Help Kevin Finish His Book Series
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"I sought that which I could not find only to be found by that which I could not lose - God's grace. The greatest discovery in life is Who finds you when you are looking for something else. " - Kevin DeVries, Ark Explorer
Dear Friends,
I need your help to finish an epic book series I have been writing for over 500 days entitled: “Explorers Of The Lost Ark.” I believe this series has the power to fundamentally and figuratively change the way people think and feel about God because it attempts to express the unexplainable-God's grace. There is nothing like God's grace in the history of religion and there is nothing like the “Explorers Of The Lost Ark” in the history of literature. Let me explain.
The “Explorers Of The Lost Ark” series (four books - 400 to 500 pages each) vividly recounts the five summers (2009-2013) I searched for Noah’s Ark on Mt. Ararat, Turkey as Lead Mountaineer for Ark Search, LLC. Our final summer of exploration was captured in the award-winning documentary: FINDING NOAH . My profile is featured under: About The Explorers and @ GRACE EXPLORATIONS . The documentary screened in 640 theaters nationwide on October 8, 2015 and is now available wherever DVD's are rented or sold. In addition to the documentary, this book series will give the reader a front row seat to a fascinating and intimate account of the search for Noah’s Ark that has captured the world’s imagination for several millennia. The Flood story and the Ark are shared in part by all the world's major religions. It is a master archetype of literature and depth psychology and a metanarrative of oral history that has covered the planet with nearly 500 flood legends on six continents thousands of years before the rise of global communication.
You’ll decide whether our team found the Ark of history. In the meantime, I found the arc of my story. I climbed more than Mt. Ararat. I climbed into my past to discover the powerful purpose of pain. I sought the Ark to be found by grace, the real Ark that saved Noah as God's most favorable, fair and fierce face. Genesis 6:8 God's grace found me on an ice field of fractured dreams. Eternities weight thinned time to distill my dreams so misery disguised in monarchy became my message. Legends and longing is the lineage of lords and ladies. God’s glory is secrecy. The glory of monarchs is to search so God's majesty is revealed not in mastery but mystery. Proverbs 25:2 We searched for a ship to find friendship knighting us in kingship. A boat bonded us in the brotherhood of Christ. It's not about finding a boat. It's about a brotherhood found in Christ.
The story of the Ark and Grace are told in the book series side by side in a triangulated, interruptive intersection of the three dimensions of time. God lives in "Transcendent Time," the real, primary world of KAIROS Time measured in celestial moments and supernatural seasons. Time is real, supernatural awe as His story – a numinous Person and purpose. Our mortal bodies live in CHRONOS Time measured in clock movements and solar settings. Time is relevant, sequential and astronomical as history – a numeric point and place. Our heart and soul lives in MYTHOS Time measured in creative myths and sensational stories. Time is revealing, suspended and animated as story – a narrative poem and presence where time is put to sleep in the sanctified and redeemed, mythic imagination of mankind. “The real world is beyond time but can be reached only by a process that goes on in time.” This process involves "The Power of True Myth" which will be fully explained in the series.
"To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labor and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode." J.R.R. Tolkien- On Fairy-Stories
In this series, all three time dimensions collide at the cosmic crossroad of the cross. Everything can happen at once in Kairos Time because eternity devours time past, present and future with an eternal now. Everything has already happened in eternity so anything can happen in time. Eternity has no end because it never began. We are all part of Gods EPIC that has no beginning or end because the Author of the story is beyond beginnings and endings. He is I AM. The past, present and future already exist in Him in Kairos Time, the "real world" we enter through the secondary worlds of Chronos and Mythos Time.
Pain drives us into secondary worlds so art at its highest peak drowns us in dreams of a primary world more real than our own. The Ark, as treasure, is a two- way mirror where the Holy hides to heal hearts.
The “Explorers Of The Lost Ark” series, therefore, is a time continuum of interrelated and interwoven stories similar to the book and movie: "Cloud Atlas" (structured as a "pointillist mosaic" minus the reincarnation theme) that will span five Ark expeditions and nine major alliterative themes of the biblical narrative ranging from pre-time eternity to the end of all time: Conflict-Firmament, Creation-Firstborn, Corruption-Fall, Catastrophe-Flood, Confusion-Futility, Christ-Friendship, Cross–Forgiveness, Consummation-Fellowship and Coronation-Feast. Through these biblical epics and historical Ark expeditions the reader will journey with the Fair Maiden of grace through pre-time eternity when evil was still good into the wonder of creation, the fall of man, the great flood and the ensuing chaos until the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, wedding and return of Christ will set things right for all time and eternity in the following series:
“EXPLORERS OF THE LOST ARK”
"Great things are done when men and mountains meet."
- William Blake
- An Explorers True-Myth Discovery Of The Real Ark That Saved Noah
PREFACE: The Power Of True Myth
BOOK I: The Call Of The Sea - Where Time Drowns
BOOK II: The Mountain Of Pain - Where Legends Sleep
BOOK III: The Battle Of Pearls - Where Grace Wins
BOOK IV: The Ones Who Dream - Where Angels Tread
With the exception of Book IV, which is almost entirely told in Mythos Time (man meets boy and goes on a true and mythic journey through several rites of passage - dreams within dreams like the movie: "Inception", towards a white cottage by the sea where memories are healed) the first three books will be broken into thirds covering all three time dimensions.
“Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.” - Karl Barth
Certain transcendent truths such as God's grace are beyond explanation. They may live only as an expression. King Solomon personified wisdom as Lady Wisdom. C.S. Lewis personified Christ as Aslan. William Young personified the Holy Trinity in "The Shack." I personified grace as the "Fair Maiden" along with 15 other named maidens that personify God's other attributes. Grace is a wonder to be caught rather than wisdom to be taught - a splendor shown as well as a secret silently spoken and shared. When words fail, the wonder of grace prevails. As such, I have attempted to incarnate the quintessence of God, which I believe is grace, into the true and mythic form of the Fair Maiden. I found in her fair and fierce countenance the only face that could make real what I already believed. She was the best face I could write that remotely expressed the beauty of God. I believe God's face is the face of grace because grace is His most beautiful face. A face so small and large, intimate and intense it can only be seen from the inner, outer space of the hearts final frontier. In this glorious galaxy, our mission is “to help wandering and wounded warriors find home and healing in the wonder of God's grace."
I climbed the highest mountains, descended the deepest depths of despair and explored the ends of the earth only to reach the end of myself and discover as if for the very first time that there is no height I can climb that GRACE is not higher still, no depth I can descend that GRACE is not deeper still and no place I can be where GRACE is not already there. Grace is the mountain that conquers us as we climb towards God.
In addition to grace, very few pieces of literature have attempted to personify so many of God's attributes in a fully realized primary and secondary universe that straddles three dimensions of time at once. I've studied the masterpieces of Dante, Bunyan, Milton, McDonald, Lewis and Tolkien and other mythopoeic writers (Christian Myth-makers) in depth. However great these luminaries were and however overshadowed my work will be of theirs, none of them combined an explicit personification of grace with a personal, true of account of an epic, five-summer search for Noah's Ark. The Personification of Grace and the Pursuit of the Ark will qualify this series as truly a one of a kind.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9
This series is not a five step "how to" book that controls the mystery of God in a formula based on our own fear and shame. This is a series about suffering that gives true sight. It is a series where beauty rises from the ashes because the grace of God is clothed in our ashes, dancing in the glorious ruins of God’s severe mercy that faithfully hurts because it finally heals. This series isn't about sin management but shame mismanagement. This is not another fraudulent “I found Noah’s Ark” book. Neither is it a scientific discourse debating evolution versus creationism or old earth versus new earth theories all of which I am neither qualified nor interested however important to engage.
“It is not down on any map; true places never are.”
- Herman Melville
This series is about the true, mythic journey every person must embark upon to recover their heart like the Ark frozen in ice as the last remaining link to a shimmering world now lost in the flood of shame. A heart that lives without shame and pain is as mysterious as the pre-flood antediluvian world. Instead of imagining a lost world where larger than life dinosaurs roamed and rumbled the ground like massive tanks and flew in the air like fighter jets and mankind could live to be a thousand years old, imagine where dragons of fear are killed with kindness, memories lost are found and even hope and faith are drowned in an ocean of love. Imagine an earthly paradise where hurts can finally be healed with the weapon of wonder that is only a shadow of the City of Light yet to come. Finding grace is finding the same mystery that filled a man with marvel while a world drowned in madness.
Henry David Thoreau wrote: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived…I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life.” I’ve lived and loved deeply. The "marrow" I sucked from life's broken bone has been filled with marvel and misery. Enough of both to produce a dream vision, a waking dream Thoreau describes as “our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”
To write profoundly, one must often live simply. Letters written in prisons and caves far outlive those written in palaces and castles. Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, St. John, St. Paul, Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn and Bonhoeffer wrote in great discomfort to give great comfort to others. They suffered so others might see. I wanted to suffer to see so others can have eyes to see. Far too many of us live in a house where our hearts are too wounded to ever come home. My wounded heart has come home to its healed self in Christ. The lights are on and I am home. I have a new set of eyes and a brand new heart. Timeless Trauma has begun to heal with Transcendent Time.
I have given everything I have to give to make this series become a reality. I just need a little crowd funding support so we can make history together. Pain has been a powerful pen to write a text of tears. Misery, pain, suffering and tears became my muse that penned a shimmering tale. I was wounded with the weapon of wonder that hurt and healed me to become a writer. I have beheld a poetic vision that made me a narrator more than a writer in a numinous atmosphere filled with awe before an Audience of One. I simply wrote what I had seen and heard. I was bleeding and burning with beautiful agony and the only relief I could find was to write.
Across evergreen fields, I heard the roar of a Lion King echoing as horns in the hills, children's laughter in hallowed halls, high silvery voices of morning stars above and the crashing surf of a Crystal Sea below. Eternity stepped into time in a thin place created by the weight of grace. I was a happy casualty strewn amongst its glorious ruins. It will take me a lifetime to recover from this asteroid of awe. I hope I never do. Mans madness is indeed heavens sanity. The result of this marvelous madness is nothing less than a sprawling, poetic retelling of God's story in allegorical form interwoven with the timeless tale of Noah’s Ark. It is a story that impacts us all because it is an epic exploration into the human heart that colonizes our deepest dreams to write the legend of our lives. In the end, I did not write this series so much as it wrote me.
I finally wrote the book series I have lived my whole life to read. It's leafy pages were rustled to life in the diamond dust wind of an internal library secreted away in the hidden chambers of a pearl we call the human heart. I would not have retrieved this book from the shelves of dusty memories filled with deep despair, prevailing pain and highest hopes if not for the splintered rays of a Great Light that filtered in from a high window above overlooking a fair country beyond my most daring dreams. And now the time has come to dust off the book once again and hand it to the world so they find their own story imbedded in the rumors of its rustling pages. We read others stories to find our own.
Although this book series is one mans transcendent journey beyond myth and mountain into the dark chambers of his heart guided only by desperations last flickering light, a small band of brothers and the hope that true freedom lies beyond the next bend, it is the story of every man, woman and child on planet earth. All of us are on a journey where we might lose everything we wanted only to discover we had everything we needed the whole time. We are all part of an EPIC adventure to reach the end of ourselves to find a new beginning in God that never ends because it never really began. This series is merely the colonization of those unexplored dreams God dreams when He dreams His dreams through us.
If writing a book is like running a marathon, then I'm at mile 23 of a 26.2-mile race. The crowds have thinned- writing an Epic is a lonely enterprise. I've burned through all my inner resources. I’ve hit the wall and it’s very tempting just to give up. But I have lived, seen and wrote too much to give up now. I was born to write this series. It is being delivered with just the right amount of exquisite pain and pleasure. I just need help crossing the finish line. Can you help? Please prayerfully consider how you can help me finish the final 5k of this marathon. After the four-book series is completed, Book I will be professionally edited and sent along with a proposal to prospective publishers.
$5000.00 is needed to finish the manuscript this spring/summer and begin the professional editing process of Book I. The entire series edit has been estimated at $25,000.00. Any gift, great or small is greatly appreciated!
Thank you for taking the time to read this proposal. I have no giving incentives or gimmicks other than your name acknowledged in the series and an opportunity to make history together. How often does an opportunity like that come along? And when they do those moments are priceless because they are timeless.
Best regards,
Kevin DeVries
PS. Please feel free to share this page within your social and business networks that might be interested as well. Thank you!
"The more we write the less we die.” - Brian Kessler
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." - Earnest Hemingway
"I was with book, as a woman is with child…What began the change was the very writing itself. Let no one lightly set about such a work. Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant...The change which the writing wrought in me (and of which I did not write) was only a beginning; only to prepare me for the 'gods' surgery. They used my own pen to probe my wound.”
C.S. Lewis- Till We Have Faces
“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.” - Sir Winston Churchill
“When a book leaves your hands it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry about this is to take over God’s business…Books don’t offend people, people offend themselves by what they find mirrored in books.” - Flannery O’ Connor
Dear Friends,
I need your help to finish an epic book series I have been writing for over 500 days entitled: “Explorers Of The Lost Ark.” I believe this series has the power to fundamentally and figuratively change the way people think and feel about God because it attempts to express the unexplainable-God's grace. There is nothing like God's grace in the history of religion and there is nothing like the “Explorers Of The Lost Ark” in the history of literature. Let me explain.
The “Explorers Of The Lost Ark” series (four books - 400 to 500 pages each) vividly recounts the five summers (2009-2013) I searched for Noah’s Ark on Mt. Ararat, Turkey as Lead Mountaineer for Ark Search, LLC. Our final summer of exploration was captured in the award-winning documentary: FINDING NOAH . My profile is featured under: About The Explorers and @ GRACE EXPLORATIONS . The documentary screened in 640 theaters nationwide on October 8, 2015 and is now available wherever DVD's are rented or sold. In addition to the documentary, this book series will give the reader a front row seat to a fascinating and intimate account of the search for Noah’s Ark that has captured the world’s imagination for several millennia. The Flood story and the Ark are shared in part by all the world's major religions. It is a master archetype of literature and depth psychology and a metanarrative of oral history that has covered the planet with nearly 500 flood legends on six continents thousands of years before the rise of global communication.
You’ll decide whether our team found the Ark of history. In the meantime, I found the arc of my story. I climbed more than Mt. Ararat. I climbed into my past to discover the powerful purpose of pain. I sought the Ark to be found by grace, the real Ark that saved Noah as God's most favorable, fair and fierce face. Genesis 6:8 God's grace found me on an ice field of fractured dreams. Eternities weight thinned time to distill my dreams so misery disguised in monarchy became my message. Legends and longing is the lineage of lords and ladies. God’s glory is secrecy. The glory of monarchs is to search so God's majesty is revealed not in mastery but mystery. Proverbs 25:2 We searched for a ship to find friendship knighting us in kingship. A boat bonded us in the brotherhood of Christ. It's not about finding a boat. It's about a brotherhood found in Christ.
The story of the Ark and Grace are told in the book series side by side in a triangulated, interruptive intersection of the three dimensions of time. God lives in "Transcendent Time," the real, primary world of KAIROS Time measured in celestial moments and supernatural seasons. Time is real, supernatural awe as His story – a numinous Person and purpose. Our mortal bodies live in CHRONOS Time measured in clock movements and solar settings. Time is relevant, sequential and astronomical as history – a numeric point and place. Our heart and soul lives in MYTHOS Time measured in creative myths and sensational stories. Time is revealing, suspended and animated as story – a narrative poem and presence where time is put to sleep in the sanctified and redeemed, mythic imagination of mankind. “The real world is beyond time but can be reached only by a process that goes on in time.” This process involves "The Power of True Myth" which will be fully explained in the series.
"To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labor and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode." J.R.R. Tolkien- On Fairy-Stories
In this series, all three time dimensions collide at the cosmic crossroad of the cross. Everything can happen at once in Kairos Time because eternity devours time past, present and future with an eternal now. Everything has already happened in eternity so anything can happen in time. Eternity has no end because it never began. We are all part of Gods EPIC that has no beginning or end because the Author of the story is beyond beginnings and endings. He is I AM. The past, present and future already exist in Him in Kairos Time, the "real world" we enter through the secondary worlds of Chronos and Mythos Time.
Pain drives us into secondary worlds so art at its highest peak drowns us in dreams of a primary world more real than our own. The Ark, as treasure, is a two- way mirror where the Holy hides to heal hearts.
The “Explorers Of The Lost Ark” series, therefore, is a time continuum of interrelated and interwoven stories similar to the book and movie: "Cloud Atlas" (structured as a "pointillist mosaic" minus the reincarnation theme) that will span five Ark expeditions and nine major alliterative themes of the biblical narrative ranging from pre-time eternity to the end of all time: Conflict-Firmament, Creation-Firstborn, Corruption-Fall, Catastrophe-Flood, Confusion-Futility, Christ-Friendship, Cross–Forgiveness, Consummation-Fellowship and Coronation-Feast. Through these biblical epics and historical Ark expeditions the reader will journey with the Fair Maiden of grace through pre-time eternity when evil was still good into the wonder of creation, the fall of man, the great flood and the ensuing chaos until the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, wedding and return of Christ will set things right for all time and eternity in the following series:
“EXPLORERS OF THE LOST ARK”
"Great things are done when men and mountains meet."
- William Blake
- An Explorers True-Myth Discovery Of The Real Ark That Saved Noah
PREFACE: The Power Of True Myth
BOOK I: The Call Of The Sea - Where Time Drowns
BOOK II: The Mountain Of Pain - Where Legends Sleep
BOOK III: The Battle Of Pearls - Where Grace Wins
BOOK IV: The Ones Who Dream - Where Angels Tread
With the exception of Book IV, which is almost entirely told in Mythos Time (man meets boy and goes on a true and mythic journey through several rites of passage - dreams within dreams like the movie: "Inception", towards a white cottage by the sea where memories are healed) the first three books will be broken into thirds covering all three time dimensions.
“Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.” - Karl Barth
Certain transcendent truths such as God's grace are beyond explanation. They may live only as an expression. King Solomon personified wisdom as Lady Wisdom. C.S. Lewis personified Christ as Aslan. William Young personified the Holy Trinity in "The Shack." I personified grace as the "Fair Maiden" along with 15 other named maidens that personify God's other attributes. Grace is a wonder to be caught rather than wisdom to be taught - a splendor shown as well as a secret silently spoken and shared. When words fail, the wonder of grace prevails. As such, I have attempted to incarnate the quintessence of God, which I believe is grace, into the true and mythic form of the Fair Maiden. I found in her fair and fierce countenance the only face that could make real what I already believed. She was the best face I could write that remotely expressed the beauty of God. I believe God's face is the face of grace because grace is His most beautiful face. A face so small and large, intimate and intense it can only be seen from the inner, outer space of the hearts final frontier. In this glorious galaxy, our mission is “to help wandering and wounded warriors find home and healing in the wonder of God's grace."
I climbed the highest mountains, descended the deepest depths of despair and explored the ends of the earth only to reach the end of myself and discover as if for the very first time that there is no height I can climb that GRACE is not higher still, no depth I can descend that GRACE is not deeper still and no place I can be where GRACE is not already there. Grace is the mountain that conquers us as we climb towards God.
In addition to grace, very few pieces of literature have attempted to personify so many of God's attributes in a fully realized primary and secondary universe that straddles three dimensions of time at once. I've studied the masterpieces of Dante, Bunyan, Milton, McDonald, Lewis and Tolkien and other mythopoeic writers (Christian Myth-makers) in depth. However great these luminaries were and however overshadowed my work will be of theirs, none of them combined an explicit personification of grace with a personal, true of account of an epic, five-summer search for Noah's Ark. The Personification of Grace and the Pursuit of the Ark will qualify this series as truly a one of a kind.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9
This series is not a five step "how to" book that controls the mystery of God in a formula based on our own fear and shame. This is a series about suffering that gives true sight. It is a series where beauty rises from the ashes because the grace of God is clothed in our ashes, dancing in the glorious ruins of God’s severe mercy that faithfully hurts because it finally heals. This series isn't about sin management but shame mismanagement. This is not another fraudulent “I found Noah’s Ark” book. Neither is it a scientific discourse debating evolution versus creationism or old earth versus new earth theories all of which I am neither qualified nor interested however important to engage.
“It is not down on any map; true places never are.”
- Herman Melville
This series is about the true, mythic journey every person must embark upon to recover their heart like the Ark frozen in ice as the last remaining link to a shimmering world now lost in the flood of shame. A heart that lives without shame and pain is as mysterious as the pre-flood antediluvian world. Instead of imagining a lost world where larger than life dinosaurs roamed and rumbled the ground like massive tanks and flew in the air like fighter jets and mankind could live to be a thousand years old, imagine where dragons of fear are killed with kindness, memories lost are found and even hope and faith are drowned in an ocean of love. Imagine an earthly paradise where hurts can finally be healed with the weapon of wonder that is only a shadow of the City of Light yet to come. Finding grace is finding the same mystery that filled a man with marvel while a world drowned in madness.
Henry David Thoreau wrote: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived…I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life.” I’ve lived and loved deeply. The "marrow" I sucked from life's broken bone has been filled with marvel and misery. Enough of both to produce a dream vision, a waking dream Thoreau describes as “our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”
To write profoundly, one must often live simply. Letters written in prisons and caves far outlive those written in palaces and castles. Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, St. John, St. Paul, Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn and Bonhoeffer wrote in great discomfort to give great comfort to others. They suffered so others might see. I wanted to suffer to see so others can have eyes to see. Far too many of us live in a house where our hearts are too wounded to ever come home. My wounded heart has come home to its healed self in Christ. The lights are on and I am home. I have a new set of eyes and a brand new heart. Timeless Trauma has begun to heal with Transcendent Time.
I have given everything I have to give to make this series become a reality. I just need a little crowd funding support so we can make history together. Pain has been a powerful pen to write a text of tears. Misery, pain, suffering and tears became my muse that penned a shimmering tale. I was wounded with the weapon of wonder that hurt and healed me to become a writer. I have beheld a poetic vision that made me a narrator more than a writer in a numinous atmosphere filled with awe before an Audience of One. I simply wrote what I had seen and heard. I was bleeding and burning with beautiful agony and the only relief I could find was to write.
Across evergreen fields, I heard the roar of a Lion King echoing as horns in the hills, children's laughter in hallowed halls, high silvery voices of morning stars above and the crashing surf of a Crystal Sea below. Eternity stepped into time in a thin place created by the weight of grace. I was a happy casualty strewn amongst its glorious ruins. It will take me a lifetime to recover from this asteroid of awe. I hope I never do. Mans madness is indeed heavens sanity. The result of this marvelous madness is nothing less than a sprawling, poetic retelling of God's story in allegorical form interwoven with the timeless tale of Noah’s Ark. It is a story that impacts us all because it is an epic exploration into the human heart that colonizes our deepest dreams to write the legend of our lives. In the end, I did not write this series so much as it wrote me.
I finally wrote the book series I have lived my whole life to read. It's leafy pages were rustled to life in the diamond dust wind of an internal library secreted away in the hidden chambers of a pearl we call the human heart. I would not have retrieved this book from the shelves of dusty memories filled with deep despair, prevailing pain and highest hopes if not for the splintered rays of a Great Light that filtered in from a high window above overlooking a fair country beyond my most daring dreams. And now the time has come to dust off the book once again and hand it to the world so they find their own story imbedded in the rumors of its rustling pages. We read others stories to find our own.
Although this book series is one mans transcendent journey beyond myth and mountain into the dark chambers of his heart guided only by desperations last flickering light, a small band of brothers and the hope that true freedom lies beyond the next bend, it is the story of every man, woman and child on planet earth. All of us are on a journey where we might lose everything we wanted only to discover we had everything we needed the whole time. We are all part of an EPIC adventure to reach the end of ourselves to find a new beginning in God that never ends because it never really began. This series is merely the colonization of those unexplored dreams God dreams when He dreams His dreams through us.
If writing a book is like running a marathon, then I'm at mile 23 of a 26.2-mile race. The crowds have thinned- writing an Epic is a lonely enterprise. I've burned through all my inner resources. I’ve hit the wall and it’s very tempting just to give up. But I have lived, seen and wrote too much to give up now. I was born to write this series. It is being delivered with just the right amount of exquisite pain and pleasure. I just need help crossing the finish line. Can you help? Please prayerfully consider how you can help me finish the final 5k of this marathon. After the four-book series is completed, Book I will be professionally edited and sent along with a proposal to prospective publishers.
$5000.00 is needed to finish the manuscript this spring/summer and begin the professional editing process of Book I. The entire series edit has been estimated at $25,000.00. Any gift, great or small is greatly appreciated!
Thank you for taking the time to read this proposal. I have no giving incentives or gimmicks other than your name acknowledged in the series and an opportunity to make history together. How often does an opportunity like that come along? And when they do those moments are priceless because they are timeless.
Best regards,
Kevin DeVries
PS. Please feel free to share this page within your social and business networks that might be interested as well. Thank you!
"The more we write the less we die.” - Brian Kessler
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." - Earnest Hemingway
"I was with book, as a woman is with child…What began the change was the very writing itself. Let no one lightly set about such a work. Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant...The change which the writing wrought in me (and of which I did not write) was only a beginning; only to prepare me for the 'gods' surgery. They used my own pen to probe my wound.”
C.S. Lewis- Till We Have Faces
“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.” - Sir Winston Churchill
“When a book leaves your hands it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry about this is to take over God’s business…Books don’t offend people, people offend themselves by what they find mirrored in books.” - Flannery O’ Connor
Organizer
Kevin DeVries
Organizer
Byron Center, MI
