Ever wonder how an unknown prophet gets in to see the King for the first time?

I had never thought about that. Surely the prophets of old were people just like you and I. Never heard of, initially, by kings and counsels.

What if God gave you a message for the President? Would you trust him to get you into the White House?

In this book, Jonah has a philosophy: You can’t steer a donkey unless it is moving. So he moves. Towards Samaria and the King’s palace, accompanied by his friend and accomplished warrior, Elihu.

Along the way they are attacked by brigands, encounter assassins and constantly have their faith tested.

Bruce Judisch does a great job of putting you in Jonah’s shoes. The story starts off a little slow, as everything is set up, but once it gets rolling you will be pulled in.

The author has great descriptive abilities. He has an ability to word-paint a landscape that makes the reader feel like they are right there.

If you like biblical fiction, I think you will enjoy this book. Give it a try and let me know what you think of it.

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T. L. Hines writes a captivating story.

In this book Lucas, the main character, remembers living in an orphanage as a young boy, but doesn’t remember much else from his past. He’s grown up with no intimate ties and connections. He’s made a past time of hiding in ceilings and crawl spaces to spy on unsuspecting people. If he feels a ‘connection’ with them, he will take a Totem - a picture, scarf, or other personal item - from them to carry with him.

Then one day he discovers there are others like him. A group of people who call themselves the Creep Club. Only they go a little farther than Lucas has ever gone. They go into peoples homes, and video tape them.

When Lucas discovers that one of their ’subjects’ is about to be murdered (they have video footage of two people planning the deed) he tries to warn the man. This sets off a series of events that will keep you turning pages to find out what is really going on.

While I felt like this book bogged down in the middle, I was glad I kept reading. The end of the book ties all the separate lines of the story together.

The story itself is good, but I kept waiting for the spiritual message. There is a very subtle theme about recognizing our own weaknesses in others and being careful how we look down on them. But that is about the strongest message you will find in this book. A little disappointing for a mainstream Christian publisher.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it?

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I signed up at Shelfari the other day.

This is a great way to get to know people who enjoy the genre you write in.

There are groups for all kinds of different genre’s where you can get to know people, let them know what you are reading, and find out their recommendations of books they’ve enjoyed.

I would love to make your acquaintance. You can find me on Shelfari as Lynnette B. See you there!

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I recently learned from my publisher, OakTara, that my novel, Rocky Mountain Oasis, is to be released in the spring of 2009. I was pretty excited to get that news! I immediately began trying to remember what the first day of summer was. LOL.

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Wow December again already! Can you believe it?

I walked down our street today and three of my neighbors already have their yards all decked out for the season.

I sighed as I realized how quickly time flies. By this time next year, Lord willing, I will have one son who is driving! And if that’s not enough to make a mother melancholy, I don’t know what is.

But I also sighed because it is time, once again, to pull the decorations out of the garage. And really, ya’ll, I’m just not thatgal. You know the one I mean. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I put out decorations, rearrange all the furniture to fit the tree in and do my part to support the Christmas decorations economy, but the whole time I’m putting out the decorations, I’m grumpily thinking about the fact that I’m going to have to put them all away in just a couple weeks.

I went to a writer’s group meeting the other day and we got to talking about Christmas tree stories. Do any of you have one of those Christmas memories that is really more horror-story than Christmas story? I do.

Just before Christmas 2001 I had a rare Martha Stewarty attack. (Just for a couple of hours when I lost my head and decided we should go cut our own tree instead of buying one from the tree sellers. Don’t worry, I’m back and it WON’T happen again!) The kids thought this sounded like fun, so Marty reluctantly joined us and we piled into the truck to head for the woods.

At the time we lived in Pierce, Idaho - a town of about 600 people in the middle of nowhere - so we didn’t have far to go. We drove up the divide between Pierce and Weippe and headed down a rutted logging road. After several minutes we pulled over and everyone climbed out. Marty grabbed the saw and we headed off to find the perfect tree.

The boys were ready to cut down the first tree we came to, but I wasn’t satisfied. If I found one that I thought was fine, Marty said it was too tall. If he liked the height of one, it would have a big hole in one side. By this time we were getting a little tired and grumpy. We found a tree that looked okay, but it was just ‘okay’ so we decided to look for just a few more minutes.

There was a game trail next to the road and we headed up the narrow path with our youngest son, then three and a half, bringing up the rear just behind me. He started to whine and I turned around to see what was going on. His foot was caught in a snare! (Not a trap, just a snare, but it took us a few minutes to get him free of it, since he’d pulled it pretty tight and was scared and kept pulling his foot trying to get it out, which only tightened it more.)

Marty and I looked at each other. Decision made. The ‘okay’ tree would have to do.

The boys were ecstatic that we’d finally made a decision and barreled down the trail in front of us headed back towards the truck and the ‘okay’ tree. The game trail had made a steady climb up the hillside, but the road was still plainly visible below us. Suddenly my oldest son tripped, lost his footing and disappeared in a head over heels roll down the embankment of the game trail. He tumbled several feet and ended up on his back in the middle of the logging road. By the time I had run the few feet ahead to where I could see down the embankment to him, he was blinking up at the sky with a look of ‘how did I get here?’ on his face.

Back at home, we set up the tree (with the worst part of it pointed towards the wall) and started hanging decorations on it. As I was hanging one, a spider scuttled across the back of my hand! I gasped and shook it off to meet its doom under the toe of my shoe. But a few seconds later ANOTHER spider scurried across my hand. I headed for the Raid. After placing a sheet under the tree we sprayed it down with Raid (and I mean sprayed!) and headed for bed.

I was not prepared for the sight that met my eyes the next morning. The sheet was COVERED with little spider carcasses! EWWWW! We took the tree outside and shook it until it almost didn’t have any needles left on it. But by that time, we had put so much work into this stupid ‘okay’ tree that there was no way we were not going to use it.

Yes. The Christmas of the spiders. We still laugh and talk about that adventure. But we’ve never done it again. Can you blame us?

Twas the night before Christmas,
and while we sipped cider,
not a creature was stirring,
not even a spider…

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

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