Every Bush Is Burning: A Life Update on My Birthday

Friends and family, peeps and tweeps…I hope Friday finds you well. Today is my birthday and I am a whopping 26 years of age. Woo hoo! I have a fun trip to the DMV (to get my license renewed) and an allergy shot planned to celebrate. (Also dinner with my smoking hot wife so it’s not all bad:) I figured now would be as good a time as any to throw out a general life update.

Many of you know this already, but for the past few years I’ve been working on writing a book. I’ve long had a passion for writing, but this particular book started out in college as a narrative non-fiction, Don Miller-esque book about how Jesus is so often tragically misrepresented by the sins and failures of the American church, and it attempted to straighten some of that mess out (Bathing Jesus anyone?…). But then I realized a few things. 1. That I wasn’t as funny as Donald Miller. 2. That I didn’t have near as many cool stories. And 3. That the book in general was terrible. So that was fun and all, throwing a gazillion words in the trash.

Then about 2 years ago I got the crazy idea to do the book idea in fiction and make a novel out of it. I started brainstorming and wrote a lot more terrible crap and threw a bunch of it away. I kept writing and then one day last Spring started emailing a freelance editor named Andy Meisenheimer. I started working with him and he waded through the mire of early drafts and pointed me in the right direction and in general started shaping me as a writer (I’m embarrassed to think where this book would be without him). It’s been a year and a half of ideas and revisions and hard work, and I’m very happy to realize that the process, at least for this book, is coming to a close.

In October of this year I will be self-publishing the book. It’s titled Every Bush Is Burning, and it explores the aforementioned themes and more. It’s a story set in Columbia about a guy named Jack Bennett, and it may have a few familiar figures in it if you’ve been around Midtown a while. I’m really excited about getting it out into the world and seeing what happens, and praying that God will use it to speak to people.

For those of you who may wonder, the reasons I decided to self-publish are basically: 1. It’s too “Christian” to be in the secular market. 2. It’s a little too raw for the Christian market (not vulgar–just for authenticity since it’s in a way a missional novel). 3. So I can make the prices as low as possible and have more control over the process. 4. Because I have very talented friends who are helping tremendously with the process (from editing to cover design to website building to shooting the trailer for it).

If you are my friend and you love me and want to help in this process, there will be plenty of opportunities to do that (and I will let you know what they are at the right time). I will likely be doing a Kickstarter campaign to offset the costs of producing a book and self-publishing, and also to hopefully raise a little bit of money for marketing since all of that weight will be on me with self-publishing.

For all of my friends who have already helped in this process, I can’t thank you enough. I am in the middle of the last revision and I’m excited about where it’s going. And for those of you who have read previous drafts to give me feedback…first of all, thank you. And secondly, I think it’s gonna be a lot better (even those of you who read the later draft). So that’s good.

Thanks friends for listening to my little update. I will keep you posted if you want to grab a copy when it’s ready, or if you want to help in the process. I will need all the help I can get spreading the word.

Peace and love!