Author Chat with Me! Tonight

First, I just wanted to say thank you! for your warm wishes and welcome backs. I'm so touched. I missed all of you also :-)

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The ACFW Book Club featured my first book, *A Lever Long Enough*, for its March selection. Lever is about a small military team that travels back in time to film the theft of Jesus' body from the tomb, and I like to think of it as *The Case for Christ* meets *The DaVinci Code*.

I just wanted to let you know that Melanie, Michelle, and the ACFW Book Club are kindly sponsoring an author chat with me at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific. The address is HERE. You don't need to be a member of the book club in order to participate or to quietly lurk. Please come if you can; I'd love to meet you!

Also, please feel free to write to me with any questions or comments. If you're interested, I am available for blog interviews (I have a list of questions and answers, or can answer your own questions), and am happy to donate a book if you want to have a giveaway. If you've read the book and enjoyed it, please consider writing a review on amazon HERE or wherever else. I have been excited and humbled by the enthusiastic reception this book has already received.

I'm currently working on two projects. Let me preface the first one by saying in my life B.C. (before children) I was a scientist. After finishing Lever I said doggone it, there MUST be a better way to structure a story, and so undertook a year long dissection/study of about 20 novels and as many films. The result is an algorithm I've refined by coaching students that I call the Story Template: a practical guide for a writer to develop a resonant, complete, compelling story from vague ideas. It’s not a formula, more like a description of proportions and guidelines that work with any genre, since I’m a great believer in the uniqueness of each artist’s vision. A number of bloggers have asked (and received) permission to reprint my short description of story HERE, and you can see a tutorial for preliminary story organization that I’ve put on my website HERE. Yes, I'm working on the book now.

My second project is the prequel to Lever, entitled *Nest Among the Stars* from Obadiah 1:4. It follows Sara’s disaster on the space station. Here’s the one paragraph summary:

When the European Space Agency wants to partner with the United States to build a lucrative new space station balanced between the earth and the moon, the Americans invite them to join in their next mission. But the American astronauts – the commander pilot, his twin sister an astrophysicist, and a paraplegic physician – discover in space that the two European payload specialists are not who they seem to be, and at least one may be a spy intent on sabotaging the mission. With dark plans afoot, the astrophysicist makes an even more terrifying discovery: an asteroid has suddenly shifted course to directly impact the United States . There is no weapon that can deflect or destroy the asteroid except, perhaps, a strange Israeli satellite that seems to bend time and space. But using this satellite may prove to cause an even worse disaster than the one it is preventing…

I'm also planning a sequel to Lever. I have to!

My journey to faith was a difficult one, full of angst, and I am eternally grateful to G-d for setting the *Hounds of Heaven* on me. Soli Deo Gloria. May He richly bless all of you who read my words :-)

Shalom,

Amy