Steven Pressfield: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Brian Doerksen: Make Love, Make War: NOW Is the Time to Worship
Robert L. Moore: Facing the Dragon: Confronting Personal and Spiritual Grandiosity
Scot McKnight: The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible
Leonard Sweet Ph.D: So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church
For you local Colorado readers, Children's HopeChest is teaming up with Mr. Biggs and the Pro Football Camp to offer you the best deal of the year. On July 15, Mr. Biggs is hosting a fundraiser for Children's HopeChest called "Play with the Pros." That night, professional NFL athletes will be on site at Mr. Biggs to play with you and your kids on all the great Mr. Biggs attractions and rides.
Tickets are $10 at the door, and get you an all access pass to the rides, attractions, and bowling at Mr. Biggs. Plus: if you pre-buy your tickets from CHC, 100% of your purchase goes directly to CHC!
The pass is good from 3pm-10pm on July 15. The retail value of this pass is well over $30. On July 15, 2009 from 3pm-10pm, you can get this pass for just $10 at the door...it gives you:
Even if you don't like sports, this is the best deal of the year. If you pre-buy your tickets from Children's HopeChest, you can have them for just $10/each. And 100% of your purchase goes directly to Children's HopeChest on all pre-sale ticket purchases. (If you buy the night of the event, Children's HopeChest receives $5 from every ticket sold).
Even if you don't live in Colorado Springs, if you want to buy tickets, we will give them to local youth groups and agencies working with at-risk youth. The kids get a great night of play and CHC receives needed funding for our programs.
To order tickets e-mail Hannah at hannah@hopechest.org or GIVE online right now. Tickets are $10 each and can be purchased by credit card on our Web site. (Just put "Play with the Pros" in the notes field.) Hannah will confirm your ticket purchase. On the day of the event, your tickets will be waiting for you on location at Will Call under the name of the purchaser. Play with the Pros tickets purchases are not tax-deductible.
Me and the family are on our vacation here in Breckenridge. I love the mountains of Colorado! If there's anything that restores my soul, this is it.
Dear friends of mine in the cyberspace and blogging community: I have some very exciting news to share with you! My publisher, David C. Cook, feels that the message of my new novel, Scared: A Novel on the Edge of the World, is so important they are giving it away for free! You heard right, Scared can be downloaded for free until July 10th, simply by going to www.scaredthenovel.com. What can you do? I need your help to get the word out. Would you consider blogging about this, posting it on Facebook and Twitter, or other social networking sites? Reading Scared is changing people’s lives, that’s why we want this in the hands of as many people as possible. You can click here to read twenty-three reviews already posted on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Scared-Novel-World-Tom-Davis/product-reviews/1589191021/ref=dp_db_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 We’ve also created a landing page with some resources you can use. It includes an embedded copy of the Free PDF link, chapter samplers and the video trailer. Get them here: http://tomdavis.typepad.com/tom_daviss_blog/scared-publicity-page.html My friend Mike Morell from The Ooze has posted this on his page so you can get an idea of what your page might look like: Thank you all so much for the support you’ve already given to Scared. I’m so glad my publisher believes in the message of the book so much, they’re willing to give it away. Who does that?! With your help, thousands of people who might not read the book can have it in their hands instantly. Hopefully, their lives will be radically changed.
You can watch the full interview I did on 100 Huntley Street by clicking here. It aired two days late, sorry about that. It's a two part segment that is also on YouTube. You can skip the other programs on the show and go straight to mine by watching below:
This interview will air in its entirety in Canada on 100 Huntley Street on June 22nd. Enjoy!
This morning, Secretary Clinton released the State Department's ninth annual "Trafficking in Persons Report." The report assesses more than 170 countries on what efforts their governments are taking to stop human trafficking. To learn more about sex trafficking specifically, I recommend the recent bookSex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, by Siddharth Kara. (A portion of the proceeds from the book will be donated to Free the Slaves.)Hillary Clinton releases human trafficking report
Tue, 06/16/2009 - 12:07pm
A special thanks to Brandi McElheny for all the hard work she put into the Feed the Forgotten campaign. Over two weeks, she helped to raise $20,120. That's food for over 7,000 people in Uganda who are starving right now.
You can read Brandi's summary of the campaign and the many, many bloggers who picked up this project here on her blog.
We are now in a position to begin launching several carepoints within Uganda. We'll report back with pictures and more information.
Two reviews of Scared have just come out. One is by, Mary DeMuth, an author I highly respect. She's an incredible writer in the fiction and non-fiction department. Get her books, you will love her writing. The second is by CJ Darlington, who won the Christian Writer's Guild's Operation Novel Contest. Her review appeared on TitleTrakk today. Hope you enjoy reading them:
"Scared is the hand adjusting our blurry lense of the world ... You’ll visit Africa while readingScared. And once you finish, a little piece of Africa will remain with you."
Here in America it’s easy to hole ourselves up in our cozy little houses with our laptops and iPods, oblivious to rest of the world. Our knowledge of foreign affairs comes from Twitter. If the AC goes out, the coffee burns, or the car won’t start, our day’s ruined. But the truth is that even the poorest in our country would be considered rich in some parts of Africa. What if a bad day wasn’t the barista getting your order wrong but going hungry . . . for five days in a row? What if instead of lying in bed worrying about that presentation on Monday, you worried who would provide for you because your mother was dying of AIDS?
At the forefront of Tom Davis’s novel is Stuart Daniels, a washed up New York Times photographer who’s thirty seconds of fame came from a photo of dead bodies he shot during a rebel militia raid in Congo. He barely escaped with his life and sometimes wishes he had died with the rest of the massacred village. He’s lost his drive, and his editor knows it. Which is why his next assignment in Swaziland could seal his fate. If he doesn’t produce the goods this time, he might not have a career to come home to.
Scared also features a twelve-year-old Swazi girl named Adanna, and it’s her story that is the hardest to read. Not because Davis’s writing is poor. Exactly the opposite. The writing is so good we feel every moment of the girl’s pain; we hear every longing of her heart. Adanna personifies the emaciated faces we’ve all seen on those tv commercials for relief organizations. How many of us have changed the channel rather than acknowledge poverty, hunger, and disease? Reading Adanna’s story brings the reality front and center. Here, right now, in the 21st century, children like her are suffering through horrors we can hardly fathom.
A powerful eye-opener, Scared isn’t an issue novel meant to guilt us into action. This is a compelling story first, and I believe Davis meant for Scared to challenge, not condemn. As Americans we’re extremely blessed, but our priorities need to be re-calibrated. Scared is the hand adjusting our blurry lense of the world. It also addresses the major question of, “Why does God even allow this type of suffering?” Says Davis, “It’s my firm belief that God has already sent the answers to solve the world’s most difficult issues, and the answer is people like us getting involved.”
Davis is best known for his nonfiction books Red Letters andFields of the Fatherless. He’s also the president and CEO ofChildren’s HopeChest, a Christian-based child-advocacy organization which helps orphans in Easter Europe and Africa. With all these irons in the fire it’s amazing how well he pulled off writing this work of fiction. You’ll visit Africa while reading Scared. And once you finish, a little piece of Africa will remain with you. Hopefully the Scripture, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world,” will remain with you too.
C.J. Darlington's first novel, Thicker Than Blood, was the winner of the 2008 Christian Writers Guild's Operation First Novel contest. It will be published January 2010 by Tyndale House. When she's not writing, she's reading. Her hobbies include book and art collecting, fly fishing, painting and drawing. Visit her online at her blog where she talks about books, writing, and publishing. You can also look her up at Twitter and Facebook.
It's as easy as going to the publisher's website here and leaving a comment. No strings attached! You will also find some interview questions and answers about why I wrote Scared, as well as a few hidden themes in the story and some discussion questions.
An excerpt from an interview with Tom Davis...
My passion is driven from the core belief that not only can everyone in the West do something to help children trapped in poverty, they must. God’s kingdom comes when God’s people tackle issues like these and change the circumstances because of their love. We are the answer, that’s why we must act.
