As you look back at your own history and perhaps that of your family, you see the Hand at work which makes you possible, steers the paths and contents of legacies, writes and rewrites lives and destinies. Perhaps it’s the evolutionary character of life which makes novels so appealing.

And novels are often object lessons in print, helping us to explain ourselves by illustrating things we wish were true – and things we wish were not true – on balance making a pretty picture of the beautiful creations we truly are.

Merchant’s Mine began as a whim granted by the Holy Spirit, written by Him and dictated to me as a scribe. (Hence the Nom de Plume “Robert Scribe.”) He granted my lifelong and suppressed wish to be a writer and write a book, by causing me to write not one, but five books in one year. No book plan, no outline, we just sat and wrote it out. Then came books 6 and 7, delayed by life events as I pursued another lifelong dream (which had been more subconscious, a purpose stated by the Lord to Himself and eventually to me), to become a minister of an old white church on a hillside (see Book 7).

The fifth book, “Bloodline” (which is now Book 1 instead of book 5), told all the things in the background, brought into focus the causes and effects of the things in the original Books 1 through 4. It’s the product of stuff I wanted to say that needed to be said.

The Merchant’s Mine series is an exercise in cause and effect, and it illustrates the role God plays in the lives of ordinary (and extraordinary) people, even in the lives of the lost. The message is that it’s no use denying the existence of God; He asserts Himself in the boldest and meekest of ways, and He speaks eloquently through those He chooses.

In the books we have the Watchers, being the fictional viewers and doers we so often wish were in our own lives. They are specially selected for their purposes and places and times; so also are the fictional angels in the form of companion animals, fictionally gifted with what we sometimes suspect they have.

May you read these books and find what you’re looking for. God bless you!

What fun we had, writing those books! Could it all be over, a chapter of life coming to a close as the writing thing becomes a memory instead of a reality? Perhaps not.

Brilliance of logic and acuity of perception have always been characteristics of the Children of Israel – though historically they have also served as sad object lessons to teach what happens when we’re blind and illogical. They learn from themselves as we learn from them. How interesting!

And as Reuben Temple, gazing into the middle distance, might murmur, “What you find might cause you to look even more.”