of light.

My throat got thick. My heart skipped, stopped, then tripped along. For just a moment ... a fleeting, unexamined moment ... I thought I might break. And I stood on the sidewalk and stared.

The beams of light were most likely two of those special-event spotlights that some businesses will shine up into the sky to attract attention. They certainly got mine.

The lights were aimed at about a 40 degree angle, running upward from south to north ... from downtown to uptown. So unlike their predecessors, when you come to think of it. But who stops to think when there are two shafts of light piercing the sky of downtown Manhattan.

It was seven years ago when it last happened. Seven years ago today (now that it's 12:39 a.m.).

The lights didn't shine seven years ago today. Someone had the bright idea for the lights to shine as a way to commemorate what happened seven years ago today. There were two, huge, powerful shafts of light launched from the now-famous "Ground Zero". Nothing will ever replace The Towers, but the light shafts gave a sense that something was there again. They rose high into the night sky, their lumens lessening until they were just wisps of grey fading into dark.

For some reason, for many of us who lived through those awful days when Manhattan became a ghost town, the shafts of light brought comfort. And hope.

Monday night, someone was throwing a party and hired a couple of spotlights.

They weren't pointed in the right direction, but those arbitrary shafts of light brought a memory, resurrected a fear, rekindled a hurt. For a moment. For a moment, time stopped.

New York City wasn't so cool when Lower Manhattan was off limits - barricaded from 14th Street South. When there were armed soldiers stationed on every street corner. When there was no traffic. No ... there was NO traffic. No cabs, no buses, no trucks, no cars. Anywhere. Just soldiers, jeeps, and a couple of million people scared to breathe the air or think about what was coming next. Not so cool when every breeze carried the smell of burning. Not so cool when every public square was wallpapered with the leaflets of the grieving, uselessly searching for the dead.

No, not such a cool place, then.

You probably could have gotten one of those apartments for a buck-fifty a month. Who'd want to live here, anyway?

Seven years.

The City has been reborn. The buzz and the money have returned.

The grief has never left. All it takes is two shafts of light to pierce the darkness. And memory returns.

A Relief Pitcher

The annual American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) Conference will occur in a few weeks in Minneapolis. While I've been to several other writer's conferences over the past three years, this will be my first visit to this venerable, national gathering of the best and brightest in Christian fiction.

As a "rookie" to ACFW I was included in a 'first-timer orientation' email loop. The loop has been a mixed blessing.

It's one thing to get 30 or more extra emails each day. It's another thing when most of those emails are concerned with what women should wear to the Saturday night dinner. Or are an on-going discussion about whether coffee will be available or how much chocolate is too much.

Okay, it's a guy thing ... I don't care about prom gowns and I'm not concerned about OD'ing on caffine or a chocolate binge. So, those emails I've learned to delete.

What has been interesting, for me at least, is the often agonizing dialogue about how to throw your "pitch".

For the uninitiated, a "pitch" is what a writer will share with an editor, publisher's rep or an agent when they are trying to sell either a manuscript or work-in-progress, or trying to sell themselves. The "pitch" is generally about seven sentences and can be delivered in about three minutes. In sales, it's often called your elevator speech.

Sadly for the rookies, the writing business has a lot of unwritten traditions and expectations that people are expected to know and follow ... and which cause a great deal of anxiety for those going into a big-time conference for the first time.

What is a one-pager? What should be in a one-pager? What does it look like? What is a summary? What is a synopsis? How do they differ? What should I bring with me? What do I pitch ... the one-pager; the synopsis; the summary? When do I pitch? How do I throw the pitch - fast ball ... curve ball ... slider?

And on and on it goes.

I've been empathizing with every one of them who is agonizing about bringing the "right" thing to the "right" person at the "right" time. Should I bring a business card, a one-sheet, a two-sided one-sheet, a proposal (what should be in a proposal?), a manuscript (finished? unfinished?), a tuxedo?

So I wrote this in one of the email loop responses:

I remember the second writer's conference I went to. I had appointments the next day with an agent and a top publisher. One of my author/mentors told me these two appointments were critical and to give each of them the synopsis and first few chapters, "perfect - squeaky clean." I was up until 4:00 a.m. working on my laptop and then I was standing outside the door of the local Staples, grumpy and bleary-eyed, when it opened at 7:00 a.m. to get hard copies off a CD.

The folks at the appointments never asked to see it.

It's so hard, coming into this strange world for the first time, because everybody inside the world (even through they ARE great people) seems to know the secret code and all of us on the outside are trying to figure out the secret code and we don't even know the language.

Here's the bottom line. All you need is passion, and a great idea. Leave the rest at home (not really, but I hope you know what I mean).

Whether you have a glitzy, drop-dead designed one-page, a synopsis, a pitch or five squeaky-clean chapters is not as important as having passion and a great idea. The rest of it you can learn by going to the seminars at the conference and reading books on the craft (Sol Stein; Donald Maass; Stephen King On Writing).

But ya ain't goin' nowhere without passion and a great idea. If you can share passion and a great idea - coherently - with an author, editor, agent or publisher, you don't need anything else. Honest.

Two years ago I came to my first conference amazingly ignorant. I didn't know anything or anybody. My first paid critique was a disaster, and so was my finished manuscript. But I had another idea I was passionate about. So I wrote that book over the next year and got an agent. Last month I signed a contract with Kregel and the book will be coming out sometime next year.

Last week I went to my third Philly Conference and took along my 26-year-old daughter. We've got an idea we're collaborating on. All we had was a storyline we had verbally brainstormed. Nothing on paper.

She was in a first-evening Practice your Pitch seminar, just to observe and learn. But they broke up into small groups and each person in the group was to give their pitch to the rest of the group. So while the others were pitching, Meghan was scribbling away in her notebook. When it came her turn, she shared her seven sentences and everybody loved it. She pitched to three other mega-authors. Two of them spent more than an hour each in separate brainstorming sessions, helping Meghan flesh out the plot. One of them told her, "You finish that book by next year and make sure you bring it to me. I want to endorse it."

She had no business card, no pitch, no one-sheet, no proposal, no synopsis, no manuscript. No tuxedo.

But she had an idea we had hatched - and it's a really good idea - one she was passionate about. That's a pitch that others can catch.

If you believe in what you're doing, share that. All the rest works itself out.

So, that's the lesson for today. I don't have an answer for the chocolate and the coffee. Forget about the prom dresses.

Cinder Block Blues

The first guy with the cinder block had it clutched to his chest, like a fireman holding a baby he had rescued from a flaming building. Two arms were underneath it, the right arm slightly askew from the bottom, just past the corner of the right side.

He was wearing a blue t-shirt. What else, I don't know. I was looking at the cinder block.

The first guy with the cinder block had copper colored hair, before the patina set in. Brown, with pervasive red highlights, wispy in the front but enough to lift in a wave and sweep back over his head. His cheeks were full, chipmunk-like, with the yellow and burgundy flush of peaches in total exertion.

The cinder block was grey.

The second guy with the cinder block was different.

Let me stop here a moment and share an observation.

Prince Street in NoLita does not often entertain cinder-clock carriers. Everything else, yes. Cinder-block carriers ... well, this was a first.

Prince Street in NoLita is a "great neighborhood" in Manhattan, particularly for those who don't live on Prince Street in NoLita. God only knows why, but this section of Manhattan - hard against The Bowery and its historical queasiness and the Lower East Side (LES) and its ethnic barrios - has suddenly become the "in" place to be. Not "in" for the residents, but "in" for the one million tourists who seem to prowl its streets every weekend.

Walk down Prince Street, or it's sister to the downtown - Spring Street - and it's unlikely you will hear English. None of the people with the maps out, the shopping bags in their hands or the odd dialects emanating from their mouths, have grown up in Dubuque.

Can you say melting pot? Can you say, get the tourists out of my neighborhood?

Needless to say, the guy with the cinder block was an interesting diversion.

The second guy with the cinder block was shocking. What was this, a cinder block parade? Was this another clever marketing ploy for Obama '08? Was someone giving away cinder blocks?

The second guy with the cinder block was thin. He was also tired. Perhaps frustrated. The cinder block sat, upright, on the sidewalk. Guy Number Two had dark hair. He was older than Guy Number One. I think he wore jeans, but, hey - who can tell after two cinder blocks?

Most memorable is that Guy Number Two took a deep breath, looked like he wanted to be someplace else, then bent over and lifted the cinder block onto his left shoulder. Shazaam! A whole new way to carry cinder blocks on Prince Street. Stop the presses!

Okay, perhaps not so dramatic.

Until you got to the corner of Prince and Bowery, directly across the street from the New Museum of Contemporary Art which is, in fact, a new museum. An icon, already. Seven floors of off-center boxes, clad in chain-mail, with no windows. This is a building?

Anyway, at the corner of Prince and Bowery, was the Girl With Two Cinder Blocks. It was an odd alignment.

Girl was on her cell phone. Obviously, not with Guy Number One or Guy Number Two, who were too busy carting cinder blocks down Prince Street to carry on a reasonable conversation. But, Girl was on her cell phone. At her feet sat TWO cinder blocks, one of top of the other, the one on top vertical.

Was she calling for help? Was she calling for directions? Was she calling for more cinder blocks?

The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind. The light changed and it was time to cross Bowery and get home.

New York City ... this is My Kind Of Town (wait, wasn't that Chicago?)