Authors, students, and working professionals partner with me to get their books and other content out the door. I’ve worked on business books, fiction, personal statements, resumes, and scholarly articles.
The Austin Stone
The Austin Stone is the church I attend and one of the places where I serve. I’ve been a part of Story Team in the past and learned a lot about working with editors and being a part of a much, much bigger story. Today, I serve on the production team because of an interest in audio.
Beth El Bible
Beth El Bible is in El Paso, Texas. It was here that I first discovered a larger community of believing artists. I used my writing talents and skills to write weekly devotionals that were sent out via an email newsletter. It was an eye-opening experience to one of the ways God could use the gifts He’s given me.
Three Rivers Community Church
Three Rivers Community Church is where, in some ways, my faith was reawakened. Here, I volunteered as a marketing intern but ended up focusing on branding, probably because of the pastor’s background in visual arts. I helped redesign the logo, which has been used for a variety of print and web materials ever since.
Forget the Writer
“‘There is no such thing as THE WRITER.’ … The battle is this: the dethroning of the writer, the constant and all-consuming bloody coup every story or poem or essay—every genuine work of art—must accomplish over its author in order truly to live and to breathe and to have something to say to us that will matter.” — Brett Lott, Letters and Life, quoting Flannery O’Connor
The Day Runs Away
Some days, the day runs away with you. A bandit, a thief, a villain. You’re carried off, blindfolded and gagged. Where did the day go? How did it put you in a black bag thrown over its shoulder?
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Time is running out. Time is running out.
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Everything is unfamiliar. Where on earth did the day take you in its mad dash? How do you find your way back when everything is strange, alien?
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For that matter, how do you get out of these bonds? They’re starting to chafe the ankles and wrists. Every move, a little more skin lost to wherever and whatever place this is.
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This is not what you signed up for.
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You calm down, note the details. This place isn’t all that foreign. You know it; it’s simply been altered by a lack of sleep and mounting worry, a to-do list that never seems to end. One thing crossed off, and two more jump to take its place.
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Time is running out.
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Focus. You know this place. You’ve been here before. Time isn’t original. It can’t make off with you to places of its own creation. It can only warp what already is. A time-warp, if you prefer. Something having to do with space, time, some sort of continuum.
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You stretch, realize you have the means to escape. A rock that’s started to send shooting pains into your hip bone, a pocketknife—where else?—in your pocket. A spoon and hourglass.
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Time really should pay more attention if it intends to run away with the day, you.
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You escape the ropes, grab the spoon glinting in the moonlight, and tip-toe behind Time. One jab, and it falls apart. You measure it, spoonful by spoonful, into the hourglass. Time has run out.
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It’s time to go. Time is running out, and you’ve got better things to do than let it run away with the day or you.
Image: Erik Fitzpatrick (Creative Commons)