Editor ’ s Note : Paul Herman is now retired after a 17 + year career on CCLI ’ s marketing team . He ’ s still a full-time worship team musician , and often spends his weekdays playing piano at the PDX Portland International Airport . In this article , he shares with us an excerpt from his new novel , Envoy .
I hear that lots of people muse about writing a novel once they retire . Not me . Although I ’ ve been a writer for my whole career in marketing , the idea of writing a novel seemed like way too much work . Mostly , I could never imagine a storyline that would hold my creative interest for that long .
I ’ ve written countless ads , articles and video scripts in my marketing career , and the overriding principle of marketing writing is : keep it concise . For the articles here in [ WM ], Bruce wants 500-800 words . So , the idea of writing a 60,000 word ( minimum ) full-length novel seemed completely foreign to me .
I loved every minute of my 17 + years at CCLI . For the first 15 years , I was the Marketing Manager for the North America region . For the last two years , I was a Content Creator , meaning I would write articles , web content , video scripts , etc ., and I also got the opportunity to do on-camera interviews with many of the top Worship / CCM artists and songwriters . My very first on-camera interview was with Steven Curtis Chapman , one of my absolute favorites . Steven was so gracious , so articulate , and he made my job easy .
From there , it was beyond-a-dream job . I got to ask CeCe Winans what it was like to sing with Whitney Houston . I heard Michael W . Smith share the memory of playing in Brazil and melting down in tears as he heard 50,000 kids sing his song , “ Agnus Dei ” in Portuguese . I was mesmerized by Eddie DeGarmo ’ s memory of trick-or-treating as a 6-year-old at Graceland and receiving an autographed $ 1 bill from Elvis . ( To find out what happened to that $ 1 bill , you ’ ll have to read Eddie ’ s biography , Rebel For God .) So many wonderful moments