About a book

Do you ever wonder how highly successful people are able to accomplish so many things? One way is that they have assistants to help them but that doesn't account for all of it.

I learned in the 8th grade one way people to it-double dipping.

Many times double dipping has a negative connotation, but I think that needs to change if we are going to become more productive people.

Take the topic of today's blog. I called it "About a book". That is a very deliberate title because I'm going to review a book in this blog. Before I do, however, I wanted to share with you how doing this can help you become a better writer.

When I heard that Thomas Nelson was offering a new blog book review program I went to check out the selections. As you know, I am not a person who does book reviews. I am always looking at what is going on in the industry so I was interested to see what books they had.

Then I saw it.

"The Kingdom of the Occult" by Walter Martin.

What!! Yes. A book on the Occult by a Christian publisher.

And here is the double dip. When I went to their website I was outlining a book. The plot required a great deal of information of the Occult in order to be accurate. [My fiction writing is suspense/thrillers]. When I saw that I could receive this book for FREE and I only needed to give an honest assessment I jumped at the chance.

I was able to:

1. Research my novel [which I had to do anyway].
2. Gain exposure for my blog through Thomas Nelson.
3. Receive a great reference book on the topic of my novel FOR FREE.
4. Have material for a blog. [smile]
5. Potentially get google hits from people looking for this particular book.

So look at the opportunities that are passing your way. I am able to do 5 things at once. Many writers read books and do reviews because they love books. That is great but I can go to the library and get books I enjoy. When I need to research, however, I want to mark that baby up. And I did that with this book.

So now, I hope you will stay to hear my honest assessment of "The Kingdom of the Occult" by Walter Martin.

ISBN-13:978-1-4185-1644-4

I wasn't quite sure what I'd think of the book "The Kingdom of the Occult". Typically topics like this are either creepy or overly simplistic. What I found in this book exceeded my expectations. I found a book full of scholarly research in to various facets of the Occult from UFO cults to Satanism, Paganism to the New Age. This book was footnoted and provided detailed overviews of Occult practices by chapter and even showed debate within various cults.

I was surprised by the sheer volume of information and the heavily footnoted references. Since I was reading this as research for a novel I'm writing, having this information laid out systematically made this a valuable reference tool.

This is also useful for individuals in missionary and evangelism because of the strong Biblical foundation of the work. There are charts, maps and headers that make this easy to read and easy to return to.

I recommend this book in the strongest possible terms for its wealth of information, its Quick Facts summary at the conclusion of each chapter, for the 18 page index and 21 page bibliography. If anyone wanted to know more on this topic this is the first place I'd send them. Not only is it dense with material but it cites the sources to allow for further study.

Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at www.WritingCareerCoach.com
Learn more about Tiffany's Marketing techniques on her main blog.
Read Tiffany's award winning manuscript "A Face in the Shadow" on her fiction blog.
She writes a blog for the Christian writer Tuesdays at Writer's Rest.