My Newest Kid's Book Is Out

I considered writing about the Sybase Match Play today, but they had so many upsets Thursday that I figured I'd have a better handle on things if I waited until after Friday plays out. Can you believe that 2nd-year player Jodi Ewart took out defending champ Suzann Pettersen 3&1? That's why we love match play -- it's unpredictable!

So I'll tell you instead about my second Mick Michaels book, Prince Jonathan's War: A Bible Story, that just came out. Like the others, it's for kids reading at level 2-3.

It's a retelling of the story from 1 Samuel 13:15-14:23. In case you're unfamiliar with it, Prince Jonathan is the son of King Saul. (He was the king just before King David.) Saul had just disobeyed the Lord and been scolded by Samuel, the "big" prophet in Israel at the time. Maybe Saul was still moping about it, but in any case he was unwilling to lead his army against the Philistines who had overrun the land.

In fairness, perhaps the fact that the army had only two swords had something to do with it as well! The Philistines had gotten rid of all the blacksmiths. That way it was less likely the Hebrews would try to fight back. As a result the army had only two swords -- Saul had one of them and Jonathan had the other. Everybody else had to use clubs, farm tools, or whatever they could get.

Jonathan saw an opportunity to attack the Philistines, but knew his father wouldn't do it. So he took his sword and his armor bearer and the two of them went to fight the Philistines alone. It's one of my favorite Old Testament stories.

Obviously I like to mix things up a bit. The first book was science fiction, this one's a Bible story, and the next one (which is already written but the illustrations are taking a while) is a Japanese legend. I'm writing lots of different types of action-adventure books!

Anyway, the book is already available at Amazon for the Kindle and BN.com for the Nook, and will soon be at Smashwords in a variety of formats, all priced at $2.99. (I'll update the Smashwords link once I have it.) And, as I do with my other books, since the Smashwords-generated PDF won't be particularly attractive to a young reader, I have a special PDF version available here on site. The PDF will be available on the World Lit page at my Mick's Place blog.