Book Reviews, Etc

Here are the results of the title survey. One of the top three will become the title of my forthcoming novel. A huge “Thank You!” to everyone who took the survey. Your thoughts will be super helpful.

The next step is a split test. I’ll use each of the top three titles in a rotating series of facebook ads, and see which one garners the highest click-through rate. The top one will (probably) be chosen as the title!

Want to be the first to learn what the title is? Sign up here to get an e-mail.

As many readers and friends know, I’ve been working on a new novel for the past two months. I’m just shy of 40,000 words so far, with probably 15-20,000 left to write.

Will you help me choose a title? Click here to vote for which title you like best!

I hope to be launching this novel by around the end of August. I’ll keep you posted on the release date.

Your help with a title will really move the novel forward.

I’m about halfway through with my Israel thriller. It’s about an innocent American tourist who accidentally makes a shocking discovery that could upend the delicate balance of peace in the Middle East. It features a former Shin Bet agent who turned tour guide when he got fired for being too aggressive about pursuing a terrorist, an operative from the military wing of Hamas, and more.

I really hope to have it out by the end of the summer. I hope you’re all going to love it.

Be the very first to hear when it comes out. Sign up for e-mail updates. Subscribers even get a chance to read every e-book I write for free. So what are you waiting for?

It’s easy for me to share my opinion about other writers’ work when it’s good.

LA Sniper by Steve Gannon is a detective story set in Los Angeles. It could even be called a police procedural because the details about how the LAPD works are so thorough.

I had never heard of Steve Gannon before, and I voted for this book in the Kindle Scout program because Amazon sent me an e-mail offering me half-off a book if I voted. I publish with KDP, so I am well-aware that many superb writers (Not me, the rest of them) work through Amazon to publish. Even so, the stereotype about books published through Amazon made me wonder just what I would be getting when I read LA Sniper.

What a delightful surprise. Absolutely top-notch writing, which just goes to show that stereotypes serve no one well.

The book is a little off my beaten track for two reasons. For one thing, the conclusion struggles between hope and depression. There is a very emotional ending and a message of hope, but to get there the author passes through some spiritually dark-as-night places, and I was a bit uncomfortable with that.

Second reason: There’s a gratuitous sex scene which, as far as I can tell, has no bearing on the plot.

Those caveats aside, there’s one more particular reason to give LA Sniper a read:

Gannon gets the guns right.

About 99% of action novels clearly demonstrate that the author has never so much as seen a gun that wasn’t in a movie. They’ve got revolvers with safeties, they’ve got people racking the slide back and forth just because it sounds scary, and on and on. It causes me to gnash my teeth.

I have no idea whether Mr. Gannon is a gun guy but if he’s not, he clearly did the research necessary to write like one. Exceptional detail, all of it correct.

Check out LA Sniper by Steve Gannon. If you like guns and good writing, you’ll be glad you did.

When I work on books, there’s a moment that I’ve come to recognize. It’s the moment when I discover one plot point that solidifies the whole story. With Life of Secrets, it was, “Don’t kill him, forgive him.” And the rest of the story fell into place. With Sons of Thunder it was, “They’re sisters,” and everything else came right out onto the page after that.

I hit that point this morning with my next thriller. I know what the story is, and I’m ready to start talking about it publicly. It’s a brand new story, with no connection to the Sons of Thunder or Secrets universes.

It’s the story of an American tourist in Israel who volunteers on an archaeological dig and makes a discovery that will change history and alter the balance of power on the world stage. It could tip all of civilization into global war.

The title “Relic of an Ancient Vision” has been kicking around in my head, but I’m not satisfied with it.

I just want to recommend the work of another author working in the same field as me. Luana Ehrlich’s book One Night in Tehran is a great spy thriller. It has chases, kidnappings, shootouts, suspense, romance, and everything fun in a thriller.

It’s also easy to read with no gratuitous sex and no profanity. The main character had a powerful encounter with fugitive Iranian Christians and is trying to work out what that means for his life as an officer in the CIA.

The author is also very good at making the reader feel like he’s getting an inside look at how the CIA works. I don’t know if Ms. Ehrlich actually worked in the CIA or not, but as a writer she is very skilled at making it seem like she must have.

Check out One Night in Tehran while you’re waiting for me to finally finish another book!

I wrote the following essay shortly after visiting the Holocaust museum in Israel. I won second place in a Bethel Writers Conference contest with it, which was awesome.

Sowing Without Speaking

In the early 1990’s, Jan Karski was a professor at Georgetown University when I was a student there. I didn’t really know much about him at the time. Among the other 19-year-olds, the word was that he was an important figure in the history of the Holocaust, and had been one of the good guys. That was all the general student body knew. His subject wasn’t of interest to me, so I never investigated further.

Jan Karski played a crucial role in the Polish resistance during World War Two. He tried to get the word out to the wider world about the extermination of the Polish ghetto. He begged America to help. But it was many years before I learned those things.

I never took his class. I ignored professor Jan Karski.

In the book of Isaiah, God promises the barren that he will given them a name and a remembrance which are better than children. In Hebrew, “Name and remembrance” read as “Yad Vashem.” Those words are taken as the name of the Holocaust museum in Israel. “A name and a remembrance.”

I toured Yad Vashem and, to my shame, I found it relatively unmoving. Amidst the educational material about the depths of human evil, I could not muster so much as a catch in my throat. The holocaust has been covered to death, of course. We have all heard the horror stories. None of it was new.

At Yad Vashem there is a term: The Righteous Among the Nations or, more colloquially, the righteous gentiles. It refers to non-Jewish people who risked their lives to save Jews during the holocaust. Listed among them are such famous names as Oskar Schindler. Each of them gets a tree at Yad Vashem, on the “Avenue of the Righteous among the Nations.” It is a place to remember those who saw evil and did something about it.

I told myself, as I saw the trees on the avenue, that I would have been one of them. I would not have ignored the evil before me. I would have done something.

And who among us doesn’t feel the same? Who doesn’t believe that, put in the same situation, we would do the right thing?

I felt that way until, two-thirds of the way through the museum, I saw the video of Jan Karski.

Professor Karski merits his own display at Yad Vashem. There’s a video of him. In it he talks about his meeting with Franklin Roosevelt, in which America’s great World War Two President declined to show much interest in the plight of the millions of tortured and murdered Jews, except as it related to America’s war aims. And as Professor Karski talked on the video about this great American who did nothing, I faced a terrible revelation.

I hadn’t even noticed him, when he walked beside me.

I, who was sure I would have been among the righteous gentiles, did not even bat an eyelash when a hero of the Holocaust was teaching.

I, who just knew that I would be one of those who risked his life to save Jews if anything like the Holocaust happened again, I realized that when I had the chance to learn from professor Karski I didn’t care.

His efforts to bring the plight of Polish Jews to the attention of America were heroic. They were worthy of recognition in the Jewish State’s great museum. And I had ignored him.

His exhibit in Yad Vashem changed my whole experience of the museum. What before had not touched me, began to hit very hard indeed.

After Karski’s exhibit, the rest of the museum had more meaning.

It was Jan Karski’s exhibit that prepared me for the last chamber of the museum. Without him, I would not have been ready.

One approaches the final room of the museum – not enters, simply approaches – and one perceives its subject matter.

Books.

Uncountable, immeasurable, innumerable books. They stack to the ceiling, in perfect ordered rows, numbered, documented, and arranged. Each of them is black. There are so many of them, together they form a wall. It’s a physical presence. It stares down at people who enter the room like a challenge.

Given the subject matter of the museum, the content of the books is obvious before one enters the room.

They are names. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands and thousands – millions – of names. Those who died in the Holocaust. Every page of every innumerable book contains a name and a testimony of who they were.

From outside the room, I saw them, and I was physically stopped from entering. I couldn’t do it. I, who had been unable to feel much through the majority of the Holocaust museum, could not – not casually – step into that room.

I checked myself. I prayed. And fortified by that, I took the step. I walked into the domain of the books. I entered the room.

At once my emotions were out of control. I wanted to weep. I wanted to shake my fist at the devil. I wanted to rage.

Of all those things, there was only one that worked. There was only one thing I could do in that room.

I could only pray.

“Lord, please use me. Please use me to prevent evil. Please use me Lord.”

With tears in my eyes, I begged the Lord that I should never again ignore people like Jan Karski. I prayed that, where there is evil in this world, He would strengthen me to fight it.

I never took a class from Jan Karski. He never spoke a word to me. And yet, by his mere presence, he planted a seed. That seed was watered at Yad Vashem, and I will never be the same.

I’m back from three weeks in Israel. For someone who’s into Jesus, it was pretty intense to walk where he walked, see things he saw, and understand his world better.

I also had a chance to look at modern Israel a little bit. I picked up enough material for a completely original political thriller set there. Watch for it this summer, I’m working on it now!