How it All Happened ♦ Behind the Story ♦ Latayne Scott ♦ Giveaway

  It Came Together This Way . . . 

by Latayne C. Scott

(See below for giveaway details)

One day a fully-formed image appeared in my mind. It was of a woman of ancient times.  She was walking away from a coliseum, beside a cart full of bloody body parts.  She thinks of her dead friend Cordelia, who had been pregnant for decades with a baby that was never delivered and turned to stone within her body. Now that stone baby is in the cart too, seeing light for the first time.

How did that image come to be?  What was the process?

Writing – whether professionally or for personal satisfaction – is an activity that many people share. There’s nothing quite like looking over the words, “The End” and feeling that some unfinished part inside ourselves is now complete, too.

Waiting for a book to be published, though, is frustrating for many people because someone asks you to move over from the driver’s seat of your car and now begins to take you at their chosen speed, not yours, toward a distant destination.

(Sometimes it can take many months from your “The End” to a publisher’s “Now Available.” To help people understand just why this takes so long, I wrote a blog post that's been accessed thousands of times:  “The Seventeen Steps to Getting a Christian Book Published.”)

That lag of time, combined with an author’s distance from his or her original idea, can really add up. In the case of my most recent book, A Conspiracy of Breath, it took eight years.

I remember the day I first read in a Bible commentary that some scholars believe that the book of Hebrews may have been written by a woman.  That was at least three decades ago, and as the year passed, I heard the theory again and again.  I came across a book that thoroughly and convincingly set out the case for the authorship of Hebrews by Priscilla, the wife of Aquila and the fellow tentmaker with the Apostle Paul.

(View a short MP3 video HERE)

I remember the first day I read an Internet news story about a lithopedia, or stone baby.

I remember the day my daughter in law gave me a book called The Bone Gatherers, about the early Christian women who provided proper burial for martyrs.

And thus it came together:  The story of Priscilla, aristocratic Roman, bone-gatherer, author, friend, and protector. What must it have been like for such a woman to throw

in her lot with another Martyr who died on a cross?  To hear the Holy Breath tell her words that would become Scripture? 

And to live with courage during a time when almost everything she loved, she lost? 

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The Giveaway: Latayne is offering a free copy of A Conspiracy of Breath to one of this blogs readers who leaves a comment in the section below. Your choice of digital, open to all; or print, limited to US residents only. Just leave your name and contact information with your comment ... so we can contact you if you win.

Giveaway ends one week from today, on September 12, 2017, at Midnight CDT. 

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Dr.  Latayne C. Scott (Distinguished Christian Service Award, Pepperdine University) writes controversial books. Her newest one, the critically acclaimed A Conspiracy of Breath, (TSU Press) is based on the scholarly theory that a woman wrote part of the Bible.  Her first book, The Mormon Mirage--also controversial-- has stayed in print almost continuously for almost 40 years. She has nearly two dozen other published books. One notable recent book is about the discovery of the ancient Biblical city of Sodom (Discovering the City of Sodom.) Her first novel is a murder mystery revolving around a code developed by the early Mormon church. Both are.... controversial. She's also won a national award for humor. Her kids say she's not so funny, but she just holds up the prize check. Latayne blogs at Latayne.com and Tweets @Latayne.