Interested in Green (the book, that is)?

Ted Dekker's book Green, the book trailer of which I've posted here as well, comes out soon in September. This is a prequel AND sequel to his fantasy trilogy books Black, Red, and White. If you haven't read this series, it's great! If you have, you might want to pre-order your copy of Green now while the discounts are good! I have a site you can go to where you can sign up and receive exclusive offers on Green and other Ted Dekker books. Just go to http://teddekker.com/readgreen and enter the CODE: 6926 when you sign up for these offers. You'll want to do it before September 1! That code will help me earn points as I am helping to advertise the book.

Meanwhile, enjoy the preview!

Cool Book Trailer for Green, by Ted Dekker

Currently Kiss By Ted Dekker, Erin Healy see related

A Story Nick Wrote

It was one of those dreams that Martin remembered vividly when he woke and that he never did forget afterward. Sometimes, he recalled it during the day and mistook it for a misplaced memory.

In it, he was at a city park. The grass shone with life. The blue ocean of the sky hung overhead. The sun suffused every detail. His daughter, Hope, lay on her stomach in the grass and read, her fingers intertwined in her long red hair. His son, Jonathan, propelled himself higher and higher on the swing. With a shout he flew into the air, his body like a high jumper’s, and landed with a roll in a cloud of dust.

He brushed himself off. “Hope,” he said, standing to block her light. “Hope, will you play with me?”

“Let me finish this chapter.”

“Oh, fine.” Jonathan squatted and began to tear the grass.

Hope, peering up at him, closed her book. “I’ll read later.”

“Push me on the merry-go-round!”

Jonathan took his place on the outer edge and gripped the bars. Hope, grinning, took hold and began to push the merry-go-round in its circle. She leaned forward, her thin legs straining against the packed dirt. Jonathan clung desperately as Hope gained speed. He fought the centrifugal force with every muscle in his body. Hope laughed as she saw him struggling and tried to add still more speed, her face as red as her hair in her exertion. Jonathan screamed gleefully as his fingers slipped. He flew off and landed in tumble.

“Are you all right?” Hope asked. She bent over, hands on her knees, and tried to catch her breath.

“That was awesome!” Jonathan tried to stand but collapsed in a heap in his dizziness.

About here, the dream became unclear to Martin. One other image remained: the older sister, book under her arm, and the younger brother, running ahead, both with their backs to him as they headed home.

When Martin woke, he lay awake, thinking of the dream. When he dressed, he paused and looked at the pregnant figurine that stood by the dresser mirror. The label in front had two dates and two names: Hope and Jonathan.

“I had a dream this morning,” Martin told his wife at breakfast.

“About what?”

“About our children.” He hesitated. “It was real, as if…. I was watching them at the park.” It had been a long time since he had thought of the miscarriages.

His wife, tears in her eyes and smiling sadly, put her hand on his. “Tell me about it.”

Gandalf is gone now, and this one isn't coming back

It's true. Gandalf passed away this week, Gandalf the guinea pig, that is. He was with us for about two years. We got him three wives this spring, and two of those passed away before him. But we still have Celina, the one we actually took to the vet or she would have died. It was very sad to lose him, but I like to think he lived in relative comfort and happiness while he was with us. I mean, he did have three wives, after all. I wouldn't recommend that state of being for our species, but I think he was okay with it.

My in-laws and Nick and I headed off for our annual ski trip on perhaps the most dangerously icy day of the year. It takes about five to six hours to make it up to the slopes in Michigan. It took us nine, four of which were spent in our own county.

At 8:15 a.m., my in-laws came to pick us up. It was raining on top of a couple layers of ice and snow. The temperature was hovering around 32 degrees. They had their two dogs, and I had mine, and we were headed to the dog kennel to drop them off. We dared not go more than about 10-15 mph on State Road 3, a separated four-lane highway. We made it to the road the kennel is on, but our progress was impeded by a stopped car nestled between two hills. We should have known better than to descend.

My in-laws' new car is perhaps the only Suburban in existence with 2-wheel drive. If the car hadn't been there, we might have made it up the next hill--might have. We didn't. We tried several times while the owner of the vehicle that had stopped before us slipped and crawled and shuffled up the same hill by foot to reach a house there. He didn't make it either. I think he eventually walked way out into a field in the hopes of finding more level ground. We don't know what happened to him.

Since the Suburban began to turn in the middle of this country road, we decided to try to turn it all the way back around and try going back. We were sitting perpendicular to the road, blocking all possibility of passing for other cars, for quite awhile. Fortunately, hardly anyone was out. Finally, finally, we turned around, and after several attempts, made it up the hill to go back. We got on SR 3 to try to go around to the dog kennel by another way. We were going no faster than 10 mph. SR 3 is a fairly fast highway with the tilted curves that every highway has and that you never notice unless you are going 10 mph. We tried to turn onto a road off one of these curves, and there was absolutely nothing we could do about it as the Suburban did a slow 180 and slid down the tilted curve right into a larger truck...that had done the exact same thing before us. You could look up and down the highway and see accidents happening right as we sat there. They eventually closed down SR 3 that morning. I don't envy the cops their work.

We messed up the bumper but drove away with no injuries or damage to the other truck. Keep in mind we'd been in this vehicle for a couple hours already...with three dogs on our laps. We drove back to Hayden Honda to get a four-wheel drive vehicle to take the dogs to a closer and more easily accessible kennel, and then, believe it or not, we started our trip again, this time toward Michigan.

We followed a salt truck moving backward at one point because it couldn't make it up the hills forward. By noon, we'd made it as far as Lagrange, about 20 miles from our starting point. After that, the roads got better, and I believe we even hit the speed limit.

That trip was enough of a trial for us, but I'll give you a brief rundown of what followed next. We got the wrong dates on our ski lift passes, but we were able to fix those the next morning when we found out. It rained that entire day so that we were only able to ski a little in the morning. My nephew Lex fell on his face on the ice (he's 2 years old) and had to be taken to a hospital for stitches. When we got home, my brother-in-law had to deal with water seepage between the carpet and mats in his Taekwondo school (I hear it smelled pretty bad). Nick had to deal with a water problem in the bakery. And there were other little odd things that just seemed to be going wrong.

When it rains, it pours, they say.

But we did have one good day of beautiful skiing, and perhaps that made up for all the hassle. Perhaps.