Writing is like being able to put life into a snow globe. It takes the things that are too big and scary and reduces them into a form that I can put away when I want and look at from a distance. It also takes all that’s good in life and captures it into something I can take out when I want and look at close up and keep forever. It makes the bad things into something I can hold…and the good things into something I can hold onto. Both help so much that I need that little souvenir of life.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Book Blurb Friday #35

It’s time again for Book Blurb Friday! Thank you to Lisa Ricard Claro of Writing in the Buff for hosting this wonderful challenge to write a blurb of 150 words max designed to sell a book inspired by her picture. I loved this week's photograph, and this is overwhelmingly one of my favorite covers so far. My blurb this week is 144 words.
~Called~
If God had ever spoken to Christopher Jostus, Chris had clearly never listened. Chris was a drug dealer, a thief, a wretch who hardly knew what the inside of a church looked like. But an old woman who had once made quite an impression on Chris began appearing to him. In a burning trash bin, in an alley, in his dreams. Each time she said the same thing: “God is calling you, son.”

And what’s more, God wasn’t calling just to save him. God wanted to put him to work helping others. Hard work.

Was it the drugs? Was Chris losing his mind? No one had ever bet on Chris before in his life. Why would God have such lofty goals for a drug-addled loser?

The answer that surprised everyone was because Chris could deliver. And Chris was perhaps the most surprised of all.

Saint Anthony once wrote about having gone into the desert on silent retreat and being assaulted by all manner of visions—devils and angels, both. He said, in his solitude, he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company. If you are appalled, he said, then it was a devil who had visited you. If you feel lightened, it was an angel. ~Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love

10 comments:

  1. Really impressed with how you've done the text on the cover of this!

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  2. 'Chris could deliver', added just a tinge of humor. Apart from that, what I think beautiful is, whom people consider "losers" may not be seen that way by God at all. And showing interest and kindness, as that old woman, who knows what might happen?! Tammy, excellent idea!

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  3. Done it again my friend! Funny how we think the least likely are in reality the most likely. Great quote too!

    Have to run my 3 demons are staring at me in their fur coats. :)
    Jules @ Trying To Get Over The Rainbow

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  4. Fabulous, Tammy. Like Sandra, I'm impressed by the cover, too, not just the blurb. I would buy this book in a heartbeat.

    Kay, Alberta, Canada
    An Unfittie’s Guide to Adventurous Travel

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  5. Beautiful premise, Tammy, and a book I'd love to read. One of the themes in my writing is that what we see isn't always the way things are; judgments are usually wrong before we never have all the facts. This meshes with that, and I'd love to find out about Chris and read his journey.

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  6. A wonderful theme which underlines the good that exists in all of us. I'm always cheering the underdog, so I know I'd enjoy this story.

    As others have noted, your image is wonderful. I struggled with a color for the title and settled for white. I actually yelled "That's it!" when I saw how you'd used the stained glass pattern.

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  7. Wow, this is a wonderful book ... yes, I would buy it. How did you do that with the cover? Great job all the way around; and I enjoyed the quote at the end too.

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  8. That stained glass pattern is soooo cool. And is your blurb! I'm betting on Chris to come throuhg!!

    Please read today's post on the reception last night and the silent auction to raise money for breast cancer. Thank you soooo much!!

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