Last week was the 6 month anniversary of the launch of Every Bush Is Burning. To celebrate (and also to get the word out), I’m giving away a free Kindle Touch (!) (even though I’m jealous and want to keep it), along with some other cool things. In general, if you like coffee, reading, and winning at life, you’re in the right place. The Kindle Touch is sitting in a Target bag beside my desk, just waiting to be opened by its new owner. Which could very well be you. (Unless I find a morally acceptable way to enter my […]

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Today marks the 6 month anniversary of birthing my first book, Every Bush Is Burning, into the world. Last year was a whirlwind of finishing up years of working on it, getting support from amazing Kickstarter backers who made publishing it possible–and all of that capped off on October 13th when we had the release party, which was so much fun it made my teeth hurt. After that, I was so exhausted that I kind of went into a zombie-hibernation for a couple of weeks where all I did was work and sleep (and eat lots of leftover cheesecake from […]

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Writing is not easy, and it’s often a lonely and discouraging endeavor. While I was working on writing Every Bush Is Burning on and off for almost six years, I spent thousands of hours alone at my keyboard plugging away. Getting excited. Getting discouraged. Throwing massive chunks of words away. Then: repeating the process. I knew very few serious writers then, so that made it even worse. For some reason, the task of writing an actual book is just flat out daunting. But I don’t think it has to be that way. I’ve always been intrigued by NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing […]

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This past September at the STORY Conference in Chicago, I got the privilege to meet and hang out with Jeff Goins. He works for Adventures In Missions and writes a very popular blog on all things writing (one of the top 10 blogs for writers in 2011). We were hanging out with a bunch of guys at a pub late one night and after hearing that I had a nasty sore throat, he suggested that I get a Hot Toddy (to which I said, “What’s a Hot Toddy?”). The second I tasted the peppermint-chocolate goodness, I knew I liked this […]

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A while back, Cindi Rose from the San Fransisco Christian Fiction Examiner posted this great review of Every Bush Is Burning, and I liked it so much I asked for her permission to re-post some of the review here. I really appreciate Cindi taking the time to review the book, and the more traffic and shares she gets the better for her, so if you like the review please click the link to the actual review and share it through Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. Every Bush Is Burning by Brandon Clements is one of those books you start reading and […]

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How do you make people care about something? Simple. You tell them a good story. Jesus told parables. Nathan told David a story about a stolen sheep that suddenly made him care very much about a poor man who was wronged. Thai Life Insurance told a story about a deaf and mute father. (Sidenote: Are commercials supposed to make you cry? They must do things differently in Thailand…)   Thanks to Michael Bailey for posting!

“Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we’d be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love […]

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I have already received a good number of emails from random readers of Every Bush Is Burning, and most of them have been incredible. It’s overwhelming to see the Holy Spirit using this story to speak to people in moving ways, and I am grateful beyond words for that. I did get one email recently, however, from a person who was very unhappy with some of the language in the book. (For the record if you haven’t read it, there is some PG-13 language.) This person was, to quote, “perplexed and disturbed” that I as a pastor would allow cursing […]

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I believe that in many ways, Christian creativity is in a crisis. Partly, because a lot of Christian art is not good art, and it does not resonate with our culture (but that’s another discussion). And partly because in some church circles, creativity is under-valued and neglected, to the detriment of the church. But I’m glad to say that recently I met a group of people who are trying to change that. In September I got the chance to go to the STORY Conference in Chicago, and it was amazing. They are really going after resourcing and inspiring Christian creatives […]

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Hey friends. In an effort to get the word out about my book as much as possible and make it as easy as possible to get, I’m reducing the Kindle price to 99 cents for a while. This is a great time to get it if you haven’t already, or you can gift it to a friend (there is a Kindle app for almost every computer or phone). A Christmas gift for less than a dollar is hard to beat after all! Hope you are swell and that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving…