Presenting Altered Vows

Altered Vows will be available in paperback and Kindle Unlimited February 1st. Here are a few thoughts about the story. You can scroll down to see the cover of Altered Vows. If you’d like to order it earlier, sign up for my email list at the bottom of this page.

I grew up reading J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Ursula LeGuin, and many others. Those fantasy books had a deep impact on me. It was not just about escaping to different worlds. I yearned for clarity about good vs. evil, and I longed for adventure in the real world. That kind of classic fantasy writing encourages readers to think about their own place in a complex world, and how their actions can make a difference for good.

I’ve been privileged in my almost 60 years of life to have some amazing adventures. I’ve camped, hiked, and hunted in some incredible places. I’ve traveled to other countries to learn and to teach. I’ve sweated and bled to try to make the world a better place. I’ve known amazing companions who have shared those adventures with me. And I hope I have more adventures yet to come.

Part of my passion as a writer is to tell a powerful story that draws the reader into those same longings. Altered Vows is the story of Mishal, a young priest who finds himself caught up in a complex world. He has to figure out his own place in that world, and he has to learn to act decisively in the face of powers that would destroy him and those he loves.

I began to imagine the story while I was a student at North Dakota State University in Fargo. Fargo is a wonderful city, but it lies at the center of the Red River Valley. That amazing flat landscape stretches for miles, and it’s some of the most fertile agricultural land in the world. When I first came to NDSU, I had just lived for two years in the Cascade Mountains of western Washington. In the flatlands, I yearned for hills, forests, and seashores. When I could get away, I traveled up into the landscapes of northern Minnesota, where the land became hilly and the trees more numerous. But most of the time, I had to remain in Fargo. I took to wandering through the city, often at night. I meandered down along the Red River, enjoying the parklands and trees there. I built campfires along the river and interacted with things that went bump in the night.

While my body was attending classes and working part-time jobs, my mind began to formulate a story. What if this landscape was not a farming community in the mid-1980’s in North America, but rather was located in Europe in the Middle Ages? There were old storm drains running through parts of Fargo that became tunnels. NDSU itself became the royal palace, and Concordia College across the river naturally became a seminary. If you know the basic geography of Fargo-Moorhead, it's not hard to see the lay of the land in Paturis, the city where Mishal grew up. And at times I longed to be exiled from the city to the woods of northern Minnesota. So Mishal went there in my stead and in my mind.

But as much as I longed to escape to the woods, I knew I needed to be prepared to follow God’s calling in my own life. College, work, and eventually seminary became my own journey. Like Mishal, I had to be prepared to face a complex world. I learned to make friends, to cross cultural lines. I spent time with Hmong people in St. Paul, street children in Honduras, pastors in remote churches in the Philippines, and Lakota elders in South Dakota. Along the way, I matured and discovered, bit by bit, that I had influence for either good or evil, and a responsibility to steward that power. Mishal’s story became a way for me to think through some of those issues.

I used to read portions of the book to my daughters when they were young. They grew up with their dad writing this ongoing story. When I finished the first draft in about 2010, Erica confessed she felt a little lost. Mishal’s story growing and developing had been a part of her own growth, and now it was done.

But obviously it was not done. A lot of revision and editing had to take place, the sweat and blood of writing. I read the story aloud to my wife, Lisa, in 2023 over many long evenings. She insisted that it needed to be published. I had turned my writing energy to many other things, but I dusted off Altered Vows, recruited an editor, did a lot of revision work, and began the toil of turning a story into a book. Along the way I stumbled on a piece of art that portrayed a dark figure with a spear confronting some kind of demon-cat. It was like the artist had read one of the key confrontations in the book. I negotiated permissions to use the image and found another picture by the same artist. The incredible graphic artists at GetCovers did their magic and voila, a book cover was born.

Enough, for now. Here it is, the cover of Altered Vows, to be released February 1.

Do you know someone who might enjoy this story? Share this blog post with them!