A Catholic Reader

I was sorting through a bunch of goodies that I picked up last August at the combined Catholic Writers Guild/New Media/Marketing Network conference and thought I would pass them on to you, before I "file" them (you know what that means). Among other things, I nabbed a number of marketing cards for novels written by members of the Catholic Writers Guild, and I thought I would commend these books to your consideration (even though I have not read most of them). A few that don't get mentioned here will be noted over on my Catholic Science Fiction blog . Today, I thought I would focus on suspense and mystery titles. Here goes: Unbridled Grace: A True Story about the Power of Choice , by Michael J. Norman. This one actually is not fiction, but fact. The author is a chiropractor from right here in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, whose true story sounds like a best-selling thriller. Dr. Norman got dragged into a rats' nest of intrigue when he unknowingly got involved with a...

I've been reading Dean Koontz 's Odd Thomas stories lately, supernatural thrillers with an unusual twist. Generally speaking, I'm not interested in supernatural or paranormal stories, but I like Odd Thomas, the protagonist who sees dead people and bodachs (dark, wispy spirits who sniff out violent death before it occurs), and who can track soon-to-be mass murderers using something he calls psychic magnetism. What I like about Odd is the fact that he is, in many ways, quite an ordinary young fellow, but one with a great sense of responsibility for his fellow man. Although his strange "gift" is obviously a burden to him, he does not complain or whine about it (or about anything else), but regards it as a talent he has been given for the good of others. Nonetheless, he does not use it to become a sort of paranormal hero, going around seeking out evil to foil it before it happens. He knows, instinctively, that he needs to balance his peculiar gift with a perfe...

A recent comment on an old post about Flannery O'Connor raises some questions that I thought I would respond to in a separate post, rather than depositing them in the obscurity of the comm box. Janet Baker left a long comment (you can read it in its entirety there), which says in part: I'm currently working on the short story Revelation, looking at the text for what it says about Flannery's Catholicism, rather than listening to her pronouncements in non-fiction, like her letters. If you read the story, you will note that it is Mrs. Turpin's virtues that must be burned away before she enters heaven, and that people enter heaven in groups, racial and social. Perhaps you don't read either St. Thomas Aquinas, or Teilhard de Chardin, nor have I extensively, but if you begin to read about it, you'll see that St. Thomas promotes the virtues of which Mrs. Turpin is guilty--generous almsgiving, supporting the Church, helping others regardless of their worthines...

As my Christmas present to all Kindle owners, especially those who just got a new Kindle for Christmas, I'm running a freebie promotion on my little book on all the helpful uses of diatomaceous earth around the home . From Wednesday, 26 December, through Friday, 28 December, you can download the book for free! Those who don't have a Kindle can purchase the paperback version , which is currently eligible for Amazon's 4 for 3 promotion (buy four books and get the lowest priced one free). 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. Merry Christmas! Happy reading!

Christmas is upon us, and Peter Jackson's new Hobbit movie has recently premiered, which reminds me of a great book I've been meaning to recommend. Anyone looking for a Christmas gift for fans of Tolkien's tales of Middle Earth should take a look at T. M. Doran's novel, Toward the Gleam (from Ignatius Press , available in hardback, ereader, and audio editions; get the Kindle version from Amazon .) It is both an homage to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and a gripping tale in its own right. The makers of the book's trailer definitely wanted to draw attention to the connection between Doran's novel and Tolkien's. The cover art design for the book should also remind readers of LOTR. Toward the Gleam 's cover was designed by John Herreid and executed by a wonderful Catholic artist, Daniel Mitsui . You can see that it incorporates some of the design elements from the well-known covers of the 1986 Houghton Mifflin edition (below), such as the r...

Barbara Nicolosi , founder of Act One , a Christian screenwriting school, often complains that her students just don't seem to understand what makes a story. My adventures in reading self-published novels on Kindle has shown me that even writers of novels seem to have trouble grasping this concept. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that many self-published novelists seem to think they can get by without editors, who would be able to point out when a story is not really a story. I used to laugh at the fact that Aristotle, supposedly so wise, said something as obvious as “Every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.” Now I see that this is apparently not obvious to everyone. The Perils of Plotting Last week I had one of those head colds that knock me out for about three days. My oxygen-starved brain was having trouble just trying to remain conscious, so writing anything was definitely out. So I turned to a freebie Kindle book I had downloaded recently, for som...

I just entered a raffle to win a Kindle Fire, and so can you! Just head over to the blog of writer Diane Capri and enter like I did. You can also take part in the Holiday Blog Hop to the blogs of some 60 different writers and get a chance to win lots of other goodies, including Amazon gift cards. What are you waiting for? Get hopping!

This week, phone and internet outages combined with a raging head-cold  to keep me from getting much writing done (although I've got plenty of things on the hob!). Let me suggest, then, that you take a look at the online edition of a new literary journal, The Lost Country , produced by some young scholar/writers of my acquaintance, who call themselves The Exiles. You can read it online or download a PDF, but if you like what you see, you should really consider subscribing to the print edition, which is very handsomely produced. You can also learn more about The Exiles , who describe themselves as "a literary club in the venerable tradition of the Inklings of Oxford and the Fugitives of Vanderbilt University." If you'd like to encourage them in their work, they accept donations! a literary club in the venerable tradition of the Inklings of Oxford and the Fugitives of Vanderbilt University a literary club in the venerable tradition of the Inklings of Oxford and t...

New cover, print version coming! I'm a reader and a writer. When I write, I try to write things I'd like to read. I'm a bit of a DIY nut, especially when it comes to my health, and one of the things I'm really interested in is finding ways to use more natural products around the house, to avoid toxic chemicals and to save some money by avoiding brand name products (there are a number of large manufacturers that I am always happy not to buy from). I do a lot of informal research on the internet regarding more natural ways to stay healthy, clean my home, etc., but I find that sometimes some really wild claims are made about things like raw honey, boric acid, etc. I find it rather irritating that reasonable claims about the valuable properties of such things are often all mixed up with really wild claims (cures cancer! pulls viruses out of the air!), so I decided to do a little more research and then write a little book about healthy, natural products for the home, ...

This fall I’ve been teaching a course on Medieval Epic Poetry, a continuation of the Ancient Epic course I taught last spring, in which we read Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Vergil’s Aeneid , poems that are all deeply grounded in a pagan worldview but which nonetheless examine human nature, and particularly human excellence, in such an authentic way that they continue to speak profoundly to readers in our own day. Still, the pagan world that produced those works valued things that sometimes run counter to Christian values, so their heroes may seem strange and not entirely admirable to a modern Christian. Nonetheless, all the poems we read in the Medieval Epic course are written by Christian poets who have, to one extent or another, appropriated the epic tradition and made it their own. What does it mean to be a hero? Achilles was famous for his godlike rage. This shows, on the one hand, the powerful appeal of the epic form and, on the other hand, the way Christians have...

Just a priest and his dog ... oh, yeah, and an alien. I wonder if the new initiative to "re-evangelize the culture" will result in a spate of Catholic science fiction novels? And what will those be like? Over on my scifi blog, Sancta Futura , I just posted some background on the story I'm working on -- take a look! Just about the same time I wrote that post, I noticed that one of my Facebook friends had "liked" a FB page for a Catholic science fiction novel that will be published in a few months. It's called Father and Captain , written by Patrick Baum. Here's the blurb on the FB page: The last Catholic seminarian in the US, forced into exile by the Bureau of Virtue Engineering, must choose between God and family, a life on earth or a life in interstellar space. I suspect, as we all get more and more discouraged by the direction modern society is headed, we'll see more such things. My own story is set in the distant future, partly becaus...

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I've recently decided to take up the challenge to write "speculative fiction" from a Catholic point of view . I'll talk about the writing side of things over on the Sancta Futura blog , but here I'd like to talk about reading science fiction, and why it's not a total waste of time, as many people seem to believe. I've been reading things that fall under the general rubric of "speculative fiction" (the term I prefer to "science fiction") since I was a little kid reading things like Sprockets: A Little Robot by Alexander Key (better known for Escape from Witch Mountain) and The Space Ship Under the Apple Tree by Louis Slobodkin. Later, in high school, I was hooked on the early novels of Robert Heinlein, and all sorts of post-apocalyptic novels such as Alas, Babylon and On the Beach , as well as the much more optimistic I lost interest is science fiction (strictly speaking) about t...

I've mentioned before that this blog (and, by the way, now also the Catholic Reading Project blog ) can be delivered automatically to your Kindle, if you subscribe through Amazon. If you've gotten as used to Kindle reading as I have, you may find that reading from your Kindle is more comfortable than reading from a computer screen. Well, here's another way you can read this blog (or anything else you find on the internet) from your Kindle -- just get the Send to Kindle browser plug-in (I just got the one for Firefox ; you can also get it for Chrome , and a Safari version is coming "soon"). The add-on is super-easy to use: just click the little button that sits up in your browser bar (see photo) and it will allow to preview what will be sent or just send it directly. What the program does is analyze what is the main article on the page and send just that; this is similar to using "article mode" if you are reading a story in the built-in web browser ...