Earn Your Seat at the Fire

I've told you about my boy Cliff Graham a few times (here, here, and here)—about how he's a friend of mine and I'm a huge fanboy of his. I'm super-stoked that I'll be headed to Israel with Cliff at the end of the month, and I'll surely be sharing some highlights of the trip with you.



But today, I want to tell you about Cliff's Gibborim training course.“Gibborim” is the Hebrew word for “Mighty Men” or “Men of Valor” (some of Cliff's most popular books are about King David's Mighty Men) and Cliff does an incredible job of grabbing hold of that ancient warrior spirit, while bringing a definitive modern warrior vibe to it.

I was honored to go to one of the first Gibborim training weekends last September and earned my place at the fire when the primary focus was on preparing for (and qualifying for) involvement in Cliff's rescue missions to help free women trapped in sex slavery. However, he is now opening it up to men who may or may not want to pursue that mission.

There is so much that I could tell you. Instead, though, let me just share an awesome video Cliff's people have put together:

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If your life has needed some excitement, some testosterone, and some old-fashioned, Old-Testament cavod (honor, glory), consider taking part in the most amazing "men's retreat" you will ever attend—a simulated emergency rescue operation with a powerful spiritual component.

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Cliff and me in San Antonio, September 2016





The Gibborim course is being held every month led by military and law enforcement experts. It combines physical challenge with mental and spiritual development and was truly one of the most rewarding and unforgettable experiences I've ever had. Scholarships and subsidized spots are available and there will be opportunities for Father/Son weekends and church men's retreats.. 


For more information, check out: www.gibborim.net. 

Sometimes Mr. Midlist gets to...

...fly down to Texas and spend three days with his favorite author, shooting guns, smoking cigars, hearing incredible stories, and having unforgettable experiences. Hear more about this trip on the next episode of the Gut Check Podcast.

Praise to our God and arrows to our enemies!

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Podcasts! Everywhere!

You may not be aware that I host a weekly podcast, together with prolific author Ted Kluck, called the Gut Check Podcast. It's a niche-of-a-niche humor type thing, in which we also talk about publishing (including promoting our own books) and skype in with a motley crew of regulars (some famous) to discuss whatever happens to be on our minds that day.

Without any research (not even googling), I'm going to assume that we made podcast history when Ted and I played a double-header with NYT bestselling novelist Cliff Graham. Cliff has been on our show before (and by "show," I mean two guys talking into USB microphones), but what made this unique is that, immediately after recording the Gut Check Podcast with Cliff as a guest, we proceeded to record Cliff's Good Battle Podcast with us as the guests. I know—groundbreaking.

Here are the links:
The Gut Check Podcast, Episode 24 - The Cliff Graham Episode  
The Good Battle Podcast, Episode 18 - Zachary Bartels & Ted Kluck


In addition, I was happy to pop up in Noah Filipiak's “Behind the Curtain Ministry Podcast” recently. We talked about self-promotion as it relates to writing and to being a Christian.

You can find that link here:
 Behind the Curtain Episode 7



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Praise and Arrows, Redux

A couple years ago, I wrote a gushing review of Cliff Graham’s Lion of War series, about King David’s mighty men. I had read them all in rapid succession and have since read them several more times (as well as literally everything else by Cliff that I can get my hands on).

Cliff is what I would call a true innovator in how he produces and distributes his work. He’s not in any sense a slave to convention, which is truly odd in an industry where convention is something of a demigod. His first couple novels were published by Zondervan and sold through the normal channels for Christian fiction, becoming bestsellers (despite the potential shock value of uber-graphic war novels on shelves next to bonnet fiction). For his next few projects, he established a publishing imprint (or, he would say, a transmedia empire!) and released them himself. Demand did not, it seems, flag. It seems like almost every day, Cliff’s team was giving updates about how they were doing their best to keep up with all the orders and thanks for your patience and sorry for the delay and all that. (I’m guessing that, with the cult following his stuff enjoys, no one complained all that much.)

Here's when this former soldier and youth pastor made a couple of really groundbreaking moves. First, he released an album full of songs about his Lion of War books (especially the first book, Day of War). Only these aren’t written or performed by Cliff. No, these are songs by Trip Lee, Stellar Kart, Audio Adrenaline, and other chart-topping artists. It’s one of my favorite albums and contains the first song to which my six-year-old son spontaneously head-banged. Then the guy (Cliff Graham, not my son) announces that he’s selling memberships to something called the Warpath. What’s that, you ask? It means that you receive advance copy e-books of every single book Cliff writes in perpetuity, including his ongoing (and spectacular) “Hall of Mighty Men” short story series. If you're more of an audio book kind of guy, he's also podcasting these stories. Oh, and he's using a bunch of the money from these projects to go on sting operations to break up human trafficking rings.

Seriously.

Now he’s back on bookstore shelves with a new novel, kicking off a new series about the Exodus and Conquest, through the eyes of Caleb. The first novel is called Shadow of the Mountain: Exodus. I had a chance to read it early and, believe me, it is as good as Day of War, which is crazy-high praise. It came out a couple days ago, and you can pick it up at any bookstore.

I hope I’ve convinced you of how compelling and full of truth Cliff Graham's words are. So let me leave you with a couple quotes of particular interest to me:

1. “This is an exciting step forward for thrillers. Playing Saint grapples with complex themes as well as being richly suspenseful. Highly recommended.”

—CLIFF GRAHAM, bestselling author of Day of War

and Shadow of the Mountain: Exodus

(If you don't already have it, you can buy my book Playing Saint at your local bookstore or through Amazon, iTunes, ChristianBook.com, or BN.com)

2. “Hemingway stilled the demons with booze. I still them with the Gut Check Podcast.” 

—CLIFF GRAHAM, 4/19/2015

(He said this on the podcast I co-host with Ted Kluck, during one of the most hilariously enjoyable conversations I've had in years. You can listen to it here.)

I’m encouraged that there is more and more good Christian fiction written for men out there, and Cliff Graham’s is some of the best there is. I hope he keeps on writing until he’s an old, grizzled man, like Caleb, telling tales of Good Battle to young warriors.
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. . . And Arrows to Our Enemies

A Brief and Enthusiastic Review of Cliff Graham's Lion of War Series (so far)

I have an inexplicable drive to begin this review with some kind of expletive to hammer home just how insanely much I love these books . . . but of course none of the PG selections that would be appropriate in this space would get the meaning across. So, I tell you what—let’s just pretend that the words “holy cow” bear exponentially more weight than they do, and I'll begin with:

Holy cow, I love these books! 

Mr. Graham takes his years of experience in the army (as a soldier and chaplain), his obvious passion for biblical research, his pastor's heart, and an amazing gift for telling a compelling story, and combines them to give us an in-the-trenches look at life in King David's army, particularly for David's Mighty Men (with particular attention to Benaiah and the Three).  The result is, at the risk of being redundant, amazing.

In fairness, though, I do wish these books had been written a little differently. 

First off, I wish that I'd written them. Because this is how I envision the Old Testament stories as I immerse myself in them and I wish I'd been able to capture the larger-than-life-yet-accessible scope and feel. Failing that, I wish the timeline would have been different. Not the timeline of the story, but the timeline of the books themselves, such that Mr. Graham would have signed his contract with HarperCollins later or I would have signed mine sooner so that I might have been asked to endorse his work. I would like to have been one of the first people to gush over this series. As it stands, I'm way behind the curve.  

So what's it like reading these books? I'm not going to apply some tired cliché about how they “made the Bible come alive” because that’s been said about countless other books and you’ve never read anything quite like this series. I'm afraid the flannelgraph depictions and Sunday school pamphlets have left us with something of a cartoonized version of many biblical characters and events. It's easy to forget that David and his men would have dealt with PTSD (although they'd have no category for it), with guilt and shame after killing many of their fellow Israelites, with doubt and disillusionment when it came to the God who had made so many promises, and with the temptations that come with life in that setting. Graham's portrayals bring all of this into focus without trading in the supernatural elements or the overwhelming sense of reverence for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

As someone who has studied the Hebrew language and the history and theology of the Old Testament for many years, I was a little tentative upon first opening Day of War, since I've seen a lot of biblical fiction drop the ball when it comes to the language, customs, etc. of ancient Israel, not to mention how many of them are filled with anachronistic weapons, tactics, and titles. Still others are faithful to the history, but come off as remote in every way and inaccessible to modern readers. To my relief, I quickly realized that Mr. Graham was not going to fall into either trap. He's done his research, but he doesn't show his work.

These books come in language we get. Graham describe archers “firing” their arrows (even though no one “fired” anything at all until the advent of gunpowder) rather than “letting them fly,” as Lawhead (another favorite of mine) insists on putting it. Men are said to “bleed out” and there are at least two references to someone seeking “closure,” but these modern terms are used sparsely and do nothing to detract from the story. Rather, they remind us that David's soldiers were not untouchable superheroes, but real men who could be physically, emotionally, and spiritually damaged.
 
There's apparently a movie in the works right now, about which I'm equally stoked and apprehensive. I mean, this story is screaming to be made into a movie, but you know how it is when you love the book first. Rarely does the movie live up to it. Thankfully, the author seems to be quite involved with the film-making process and can hopefully keep it from being either Hollywood-ized (and robbed of its biblical integrity) or cheesy-Christian-movie-ized (and robbed of its grit and reality). One thing's for sure: if they're true to the source material, it will be rated R.

Speaking of which, some readers might be offended by the graphic nature of the battle scenes.  I get this, and would encourage people with weak stomachs to give these books a wide berth.  (I won't be letting my son read these suckers until he's in his mid-teens.) Others might be put off by the level of poetic license the author takes. I would argue that these readers have no business picking up a work of biblical fiction (seeing as how such license is what makes these books distinct from Scripture itself). The author's notes make sure that we understand what's biblical and what's a fictional device and I, for one, loved the clever back-stories created for Uriah the Hittite and Ittai the Gittite. They really made the Bible come alive. (whoops)

I'm hoping I might be able to briefly chat with Mr. Graham at an event for authors and agents in September and tell him how cool I think his books are. Before that, though, I plan on attending a book signing in August, where I can hear Mr. Graham speak, buy a water bottle that says Cover Me In the Day of War up the side, and then stand in line to get my copies signed with a goofy grin on my face. 

In short, these books rule and I recommend them highly if you're into . . . well, if you're into super-awesome, super-intense biblical fiction with tons of action and compelling characters. This is one of those rare situations where a book truly defies genre. It's not exactly historical fiction, it's not fantasy, and it's very different from most of what we call biblical fiction these days. I've heard this series described as “supernatural thriller,” a label which has also been used to describe my own writing. I can only hope that something I write will affect people as profoundly as these books have affected me.  They really are amazing.

Just amazing.

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