One of the major difficulties in writing an imaginatively expanded version of the story of David from the Bible (and trying to still keep it biblical) is the utter lack of precision in the source materials when it came to time. When did all this stuff happen?

Not having the exact dates is fine for general Bible study or children’s worship purposes; we don’t need to know what year David was anointed to teach about how God isn’t impressed by the things our culture is impressed by, but by what he sees in our hearts. But when you’re trying to immerse people in a particular time and place, TIME is a crucial part of the equation. A teenager might be vague about when they’ll be home from hanging out with friends, but I wasn’t even going to try writing a story that was vague about how old David was at any point in the story. How can you immerse yourself in someone’s life if you have no idea, for 300 pages, how old they are?

So that meant making choices based on very little concrete information.

The Bible is clear on few things:

1. David and his band of followers (600 strong) “lived among the Philistines” for one year and four months–this is how long he was a mercenary/pretended to be a mercenary at the end of his time on the run from Saul.
2. David was 30 when he became king of Judah.
3. He became king of all Israel and reigned from Jerusalem 7 years after that.
4. He ruled for a total of 40 years (7 from Hebron, 33 from Jerusalem).
5. He was 70 when he died.

Because there was no standardized calendar, all timekeeping was relative: this event was 3 years after this other event, that happened in the 5th year of So-and-so’s reign. So biblical historians do a lot of approximating from events that are both mentioned in the Bible and have additional evidence that allow us to give it a date.

But even this is an imprecise science. See the list below of dates that various experts have assigned to David’s life and rule:

Ancient History Encyclopedia c.1035 – 970 BCE
Encyclopedia.com ruled 1010 – ca.970 BCE
Jewish Virtual Library ruled 1010 – 970 BCE
Chabad.org lived 2854 – 2924 (907 – 837 BCE)
Wikipedia “Historians of the Ancient Near East agree that David probably existed around 1000 BCE, but that there is little that can be said about him as a historical figure.”
My Jewish Learning ruled c. 1009/1001 – 969 B.C.E.
NIV Study Bible lived 1040 – 970 BCE

Some sources are only willing to give dates to when he reigned in Israel; others will give other dates, admitting that they are approximate. The NIV Study Bible goes so far as to give a date for David’s anointing, although there are no textual hints or clues as to his age, only that he’s the youngest of his siblings and that he was in the hills with the sheep. This one clue has led some children’s picture book authors to imply that David was as young as 10 when he was anointed, because kids that young would be given responsibility over a flock. Others argue that David was probably already of military service age when he became a musician for Saul and was anointed by Samuel, otherwise why would Saul have been so threatened as to want to murder him?

Frankly, both are plausible. As is my timeline.

• I went with the majority and had his death date at 970 BCE, which makes him born in 1040 BCE.
• I like the idea that he was anointed young but not too young, at 13. He may have gone through a cultural rite of passage to manhood, but his life is not significantly different.
• He goes into Saul’s service at 14, but gets sent back home when Israel goes to war because he’s not yet at fighting age (which burns after awhile).
• He kills Goliath at 16.
• The Giant Slayer ends with him at age 20, when he’s finally figured out why he was anointed seven years earlier, and starts his 10 years on the run from the murderous King Saul.

Each one of those is a choice that I have to make plausible. Not to mention other crazy things like making it plausible that Saul has to be introduced to David right after he’s killed Goliath, despite the fact that David has been his musician for some time. And that David remained in Saul’s service after Saul had tried to kill him with a spear.

I think I managed to give solid character-seated reasons for each of those, but only my readers can be the judge of that 🙂

Speaking of which, if all that intrigues you, you can find information about where to order The Giant Slayer here.

It is official: I have perseverance.

This has not always been true. I used to get my mother to finish all my sewing projects. As someone for whom many things came easily, I’d routinely abandon things once they became difficult, because that meant I was “bad at it”–classic fixed mindset. My basement storage room was clogged with half-finished craft projects until one January when I made it my discipline to finish them or get rid of them. The balance on the scale of Great Ideas vs. Ideas That Have Seen the Light of Day leans so far on the Great Ideas side that it’s laughable.

Even The Giant Slayer–I started writing this with so much hope and excitement. In 2011 or 2012. Before that, I’d been writing romance and learning a lot, but no agent or publishing deal. And then, in my read-the-Bible-all-the-way-through project, I reached the story of David in 1 Samuel. It was thrilling. I was a big reader of middle grade and young adult fiction (Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Benedict Society), and I kept seeing echoes of those stories in David’s story. I wished that my then-12-year-old son could see the Bible as exciting as I was seeing it–David was the original Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Percy Jackson! But the Bible is written in formal language without the level of detail that kids connect to.

So I thought I might take my love of middle grade fiction, my love of the Bible, my love of research, and my skill in telling Bible stories to kids and re-tell the story of David, adding in some of those feels-like details, some of the dialogue, some of the things that would make it feel like a fully fleshed-out story for contemporary kids.

I thought it might take me 6 months. Ha! The more I wrote, the more details I craved, the more precision I needed. It took two years to write, and then another two years of submitting to agents and publishers and dealing with rejection before choosing myself and deciding to independently publish it. In mid-2015 I was ready to go. I had ISBNs, the manuscript was edited, I had my Facebook author page and I was executing my marketing plan, I had contacted book cover and interior designers, I had a publisher name and logo.

And then my husband of 21 years was arrested for a sex crime.

I’ve written generically about my marriage imploding and things being difficult, but what happened was not generic; it was huge and shocking. It meant a complete reordering of our lives and our expectations. Even that feels like an understatement. The Giant Slayer was the thing that always got pushed to the back burner while I dealt with all the financial, legal, medical, educational, emotional, psychological, and physical needs I was negotiating for myself, my children, our extended family, our friends, and our church.

Now and then, I’d take a baby step toward picking up this book project, but it’s hard for a single mother who is no longer married to a web developer to do tech stuff on her own. But I kept trying and I kept praying for perseverance. Somehow, I decided that 2019 would be my year. In 2018 I made a few tough decisions and decided to pay for the things I could–including that gorgeous cover by Jessica Bell. I spent a crazy amount of time asking my friend Mr. Google many questions about what I wanted to do. I yelled at my computer, and sometimes I cried. But I kept going.

Three and a half years after I was on the verge of publishing, I have published. I am so proud of it. I think I have managed to present David and Saul without nostalgia, as if they do not know how their stories turn out (which is my pet peeve in so many biblical presentations).

Whether you read Mary Loebig Giles’s wonderful back cover blurb (following), download the first two chapters, and order the book or not, I thank you for reading this far. I’ve talked about this project for so many years with so many people: thank you to all of you for listening. May you keep persevering at something you think of as a too-big hurdle: may you slay your metaphorical giant, just as I have.

Born to serve, destined to lead…

Twelve-year-old David, a skilled musician and bold risk-taker, tends his flocks in a rural backwater of ancient Samaria, eager to prove himself and join his brothers on the battlefield. A youngest son who would never have a household of his own, no one is more shocked than David when a powerful prophet summons him for a cryptic blessing, hinting that he–and not his brothers–is destined for greatness. So begins David’s epic adventure. As the nation readies for war against an age-old enemy, David secretly trains as a soldier. He soon comes face to face with a terrifying foe and ultimately finds himself in the center of a life or death struggle that will alter the course of history for Israel–and the world.

A hero’s journey and young adult coming-of-age novel, The Giant Slayer imaginatively retells the Biblical story of David’s meteoric rise from shepherd boy to fearless warrior and future king.

Amazon (print and ebook)

Apple Books

Barnes & Noble

Kobo (Canada)

Here are the things I need to do in order to (finally!) finish The Giant Slayer:

1. Hire someone to do a few fussy fixes on the cover and add some things once I make decision #2.
2. Decide what the series will be called.
3. Finish formatting the print version (and finish making fussy little changes to the text).
4. Transfer the final version from InDesign back into Word, and format it for the ebook.
5. Decide on what the second book will be called (so I can insert a teaser first chapter, and include a “hey, if you want to find out when Name of Book 2 publishes, sign up here” kind of page on my website).
6. Get another author photo done, since I look very different from the current one taken a year and a half ago.

Since two of these are decisions with no clear answers, I’m stuck. But I’m putting the list and the dilemmas out here, both for accountability and to solicit input.

2. Name of series.

My instinct is to call the series “First Kings,” so The Giant Slayer would be First Kings, Book One. But my issue is two-fold.

You can only have one First of anything. My dad was particularly nonplussed by how both Saul and David could both be a first king. My explanation is that Saul is the literal first king of Israel, but David was the first king in terms of what we think of as a king: he established a political, cultural, and religious center that wasn’t attached to any one tribe, lived in a grand place and had wealth (sometimes from conquered countries) that Saul could only have imagined, organized the military and developed Israel’s first permanent fighting force, brought back the Ark of the Covenant, and unified the country. If I explain that somewhere in the book, in a charming, sort of amusing way, is that enough to justify both the two firsts problem, and the slight confusion some readers may get that I am not, in fact using any material from the biblical book also called First Kings?

If not First Kings, then what else could it be?!? Feel free to brainstorm in the comments. I’ll give you credit if yours is chosen.

5. Name of second book.

The first book is The Giant Slayer, and the third book will be The Shepherd King. The second book is about David’s years on the run in the wilderness, building the men who come to him into a unit yet refusing to enter into any kind of fight with King Saul (who is hunting him down). He’s attempting to solidify support among the people, and he winds up as a mercenary for Israel’s arch-enemies, the Philistines. The one title I can’t let go of is The Reluctant Rebel. But that’s too many syllables compared to the other two books, and reluctant is too complicated of a word. But I like what it gets at. Yes, David became a rebel, but only because Saul treated him like one by constantly trying to kill him. So to survive, he had to act like one (although he drew the line at fighting fellow Israelites and killing Saul). So he was reluctant.

What else can I call it?!? Please brainstorm in the comments. I’ll give you the glory of a shout-out in my acknowledgments if your title is chosen.

So there you have it. My to-do list and my dilemmas. I really do hope someone who is better at names than I am can hook me up.

Last week, I found out something that gave me both hope and dread: Geraldine Brooks, a bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, is publishing a novel about Israel’s second king, David, this year. So am I.

Oh, the stew of reactions I had.

Dread. She will suck all the potential attention my book(s) could potentially get.

Vindication. I was right that the time is ripe for fictional treatments of biblical people.

Curiosity. Her retelling will be different from mine. Here’s the blurb:

The Secret Chord provides new context for some of the best-known episodes of David’s life while also focusing on others, even more remarkable and emotionally intense, that have been neglected.  We see David through the eyes of those who love him or fear him—from the prophet Natan, voice of his conscience, to his wives Mikal, Avigail, and Batsheva, and finally to Solomon, the late-born son who redeems his Lear-like old age. Brooks has an uncanny ability to hear and transform characters from history, and this beautifully written, unvarnished saga of faith, desire, family, ambition, betrayal, and power will enthrall her many fans.

I am aiming my book at young adults and she’s aiming hers at adults, which is my way of saying that she writes gorgeously, for a literary fiction audience; I don’t. I am using fewer points of view, just David and Saul, to her possible six. I am using Western English spellings. But I loved her novel, People of the Book, and I kind of can’t wait to see what she does with David and all those people in his life. Will her characterizations be similar to any of mine? Will any be polar opposite?

Hope. If people are interested in her book and they look it up on Amazon, maybe they will sometimes find mine, as well. Discoverability is a big issue when independently publishing, so this might bring a few more eyes to my project than it would otherwise have gotten.

Which brings me to:

Determination. Brooks’s publication is as good a reason as any to try to get all three of the books in my series published this year. Which would be crazy. But I’m going to try. So it will be crazy.

Right now, The Giant Slayer (Book One) is with an Old Testament expert to make sure I get matters of culture at least plausible. Then it goes to the final proofreader, and then to the book and cover designer. The Giant Slayer could be out by summer. Contact me to be put on the list of those who will find out first!