Early this morning I dreamt I was at a large local university, attending an event similar to the L.A. Times Festival of Books. It so happened that my ex-boyfriend was also attending the event. I’ll refer to him as Winkie, the name he chose for himself and which I used when dedicating my debut novel to him.
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My dearest Mummy,
This is now my fifth Mother’s Day without you. I want to tell you how I spent it, but first let me tell you how I spent this year since my last Mother’s Day without you.
You’ll be happy to know it’s been my best year since you left me on May 5, 2021. (I know the correct term is “left us,” but from my perspective, you left me more than you left all of us.)
I’ve spent this year working on the childhood dream you always believed would someday become reality. I wish you were here to see it, but you’re in good company.
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Last night I dreamt of Mummy again. It was a brief scene—a dream within a dream—and it opened with a glass vase perched atop a round mahogany table in a church foyer.
The vase contained a bunch of delicate pink and white roses. I was pleased to see them, and heartbroken to learn that they were for my sisters and I to lay on our mother’s coffin.
I picked out a rose and stepped inside the church sanctuary, where Mummy’s memorial service was being held. My sisters and I were about to take our seats when all of a sudden, Mummy herself appeared in the front!
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While thinking about a release date for my debut novel, The Superiority Contest, I discovered there is such a thing as World Tourism Day. And that is today, September 27.
World Tourism Day would have been an appropriate occasion to release a world traveler’s tale, but the novel wasn’t ready, and it’s more important to get that right. Over my long adulthood I have learnt that Hamlet was right when he said, “The readiness is all.”
In this discussion with his bestie, my favorite literary character was referring to his impending duel with Laertes, which could possibly end in his death. (Which it does. The play can’t go on forever.)
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A new book is coming quite soon.
I hope it will be a big boon
To your reading time.
It does have some rhyme
So prepare for your upcoming swoon!
The book is my maiden novella.*
Though it isn’t a jolly good fella
I hope it is good.
I wrote best I could
While guzzling down tea with vanilla.
The story recounts a world trip
That wasn’t a hop, jump, and skip.
My topmost priority
Was finding Superiority
Where the vice has its vile viselike grip.
My findings may shock you, dear reader.
I wish that the world had been meeker
But alas I did see
In country upon country
That pride rises up as the leader.
While wandering from clime to clime
As Odysseus did once upon a time
I also met folks,
Some gals and some blokes,
Whom I cannot describe all in rhyme.**
The dedication’s first line bears the name
Of the one who was twice my ex-flame,
A lover of levity
And fanboy of brevity—
My loquacity bears some of the blame.
So at least let it make me some moolah
With this, my forthcoming novella.
When it’s widely read
I’ll get me some bread
And spread it with golden Nutella.
*The manuscript was a novella when I composed this announcement. It’s a novel now but to quote David Copperfield, let it stand.
**Hence the prose.
(c) 2024 by Sharon Arpana Edwards. All rights reserved.
2023 has been one of my most challenging years to date. But guess who’s never fazed by a challenge? Guess whose power is made perfect in our weakness so we can confidently declare, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10)?
While writing this blog post I finally realized why I have faced so much opposition this year, from seemingly random injuries to longstanding health issues flaring up, from financial difficulties to doors that refused to open…
I couldn’t figure out why these attacks kept coming no matter how much I prayed and stood on God’s Word by faith. But when I began writing this blog post it struck me that my trials of 2023 were directly related to the fact that I’d just written a book on Job!
After the publication of There Once Was a Man Who Suffered: The Book of Job in Limericks in November 2022, I heard of another author who experienced trial upon trial when he began writing on Job, the Bible’s book on suffering. And yet he lived to finish his book, and I have lived to write this blog! The Lord is truly faithful!
My good heavenly Father made sure 2023 had its share of blessings for me. Here are three highlights from the year that was.
One, I made my first-ever trip to New York, to attend my oldest niece’s graduation from Columbia Law School on May 15. The reunion was extra special because I was seeing my family for the first time since Mummy’s passing in May 2021. Manhattan gave us some fine weather, well befitting my niece’s dedication and hard work.
Two, at the NRB Convention in Orlando, also in May, I unexpectedly met Nick Vujicic, who graciously allowed me to read this limerick from the prologue to There Once Was a Man. It is referring to those who can only offer pat answers to our suffering. Also known as Job’s comforters.
They’ll remind you that millions of folk
Are sick, all alone, and flat broke
If your mood is the same
Eventually the name
Of Nick Vujicic they’re sure to invoke.
Three, June 29 marked my first decade as a published author! The Tenth Anniversary Edition of my first book, Pioneer Boulevard: Los Angeles Stories, was unfortunately delayed by six months, but I’m grateful it is now on Kindle and in paperback. This commemorative edition includes a bonus Q&A section with book insights and writing tips.
To celebrate these first ten years, the paperback will be available at a special price of $10 for the first ten days of its life. Offer valid in the US through Sunday, January 7. Grab a copy for the aspiring writers in your life!
If you do buy any of my books, I’d be grateful for published reviews, word-of-mouth publicity, and podcast interviews. And if you can help me with a tax-deductible gift, please visit the donate page of this site.
Thanks, and I wish each of you a fruitful and faith-filled 2024 in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ!
(c)2023 by Sharon Arpana Edwards. All rights reserved.
Today I celebrate ten years as a published author! I had hoped to release a commemorative edition of my first book to mark the occasion, but a hand injury decreed otherwise. God being rich in mercy, the hardcover edition of my latest book is now available on Amazon.
I’d be grateful if you could buy a copy of this new edition, or the previously released paperback, and leave a review on Amazon. That will introduce me to new readers—something every author needs! You may also want to check out my award-winning 100-day devotional.
If you decide not to purchase either book but would like to make a donation to my ongoing writing and ministry, here are the links. Thanks in advance, and now let me share a memory from the day I became a published author.
I remember June 29, 2013 as though it were just last month. In fact, I’ve forgotten what I was doing on this day last month, but the events of that career-defining day from a decade ago are printed like a paperback in my memory.
One of these memories appears in the preface to the tenth anniversary edition of Pioneer Boulevard. If everything goes according to Plan B, as I am praying it will, the book will be out in July.
June 29, 2013 was a scorching Saturday in Los Angeles, with temperatures soaring well above 100 degrees. A friend who had driven 70 miles to attend the book launch wagged an accusatory forefinger at me and said, “You had to pick the hottest day of the year.”
“I’m from India, remember?” I replied, trying to ignore the moist beads trickling down my neck and back, and wishing I had worn a white cotton dress like my friend. Having never launched a book before, I was new to this—a pioneer, like my characters—and it reflected in my attire.
As I recollect how uncomfortable I was in my formal black dress and the new sandals that pinched, I am reminded afresh that being a pioneer is not always a comfortable experience. It’s usually the exact opposite, in fact.
If I could relive the day I became a published author, I would definitely wear a summer dress and sensible shoes. And there are myriads of things I would do differently in the decade since. Most of these things I will never be able to redo, so I only ask God to grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Something I long ago realized I could and should change was the order of the stories in this book. The first edition had opened with “A Thirtysomething Secret,” which I see as an introduction to the world of Pioneer Boulevard. My esteemed tutor in England, novelist Joe Stretch, shared this opinion, and I was sure my future readers would agree with us. Imagine my surprise when more than one reader remarked that the book should have opened with a different story.
With their genial feedback ringing in my ears, I decided to begin this edition with the story that seems to be a favorite with readers. Originally placed third, “Crocodile Tears” also happens to be the first I wrote chronologically, as well as the one from which I have quoted in the afterword to my latest work, There Once Was a Man Who Suffered: The Book of Job in Limericks.
Another change is the addition of a Q&A section at the end. These are questions I have actually been asked, mostly at author talks held at public libraries and such, but sometimes in private conversations too. My answers shed light not only on these ten stories but also on my writing process and writing in general. If some aspiring writer should find them helpful, I shall consider my labors rewarded.
—Sharon Arpana Edwards
Los Angeles, Calif.
June 29, 2023
(c) 2023 by Sharon Arpana Edwards. All Rights Reserved.
As long as the Lord lends me life, I will remember 2022 as the year of the forgotten dream. This dream was to write poetry, though I little dreamt I’d write a whole book of it!
As a lifelong lover of English literature, I’d have been content to compose a few good poems. One Christian “Kubla Khan” and some sonnets like “Chapman’s Homer” and “On His Blindness” and “Death, Be Not Proud” and “Sonnet 33” would have sufficed.
My standards were high, but my dreams weren’t big enough. Certainly not as big as God’s dreams for me.
God’s dreams for us are always bigger than our own.
This is not wishful thinking or heresy. It’s biblical. The apostle Paul tells us that God “is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20). And Jesus Himself said, “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32).
What could be bigger than the kingdom of heaven? What could outvalue the “pearl of great price,” that inestimable treasure to obtain which the merchant sold everything he had?
Nothing. Not even a whole book of poetry.
Even so, a whole book of anything was the impossible dream a year ago.
When 2022 dawned, I had not published a book since The Blessing of Melchizedek Devotional was released in November 2016. For half a decade, I’d only produced a handful of blog posts, a couple screenplays, a few worship songs, and the odd limerick. I enjoyed writing it all, but my career as an author seemed to be over.
Whether the world had written me off or whether it was awaiting my next bestseller with bated breath, I cannot say. All I know is that I myself had no energy or inspiration for a new book—and I’m the kind of writer who needs both to get started. Once I begin, I rely more on grit and grace.
As I mention in the introduction to There Once Was a Man Who Suffered, I was very ill when I got the idea for the book. My grief over my mother’s death eight months previously had found its way to my physical person. For a whole week in January I lay in bed drifting in and out of sleep, at times wondering if the illness was going to be my last.
In this feeble, febrile state, God gave me the biggest surprise of my life! This surprise—the idea to tell Job’s story in limericks—is all the more special because it showed up on my younger nephew’s birthday.
Three days before, my friend Theresa stopped by after church to check up on me. Revived by her concern and the appetizing soup she’d cooked, I began telling her the story behind my first screenplay. She listened with interest and without interrupting (God bless her), then suggested I consider writing a new book.
I winced internally. Although I told Theresa I’d pray about it once I recovered (a promise I meant to keep), I winced because I realized that my dearest reader would not be reading my new book.
The Lord has since shown me that I wrote the book precisely because Mummy would not be reading it. The book emerged out of my grief for her.
The story behind my new book reminds me to trust the Lord with other dreams I have forgotten or given up for dead. Which reminds me of Abraham, who believed that God “gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did” (Rom. 4:17).
“He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. And therefore ‘it was accounted to him for righteousness’” (Rom. 4:20-22).
(c) 2022 Sharon Arpana Edwards. All Rights Reserved.
When the proof copy of my new book arrived last week, one of the first people I texted was Rabi Maharaj, author of one of my all-time favorite books, Death of a Guru. His response to the cover image I’d sent was heartwarming.
Apart from warming my heart, Rabi’s text reminded me of the process of obtaining God’s promises. And it is a process. The Bible makes it clear that God’s promises Continue reading
SHARON ARPANA EDWARDS 