Hi subscribers! Change is coming! This change involves two pieces of news.
The first is a status report on the Planets Shaken series.
I apologize to all of you who are waiting for the third volume of the Planets Shaken series. It took me a year-and-a-half to finish the second volume, The Rendezvous. I had hoped to have the third volume done in a similar time frame, which would have seen it published in April. Well, April has come and gone, and I am still polishing the rough draft, preparing it for my beta readers. So there is a change in my intended publication date.
There is an explanation for this, which I trust you can empathize with. I don’t have the luxury of writing my fiction series full time. If I did, I could probably cut my book times in half. Fiction writing, while an important part of my ministry/calling, only receives 35 to 40% of my time during a typical week. The rest of the time goes to a tent-making job, teaching in the local church, camp and conference ministry, advanced studies in several fields of interest (prophecy, doctrine, spiritual warfare, apologetics, biblical languages, and electric-universe cosmology), writing non-fiction prophecy books (two should be ready this year), managing my ministry website, and writing a devotional email/blog. On top of a busy schedule which generally only allows me 4-6 fiction writing slots per week, I also had many week-long and multi-day stretches come up in the past year, for ministry and home repairs, which completely took me away from writing for a total of four months.
So where are we at with volume three? Barring significant interruptions, my current pace has me sending it out to my beta readers in 4 to 6 weeks. The beta stage usually takes 6-8 weeks. Then it takes a couple more weeks for proofreading and formatting. So, a conservative forecast says it is still three to four months to publication — in other words, late summer.
But there is one further change involved in the writing and publishing of this series. The fourth and final volume should be completed much more quickly. I have made a few changes in how my time is going to be allocated in the future for my ministry, and the coronavirus has made a few more short-term changes for me, so I will have more time to devote to writing the fourth volume of the Planets Shaken series and to my non-fiction books. It will likely be finished in less than one-and-a-half years.
The second is that I am making a change in how I will be connecting with the readers of the Planets Shaken series.
My goal had been to send an occasional letter that focused on my progress on the Planets Shaken series, throwing in a personal note or two. But over the past three years I have only managed to be mediocre at this — as some of you probably agree — the letters being few and far between. As I have processed my lack of engagement with this, I have come to realize that I just don’t identify as a Christian-fiction author. When I try to operate in this identity, I feel like David in Saul’s armor. So I have decided to transition every aspect of my Christian-fiction writing into methods and approaches that are more in keeping with my identity — a Bible/prophecy teacher who happens to write Christian fiction as one aspect of his ministry. I think my Planets Shaken series bears this out. It is not merely clean entertainment. It contains a robust core of gospel, prophecy, history (especially catastrophism), and cutting-edge cosmology.
The upshot of all this is that this email will be my last communication under the Planets Shaken heading and my last letter that focuses primarily on the Planets Shaken series. Going forward, I will merge the One in a Quillion/Planets Shaken update email into my devotional email, the Upward Trek, which I send out on a more regular basis (2 to 4 weeks). It features a short article on vital topics as discipleship, spiritual warfare, or prophecy. In the future I will expand it a little so that it also includes updates on the Planets Shaken series and my non-fiction books, links to articles of interest on my website, and brief observations on matters in the world that align with the prophetic issues I mention in my books.
This new approach offers a few advantages. One, my readers will hear from me much more often. Two, they will be exposed to other aspects of my ministry. And three, they will get to see more of me … the whole me.
The one downside is that some readers may not be interested in receiving anything in their email from me other than updates on the Planets Shaken series.
If you are unhappy with the new arrangement, please feel free to unsubscribe. I will understand.
If you are happy with the new arrangement, you don’t need to do anything. You will be automatically merged into the Upward Trek mailing list.
I will be sending this email out three times, the second and third times only to those who have not already opened it. I want to make sure that everyone on the mailing list gets this information. I don’t want anyone to be frustrated because they are receiving emails they don’t want to receive.
May the light of the Christ of the Bible and the Bible of Christ shine brighter and brighter in your heart as the darkness in this world grows thicker and fouler.
“Eyes wide open, brain engaged, heart on fire”
Lee W. Brainard
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