Sky Blue (15 Weeks of Giveaway #8)

Interested in winning a copy of Sky Blue and a cd of the soundtrack I made for it? Go to my Facebook page to enter the contest.

Here’s an overview of Sky Blue:

Publication Date:

July, 2007


Where the idea came from:
I worked in the role of Author Relations for thirteen and a half years at Tyndale House Publishers. This was a dream job for me, yet at the same time I got burnt out while working in that position. I first started writing this story at a Book Expo in Los Angeles when I was busy and seeming to go out of my mind (and if you ever wonder why all my characters are going out of their mind, well . . . ). The story evolved just like my journey in Author Relations did.

One line synopsis:

A burnt-out literary agent who hates his profession and industry has to lose everything dear to him in order to find meaning in his life.

Journey to publication:

This was a very long journey. It took me five or six years of working away on Sky Blue before I even sent it out to publishers. I never intended this book to fall under the category of “Christian fiction.” I wanted to work with an agent for the first time and sell this to a big publisher. So I sent this out to several agents. The one who decided to work with me was my current agent, Claudia Cross. This was the first book of mine she sent out.

We got some decent rejection letters. But we received no offers. So I eventually asked my editor at Moody Publishers if they were take a look at it. I had already done major rewriting on it with Claudia. I would need to do a lot more work on it with Moody, but they decided to publish it.

The Response:

The most collectively heartfelt reaction to any of my books has been to Sky Blue. Some people haven’t quite understood, but some of the letters/emails I’ve received about it have been amazing.

My Thoughts:

Anybody who follows my writing knows this is my most personal novel published to date, and because of this it’s also my favorite. This is the sort of book I love—out of the box, absolutely non-formulaic, heartfelt with a whopper of a surprise. I know the work that went into this story as well as the chunks of myself. It’s melancholy and flawed just like I am. But I really loved how it came together

Interesting Fact #1:

When I started writing about a couple going through infertility, I just added that as a dramatic element. Little did I know that my wife and I would find ourselves going through the same journey years later as I was continuing to work on the story.

Interesting Fact #2:

I wrote the final chapter after our daughter was born, and some of that chapter was literally written with her in my arms.

Interesting Fact #3:

I drove across the country along Route 66 on a ten store book tour in the summer of 2007.

Interesting Fact #4: The title was based on the song by Peter Gabriel.