Get a sneak peek into the mind of the author. Rabbi Mark L. Shook takes you behind the scenes of his research, writing process, and more in his blog.
-
Timing is Everything
Posting for April 6, 2026 Writing Search for the Sacred Scroll was not a problem from the “timeline” point of view. The historical period it was based on did not always have definitive markers for certain events. It was possible for the writer to decide what happened when and where, in the absence of contradictory Biblical texts…
-
In the Works,
Thank you for keeping this blog on your list of reading materials. This is my first blog post in quite a while. I have been working on my next book. The working title is, The Leper’s Testament, and is a sequel to Book 3 of Search for the Sacred Scroll. I am now twenty-five chapters into the new…
-
Earthly Thoughts be Silent Now
As a means of relaxation and stress reduction, I find that reading the work of Bart Ehrman is just the ticket. Ehrman is a prolific scholar of Christianity and Christian Literature. In one of his early books, he describes the way most non-fundamentalist Christian seminaries approach the text of the New Testament. They study it…
-
Historical fiction has lots of unwritten rules.
Historical fiction has lots of unwritten rules. One of these unwritten rules pertains to language. If you are writing about ancient Babylonia, the names of people and places should sound Babylonian. Better yet, they should be in Babylonian, or whatever language Babylonians spoke, at the time of the story. Names should be transliterated into an…
-
Once I had an end, I found a better beginning.
I vividly recall how relieved I was to have the first draft completed. I reviewed it one more time and decided to add a bit more detail to the first chapter. Discovery Under Fire was supposed to open with a firefight between members of the Iraqi National Police Force and Sadaam’s Hussein’s diehard military remnants. Media reports…
-
I Never Intended to Write a Novel
I never intended to write a novel. Teaching classes on the TANACH/the Hebrew Scriptures was a passion I could indulge in as a congregational rabbi and as an adjunct professor of Jewish philosophy at St. Louis University. But it was the heartfelt questions of my students in both communities that propelled me down the path of…
All Shook Up 