GT: When I went back to get my master’s degree, I quit my job, and decided to go back to school and I got a part-time job. I had a lot more time, plus I was commuting up to the University of Utah, and I got into podcasting. I decided to start my own blog. I did a little bit of blogging for about 10 years. Then, I thought, “You know what? I like this. I’m going put my name out there, and we’ll see if anybody listens.”
So, I decided to start Gospel Tangents. Let’s see, this is my fifth year, so about four and a half years ago. I should mention the name, Gospel Tangents. I had a couple of friends in college, and they were debating about whether Adam had a belly button or not, which, apparently, I didn’t know at the time, somehow related the Adam-God doctrine. I don’t know how that works. So, we were standing there talking, kind of debating this, and I don’t know that anybody even would ever know, but the one guy made the quip, “Yeah this is the Gospel Tangents class out in the hall.” I just thought that was the coolest, so that’s kind of where I got the name.
When my kids were younger, they were probably 8, 9, 10, around there. I had told them a Book of Mormon story and they didn’t know it. I was like, “You don’t know about Nephi and Laban and all that stuff?” So, I was like, “Alright, well, we’re going to make a little Book of Mormon for Kids.” Then, my 10-year-old goes, “We could sell it.” I’m like, “Nobody’s going to buy this. Are you kidding me?” But, then I thought, “Oh, Amazon has this thing where you can publish it.” I was like, we’ll sell it for $1. I was shocked. My kids drew these little stick-figure drawings. They’re not good at all, but they were what they did. The purpose was just to teach them about the scriptures, and I printed out a copy. II was shocked that people were buying these things. For $1, who cares? So, then so we did the Bible for Kids. We were like, “Oh we’re going to sell that for $3, because anybody will buy that.[1] So, I kind of did that under the Gospel Tangents umbrella at the time. But, it was about four and a half years ago when I finally said, “I love Mormon history. I’m going to start doing this.”
[1] We also did a Triple Combination called “LDS Scriptures for Kids” for sale at https://amzn.to/2X4tZxX . My daughter complained there weren’t enough stories about women, so we created “Women of the Bible for Kids,” which is available at https://amzn.to/3fK0zMc .
