The torpedo is away. I sent my proposal off to my agent last night. I'm glad I waited those few extra days because a couple happy surprises made it into my inbox at the last moment, allowing me to polish the proposal a little bit more.

Here's an interesting tidbit, by the way: I spent the past week with my youth group at Youth America, a church camp in Oklahoma City. In addition to teaching teens, they provide leadership seminars for the youth pastors and leaders. Better yet, they provide free coffee and a quiet "leaders' lounge" for those of us who have paperwork to do. I took advantage of the lounge to get the synopsis done.

As some of you may know, my novel, Joy & Carnage, is (in a very general sense) about school shootings and revenge. While I was finishing up the synop, a guy came and politely asked what I was writing about. I told him and was completely surprised to find out that he was first pastor on the scene in Littleton, after the Columbine shootings. I received some terrific feedback from him, and he's made himself available to me if I have any questions.

Neat, huh? For more on the novel, click HERE.

Mr. Youth Leader, cover that wall!

Friday night was our teen lock-in, and it went extremely well. In the past, at various churches, we've always had to deal with some kind of drama. Not this time. I am amazed at the unity of our teens. It seems to me that it would be quite easy for fifteen teens, from four different high schools, to divide themselves into clics, but that's exactly what they did.

We started out the night with an hour of Guitar Hero, and then, at 11PM, we went to IHOP. After we returned, we focused on the night's main activity: painting the new youth room. Recently, our pastor shuffled various ministries around to give us our own room. This weekend, we painted our first wall. I had painted it black a few days earlier, in preparation. When we came back from IHOP and changed into our painting clothes, we brought out a tray of paint bottles. For the next two hours, we slung, smashed, swirled, spongued and splattered paint on the wall. I wish I had thought to take pictures so that you could see it.

A good time was had by all and I just wanted to share how proud I am of them.