Christian | Husband | Father | Author of Travel By Star | https://xitter.cf/t.co/cPnFIeclF0
California
Joined August 2022
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As of this weekend, I have my first ever sale in Australia.
Considering the first novel I ever tried to write opened in Perth, I'm quite giddy.
Someday I will have to tell the rest of this...
“What Shadows Give,” by Plain Runner
I hadn’t seen her in ten years. Yet, this was the street. These were the stones her bare feet walked upon as I held her heels. This was the light where I first saw the little smile. Maybe she knew in that moment when we crossed to avoid the puddle. Maybe she always intended to bring me back here.
The light made her look like a ghost, half in shadow, half revealed. Like she’d come back, but only for this sliver of time, either to finish what she’d begun or to escape it… I couldn’t say. But she was wearing the same jacket she’d had that night I lost her.
The bullet holes were the giveaway.
Photo by @KingAriPress
My sincere thanks to everyone who has offered their thoughts and prayers here. Blessings to you all.
I have had a hard time sticking with writing since publishing.
Initially, I chalked it up to being tired. The five years prior to releasing Travel By Star saw an increasingly emotional series of life events: Two children marrying, two parents passing away after long fights with illness, losing our family dog, another child finishing college and stepping into adulthood, one moving out of state, wild swings at work wherein one moment I couldn't catch my breath to suddenly facing the prospect of job loss, all of this running through the pandemic, then finally spending this last year trying to find a better balance of writing and marketing while working 50-60 hours a week and tending to neglected relationships.
To cap it all off, I've had some ongoing health issues for the past nine months which have destroyed my sleep.
The last thing I want to sound like is a complainer... I'm just a little worn out, and maybe a little lost. I want to find my way back to purposeful writing and I really want to do right by all those who've been so supportive of my work.
I keep feeling like the Lord has been building me for something... what, I'm not sure, but I want to be ready for it, at least as much as possible. I want to honor God with my work. I want to serve well the people I love, and I want to get some real traction on this writing thing - not necessarily in sales, as I trust those will come - but in good words down on paper.
But it's a fight on all fronts these days and both my spirit and my strength remain elusive.
His grace is sufficient, I know. And, maybe He's telling me to let this go for awhile... again, I'm not sure. All I know is I'm tired of feeling sick and sick of feeling tired. Something needs to break this siege.
So, yeah, I would appreciate any prayers you could say on my behalf.
Thanks as always to everyone who's encouraged me here.
I have had a hard time sticking with writing since publishing.
Initially, I chalked it up to being tired. The five years prior to releasing Travel By Star saw an increasingly emotional series of life events: Two children marrying, two parents passing away after long fights with illness, losing our family dog, another child finishing college and stepping into adulthood, one moving out of state, wild swings at work wherein one moment I couldn't catch my breath to suddenly facing the prospect of job loss, all of this running through the pandemic, then finally spending this last year trying to find a better balance of writing and marketing while working 50-60 hours a week and tending to neglected relationships.
To cap it all off, I've had some ongoing health issues for the past nine months which have destroyed my sleep.
The last thing I want to sound like is a complainer... I'm just a little worn out, and maybe a little lost. I want to find my way back to purposeful writing and I really want to do right by all those who've been so supportive of my work.
I keep feeling like the Lord has been building me for something... what, I'm not sure, but I want to be ready for it, at least as much as possible. I want to honor God with my work. I want to serve well the people I love, and I want to get some real traction on this writing thing - not necessarily in sales, as I trust those will come - but in good words down on paper.
But it's a fight on all fronts these days and both my spirit and my strength remain elusive.
His grace is sufficient, I know. And, maybe He's telling me to let this go for awhile... again, I'm not sure. All I know is I'm tired of feeling sick and sick of feeling tired. Something needs to break this siege.
So, yeah, I would appreciate any prayers you could say on my behalf.
Thanks as always to everyone who's encouraged me here.
"Oh, you beautiful babes, for whom we've travelled through time..."
Best pickup line ever.
Gen-Z could solve all its dating problems just by returning to the classics.
First coffee of any kind in three months. I will probably regret it, but it's a partly cloudy morning following a couple days of rain, it's October, it's Friday, and the mocha must have its moment.
Plain Runner retweeted
Help us celebrate Tony's Book Birthday and actual Birthday by liking, sharing, and/or purchasing your copy of his book.
It's a mix of Stranger Things, Narnia, a circus, and something all its own. Anabel and her friends meet a mysterious stranger just as an age-old darkness returns to this small Idaho town.
Will they stop the darkness before it's too late?
I basically have ten years to get this guy cast as Hatchet.
Dang, I really need to be writing more if I have any hope of Travel By Star becoming an indie phenomenon such that a movie or streaming series done right and proper is an inevitability.
Karen Gillan, who is a Highlander, says Henry Cavill's Scottish accent in the Highlander reboot is absolutely "bang on"
She also says he was so dedicated to authenticity, he was even correcting people who were mispronouncing Gaelic words
(via @Collider)
I have some pretty dark stuff in my book. There are bad men and worse doing bad things, but I tread carefully for my own soul and that of my readers, and it is always with the understanding that evil cannot win.
The blood and fire of righteousness is all the more real.
The reason I don't watch horror, besides the creepiness, is the people who make it.
The mindset they have to be in, the creepy ideas and sets they have to come up with, and stories of behind the scenes stuff I have read just tells me the people making these movies are not in a spiritually healthy place.
Which makes me think it's pretty unhealthy to be taking it in, too.
Plain Runner retweeted
I just picked up the Kindle version of Travel by Star last night. Only a few pages in, but I’m enjoying it! You can tell pretty quickly if something is well written or not, and your book is clearly quality work.
This is something I am trying to capture in my own work.
What does love look like after the triumphant kiss?
It's difficult to do well in life, and I think it's why so much of our popular entertainment shies away from it. We all love the chase. It's part of that hero's journey that speaks to us all, men and women alike. The building of a marriage, though... the staying and striving in the same direction... that's the harder story to tell.
Not because it's boring, which seems to be what you often hear from Hollywood, but because it calls upon something we don't see enough of.
Steadfastness. Selflessness. Forgiveness.
It's easy to write about falling in love, because in a very real sense, it's easy to fall in love. It's quite another thing to press on when reality presses in. The short story I'm currently writing is proving tougher than I expected for this very reason. Good creative work goes to work on the creative person before it's ready to send into the world, and for many, I think it reveals things about ourselves we'd rather not deal with.
I love a good love story or a boy meets girl song or a knight to the rescue adventure, but if these are going to have any lasting effect, they have to at least show the capacity to move beyond the shallows. Sometimes, they have to show the depths.
Plain Runner retweeted
It. Is. Done...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
10 days to do the ending.
6 weeks since I started writing, exactly.
116,500 words.
My book is done.
Ok, except the Epilogue, but I is saving that for when I want happy tears writing weddings. :D
It really helped deciding last minute to go to this writer's conference - tomorrow - cuz that meant I had a deadline. And I made it!! I can now, honestly, say I have a book!!
Swoon
🤖 Made with AI
I don't know what's going on at Netflix, but then neither does Netflix, so...
As to the rumor that all future Narnia movies have been scrapped, I'm calling it qualified BS. Whatever reports may have said back when the Netflix deal was made, additional movies were always contingent on the first succeeding. This is why you're seeing the Lewis estate come out in defense of Gerwig. Whether test screenings were as bad as we've heard or not... whether the fan backlash is really just a tempest in a teapot, none of that matters if the perception is that the studio is nervous.
Executive firings don't usually bode well for projects in the immediate vicinity, good or bad.
Netflix fired film boss Dan Lin because he could not find the balance between streaming titles and theatrical release experiments, sources say.
Lin and Greta Gerwig did clash over the upcoming "Narnia" movie, but sources say the incident is not directly what led to his firing.
On a Zoom call earlier this year, Lin is said to have been “dismissive” to Gerwig regarding the progress of the "Narnia" movie, which carries a $250 million budget. Word traveled fast around Netflix that the meeting had gone south. Soon after, Lin disappeared from the film, per sources, and film VP Doug Belgrad stepped in as the primary Netflix exec overseeing the project (until, of course, he was laid off last week).
variety.com/2026/film/news/n…
