Welcome to the August 2015 Edition of Songdove Books Newsletter!

The final full week of August already! I know many of you are wondering where the summer went, thinking you may have caught a glimpse of it in the corner of your eye as it whizzed past. In my corner of the world, it was a hot, dry summer with more than its fair share of forest fires and cracked earth! However, in spite of the heat, it was an adventurous summer as well. Those of you staying up with my monthly newsletters will have learned about July's adventures already.

The adventures for August were closer to home, but prompted me to write about the joys and challenges of setting up my grown kids to make names for themselves in their own particular niches in life. Those efforts are ongoing as we speak, but they began in earnest this summer.

BACK TO SCHOOL!!!

Things stayed quiet on the book front until this very week when I launched a two month book bundle good from now through to October 31st. The way the savings go, its as if you are getting two books in the bundle for FREE! Due to how various retailers around the 'net have priced my books, this is more true than you might realize!

Prayer Cards From "A Year in Prayer With Jesus"

Month Five prayer cards for "A Year in Prayer With Jesus" are now completely scheduled through to September 10th. That means I have to get my own tail and complete more months in the prayer card series. It's been hard to concentrate on all the copy and pasting required to turn the book into this series with the weather being so hot this summer. But I will get this series of prayer cards completed. I promise!

These prayer cards will not be shared on LinkedIn any longer, as I can't force LinkedIn to accept both an image and a courtesy link via hootesuite, without the courtesy link taking over. The focus is not to be the link, but the image. So LinkedIn is now axed from seeing these cards.

When Month 6 is completed, Months 1 - 3 will go on sale at 25% off. All decks, whether 30 days or 31 days, sell for $20 each and are useable as desktop backgrounds, in your screensaver app (randomly), or printed at 300 DPI on your colour printer. You may purchase one copy for home, a second work, another for your office at church, etc. If you have a Bible study group you wish to purchase for, contact me and we'll discuss special pricing.

Month One: https://gumroad.com/l/PC-YPWJ
Month Two: https://gumroad.com/l/PC2-YPWJ
Month Three: https://gum.co/PC3-YPWJ
Month Four: https://gumroad.com/l/PC4-YPWJ
Month Five: https://gumroad.com/l/PC5-YPWJ

Another Book Project!

Efforts on my daughter's books are coming along, particularly one we are doing together where she will be listed as co-author in order to ensure that I have my facts straight and effective sources quoted. This book is entitled, "Horsemanship According to Xenophon" and will not only feature the translated work as done by Morris H. Morgan in 1893, but include many of Morris's own translation notes. Ashley and I are huge lovers of history, so with so many of Morris's notes giving historical context either for Xenophon's comments or Morris's own translations at times, the historical value was too great to pass up! A cover for this book still has to be drafted, but the interior is so far coming along nicely. This will be the equivalent to a softcover coffee-table book due to its size and the full-colour interior. Many of the images in the book feature both Ashley and her horse, Bella Svanna.

Our goal for this book is to bring Xenophon's writings into the modern day first as Morris saw them in 1893 and then as we see and interpret them now. Our presentation will draw from Ashley's 9+ years of experience around horses both caring for and riding them English-style, as well as quotes and references to manuals, guides and other sources showing the modern adaptation, interpretation and execution of many of Xenophon's admonitions from 350BC.

Due to his various references to how the Persians handled equestrian concerns, an additional writer's influence from 1350BC in the country of Mitanni is included in Chapter 4. This is important to note as Mitanni was overtaken by the Hittite Empire; yes, that same empire that was driven out of Canaan when Israel moved in. In turn, the Hittite Empire was overtaken by the Persian Empire against whom Xenophon joined the Greek army to fight long before he began writing. Many authoritative references to Xenophon's works state that there doesn't exist any writings related to the care, feeding and training of the horse that survived prior to Xenophon's book. I'd say 5 cuniform tablets from the ancient Hittite region certainly qualify as prior writings!

So if you are into horses and into history, you'll want to stay tuned on the progress of this book!

News Related to the Songdove Books Affiliate Program

Have you signed up as a Songdove Books Affiliate yet? I know some of you like to share my books with your online friends from time to time, so why not get 20% kickback for your trouble?

Click2Sell and JVZoo only offer this percentage on my two e-courses, however the recent additions this month of Gumroad and Payhip also let you earn this percentage on sales of my books too!

Check out this link on my site for more information. Help me get word out about my books and e-courses, and get paid for every sale made from your efforts!

Wrap-up

I'll close off today with encouragement to check the blog links below. I've been saying that a lot in recent newsletters, but the truth is, that these newsletters have been coming out shortly after major thoughts have already been written. Being one for efficiency, why write them twice, right? My blog has been quite varied this summer ranging from devotonal thoughts to family life to at least one all-out rant! I actually do rant occasionally. Remember that I process things through my fingers on this keyboard. That means when God is speaking, I process via writing, when I'm puzzling something out I'll process via writing, when an issue grates on me too strong I'll resort to writing about it to get it out of my system for awhile, etc. So my blog is a reflection of these various types of writing this summer. If you haven't stopped by in awhile, you'll want to click one of the posts below and then look at the left-hand sidebar near the top to see recent blog posts. Alternatively, you can click the site banner to go to the home page and scroll down to see the variety of blog posts this summer produced.

Feel free to share any posts that resonate with you too. Each posting has a row of share buttons across the bottom to help you do that. It's a shorter newsletter this month, but we are heading into the Fall season now, so who knows what's in store as we move forward.

View past newsletters.

Latest Content on the Songdove Musings Blog:

Relationship with God: Which One Do You Most Identify With?

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"Back to School Bundle for the Entire Family!"

Yes, it IS that time of year again! For some, classes are already in session. For others, classes are due to resume following Labour Day in September. Regardless of when children and teachers are returning to the classroom, its hard not to observe all the sales going on in the stores right now! Paper, pencils, rulers, backpacks, calculators, cellphones and …

The Cyclist, The Motorist, and the Law! A Rant!

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