Here's a lovely passage from Leif Enger. Oh to be able to write like this: "For heartening sights nothing beats a well-packed picnic basket. One so full it creaks. One carried by a lady you would walk on tacks for. Does all this make her sound beautiful to you? Because she

Open to me the gates of righteousness, That I may enter through them and give thanks to the LORD. This is the gate of the LORD; The righteous shall enter through it.

Here's another beautiful passage from "Peace Like a River" by Leif Enger from the perspective of a young character who has just failed to show good judgment: "It seemed necessary just then to touch base with the Lord. Shutting my eyes, I leaned into the horse. I prayed in words

Look who is moving up the list on the "Countries hitting my website" statistic! * No idea why Bulgaria is here except maybe scammers. * But hopefully the wonderful people from Japan will pull way ahead of China soon! 😂 todnewman.com

Had fun today teaching two AP Literature classes at Salpointe Catholic High School on writing and publishing. Lots of interest, lots of kids who are readers. Based loosely on my self-publishing series: todnewman.com/new-blog-serie…

“And Tobiah sent letters to make me afraid.” Reading through Nehemiah this AM forces me to consider that lying, manipulation, and treachery in politics is not merely a recent invention!

📚New artwork and strategy... My current WIP is a novelette (my first book less than 50K words). My strategy is to put it ONLY on Kindle Unlimited for free (or almost free) to draw attention to my older Old Testament prophet historical fiction series. Cover artwork attached...

A well-run society is so precarious… Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and got the returned Israelites to function. Then he went to Persia for a while and everything in Jerusalem unwound. Sounds like human nature hasn’t changed much. Nehemiah 13 tells the story.

Not the best sunset by far, but this one was subtly beautiful. From my back porch…

This looks a lot like my cover art process! 😂😂😂

The next work I will be publishing is a novelette in a series of historical fiction about Old Testament prophets. Here are the words of the old prophet in Bethel who betrayed the unknown man of God in 1 Kings 13. One of the most puzzling stories in Scripture that I've chosen to

Here’s a portion of Psalm 124. Ponder this imagery for a second! Blessed be the Lord who has not given us as prey to their teeth! We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; The snare is broken, and we have escaped!

Just in time for Easter!

Here's another "Peace Like a River" quote: context is the young protagonist agonizing over the fate of a federal agent he betrayed. If you want to know why I read this book twice in six months, see the review (with quotes) that I wrote on my website: "A pain started up, as of

I've been listening to Sweet Comfort Band songs all afternoon while I work on redoing an old book cover. Thanks to Bryan Duncan for the great songs and memories. If you don't know their songs, they have a huge presence on Apple Music. And check out that album cover!

OK. Replaced the artwork on the book cover. I didn't like the old one (never got the character's hands right and my attempts to fix it made it worse). This is more aligned with the style of my latest books in this series. Thoughts?

Hi to my X author friends (and all others!): I'm running a free download from this Thursday to next Monday on a new novelette in my "Prophetic" series where I fill in the gaps (and add some magical realism) in the lives of interesting Old Testament prophets. You can read about