Have you ever found yourself down a path in life that you never ever dreamt you would be on?
Well, that’s where I find myself today.
People have asked me if I always wanted to be a writer growing up, and I can honestly say that was never a thought of mine.
What I can tell you is that God started opening up doors for me to write in my mid-30s. A friend and mentor of mine that I used to eat lunch with would regularly share crazy outdoor adventure stories that he and his family had experienced together (canoeing fur traders’ routes from the 1700’s, staying in a deserted trapper’s cabin along one of the rivers in Canada etc), and over the course of time, he lured me in.
My wife, who is always up for adventure, had been wanting to start backpacking as a family for years. We had done some pretty intense hikes, but we always did day hikes and found ourselves exiting the trail trying to get back before dark. She had backpacked as a high schooler and had wonderful memories of hiking in the Rockies. She kept telling me, “The beauty of backpacking is that you don’t have to leave these beautiful spots that you hike into. If you carry your gear with you, you get to stay there by yourself to enjoy the sights and sounds.”
So, between the lure of creating our own adventure stories (like my friend, Rob), my wife’s love for adventure, and my appreciation for the outdoors through hunting and fishing, we embarked on a new family adventure - backpacking. We started out on the shores of Lake Superior in Ontario and one trip quickly led to another and another. Soon, we had our own collection of memories, stories, and mishaps.
It was all so much fun that I started journaling our trips, and it became a family thing. As we backpacked, we would all take turns recording the day’s adventures. Today, these journals are an absolute treasure and a blast to pull out and read every now and then.
Somewhere along the line, I had friends who had read our family journaling, and every time they finished, they would say that I should turn it into a book. I would just laugh it off, thinking that no one would be interested in what we were doing.
About that same time, a friend approached me about a writing opportunity with an outdoors’ based ministry called Sportsmen’s Devotional. He suggested that I throw my name in the hat and see what happened. I prayed about it and decided to give it a shot. To my surprise, I got a call back, set up an interview, and I soon joined a team of Christian outdoorsmen from all across North America - about 30 of us in total. This was back in about 2006, but to this day, I still write one article a month for them to share as a devotional.
At this point, I had already been contemplating writing a devotional book, using our outdoor adventures to work from, and with the monthly practice I had with Sportsmen’s Devotional, everything just seemed to be coming together to try it.
I started doing some research on how the publishing industry worked. One thing that stuck out to me in my research was that the average writer would receive over 60 “no’s” before they would get a “yes” from a publishing company. A friend of mine had also written his first book, and so he and I were bantering back and forth about his experience as a new writer. I didn’t really know exactly what I was doing, but I decided that I would start by contacting the company he had worked with and send them a sample and a proposal for a book. And to my shock and surprise, they said they wanted to publish my outdoor’s devotional - Swim Upstream. They were the first and only company that I had submitted my work to. It was amazing, and honestly, I wasn’t prepared to hear “yes” at all. I was bracing myself for the onslaught of “no’s” that I had previously read about.
One other caveat to throw into the mix is that an author I highly respected (Steve Farrar) had once said in one of his books that no one should ever write a book until they are at least forty. Now you can argue with me on this point if you’d like, but his rationale was that you really don’t have anything to say of value until you’ve lived a little bit of life. Steve has spent his career working in men’s ministry, and one of his observations is that men change at about 40 and start operating out of conviction in their faith rather than obligation. I had often reflected on his comment, and as I lined up the project of putting the first devotional together, I recognized that the publish date we had set would put me at about the age of 40. The dots continued to line up; this one made me smile, pondering what God was up to.
To speed things up a bit, Swim Upstream was published in 2010, and as I got busy raising teenagers, I had to set aside the writing. Periodically, I would have opportunities to write articles for Lake Superior Magazine or Michigan Out of Doors or even do a radio show here or there.
As our younger kids headed off to college, I started to have more free time, so I worked on a second devotional - Breaking Camp. Most of this was actually in place by about 2019; I just didn’t have enough time to finish it completely.
In the midst of writing Breaking Camp, I started playing around with an idea I had for a novel going all the way back to 2001. I tried working on both of the books simultaneously for a while, but they required different perspectives to write from, so I decided to finish off Breaking Camp by itself first.
As the finishing touches were being made on the second devotional, an opportunity presented itself to do some writing for a newspaper - The Alpena News. I had never written professionally for a newspaper, but I figured that what I had done for the magazines had to be close enough, so again, I agreed to become a team member of a group of people who would write a faith-based article once a month - “Everyday Faith”.
Shortly after joining the newspaper, Breaking Camp was launched last year at the very end of September. This past year has been a lot of fun, as interest in both of the devotionals has grown significantly. Over 20 stores across Michigan are now carrying the books, and Swim Upstream became a top ten percent seller this fall as an independently published book. My kids have hopped in and have all contributed along the way in this process and are now a part of my “tech” team - thank goodness!
God has been so good throughout this entire process, going all the way back to 2007. I never would have dreamt that this would become a regular part of my life back then.
But, at this point, it’s time to shift gears. It’s time to start the long awaited Alaskan adventure novel back up. I really don’t want to say too much about the idea for the book right now, as there’s just so much work to do.
Did I mention that we took a six week trip to Alaska in 2017 and did research and interviews for the novel back then?
I can tell you that I’m super excited to be at this place where I’m currently doing research, and the beauty of being a Christian outdoor writer is that “research” means I get to learn about cool places, unusual hunting strategies, and interweave those with stories of how God interacts with his people in his creation.
I’ll periodically be sharing “inside” details of where I’m at in the process through the blog. I’d love this to be interactive, so if you have questions about the new book or just writing in general, feel free to message me. I’d be happy to share what I can:)
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John 3:17 "For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."
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