Wouldn't you know it?

Just about the time I decide to take Just This Side of Heresy anc convert it over to its new incarnation, Exegeek.com, JTSoH gets ranked as one of the Top 100 Best Blogs and Websites for Innovative Academics. We're #51.

For those of you who have never visited this site, feel free to check out my archives for some of the material mentioned on the aforementioned website. After that, please head over to my new project: Exegeek.com. It's fairly similar in content, but we've added a discussion board, an additional writing blog, various academic service, Twitter feeds and a Facebook group.

~Jeremy

That’s Me, Under the Bus

Modern theology, as far as the mainstream goes, has made every effort to denigrate humans, to make them something less valuable than they actually are. The end result, as far as I can tell, is to turn humanity into some kind of creature that may be abused to the nth degree without second thought.

As far as I’ve been able to tell, this degradation of man almost always leads to one end: it serves to justify God’s wrath towards certain people or groups of people in such a way that he can be made to commit acts that the Church would tolerate from no mortal, but can thoughtlessly applaud when enacted by a sovereign God.

http://www.exegeek.com/blog/?p=282

Exegeek hits Myspace! If you have a myspace, come and visit us.

MYSPACE/exegeek

Our first week at Exegeek.com has gone well. The message boards are open, e-mail accounts set up, advertising is arranged (be a friend and click some links, hehe) and the first few articles have been published. Better still, Google knows us!



Just This Side of Heresy will, in all liklihood, be joined with Exegeek as our blogspot portal, and our JTSoH Newsletter will should be returning soon, with more information concerning exegeek.



So check us out HERE. Sign up for our discussion board. Read some articles. Suggest a few. See you there.

Keep checking back... My friend and I have got something fairly awesome in the works. I can't wait to show you. I'll know more by Wednesday or so.

My writing space has become a laboratory. In my latest Work-In-Progress, there is an extended chase/fight scene. I'm not huge on fight scenes really, and I rarely include them. Joy & Carnage, for example has none. Neither has Cold. So I've found myself asking, how do I write an action scene that consists of more that:

James ran and jumped. He punched the fellow in his face. The two of them tumbled down the slope until James exploded.

The general pattern in that scene is noun-verb-noun, noun-verb-noun, etc. To escape this, I've begun studying Haiku, a Japanese style of poetry that consists of three lines with five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. I'm experimenting with action scenes written in haiku form.

An example of an action-scene set to haiku would be:

Light poles like comets' tails

flew past in hurried flashes,

too fast to count them.

The driver veered left.

Vigilante fell sideways,

almost eating street.

After editing them back into prose, I hope that they'll possess a little more flavor than usual.

Vigilante is now officially my next project. I've started building the framework--number of chapters, average word per chapter requirements, order of events, general outline--I have a few plot issues to work through and a couple spiritual things to work into place.

Here's the general idea. Vigilante is going to be the story of a big city crimefighter who loves his city, but leaves it when he's offered a documentary deal with the Law & Justice Channel. the show bombs miserably, and he returns to the city to resume his duties. In essence, it is a retelling of The Prodigal Son which, in turn, was Christ's illustration of the Jewish nation's displeasure with the Gentiles' acceptance of righteousness.

I plan to spend another week on brain-storming before I actually put finger to key (because no one puts pen to paper anymore). Hopefully I'll get that part finished soon. She hasn't said anything, but I'm fairly certain that my wife isn't too happy that her brand new dining room table is covered with the little squares of paper I use to put my plot in order.