In Conversation with Author Naomi Craig

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Summary below

Welcome to author Naomi Craig. She lives in the southeastern mountains of Arizona
and is married to a pastor. When she’s not writing furiously, she is
volunteering in some capacity at her.

The main character of Naomi’s latest book ‘Ezekiel’s Song’ is a singer, a
female singer, the wife

of Ezekiel. She’s a gifted musician. Her beautiful name is who she is also,
because in Hebrew Shiriel means: God is the song of my life. Shiri: Song of My
Life is an actual Hebrew name. But Naomi added the El which means God.

As a pastor’s wife, she became interested in Ezekiel… his primary audience
was still back in Judah but he was far away, in Babylon. And then he was
paralyzed. The Lord bound him physically. He was on his one side for one day
for each year Judah strayed and one day for each year that Israel strayed away
from God. So he was physically paralyzed for about 14 months and doesn’t know how
he is supposed to get his message to repent back to the people of Israel or to
Jerusalem. On top of that, he’s struck mute, symbolically for 7 years, apart
from when the Lord puts a specific revelation in his mouth.

He is mentioned as having a wife. Spoiler alert: don’t read Ezekiel Chapter
24.

You can know where the characters are coming from because know what’s going
to happen in biblical novels.

As a wife in ministry, Naomi can relate to serving the Lord in difficult
circumstances, when it’s not what you planned. “So there’s a lot of me in Shiri
as far as the serving part.” She’s like an alter ego.

“At our previous church,” she says, “we were there for about five years and
my husband was part time with the church and full time with the county. He did
a job that you drove 45 minutes, at least, one way. And he was also still
attending seminary school for continuing his education as a pastor. And, so,
there was a lot of the ministry aspect that I needed to step up and help with.
Because of just the situation. And so, if somebody needed a food box, I’d have
to set everything aside and drive for15 minutes: you’d get your schedule
disrupted. And so I’d have to do that – and go and help someone get a food box
from the church.”

 At Naomi’s new church, there are
people who are willing and able and actively serving. So, she  was able to step back.

“I would wonder in the last church whether anything I did had any value? I
had that identity of what am I? Who am I if I am not serving? A lot of that
comes out in Shiri’s struggle,and her life and her process because she has to
manage the home and care for her invalid husband.”

Naomi has her working outside of the home, Naomi has her working outside of
the home, in order to make ends meet, and singing in the Temple.

“There are records of women singing, going back to Solomon’s Temple. They’re
daughters of Hymen. The Bible says the daughters of Hymen were singing in the
choir.”

Her idea to write about Ezekiel came from wondering how does ministry happen
when you’re physically bound? Ezekiel was contemporary with the prophet
Jeremiah which helped with researching his back story and putting a timeframe
on what he was going through before the exile.

“The kings were terrible at that point and the king was blatantly disregarding
the Lord. In Jeremiah, he’s twice slicing off a part of Jeremiah’s prophecy scroll
and burning it. This is how blatant his disrespect was for the Lord,” says
Naomi. “It’s really neat to me to see what historically will line up because
sometimes you can just read the Bible as linear.”

The Israelites are in Babylon in Ezekiel but the added context of Jeremiah
shows how big this problem is: the problem of sin.

“You are able to see the whole picture. That’s what I love about historical
fiction set in Bible times: you can feel for the culture and maybe why they
made some of the decisions that they made or why the call for purity was so
important.”

The prophets called for repentance. They wanted people to come back to God
and live in a way that did honor to Him.

“For a little bit of time, the nation would. Or they wouldn’t. So, they just
slipped further and further away from God’s plan,” Naomi says.

In Ezekiel’s Song, Ezekiel is a student under Jeremiah. Since they
were both priests,

it’s quite possible that they knew one another. Ezekiel knew that it was
inevitable

that Babylon, led by Nebuchadnezzar, was coming.

“His message was: ‘Let’s call up the faithful before that happens. Let’s rise
up. Let’s be strong in our faith, so we can endure whatever the Lord has
planned for us next.’”

Naomi has used midrash to take the Bible’s skeletal barebones, and put flesh
on them. She has turned the evidence that we have into something that people can
actually relate to.

She has asked herself, “What are the real lives behind these rather bizarre
prophecies and symbolisms that the Lord asks of Ezekiel? What’s really
happening?”

‘Ezekiel’s Song’ has done rather well, although it’s only been out for a
month.

“I had an amazing street team helping spread the excitement. But it’s also
that, with my first book, I was an unknown: it took a long time to amass the
reviews and the eyes on it. The hard work launching and promoting ‘Rahab’s
Purge’ has rolled into Ezekiel. Now it’s a little bit easier to be found, I
guess. Because I’ve put in all the work, and I have that other book. And my publishing
team does a fantastic job. They’re running Amazon ads and stuff. Coming up,
I’ll be in a two-week book tour, with their blog touring promo.”

This will put Ezekiel’s Song in front of a whole lot of other people.
“ I think also Ezekiel is not commonly done in the biblical fiction world.”

Naomi’s previous book was Rahab’s Courage. “Everybody who writes
biblical fiction has pretty much written about Rahab. Even Francine Rivers has
done Rahab.”

Naomi didn’t realize the situation concerning Rahab until she’d written the
majority of her story.

“I always imagined that if one of the two Israelite spies who came to her
may have been her biblical husband. I just went with that.” Naomi laughs “But
that wasn’t a new idea either… Everybody does that one.”

Naomi also focused on Rahab’s mental health as a prostitute. And the fact
that she integrated the Israelite community beyond the Jordan River, who had lost
20,000 of their members from messing around with prostitutes.

Back to the subject of promoting Naomi’s new book, Ezekiel’s Song…

Her street team that has been on board for a couple of months, sharing
graphics and reading ahead of time and reviewing and then sharing their reviews
– in addition to the Amazon ads.

She also posts consistently on social media, mainly Facebook and Instagram.  

“I have 5 or 7 areas that, if I don’t know what to post, well, then, there’s
what my dog has been doing, or my book, or other books that I’ve read. You can
just draw from one of those buckets and say,’Today, I’m gonna be doing a book
review.’ Of course, video is key these days. If you’re on social media, video
is going to hold a lot more attention than just a static post. So, I’m trying
to transition to doing more of that, which is scary, I know, for a lot of
people.”

Using Canva, Naomi animates static images really simply so they look like
video.  

– Yeah. Yeah. – So, if you want to get noticed. I’m mostly on Instagram and
the on Facebook. We have a fantastic group that Bobbie’s part of: Biblical
Fiction Afficionados. And we just really have a great time talking about
historical fiction in Bible times or early church eras. So, just find your
right people, like there’s tons

“As of right now, before including pre-orders and launch week, I’ve had 300
copies sold, including digital, which is fantastic for a smaller publishing,
for a smaller offer. As of right now, about a month in, there’s about 55
reviews on Amazon already.”

Her upcoming blog tour will bump up reviews as well.

“I’m really pleased. I’m so happy. I’m really proud of this book. It is a
personal slice of me in some ways. But I’m just so pleased that it’s a message
that will get out there and hopefully it will encourage caregivers or people
who are serving in the ministry but they’re not feeling like what God called
them to do, you know. Sometimes… sometimes you know it doesn’t seem like what
God has placed on our heart is how we serve, but He’s always there with us.”

Check out Naomi’s website: Naomicraig.com to learn more. She had a free novella
to download. ‘On Desolate Heights’ is a Balaam story about the talking
donkey.