October, 2009:

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a journalist named Jessica Clark for a quote on Donald Miller’s new book. Here’s the piece she wrote:

Million Miles author stops in LR

JESSICA CLARK ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

A New York Times bestselling author says he knows the ingredients to a meaningful life and he’s sharing them Tuesday in Little Rock.

Recently, Donald Miller hit the road to talk about his newest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life, which chronicles Miller’s discoveries. The book tour will span two months and tens of thousands of miles, during which Miller will visit 65 cities.

Miller will make a stop in Little Rock at Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas to share what he says makes a worthwhile life, which he learned from screenwriters while working on turning Blue Like Jazz into a movie which will premiere in 2010.

“Screenwriters have discovered what makes life meaningful because they have to put it on-screen in a movie. I’ll share what it is they’ve discovered and how I applied those principles to my life and what happened because of it,” he said.

Mosaic Church was contacted by Miller’s executive assistant with the idea of being a host for the book tour. Mark DeYmaz, Mosaic Church’s directional leader, said it was a good fit because the church and Miller have a “missional mind-set” and live out their faith.

“It’s not about attracting people to the church, it is about motivating the church to go to people where they are in bars, college campuses or wherever,” DeYmaz said. “Miller lives out a missional lifestyle and is authentic with people that wouldn’t step into a church.”

Miller, 37, had been writing since he was a child, he said. His first book, Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance, was published by Harvest House Publishers, but it wasn’t until he wrote Blue Like Jazz that his writing career took off. Published by Thomas Nelson, a Christian book publisher, Blue Like Jazz has sold more than 1 million copies and made The New York Times best-seller list 45 weeks since it was released six years ago. It is a book made up of essays about spirituality and his reflections about Christianity.

Miller says his new release offers readers a different perspective. “In other books I was asking a lot of questions, in this book there is more hope,” he said.

“His early stuff is like unedited journal writing, but he gets more controlled and precise as he goes,” Christianity Today freelance writer Patton Dodd said. “He expertly and naturally captures the young evangelical zeitgeist [spirit of the age], but he pushes on its borders.”

“The best thing about Miller’s books is that they throw you into a torrent of self-reflection with the strangest of motivation,” said Michael Krahn, a Canadian minister and blogger. “There are no guilt trips, no commands, just Miller taking a brutally honest look at his own life and writing about it and somehow this inspires us to do the same.”

In his new book, Miller adapts the elements that make a good movie into his own life to make it more interesting.

“In studying the elements of a screenplay and editing a movie based on a memoir [Blue Like Jazz], I was editing a fictional version of myself. I wanted my own life to be more like the fictional version of me so I made some changes in my own life and rode my bike across America.”

Miller spent seven weeks riding his bike across the United States raising money for Blood: Water Mission. He also found his biological father whom he hadn’t heard from in 30 years and he hiked the Inca Trail in Peru just to impress a girl.

“A Million Miles is probably Don’s most mature book, yet it is classic Don Miller in that it offers readers an entertaining, one-of-a-kind experience,” his publisher, Brian Hampton, said.

The focus of Miller’s book tour is to get people to realize that “we can live better stories, and when the credits roll in our lives we can have a sense of fulfillment and meaning because of what we’ve experienced,” he said.

After the tour, Miller will work with his nonprofit organization, The Mentoring Project. The Portland, Ore.-based group mentors children growing up without fathers.

“We’ll be releasing a revised edition of Searching for God Knows What next spring and further down the road there will be another book,” Hampton said.

“I believe my best stories are ahead of me. I don’t think I’ve told many good ones so far,” Miller said. “Since I’ve understood the power of a story, the power of a good protagonist wanting something noble and overcoming conflict to get it, I haven’t been able to go back to a normal life.”

“An Evening With Donald Miller” will be 7 p.m. Tuesday at Mosaic Church, 6420 Colonel Glenn Road, Little Rock. Tickets are $15. More information is available at amillionmiles.com.