April 11th, 2010

The Easter hols are flying by, and all I’ve got to show for the break from work is a massive red lump on my neck, together with numerous other identical wounds elsewhere, from a viscious afternoon of paintball. I’m in the middle of the third draft of my book, and the main development is that I’ve come up with a new title. Resurrection Men was never my final choice, mainly due to the fact that there is already a book with that title, but I was struggling for inspiration. I’m not going to reveal it now though. I know that my legion of fans will be disappointed at this news, and the internet will soon be rife with speculation on the many Jon Cooper fan forums, but hey….

I’m not feeling like I can get started on anything new in the meantime, either. If I do, I know that I’ll lose what little motivation I have to improve this book. Despite numerous people advising me to the contrary, I thought the original ending was ace! Editing and re-drafting doesn’t quite give the same level of satisfaction as creating a new chapter or whatever. I guess I’m going to have to get used to that, though. At least I have Mrs Cooper to keep me motivated towards making it the best that it can be before I allow it to be subjected to the merciless scrutiny of the publishing world. And anyway, my plan is that the original draft can be released as the tenth anniversary edition, with a posh new cover…..

I finished reading The Testament of Gideon Mack. I quoted it a couple of times in my last post, and here’s another:

‘Denying the existence of God [is] as arrogant and stupid as asserting it. The only sensible way to behave is to believe in what we know to be real.’

A sensible philosophy with one flaw – what if we know that God is real? Clearly the character who says this (and perhaps the author) think it impossible to believe in God, as we can’t know that. It got me to thinking about whether or not I do know that God is real – and I concluded that I do, because of the works I have seen him do. This, I presume, would raise a counter-argument from any agnostics: How can you attribute those works to God, and not luck/medicine/science, etc? I would say firstly that God controls those things, and uses them for his purposes – God gave us brains to look after each other, so why should he always perform blinding-flash miracles just to heal a medical condition? Secondly, and beyond that, I reckon that I can’t, with 100% certainty, say that God did those things – I have no concrete proof, only faith. Faith requires that I am confident in what I hope for, and certain of what I do not see, or words to that effect. To some, that will seem like foolishness (the Bible says that, too). To me, it sometimes seems like foolishness. I guess that then makes me a fool…. Well, that’s fine by me. God knows I’m a fool, a sinner, an idiot of the highest order. And he loves me just as I am….

For more on this theme of my (and our) stupidity coupled with God’s betterness, click here to listen to the song that I mentioned last time. Thanks go to Andy B for a great job on the recording front…..

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