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The Devil’s Due: Back Cover Blurb
The book is not quite ready for prime time, but here is the cover blurb:
Taylor Smart knew that living with one foot in the everyday world and the other in the faery realm wouldn’t be easy, but nobody told her it was a death sentence! When you’re only thirteen years old and a powerful sídhe overlord puts you on his black list, bad things are bound to happen. And as if that weren’t enough, somebody has also set their sights on her best friend, Jill.
In the unearthly world its inhabitants call the Wonder, people pay their debts…or live to regret it. And so, Taylor and Jill find themselves running away from home, forging new alliances, and facing unexpected dangers in hopes that maybe—just maybe—they’ll be able to soothe the wounded pride of the powers that are out to get them.
Percy Jackson’s Greek Heroes
Apparently a companion piece to Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods will be arriving next summer. According to Rick Riordan,
During the Blood of Olympus tour, we announced Percy Jackson’s Greek Heroes, which will be published on Percy’s birthday, Aug. 18, 2015. This is very much like Greek Gods, except about (you guessed it) the Greek heroes like Hercules, Theseus, Atalanta, Perseus, Orpheus, and all the rest. Filled with Percy’s snark and sass. Illustrated with full-color art by John Rocco. So heavy you won’t be able to lift it. Yes, it will be awesome!
So, there you go.
Banana Pudding Discipleship
Mike Ruffin is making me hungry.
Occasionally I am brought up short by the realization that some people have never had real banana pudding. If you are wondering what I’m talking about, you are one of those people.
My heart breaks for you.
Hengel: Christology and New Testament Chronology
Tim Henderson has posted his summary of the next essay from Martin Hengel’s Between Jesus and Paul: “Christology and New Testament Chronology.”
Sunday Inspiration: Joy
Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.
—Henri Nouwen
Pete Enns: Paul Is the Crazy Uncle of Us All!
Do go read Pete Enns’s latest at Huffington Post: “3 Reasons Why Apostle Paul Is the Crazy Uncle No One Wants to Talk About (and 2 Reasons Why We Need to Get Over That).” If you’re in my CHR 150 class, read it twice. It will save you some time and heartache in a couple of weeks.
Hengel: Between Jesus and Paul
Tim Henderson has begun a review of the six essays included in Martin Hengel’s, Between Jesus and Paul. Hurray! The first is “Between Jesus and Paul: The ‘Hellenists’, the ‘Seven’ and Stephen (Acts 6.1-15; 7.54-8.3),” from which the volume gets its name. I’ll gather links to all of Tim’s summaries here for ease of reference.
Sunday Inspiration: Suffering
Above all shadows rides the sun.
—Samwise Gamgee (via J. R. R. Tolkien)
Writing People of (a) Color (Different from Your Own)
In a thoughtful (and visually appealing) post by MariNaomi of Midnight Breakfast, several cartoonists offered some practical advice on how to write credible characters of a racial or ethnic background different from one’s own.
I hope I do justice to my nonwhite characters. As much as possible, I strive to avoid stereotypes (naturally!) and work from a character-first approach. Whenever possible, I try to draw on my experiences (1) as the kid of two teachers at an inner-city high school whose students often dropped in at our home and (2) the lone white kid in a predominantly black church youth group growing up.
In The Devil’s Due (which is hurdling through beta editing! Yay!), Taylor’s friend Jill plays a pretty significant role. The template from which I built her character was actually my childhood memories of a colleague and best friend of my mom, a strong, intelligent, devout, and compassionate black woman who could stand toe-to-toe with my mother—who is kind of a force of nature, but I mean that in the best possible way!—because of the love and respect they had for each other.
Imagining what that lady, now long deceased, might have been like in her teenage years helped me put a “face” on Jill, at least tentatively.
Want to Build a Better Brain?
Learn a foreign language! From The Guardian:
The Swedish MRI study showed that learning a foreign language has a visible effect on the brain. Young adult military recruits with a flair for languages learned Arabic, Russian or Dari intensively, while a control group of medical and cognitive science students also studied hard, but not at languages. MRI scans showed specific parts of the brains of the language students developed in size whereas the brain structures of the control group remained unchanged. Equally interesting was that learners whose brains grew in the hippocampus and areas of the cerebral cortex related to language learning had better language skills than other learners for whom the motor region of the cerebral cortex developed more.
Darrell J. Pursiful 