Faith, Family, Football, and Books!
- M.D. House
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
#43 | SEPTEMBER 2026
M.D. House Newsletter
I'm a football fan (American football), so September is a fun month. My favorite thing to see isn't a bone-crushing hit; it's aggressive but fundamentally sound play on both sides of the ball, accompanied by great sportsmanship, which still exists, thankfully.
How that applies to writing I'm not sure, but there it is. :)
In August, I was able to return to my alma mater (BYU) and teach at Education Week, where about 18,000 people descend on campus before school starts for a full week of practical and spiritually nourishing classes (including some on Artificial Intelligence, of course). I was one of the roughly 300 instructors hired for the event (my first time), and it was an absolute joy.
I also "hiked the Y" one morning, very early. I hadn't done that in probably 35 years or more. It's a bit more than a mile of steep switchbacks to get to the very top of the white-painted stones forming a giant Y on one of the mountains, but the ascent wasn't what made me sore the next day. It was jogging down.
I met a man at least 10 years older than me, and he does the hike three times a week (M-W-F) religiously ... wearing a 30-lb weight vest. He also jogs the whole way down. I decided to do that with him while we talked. That's a slightly different set of muscles, and I paid for it later. It was a beautiful morning, though, and the views were stunning, as you can see below.
Progress Updates
Despite essentially taking a week off while I was down at BYU for Education Week, Whispers of Divine Reckoning Draft 1 saw great progress again. I'm at 105K words, targeting about 140K (so fairly long). The story has taken a few interesting twists, which are helping it dovetail nicely into the final section. I should complete it this month, and then I'll turn my attention to the editing of Polycarp, with the aim of publishing that before the end of the year. (I should have the cover for that book in a week or two from Lance Buckley.)
As I mentioned before, next year I aim to publish both Whispers of Divine Reckoning and Cardinal Star (the 4th and final installment of the Patriot Star series). My next non-fiction book, about prophets and prophetesses in these end times before the return of Christ, will also get published in 2027.
FYI, I'm doing a couple more Bookfunnel activities this month. Here they are:
Transformational Christian Bookstore, featuring The Most Useless Man in the Apocalypse:
Author swap with Brian Scott Pauls:
https://dl.bookfunnel.com/lb7tycss0t?tid=9s16rou31b
Check them out!
AI Hot Plate
In 2025, four major U.S. universities got together and announced plans for an initiative to study religious bias and discrimination in the growing plethora of AI tools out there. They are, in alphabetical order:
Baylor University
Brigham Young University
Notre Dame University
Yeshiva University
Earlier this year, they announced the Consortium for Evaluating Faith and Ethics in AI, or CEFE-AI. They are already running tests on various AI models and conducting additional research. You can check out their efforts here.
Happy football season!
Mike
As always, feel free to reach out to me at inspire@mdhouselive.com. And check out my merch store here. :)
Thank you!
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