Author Archives: Janet Sketchley

About Janet Sketchley

Janet Sketchley is an Atlantic Canadian writer whose Redemption’s Edge Christian suspense novels have each been finalists in The Word Awards. She's also the author of the devotional collection, A Year of Tenacity. Janet blogs about faith and books. She loves Jesus and her family, and enjoys reading, worship music, and tea. Fans of Christian suspense are invited to join her writing journey through her monthly newsletter: bit.ly/JanetSketchleyNews.

What Will Jesus Say?

4 Replies

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge:Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 2 Timothy 4:1-2, NIV*

I’ve read these verses before, and always focused on Paul’s charge to Timothy. This time, I saw the word “judge”.

My first response was a sense of reassurance: it’s Jesus as Judge. I trust Him. 1 John 1:9 and other verses promise His verdict for those who’ve accepted His salvation will read, “paid in full”.

On second thought, I realized it won’t stop there. Will I hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant”? (Matthew 25:21, NIV*)

Or have I been wasting my time, coasting, doing my own thing?

So many things take me back to Proverbs 3:5-6. Be sure God is directing. Spend time with Him daily. Trust and obey.

I can’t let the fear that I might mess up make me not step up, when there’s an opportunity. Nor can I believe the lie that pictures a stern God shaking a finger.

I need to trust His grace and forge ahead. Out of love, not out of dread or obligation.

Father God, thank You for reminding me I am accountable to You. Sometimes I forget I have limited time and opportunities, and I waste them. Thank You for Your grace that forgives and empowers. Grow in me a willing, trusting, obedient heart. Help me be a good, faithful child of the King.

∞

Jason Gray’s song, “More Like Falling in Love,” points us back to the motivation we need if we’re going to serve our King.

*New International Version (NIV) Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Review: Back on Murder, by J. Mark Bertrand

4 Replies

Back on Murder: A Roland March Mystery, by J. Mark Bertrand (Bethany House, 2010)

Roland March was a good detective, but now he’s on the way out. Something happened—a bad case, a personal tragedy, perhaps both—and he stopped trying.

His chief reluctantly assigns him to a gangland murder: one last chance, and one March discovers he desperately wants to take.

His superiors want him gone. He’s told to drop his brilliant hunch. Everything he tries only makes things worse. And it’s September, time for his wife’s annual depression.

Back on Murder is a fantastic read. Author J. Mark Bertrand nails the detective’s voice in this first-person novel. His descriptions are fresh, vivid, unique.

This is some of what March sees as he studies the first crime scene:

“The couch cushions blossom white with gunshots, exposed foam bursting from the wounds…. Evidence markers, chalk lines. imposing scientific regularity over the shell casings, the dropped firearms, the fallen bodies.” (page 12)

Here, March is arguing with his wife, Charlotte:

“We’re not yelling at each other. Not quite. But it’s a hissing little knife fight of a conversation, no dodging or parrying, just attack, attack, attack.” (page 42)

First person works for me as a mystery reader—whatever the sleuth or detective learns, I learn as well. Sometimes I can even piece a few clues together before he or she does, although not so much in this case.

But the novel is written in the present tense, a major turn-off for me. This is a fast-paced story, and once I was into it, my brain converted the action descriptions to past tense (that’s what it thinks is normal after 40+ years of reading). Then it would trip on a present-tense verb and throw me off the story’s rollercoaster. Not fun.

In the midst of assimilating the whole present-tense-fast-action thing, on page one I found a description of the murder victim: unique and well-written, but referring to his “wife-beater”. While I usually feel the political-correctness enforcers go overboard, this one should maybe have been stopped.

I was surprised a) that it was there, and b) that all readers would be expected to know the words mean a sleeveless, scooped-neck undershirt. If you didn’t know, I doubt you’d figure it out from context. You’d just be thinking about the dead guy having beaten his wife. This dead guy may not even have had a wife, so that’s a bad distraction from what he did have: enemies.

It’s hard for crime novels to have happy endings when they’re about death. March’s case resolves in a mostly satisfactory manner from his perspective. For readers, it a good ending. Our questions have been answered, some justice has been dealt, and there’s an open-ended issue that promises us future plots. Professionally, things are looking up for March. On a personal level, he and Charlotte are making progress.

March is a non-Christian protagonist for both Christian and general market police procedural lovers. Readers wanting a conversion scene for March need to look elsewhere. It wouldn’t be a realistic step for him at this point, but perhaps in a future novel. I found his non-faith gave him the opportunity to let Christians see how others may perceive us. He isn’t intentionally nasty, but he doesn’t get it. We all know people like that, and we need to understand them and to help them understand us.

J. Mark Bertrand is the co-author (with Deeanne Gist) of the romantic suspense, Beguiled. Back on Murder is so tightly-written that I can’t believe it’s his first solo novel.

Take a few minutes to read an excerpt from Back on Murder.  And there’s an interesting Q&A with J. Mark Bertrand that promises:

“With the fallout from Back on Murder, and some new secrets coming to light, March’s next case might be the most disturbing he’s ever faced. The next book in the Roland March series, Pattern of Wounds, is schedule for release in Summer 2011.” [Read the full Q&A here.]

J. Mark Bertrand’s website is Back on Murder. Why write the novel in first-person, present-tense, with a non-Christian protagonist who’s somewhat of an anti-hero? In a guest-blogging post at best-selling suspense novelist Brandilyn Collins’ Forensics and Faith blog, he claims, “The Story Made Me Do It”.

I like Roland March, and I’m glad he’s back on murder. Present-tense narrative or no, I’ll be waiting to read Pattern of Wounds.

[Review source: Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications Inc. Available now at your favourite bookseller from Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group.]

Tourists at Home

2 Replies

When we go away, I like to explore, to check out some of the cool things to see (and to eat). There are plenty of options at home, too, but I don’t pay as much attention. Maybe it’s because I can always do it another day. When you’re visiting somewhere, you’re on limited time.

I’m happy to have a son young enough to still like day trips with Mom, so each week of summer we plan an adventure. I hope it stops raining, or this week’s might be kind of soggy.

We’ve picked strawberries, visited a couple of favourite parks… I want to find something new to do near home and I may have found it. I hear there’s an Italian market that sells gelato….

What do you like to do near home for a mini-vacation?

Be Still, My Soul

14 Replies

I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
Psalm 131: 1b-2, NIV*

This is one of those psalms God uses to remind me to draw nearer to Him, to learn to abide in Him. After He nudged me through 2 Timothy about needing to steep in His presence, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see these verses show up in my daily reading calendar.

Two more gentle invitations to abide arrived in my in-box, posted on other blogs. At Under the Cover of Prayer, Judith Lawrence’s post, “Contemplatives Without Cloisters,” lures me with the promise of ongoing communion with God, even amid life’s ordinary routines.

“The call is to prayer, to be at one with the Sacred at any and every given moment of the day or night.”

Meanwhile, at Other Food: Daily Devo’s, Violet Nesdoly posted “Walking with God”:

“When we walk with someone we go in the same direction. We move at the same speed. A walk conjures pictures of conversation and fellowship along the way. It is exercise non-strenuous enough that we don’t tire quickly — a relationship for the long haul.”

Violet’s post includes a selection of quotes from Andrew Murray. This one stirs a longing in my spirit:

“Abiding in Jesus is not a work that needs each moment the mind to be engaged, or the affections to be directly and actively occupied with it. It is an entrusting of oneself to the keeping of the Eternal Love, in the faith that it will abide near us, and with its holy presence watch over us and ward off the evil, even when we have to be most intently occupied with other things. And so the heart has rest and peace and joy in the consciousness of being kept when it cannot keep itself.” (Devotional Classics: Andrew Murray George Müller Collection [Andrew Murray Collection, Kindle Edition], Location 847)

Father God, Creator, Sustainer, my spirit longs for this awareness of “being kept when it cannot keep itself”. Only You could plant such a desire, and I thank You for it. You are also the only one to fulfill it. Help me do my part and learn to walk with You. Help me not to waste time fretting about things that are Your responsibility. Help me rest in You, securely held in Your keeping. Help me trust and love You in complete faith.

Note: Ann Voskamp has a beautiful post today at A Holy Experience: “Three Ways to Really Enter into His Rest Right Now”

∞

“You Are My Hiding Place,” by Selah, lets me reflect on God’s trustworthiness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co6HXUN19AY&feature=related

*New International Version (NIV) Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Review: The God Cookie, by Geoffrey Wood

Leave a reply

The God Cookie, by Geoffrey Wood (WaterBrook Press, 2009)

“Perhaps none of this would have happened had they not been arguing about golf balls.”

I don’t know about you, but I figure any book that opens with a line like that has to be worth reading. Especially when it’s written by Geoffrey Wood, who had me laughing frequently in his previous novel, Leaper.

The ones doing the arguing are Parrish, Mason and Duncan, three guys in their early 20’s who work together in Parrish’s coffee shop. They do a lot of this friendly hassling of one another, and on the day in question the topic somehow gets around to whether God talks to people. (Parrish thinks He’s real, the other two aren’t sure, and none of them pay Him much mind.)

Circumstances unfold in such a way that when Parrish opens a fortune cookie after the argument, he believes the words inside are from God. A little bemused and regretting he asked God to speak, he isn’t quite sure what God wants him to do.

Parrish ends up at a bus stop, where he befriends Rose and Audra and encounters a host of other characters. He thinks he’s supposed to help someone, and as he bumbles along trying to find who that someone is and what to do for them, he draws Audra along with him.

Geoffrey Wood is a thinker, as well as having a delightfully quirky sense of humour. His slightly detached, omniscient style works well in this story (although I did have some trouble in the opening pages, trying to figure out who was who among the three guys). It also lets him pull readers in as observers, and behind the surface storyline we can think about the deeper questions he raises about how we relate to one another—and to God.

Although the narrative feels a bit distant, it offers glimpses into individuals’ daily struggles that let readers empathize. I hope it teaches us, as the events teach John Parrish, to listen. Really listen to the people around us.

WaterBrook is a Christian publisher, but The God Cookie is a novel that should cross over well to the mainstream market. It’s definitely not “formula Christian material” (whatever that is). None of the characters go to church or do all “the right things”.

Some Christian readers may look only at the surface and close the book as moderately irreverent. That would be a mistake. Read to the end, and while you won’t find fancy theology, you’ll find spiritual truth (suitable to Christianity, not just vague truth). And it’s not irreverent, it’s honest about where these three men are in their spiritual lives at the start of the story.

We all know people like that. They don’t mean to be offensive to God, they just don’t have Him on their radars. Everyone starts that way until He pings us with His.

I’d like to know where the novel is set. It’s somewhere in the United States I presume, northern enough to need hats and gloves in February but where snow that late in the season is not a given.

Canadian readers, be warned: the novel refers to people wearing toboggans. I puzzled a bit about why one would wear a toboggan that was meant for coasting on snow, and then I wondered if an intrepid Canadian had pulled the wool over the author’s and editors’ eyes. (Bad pun intended.)

We call them toques, (or tuques, depending on who you believe). For the uninitiated, that’s pronounced to rhyme with “Luke” and it’s a knitted hat. According to Wikipedia, “toboggan” is a short form of “toboggan hat”. But on the toboggan page it sends you to the tuque page to read about the hat. It also says a toque is a chef’s hat and a tuque is a knitted hat, but any knitting pattern I’ve seen has spelled it toque. Google search obligingly provides hats for both spellings.

A traditional book review shouldn’t rabbit-trail like this, but somehow I think Parrish and his buddies would approve. Nonetheless, back on track. Here are some snippets from the novel, to show the fresh delivery Geoffrey Wood gives his prose and his ideas:

“Duncan…leaned on the espresso bar, nervously patting the top of his head with his hand, as if gentle persistence might nudge his thoughts out of hiding.” (p. 162)

“My strangling a bus sign cannot, unfortunately, be blamed on my head wound.” (p. 188, and my personal favourite line in the novel.)

“What God did next for Audra was interesting, mainly because God had been doing it all along. [without it yet being seen]” (p.266)

I laughed less with The God Cookie than with Leaper, but I thought more and got the message better. I hate to use a word like “message” because neither novel is “about” an agenda. Neither preaches. They’re about the characters. Those characters, at least the protagonists, grow and change, but it comes organically from their natures and their experiences.

The God Cookie is a brilliant novel, and I hope we’ll see more from Geoffrey Wood very soon.

Check out chapter one of The God Cookie and see if you don’t want to read more. You can read an interview with Geoffrey Wood at Novel Journey.

Here’s a video introduction to The God Cookie from the author himself. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87ROs9DvQ6o]

[Review copy courtesy of my local public library.]

The INSPY Awards: fiction and creative non-fiction

2 Replies

Do you have a favourite novel or creative non-fiction book published in the United States between July 1st, 2009 and June 30th, 2010? Hardcovers and paperbacks only, no eBooks.

The INSPYs are “the Bloggers’ Award for Excellent Faith-Driven Literature.”

From the INSPY website:

The innovative award is designed to help readers in their search for the preeminent faith-inspired literature of today. The INSPYs were created to select and showcase books with the highest literary standards that grapple with the Christian faith. To find these works, the INSPYs net is cast wide, accepting nominations of books aimed at the Christian bookstore market as well as those from the general market.

Award organizers are seeking book nominations in the following genres: Historical Fiction; Amish Fiction; Thriller, Suspense, Crime Fiction; General and Literary Fiction; Romance and Romantic Suspense; Speculative Fiction; Creative nonfiction; and Young Adult Fiction. The deadline to nominate a book is July 31.

Now I just have to remember which books I’ve read and loved fall into this publishing-date window.

Of Tea and Spiritual Maturity

2 Replies

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
2 Timothy 2:1, NIV*

I often read pages of Scripture before something nudges my spirit. Other times the same verse catches me for days.

This is one of those times. Today I’m looking at the “be strong in” segment of this verse.

Hot tea steeps in 3-7 minutes. Sun-brewed tea takes 2 – 5 hours. Refrigerator tea steeps 6 hours or overnight. One starts with boiling water, the others with cold.

If we’re the water, the steeping time depends on our temperature—how much heat we’ve been exposed to before we come to Jesus.

As water that hasn’t been heated enough to boil, I’m drawn to the sun tea image. Not that I can go sit in the sun and relax, but as I go through the day, can I keep that spirit-focus to be held in His Light?

Tea has an optimum strength, depending on the variety and on the taster’s preference. Leave the bags in too long and it’ll get bitter. Not so with us.

Steeping in the Lord’s grace takes a lifetime.

Father, help me rest in You—steep in Your Spirit and Your grace. Let it change and flavour me as I learn to abide in You. Quiet me, remind me, draw me ever nearer to Yourself. Cradle and sustain me until You brew me into that which You’ve designed me to be.

∞

This week’s song is “If I Could Just Sit With You Awhile,” written by Dennis Jernigan. I’m glad I found the version sung by Todd Agnew on one of his early indie CDs. Please ignore the typing issues in the video. I work with what’s available on YouTube.

*New International Version (NIV) Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Review: This Isn’t the Life I Signed Up For, by Donna Partow

2 Replies

This Isn’t the Life I Signed Up For, by Donna Partow (Bethany House, 2003)

The subtitle of this book is “A 10-week journey to hope and healing.” Donna Partow’s openness in sharing her own struggles gives her the credibility to write such a book.

She’s not a perfect woman dispensing packaged answers. In the journey toward hope and healing, she invites readers to “enroll in a class taught by a fellow student of life…guaranteed to include 0 percent oughts and shoulds. Instead, it’s 100 percent real life.” (page 16, 2003 edition)

We’ve all had disappointments and painful circumstances in our lives, the results of our own poor choices or things that just happened. We didn’t sign up for these—we want things like happiness, health and love.

The straight talk in this book offers us perspective on the past, and a way to move forward. It requires us to be open—real—with God, ourselves and others. Letting go and forgiving the hurts we’ve endured, big and small, can free us to embrace hope and healing: the life we’d like to sign up for.

I pulled this review from my ‘archives’ file, only to discover that This Isn’t the Life I Signed Up For has been re-released in 2010 from Baker Publishing Group with a new format.

From the Chapters-Indigo website:

“This new edition of This Isn’t the Life I Signed Up For now follows the format of Donna Partow’s most popular book, Becoming a Vessel God Can Use. Each of the ten chapters includes an integrated Bible study, along with helps for group leaders.”

I like this. My 2003 version has all the teaching but required a separate book for the Bible study aspect. As I check my shelves, I see I don’t have the book anymore. If you buy a copy, beware lending it out–your friend may want to keep it!

From the Baker website:

“The tools you need to make positive life changes are all here: In-depth Bible study, practical life application, Scripture memorization, and more. As Donna says, ‘If God can breathe new life into my weary heart and soul•there’s hope for everyone!’”

Donna Partow’s style is fresh and direct, and her message is timely. Her previous books include the bestselling Becoming a Vessel God Can Use, Walking in Total God-Confidence, and Standing Firm. More recent books are Becoming the Woman I Want to Be, Becoming a Vessel of God’s Power, and Making Money From Home: How to Run A Successful Home-Based Business.

You can find plenty of resources including online classes, news updates and tips on faith, family, fitness and finances at Donna’ website, Maximize Your Life for Maximum Kingdom Impact.

New Places I’ve Found on the Web

4 Replies

Here are some of the new or new-to-me places I’ve found on the Internet:

My Utmost for His Highest provides daily devotionals by Oswald Chambers

Under the Cover of Prayer shares insights, revelations and stories that will show the power of prayer.

Kyria is an online, subscription-based magazine for Christian women. You can check out a free sample here: Kyria: December 2009: Rest.

Listening to My Hair Grow is a new blog from Rose McCormick Brandon with posts on various topics that arise from “a search to regain quietness in my life”.

Live Green, Live Better is a garden-related blog by Kim Burgsma, offering “tips, tricks and true confessions from a landscape designer”.

Heartfelt Devotionals offers a variety of “Thoughts for Common Sense Living” from Brenda Wood.

Return Home and Tell is a new blog from Kimberley Payne, acting on Jesus’ words in Luke 8:39, “Return home and tell how much God has done for you.”

Free2soar offers flight-themed poetry and Scripture.

Talk on the Way is a website “dedicated to helping our generation know more than just facts about Jesus–to know Him personally” with articles and conversations to deepen personal spiritual growth and relationships.

Maureen’s Musings is the art-and-words blog of Nova Scotia folk artist and writer Maureen Newman. Maureen’s Rural Moments site will let you see all of her paintings.

Dreaming Big shares “reflections about identity, freedom and dreaming with God” from Christian speaker Heather Boersma.

And a hearty thank-you to Ann Voskamp of A Holy Experience, whose blog is not new to me but whose Write! Canada workshop on blogging challenged Christian writers to remember Jesus’ upside-down definition of success and to serve with our words.