Note from the Author

Finally my story, a full-length Christian novel, has been launched and is available. Here's the first part of the saga of its background. You can find Tangled Strands at https://www.createspace.com/6918620

I first heard the song “Transformed” in the early 1950s and liked it so well that the words and music stuck with me. A dozen or so years later in the 1960s, the main characters of this story were born in my head during a stay at a Michigan lake. In the 1970s in South America I wrote multiple pages of back story.

In the early 1980s, I acquired my first computer. Little by little, I transcribed the pages of back story to the computer and began drafting more of the story.

I drafted it in all kinds of places. In the back seat of a car on a cross-country trip, I “wrote” some important elements in my head and scribbled a few notes to remind me when I got home. Many evenings while driving a stretch of Interstate to and from a teaching job, I would compose in my head, then transcribe to the computer when I got home.

In the 1990s, I puttered with it some more, adding another key character and making first attempts at a sequel. At some point, I considered the story complete. A handful of family and friends read it and said they liked it, but a publisher I approached was not interested.

In the mid-2000s, I decided that if I were ever to do anything with it, I needed to get serious about some training. In 2005 I attended my first Christian writers’ conference and got my first lessons in fiction in a class by the renowned Christian writer Angela Hunt.

I learned several startling things. I spent the next decade learning how to incorporate those style elements into a number of rewrites of the story. I hope you enjoy it. If you have feedback, you can write me at esthergrossts@gmail.com.

Getting Close

I've been thinking for weeks—actually three months—that it was about to happen. 

In November I was confident it would be ready for Christmas.

But no. 

Well, surely in January when the proofreader friend finished with it. 

But still no. One delay led to another. 

Even when we thought we were ready to submit it—and actually did submit it, it turned out to need another round of not only proofreading but a bit of editing. And that led to an unexpected major edit that I hadn't anticipated doing but that I feel really good about.

So what am I talking about? 

A life-long project, one that has at various times been pursued intermittently, for a while seriously, and then again laid aside for what turned out to be several years. 

But a few people kept bringing it up. Why didn't I do something about it?

By now you’re impatient with me because I’m not saying what it is. You’ll have to forgive me because I don’t want to make an actual announcement about it until I “see the whites of its eyes.” It would be devastating to announce it and then have it go down the tubes after all.

So I’m asking you to tune in your ears and keep watch with your eyes even as you forgive me for still holding back.