A New Roll-Out for ‘Wrestling with God’ — Just in Time for the Holidays

Drumroll! This is a big day for me. It’s the day of a new roll-out for “Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith.”

I’m releasing it under my own imprint, Blackberry Canyon Press.

It’s the same prizewinning “Wrestling with God” that was published in 2015, a book that I believe has much to offer our globalized, multi-faith, strife-ridden — post 2024 election — world, especially as the holiday season approaches.

When you order a copy be sure to order the “Wrestling with God” that’s published by Blackberry Canyon Press. You’ll find it wherever books are sold, including:

Why I Wrote ‘Wrestling with God’

I put years of work into writing “Wrestling with God,” and my hope in writing it was that, in our increasingly globalized world, it might inspire conversations between people of differing traditions and temperaments.

It includes the voices of a Buddhist monk, a fundamentalist Christian, a progressive Muslim, a happy atheist, and a hopeful skeptic (me), all Americans in search of a way to believe in God — or something — in our twenty-first-century world.

Why a New Roll-Out for ‘Wrestling with God’?

Why the switcheroo? Why the re-release?

My publisher Patheos.com shut down its book publishing arm some time ago. Which means the rights to “Wrestling with God” have reverted to me.

Which means if I want to keep my book in print, it’s up to me to make it happen.

And that has involved quite a bit of  work.

Most of the work has been technical:

• Getting a new ISBN number.
• Updating links to the book all over the place.
• Filling out endless forms at book distributors Ingram Spark and Amazon.
• Making sure the re-release is available to you as an ebook as well as a print book — online and at bookstores.

(Lucky for me, my trusty social media guru Cheryl McLaughlin is up to the task.)

But much of the work has been truly fun:

• Creating my own publishing house and cooking up a name for it: Blackberry Canyon Press, in honor of the blackberries growing wild in the canyon below my house.
• Tracking down the lovely Michelle Lenger, who designed the fabulous cover for the original 2015 release and asking her to reconfigure her design.

  

• Working with Michelle to come up with a logo for my new imprint. She did. It’s an adorable red (yes, red) blackberry. Giving birth to that blackberry involved a lot of emails back and forth with Michelle, who lives three time zones away and is very patient.
• Splashing the super impressive endorsement from Publishers Weekly across the top of the front cover, complete with its fat red star and the words: “Any seeker of any faith will be blessed to read the words of this fine author and observer.”

Celebrate With Me

Please join in the celebration and treat yourself to (another?) copy of “Wrestling with God.” Send copies off to friends and family who haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting the monk, the fundamentalist and the atheist.

Think ahead to the holidays. As an interfaith book, “Wrestling with God” will make a great gift. Even your atheist friends might appreciate it.

You can order your copy of the “Wrestling with God” that’s published by Blackberry Canyon Press — in paperback and soon as an e-book — from Amazon,  Bookshop.org  or Barnes & Noble, or through your local bookstore.

Note: You might see used copies for sale on Amazon at super low prices. Those are left over from the book’s original release. It’s the same book. But if you buy one of those, it won’t have Blackberry Canyon Press’s gorgeous — red! — blackberry on it.

Coming soon: How you can help “Wrestling with God” reach more readers.