Kindle freebie, Amazon reviews

.Just a quick note today -- I'm running a freebie promotion on my little book on all the helpful uses of diatomaceous earth around the home . Saturday, 15 June through Sunday, 16 June, you can download the book for free!

Those who don't have a Kindle can purchase the paperback version, which is currently being offered at a 13% discount.

Anyone interested in having a "greener" home, using healthier products to get rid of bugs such as fleas, ants, even bedbugs, or just "getting back to nature" will enjoy this book. Think of it as my little gift to you. If you like your gift, please post an Amazon review saying what you like.

If you'd like to know what I've been reading lately, you can take a look at my reviews on Amazon or on Goodreads. Among new works of fiction I've read lately, probably the most interesting book for readers of this blog is The Christus Experiment, by Rod Bennett, author of Four Witnesses: The Early Church in Her Own Words. The premise is fascinating -- what if you could go back in time, kidnap Jesus, and bring him into our own day? I got suckered in by the glowing praise by high-profile Catholics such as Mike Aquilina and Mark Shea, but I have to say that this "high concept" novel disappointed me. If you'd like to know why, read my Amazon review.

Right now, I'm reading mostly science fiction novels from the great writers of the '50s and '60s, some of whom I discussed recently on my science fiction blog. If you hop on over there, you can also read my latest post about the novel I'm writing and the series I'm planning. Catholic science fiction! Saints in outer space! What's not to like?

Poetic Truth, Part I: Giambattista Vico

Vico drove me to it!

I may be the only person ever to have a traffic accident because of Giambattista Vico. Partly, this is because he has been dead since anno Domini 1744, and partly because not that many people (I guess) meditate on his theory of poetic language while navigating rush-hour freeway traffic. (Perhaps also because most people who do are smart enough to buy cars with anti-lock brakes, but that discussion will have to wait.)

Anyway, assuming that you, gentle reader, are not yet counted in the number of those privileged to have glimpsed the beauty of Vico’s theory of poetic language (which makes up one portion of his wonderful work, La Scienza Nuova or The New Science (by which is meant not “science” but “knowledge”), I will give you a very rough idea of what I’m talking about. It’s been many years since I first read Vico, and almost as many since that traffic accident, and it’s entirely possible that my apprehension and application of Vico’s ideas is, ahem, idiosyncratic and my current memory of them imperfect. Nonetheless, (having thus indemnified myself against the objections of those who may know Vico much better than I), here, in a nutshell, wrenched from its proper context in Vico’s theory of Western history, is my take-away of his theory of poetic language:

Inadequate representation of the truth of God.

Ancient poets were, for the most part, trying to express, in human language, truths for which ordinary language is utterly inadequate. Many of these truths could be called “theological” – i.e., truths about the supernatural, about God(s). Now, in those primitive times, when language itself was still new and unrefined, mankind did not yet possess words to express the ineffable, the supernatural, but human language did possess plenty of terms for indicating and describing the natural (rocks, birds, trees, bolts of lightning). Therefore, since human language was inadequate for the task of explaining divinity, the poet was forced to express himself by means of metaphor (or analogy), substituting something natural (which language could express) for the supernatural thing the poet desired to communicate. The power of Zeus/Jove, for instance, is not a lightning bolt, but a lightning bolt is a familiar, natural phenomenon (for which human language has a word) which has important similarities to the power of god (for which language has no adequate term).

In other words, poetry is necessarily analogical or, if you prefer, metaphorical. “Poetic language” means, before anything else, figurative language; “poetic truth” is a truth which cannot be expressed in ordinary, expository language – the poet must cast about for a metaphor that seems to grasp the essence of the truth he wishes to express. Once you have grasped this essential truth, you will recognise that much of what calls itself “poetry” these days is anything but. It possess rhythm, rhyme, and other features or uses of technique which we associate with “poems,” but if it is not trying to express truth through concrete verbal images, it is not “poetry,” strictly speaking.

I’m skipping over a lot here, but this will do for my purpose, which is to explain the value of “poetry” (by which I mean what most people call “literature”). Poetry/literature’s purpose is to communicate truth, and its method is to express that truth metaphorically (by means of analogy), because that is the most adequate way to do it. I’ve had students (future engineers, accountants, and fry cooks) who complain that it is much easier just to say things in plain words, but the poet (or the lover of literature) knows that they are wrong.

Perfectly adequate expression
of the truth of God.

It’s important to point out that the theory of history and language that Vico elaborates in La Scienza Nuova referred specifically to what he called the “Gentile” (pagan, Graeco-Roman) world, NOT Judaeo-Christian history. The Christian should recognize that in Judaeo-Christian history, God did not need poets to describe or explain Him, rather He did it Himself – i.e., Divine Revelation does adequately what the mytho-poetic tradition of the pagans did inadequately. God’s perfect self-expression is the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Logos, true Man and true God. Nonetheless, even in this (I would say), God Himself is the poet – i.e., he provides us adequate analogies to give us glimpses of his true nature. But as every Christian mystic who ever lived has known, what God has revealed is true, but it is not the whole truth. Neither our language nor our minds are adequate to the task of comprehending God in His fullness – for that we must wait until “we shall see Him as He is, for we shall be like Him.”

I’ve got more to say on this subject, but for now I’ll just let you chew on that. Stay tuned for parts 2, 3, etc. Meanwhile, think about poems, or other works of fiction, that you have read which have given you new insight into some truth about the human condition. Something which, upon reflection, you recognized to have “opened your eyes” in some respect. (I am not talking about information but about insight.) If you can think of something along these lines, please leave a comment and let us know what it was, and what it illuminated for you.

(If the idea of poetic truth appeals to you, you might like to read this post from a while back.)

Study the Great Works of the Western Cultural Tradition in Kansas City, Missouri

Some readers may know that over the last year or so I have been privileged to teach a couple of literature classes in the epic tradition for the Walsingham Society of Christian Culture and Western Civilization. The Walshingham Society is a relatively new organization in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, although it actually is carrying on the work of the (former) College of Saint Thomas More, which offered a curriculum in the great Christian liberal arts tradition for some thirty years or more. (It has recently undergone a sea change and been reborn as "Fisher-More College," offering a somewhat different, although thoroughly traditional and Catholic, curriculum.)

The erstwhile College of Saint Thomas More always had two overlapping circles of "clientele" -- traditional-aged college students looking for a more substantial and challenging education than most colleges and universities offer, and adults who wanted to steep themselves more thoroughly in the great Western, Christian tradition. The Walsingham Society also seeks to offer educational opportunities and cultural events for people of all ages, so I'm very happy to say that the founders of the Walsingham Society have recently been invited by Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph to found a four-year classical liberal arts college in his diocese. He must really want them, because he has even donated a building to house it!

The new institution is to be known as Christ College, and will offer a single major, i.e., a single, common curriculum culminating in a bachelor of arts degree in the liberal arts. You can read more about it in this recent article in the National Catholic Register. If you know anyone looking for a worthy cause to support, I'm sure donations will be welcome and there will undoubtedly be lectures and cultural events planned for folks in the greater Kansas City area before long (if not already).

Those of you with children entering high school should seriously consider this type of education for them -- that is, if you actually want them to be educated, rather than merely processed through a diploma mill. "Education" in the traditional sense has to do with forming the "soul" -- i.e., both the mind and the character of the student, and this is exactly what real liberal arts institutions aim to do. On the other hand, "educators" at 99.9% of colleges and universities these days would vehemently deny that their institutions have any right or aim to do such a thing, as if it would be presumptuous and offensive to suggest that educational institutions should do what they, in fact, understood to be their primary purpose until the rise of the "modern university" about a hundred and fifty years ago (this sad truth became crystal clear to me while I was teaching at a certain midwestern state university).

If you're interested in reading more about the classical model of education and how  & why it differs from what is called "education" these days, I recommend this article. If you'd like to read about the value of a Catholic liberal arts education, try this. Or just talk to anyone who has been blessed to have experienced such an education -- he or she is bound to be an enthusiastic proponent. As were the two brothers who created this video, "A Student Defense of Classical, Catholic Liberal Arts Education."

The Hunger Games left me hungering for more ... but not the way you think

It's been quite a while since I posted here, simply because I've been very busy working on my Catholic science fiction novel -- in fact, I've finished the first draft, so it was time well spent. Now, however, the draft is "resting" while I think about what I want to achieve in revision (a lot, as it happens), so I can turn my mind to other things for a while.

I have been doing some reading along the way -- a lot of it has been advice on how to write great fiction (which I won't bore you with), but some of it has been books that you might be interested in yourself. So here's a run-down of a few things I've read over the last couple of months, and what I thought of them. The first one was Suzanne Collins’s runaway bestseller Hunger Games trilogy.

Since I'm working on science fiction of a futuristic sort, I've been concentrating on speculative fiction of various sorts, to get a feel of what sort of thing is getting read these days. So I was excited when Amazon offered the entire Hunger Games trilogy for Kindle download for just $5. I hadn’t read any of the books – and, frankly, hadn’t intended to, until I saw the movie based on the first one and thought, “That was pretty good.” I’d heard the film was a pretty faithful adaptation of the book, so I was interested in seeing how close the two were (I’ve already had my rant about what makes a good film adaptation of a novel). I found that, as far as the story itself goes, the two are remarkably similar (just one or two minor characters who get dropped in the film), but the effect of reading the novels was completely different.

The books are narrated by Katniss Everdeen, the protagonist, so the reader never gets any relief from her attitude, which is bitter and cynical. I never really understood why she was as bitter as she was, since other characters who had to endure many of the same hardships she did were much more sympathetic and likable.

I kept thinking that her love for Peeta and/or Gale might help her to overcome a measure of her bitterness – surely she would grow and mature? Instead, her creator, Suzanne Collins, kept subjecting her to more and more nightmarish tortures, making her more and more deeply damaged emotionally. After reading the entire trilogy, frankly, I was sick of Catniss and her world. By the end of the third book, other characters had moved on, literally and figuratively, but Catniss and Peeta, and even their children, remained haunted by their grim world. At a climactic moment near the end of the final novel, I realized that the whole trilogy was little more than an anti-war screed, which explains why the author insisted that Catniss could never live happily ever after – because she was the poster child of the “war is hell” message, and to suggest that the evils of war could be transcended would undercut that message.

This touches on the thing that I found most irritating and unrealistic about these novels: total lack of any kind of transcendent hope or faith. Although the stories are set in a North America of the far future, and traces of regional culture remain (the hard-scrabble coal miners of Appalachia, field gangs of virtual slaves in the deep South), none of the people of any of the districts of Panem seemed to have any kind of religious or philosophical belief that suggested there was any way to transcend the harsh conditions of their lives. It was a world utterly without hope. Leaders on both sides in the rebellion were equally cynical and corrupt. Even after the rebellion succeeded and life was moving on, there was no sense that anything was, or ever would be, better.

Theseus Slaying the Minotaur

Antoine Louis Barye,(Musée du Louvre )

I was hoping that, despite the disagreeable personality of the lead character, I would find that the Hunger Games would be a good book, in the sense that C. S. Lewis defined that term in An Exercise in Criticism -- i.e., one that makes the reader feel "enlarged" or in someway better off for having read it. Alas, this was not the case. Instead, I felt damaged by its corrosive commentary on life. In the end, I was heartily glad to say goodbye to Catniss Everdeen and her dreary, soulless world.

I'm sorry that I found the books so toxic. On the face of it, they have a lot to offer -- a modern up-dating of the ancient myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, a technically well-structure plot, some very inventive "games." But it was like eating a feast at a chain restaurant -- looks good, smells great, all your friends say you'll love it, but too late you realize that every dish is full of chemical additives that provide no real nutrition and may actually prove indigestible.

Fortunately, I went on to read something much more satisfying, if not perhaps a lot more nutritious. I'll tell you about that next time.

My Fifteen Minutes of Fame? I've been nominated for the Liebster Award

Connie Rossini of Contemplative Homeschool blog has kindly given me the Liebster Award. It’s given to up-and-coming bloggers who have fewer than 200 followers.  You modern linguists will already know that "liebster" means "favorite" in German. So, in bestowing this award on me, Connie is proclaiming that my blog is one of her favorites (thank you, Connie!) and suggesting that it might become your favorite, too, if you'll just give it a try. So welcome to any new readers -- please poke around, you'll find a little bit of a lot of things, and quite a lot about the moral imagination, which seems to be one of my favorite subjects and, also, the subject that attracts the greatest number of readers.

Here are the “rules” for The Liebster Award:

1. List 11 things about yourself.
2. Answer the questions that the nominator has posed for you.
3. Nominate 11 up-and-coming bloggers who have fewer than 200 followers.
4. Create 11 questions to ask the nominees.
5. Go to the page of each nominee and tell her about her award.

Here are 11 things about me you probably didn't know:

1. I was expelled from kindergarten for being "socially immature."
2. I didn't learn to ride a bike or swim until I was 10 years old.
3. In first grade, my penmanship was so poor that one of my teachers once said my writing-practice paper looked like it had been walked over by a hen with muddy feet.
4. I once played the "Henry Fonda" role in an all-woman version of Twelve Angry Men.
5. I was a National Merit Scholar.
6. For two summers when I was in junior high, I took part in the Governor's Program for Gifted Children in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
7. I once had to walk two miles barefoot through Madrid because the high heels I had left home in proved to be too horrendously painful to wear. (I bought a pair of cheap, ugly, flat shoes before I went home at lunchtime.)
8. I am probably the only person ever to attempt to write a novel about practicing Catholics in the 29th century at the far edge of our galaxy.
9. When I was a youngster, some of the things I wanted to be when I grew up included: a diplomat, an interpreter, a world-traveler, a novelist, a commercial artist, a naval intelligence officer, an archaeologist. I'm still working on a couple of those.
10. For eleven years, two possums used to come into my second-floor apartment every night to eat my cats' food from their dish in the kitchen, and I discovered this only a couple of months before I moved out of that apartment.
11. I was baptised and confirmed in the first parish ever to be dedicated to Saint Frances Cabrini. The bishop who confirmed me had been a student in one of the schools Saint Frances Cabrini founded, and he met her when he was a child. I took her name in Confirmation.

The questions Connie gave me are:

1. What is you favorite painting or sculpture?
It's hard to pick a favorite! I've visited many art museums and seen many beautiful works of art -- those that impress me most are not always the most famous. For instance, once when I was in the Louvre in Parish, there was a huge crowd, about 6 people deep, trying to get a peep of da Vinci's La Gioconda (a.k.a. Mona Lisa); I've never cared for that painting, but found that right next to it was a very beautiful painting of St John the Baptist (it may have been this one). I'm fortunate to have had ready access to the very wonderful Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, where I can see this beautiful painting of a Spanish knight by one of my favorite painters, Diego Velázquez. (I am a sucker for great portraits, and when I lived in Madrid I spent hours ogling Velázquez's work at the Museo del Prado.) I've already written about the sculpture that I've found most striking, Nike or Winged Victory.

2. What is your favorite book of the Bible? 
This one is easy: the Gospel of St John, hands down! If the rest of the Bible were to be obliterated (which God forbid), this Gospel could stand in for all the rest. (Of course, without all the rest of the Bible, no one would really understand John's Gospel, so it's a good thing you can't just pluck one book out and ignore the rest.)

3. What was your worst subject in school? Physical education. At least, that's the only class in which my classmates actually threatened to beat me black and blue for being so lousy at it. To be fair, though, I was actually pretty good at folk dancing, bowling, and calisthenics (if you don't include push-ups); unfortunately, PE teachers tend to skimp on those units and spend way too much time on things that involve catching or hitting (or kicking) flying objects, which my monocular vision made it very difficult for me to do.

4. Which modern convenience would you find it most difficult to live without?

If I lived in some pleasant, rural area and had plenty of room for books (although the codex was once considered a "modern" convenience), instead of being stuck on the periphery of a huge metropolitan sprawl, where everything I want to do and everyone I want to visit is 20 or 40 or 60 miles away via a spaghetti soup of freeway, I could live without almost all modern conveniences. Except, perhaps, eyeglasses. I could do without them, too, if I didn't have to kill my own food. (No, I do not currently kill my own food, but if I lived rurally without mod cons, I might have to.)

5. What is the farthest you have ever been from the place you born? According to this calculator, 5625.89 miles or 9054 kilometers, give or take. That is the distance between Alexandria, Louisiana, my natal spot, and Pompeii, Italy, where I once climbed to the top of Mount Vesuvius, in the company of several dozen high school Latin students. I've been grateful ever since to Pliny the Elder for having immortalized that volcano's most famous eruption.

6. What is your favorite day/season of the liturgical year?
Palm/Passion Sunday, which encapsulates beautifully the God Made Man and the human race's bipolar attitude toward Him. That, or Good Friday, which beautifully expresses that same God's unwavering and undying love for the wretched creatures whom He patiently wills to become like Him. Shucks, just give me all of Holy Week, while we're at it, especially if that includes Easter. And by "Easter," of course, I mean all of Eastertide. Especially if that includes Pentecost.

7. What virtue would you most like to be remembered for practicing? Humility, the foundation of every other virtue. But that's not very likely. The one I've been working on longest (even before I knew what a virtue was) is Wisdom. I've probably made a little more progress on that one, but only because I got started sooner and have pursued it with greater zeal. Mea culpa.

8. What one word would your friends use to describe you?
Smart. By which they would mean, "We can ask Lisa anything and she'll have some sort of answer that sounds like it makes sense. Or if she doesn't have the answer, she can tell us which book to read or web site to visit to find out." {sigh} I've been known as a walking encyclopedia for more than forty years, malgré moi (when I was 7 or 8, I actually read the World Book Encyclopedia cover to cover). But, as I've always said, it's not what you know or how "smart" you are, it's what you do with what you've got. I'm still working on that.

9. Would you describe yourself the same way?
No, I'd say I'm philosophical, which means "seeking wisdom." (Are we starting to see a trend here?) Being wise is not the same as being "smart" -- there are plenty (too many!) "smart" idiots in the world, and I hope not to be one of them, even though I make plenty of stupid mistakes all the time. But life is a journey, not a resting place, and Truth is a broad and deep country, so I keep questing, higher up and farther in.

10. Do you speak any language other than English?
I speak Spanish well, and French not-so-well. I also read (listed in declining order of proficiency) Latin, Italian, Old French, and a smidgen of German, without being able to speak them. Oh, and I once had a college roommate who told me I spoke Russian in my sleep (maybe I did, I took a year of it my senior year of high school).

11. What is your favorite novel for adults?

I don't do well with "favorite" questions. Also, I don't really distinguish between "novels for adults" and "novels for anybody else." A good book is a good book. There are too many novels I really like, or have really liked at some time in my life. Here are some that have been my favorites at different times in the past (in no particular order): Where the Red Fern Grows, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, Tunnel in the Sky, The Daughter of Time , Love In the Ruins, The End of the Affair, The Inheritors, Dandelion Wine, The Lord of the Rings, Below the Salt, Islandia, The Secret of the Old Clock (Nancy Drew), The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, That Hideous Strength, The Place of the Lion, Otherland , Time and Again, Alas, Babylon, A Town Like Alice, Lucky Jim. Most of these are not "great literature," but they have all been, for me, captivating tales, prompting multiple readings. There are some recurring themes her, which astute readers will discern.

But enough about me. I'll be pondering who my own nominees will be. If you would like to be considered for the coveted Liebster Award, let me know.

Plato, Homer, and the Saints in Outer Space

In The Republic, Plato acknowledges the power of the arts (chiefly music and literature) to shape impressionable young souls. Concerned parents today, worried about the music their children listen and the books they read (if they read at all), may appreciate why Plato has Socrates say, in his discussion of a theoretical "just city" (i.e., just society), that youngsters should not be exposed to dangerous ideas -- such as Homer's depiction of the gods as powerful, spoiled brats. In the modern era, Plato has often been accused of being against art, music, and poetry, but I've always thought this a gross distortion to what he is actually saying in The Republic. He acknowledges the immense power of the arts to form -- or deform -- the soul, and he suggests that those who are destined to be leaders should be taught to be wise. The reason he infamously forbids poets in the just city is that he wanted to present young souls with inspiring images, and he just didn't find Homer and Hesiod to provide healthy inspiration. The imaginations of the future rulers of the just city should not be infected with the bad examples of the poets' gods.

Since Plato found the popular literature of his day to be unwholesome for impressionable young people, he made up edifying stories of his own. In fact, each one of Plato's great philosophical works is itself a made-up story, meant to lead the reader toward the truth. He peopled his stories with figures familiar to himself and his fellow Athenians: Socrates the great truth-seeker, and the men with whom Socrates often associated, each of whom typifies some particular point of view. Anyone who has ever read The Republic with any attention will be unlikely to forget Thrasymachus, the belligerent young man whose idea of justice was something like "might makes right"; Thrasymachus drops out of the discussion of justice pretty early on -- he just doesn't have the patience for it. But Glaukon (modeled on Plato's own brother) hangs on Socrates' every word, and follows the discussion closely, asking questions and advancing ideas. Socrates, who is trying to get his young interlocutors to glimpse the true nature of justice, makes up one story after another to illustrate the points he hopes they'll grasp. Plato's Socrates never teaches didactically; he always tries to help the others to see the truth in their mind's eye, using both their intellect and their imagination.

For more than two thousand years, this is what "high" literature took as its task: to illustrate some truth about the human condition or the world which would impress itself on the reader's imagination, to "form the soul," to use Plato's terminology. It is a sad fact that this literary project has largely been abandoned by writers today, even those with "literary" pretensions. Contemporary literature seldom makes any attempt to be edifying. Indeed, most contemporary writers would hotly deny that they have any moral obligation to the reading public, aside from being true to their own "vision." But a diseased eye cannot have clear vision.

This may be the reason that so many parents and educators who are concerned about presenting young people with edifying stories return to the great classics, written in ages when literature, like art and music, was intended to elevate the soul, to allow it to glimpse heights where the truth dwelt -- but to do so using forms familiar from daily life. In such works, the writer has taken great care to find a balance between portraying human nature as it is and showing it as it ought to be and can be.

Great stories of the past should continue
to shape great stories of the future.

This is one of the reasons I've decided to become not just a Catholic reader, reading with an eye to truth, but a Catholic writer as well. I believe that the Catholic perspective on life as it is lived and as it ought to be lived is one too seldom glimpsed in books today. Too often reality is portrayed as flat, ugly, and factual, when the Christian knows that it is complex, beautiful, and full of mystery. We need more literature that transcends the superficial facts of life in this world, to hint at truth, beauty, and goodness. For this reason, when I refer to Catholic writers I do not mean simply those who write for a Catholic audience. Instead, I mean those whose work reflects the vision of reality that I've just described, but who may not write for a necessarily Catholic audience. Writers who, like Flannery O'Connor, realize that the world has become blind and deaf to the mystery of life and the Creator's imprint on his Creation.

As many readers of this blog will already know, I'm currently working on what I call a "Catholic science fiction novel." It is intended to be "Catholic" in both senses: it has characters who are Catholic (one is even a priest) and it illustrates themes that will resonate with Catholic experience: growth in virtue, the redemptive value of suffering, and others. But it is also meant to be Catholic in the broader sense I just mentioned: to present a reality that has depth, in which superficial appearances cover metaphysical depths, in which the natural and the supernatural coexist and correspond. I hope that this vision will imprint itself on the imaginations of my readers.

Many speculative novels
paint a bleak future.

So many futuristic science fiction novels, by Christians and agnostics alike, present a kind of nightmarish future, in which science, technology, and rigid secularism have distorted human life to such an extent that it is barely recognizable, or else an absurdly utopian future in which, by his own efforts, Man has created a paradise without poverty, disease, or even death. My story is very different; it focuses not on technology, but on people, who are not imaginary aliens but ordinary human beings, with ordinary human struggles -- which just happen to take place in a distant part of our galaxy, far in our future, and sometimes using technology that we can imagine but will probably never see.

And yet, when I began to think about the shape of my story, I found that it contains remarkable parallels to ancient epics, such as Homer's Odyssey and Vergil's Aeneid. I was surprised to realize that it also parallels American history, in depicting people escaping a world in which religion is often persecuted to create a new home, in a distant land, where a new society may be built, guided by Christian principles -- much as the English Pilgrims did when they came to North America. Biblical echoes can also be found in it. Why? Because my imagination, quite unconsciously, has been shaped by the great stories most familiar to me and has fashioned a tale that bears a familiar resemblance to them.

I'm sure few readers will be conscious of these allusions, any more than I was conscious of them as I began shaping my story, But perhaps my story will make an impression on the imaginations, and the souls, of my readers, similar to the way ancient epics and Holy Scripture have made an impression on my own. I'd like to think so. I'd like to believe that, like Plato, I have created a story that helps my readers glimpse some aspect of truth that had previously eluded them, or that, like Flannery O'Connor, I have drawn vividly enough for the blind to see unsuspected beauty in the ordinary struggles of life.

Updated! Freebie Redux and a Preview

Get your free Kindle download
February 8 and 9

I've been doing more writing than reading lately, but I wanted you all to know that my Kindle ebook on diatomaceous earth, "Mother Earth's Best Kept Secret," will be available as free download again for a couple of days, Saturday, 9 February, and Sunday, 10 February. There is also a paperback version available , but that'll cost you. (N. B.: Updated dates are correct!)

One book that I am reading -- one of the few that isn't about how to create a great plot or how to make your novel's characters jump off the page -- is Lorraine V. Murray's The Abbess of Andalusia: Flannery O'Connor's Spiritual Journey (Kindle version also available). I bought it a couple of years ago at the end of a months-long Flannery O'Connor pig-out, and never got it read. I hope to be giving you my take on Murray's book later this month.