Saturn as seen from Titan, painting by Chesley Bonestell

Saturn as seen from Titan, painting by Chesley Bonestell
Favorite astronomical painting

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

The Shunammite Woman in editing mode

I have been through the Shunammite Woman story twice.  It numbers over 18,000 words including a wonderful poem by my preacher friend, Fred McKinney.  He verbally gave me permission to use this in my story.  I have included it at the end of the story, right after a glossary of name meanings and scripture references.  I'm thinking I also need perhaps at the start of the story some statements about using miles instead of furlongs as the Bible uses for distances.  However the New Testament uses the term mile in one place.  In Bible times the mile was somewhat less than our English mile being 0.9 mile.  Coins were not known in the Shunammite's time but the form of exchange was rings of gold or bands of gold so I have employed that in the story.  I feel I need to use miles so the reader can understand distances better.  I have mentioned many times distances from one town to another.  I have relied on a book of Bible Lands by J.W. McGarvey who traveled these lands back when he lived in the late 1800s.
Unfortunately, The Shunammite Woman story doesn't even attain novella status which is 30,000 to 50,000 words.  So I will have to settle for publication in ebook form if I can find a publisher who will do that.  Francine Rivers who wrote five novellas on the five women listed in Christ's lineage number a bit over 50,000 words, at least the one I checked.  I've read two of those five novellas: Ruth and Tamar.