I’m A Guest On a Podcast! (And Other Fun News)

{Header photo by Will Francis on Unsplash}

WOW, the past two weeks have been quite the whirlwind. Between sharing the opening chapters of Operation Lionhearted with my newsletter subscribers, my cover designer officially beginning work on the 10th, ordering my first ARC (!!!!), and getting my novel’s completed ebook format back from Elisabeth G. Foley (it looks amazing—you can check out her website here!), a lot of things happened all at once in a very short amount of time. 

Celebratin’ over here like nobody’s business…

But now things have quieted down…and I have never been more relieved. I know it’s the calm before the storm; things will get crazy again before too much longer! But for now, I have no pressing responsibilities on the writing front. I can’t obsessively tweak Operation Lionhearted anymore, thank God, and I have a short lull before it’s time to write my article for Cultivating’s Autumn issue. 

What does this mean for me? Well, so far it’s meant that I can actually just…PLAY. I can “doodle”–which is my way of saying that I can write all the little snippets of random scenes that pop into my head. I may not be happy with them in the end, but at least I “doodled.” I can even write those fanfics I’ve dreamed up but haven’t had the time or mental energy to write. And if the day is winding down and I’m too tired to write, I’m giving myself the freedom to watch a movie instead. I watched The Rise of Skywalker for the fifteen-millionth time this past weekend, and I’m gonna finish watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince this week. 

But here’s something else I’ve been up to, something I hinted at in the title of this post: this very day, I am a guest essayist on a podcast! A few weeks ago, Matthew Clark–singer, songwriter, storyteller, and a fellow writer with Cultivating–asked if I would be willing to be a guest on his podcast, One Thousand Words. 

This podcast is different than any other podcast I subscribe to. Rather than each episode being a conversation, Matthew and his guests “share weekly essays glimpsing truth, beauty, and goodness along the way of pilgrimage toward God.” My essay, “The Defiance of Laughter,” is inspired by my favorite poem of Wendell Berry’s, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” It’s a deeply personal essay for me, not least because the ideas I present within it are ones that I have to preach to myself at least once a week! I hope y’all enjoy it, and that you give Matthew’s other episodes a listen.

Before I close out this short post, let me share just two more announcements:

NUMBER ONE: I saw Black Widow on its opening weekend! I’m not sure yet if I’ll write a review here on the blog, or if my brother Ben and I will record a podcast about it; it’ll probably be determined by whether or not Operation Lionhearted takes over my blogging in August, haha. But suffice it to say for now that I really loved it and I can’t wait to talk about it! I love Natasha Romanoff so muuuuuuch…

NUMBER TWO: As I said earlier in this post, I just ordered my first ARC for Operation Lionhearted! For those who may not know, an ARC is an “advanced reader copy”–a physical copy that isn’t the final physical copy. It has a temporary front cover, it isn’t for resale, and the manuscript can be tweaked, if necessary, before final publication. If the ARC looks good, I will order some more–and my next blog post will likely be an ARC giveaway! So do stay tuned for more details on that. 

My siblings are finished with school till early- to mid-August, which means that this week will be devoted to our family’s annual deep clean of the house…so I’ll end this post with a wave of my dusting rag. I’ll be back on the first Monday of August! 

Riding outta here like Harry on Buckbeak 😉