The next book….

Where the "magic" (e.g. tears, caffeine, and self-loathing) happens. 

Sometimes when I write a really vulnerable, personal post (like this, this or this), someone will leave a kind comment encouraging me to do that more often. 

I always smile to myself and think, “Yes, because I’ve totally got the emotional fortitude it takes to bleed onto the page on demand.” 

Things have been a little quiet around here because I’ve been bleeding all over the pages of a new book. It’s a book about church—loving it, losing it, searching for it, finding it—and if all goes according to plan, you can read it in the Fall of 2014. 

I always save my best writing and best energy for my books, and now that I’m on deadline and aiming for 1,000 words a day (!), there’s not much left in the reserves for the blog. This is a deeply personal book that I want to write with great care, so I find myself struggling to complete a single email after a long day of writing (and eating animal crackers, and drinking wine, and ignoring phone calls, and listening to the Pandora Civil Wars station for 14 hours straight, and gaining 15 pounds, and wondering how a chapter about Ash Wednesday somehow left me scouring the periodic table of elements for an hour). 

So December will be a little quiet, though I’ve still got some good stuff lined up for the month: a review of Christena Cleveland’s book Disunity in Christ, “Ask an Open Theist” with Greg Boyd, a list of 101 amazing Christian women speakers, and a cheat sheet for N.T. Wright’s latest book. And beginning in January, we’ll launch a bunch of exciting new series and features. 

As always, thanks for your patience. I’m so grateful for this community. You have shaped and informed so much of the content of this next book. I haven’t written a word of it without thinking of you.