To start off 2024, I’m excited to announce Heretics of Piedmont: A Novel of the Waldensians as part of a unique giveaway! The organizer of this giveaway, Jayna Baas, had such a creative idea to promote an amazing collection of books that literally spans centuries of faith. As a side note, one of the books in this giveaway, Whose Waves These Are by Amanda Dykes, was one my wife and I read together.

When airport baggage conveyors brought mine and Andrea’s matching black suitcases into a terminal, it was hard to distinguish them from other generic bags rolling alongside them. They were branded as Jeep, but they weren’t extraordinary, and toward the end of their usefulness, I picked them out by their rips, broken wheels, and other scars. They were part of our marriage from the beginning. My parents bought them from Sam’s Club as their wedding gift to us, and our first trip with them was our downtown Chicago honeymoon.

My family has about a fifteen minute drive to church. It’s a scenic drive that includes farm fields contoured to the rolling hillsides, thick woodlands, and a small town. Often as my family loads into our car, the bells of a nearby church sound out through the southern Pennsylvania countryside. It’s not our church, but I still enjoy hearing those bells—the ancient call for the community to worship their Creator, Lord, and Savior.

I recently read a blog post by Pastor Tom Brennan titled, “How to Write a Book.” I’ve read two of his books and have been impressed by both the content and quality, so I knew his insight here would be valuable. A point he made in the post that caught my attention was this: Only write a book if you have read at least twenty-five books on similar subjects. I agreed, but then I wondered if I had read that amount for my two (almost three) fiction books.

I’m not sure about everyone else, but for me it’s easy to be pulled into investing in shiny new tools when learning a skill. When I picked up running, I heard about all the gadgets: smart watches, GPS, pricey shoes, running shirts, running shorts, head bands, wrist bands, armbands for your phone, apps for your phone, app subscriptions, virtual running coaches, and many more. Where do you start? I’ve found writing to be the same.

Continued from Part 1 I sat on a church pew one Saturday morning watching my children practice their Christmas program. It was going to last almost two hours, and I didn’t have anything except a notebook to occupy my mind. Three days earlier, I had finished planning my first novel, but other than about thirty pages of notes, I hadn’t yet written anything. I wanted to write it, but I needed something to propel me into the actual first draft.

To my brother— Adam Murdock #42 In March, my youngest brother, Adam, died in a car accident on his way home from work. I could never describe the feelings in a few words posted on the internet, nor would I want to. The first draft of The Lord of Luserna was two days from completion when everything happened. Instead of writing a few pages for a novel, I wrote an obituary.

How did I find myself writing a story about Renaissance-era religious dissenters? Since I can remember, I’ve had a love of geography. Some of my first memories were from watching the 1990 animated movie, The Rescuers Down Under. There’s a short scene where the heroes relay an important message from New York City to Australia. The camera zooms out to show a map and how a telegraph message went from point to point, halfway around the globe.

“A trailer for a book? Really?” Trailers for movies have been around for a long time, but it wasn’t until video distribution became simple in the mid-2000’s (especially in the advent of YouTube) that book trailers came into existence. For Heretics of Piedmont, I read from multiple sources that a trailer is helpful, but not totally necessary. I didn’t pursue it until just before that book’s release in September 2021. Video production is not at all something I was comfortable with, so I scoured Fiverr for a seller who could develop in a style I liked.

Folk stories and songs shape culture. What would the United States be without Davy Crocket and Daniel Boone, England without Robin Hood, Scotland without William Wallace, or France without Joan of Arc? They embody the national spirit and provide legends passed down from parents to children through the generations. During my ongoing study of the Waldensians, it’s easy to get bogged down in historical dates, names, and places, but miss the intricacies of daily life.