The book had a busy day today, and I had a busy day running around after it!
First, the Nook edition is now available. You can find it here!
Someone just told me she was going to clean her house today, until she found out the Nook edition went live. Should I offer to go and vacuum, I wonder? Well, if I’m going to vacuum someone’s house, maybe I should start with mine… Continue Reading →
My second novel has just been released by Lingua Sacra Publishing! The Kindle edition of The Other Side of the Bonfire is now available! Click here to download your copy! Readers in the United Kingdom can obtain a copy here. Paperback and Nook editions will be available within 48 hours! Continue Reading →
We were in a wedding today. My whole little family. There were many lovely moments. Because we were in the wedding, we could see the faces of the bride and groom all the way through, smiling, tearing up, holding hands, thinking all the private thoughts that only they will ever know. It was one of those days that you know you’ll remember with a glow of golden light around it.
I loved watching the bride dance with her grandfather. I loved watching the bride’s mother as she watched the bride. But I think what I loved most of all was watching the couple’s first dance. There was something about the way they stood there together in that crowded room, so close together, face to face, holding one another the way you hold someone to help him stand, the way you hold someone who keeps you alive and well. There was such honest tenderness between them. They know each other so well already, and they chose to get married, knowing.
God bless and keep you, sweet friends.
My second novel, The Other Side of the Bonfire, is scheduled for release in just over a week!
Reviews so far are very positive, and I’m looking forward to my favorite moment—the first time I get to hold the baby/book in my hands. I know e-books are the wave of the future, but I love the weight of a paper book. I love the sound of pages. Electrons will never replace that loving feeling.
To pass the time until the book is a reality, here’s what you could learn about the story by reading the back cover. Continue Reading →
I just stayed up much too late to finish reading A Place of Brightness, by Keith Massey.
Have you read it? Read it! This is a must for anyone interested in the possibility of an Orthodox Christian literary genre. If you read it, we can talk about it! I’m eager to hear other views of the book and to discuss it.
I promise to avoid spoilers. Even without touching on the finer points of the plot (and it had some fine points!), there are many things to say about this novel. Continue Reading →
As of page 143, this is definitely a book that falls into the category I was describing earlier, a novel written from a Christian viewpoint but without being “Christian fiction” in the sense in which we most commonly see that genre in the USA. First, it’s historical fiction without being about the American West, the American South, or World War II. Second, it’s written by a man and (judging by what I know of men as an observer but clearly not a member of that gender) it would be appealing to men. It’s well-known that the primary reader of a Christian fiction novel in the US is female.
What makes this book even more interesting is that it’s not written from an Evangelical Christian or even Protestant Christian perspective. Continue Reading →
I just started reading a novel that might qualify as a member of the genre I was just discussing…Christian worldview, but simply because the characters are Christians, not because the author is out to hit us upside the head with his views. If it keeps up all through the book, I’ll be writing more about it here soon.
My husband and I watched this movie last night on television. It’s an award-winning secular film based on the true story of a group of Catholic monks caught between a military government and extremist guerrillas in Algeria in the late 1990s. There is tremendous pressure on them to leave the country, and they must decide whether they will leave or stay as the situation around them continues to disintegrate.
The film is beautifully made. The cinematography and the portrayal of each character were perfect, in my mind. It was difficult to remember that the actors were actors, and that the film was not a documentary. It remained wholly human and touching, all the way to the end.
As I was watching it, and musing on how attached I was becoming to the monks in the story, I started thinking about how I would (or wouldn’t) place it in the frame of Christian culture. I followed my own train of thought for a few minutes, then turned to my husband, opened my mouth, and heard myself saying, “See? This is a real movie, not a Christian movie, but look at how it’s portraying these monks!” Continue Reading →
This is from St. Gregory the Theologian’s Funeral Oration for St. Basil, whose perspective I shared yesterday. St. Gregory says:
I take it all intelligent men agree that among human advantages, education holds first place. I refer not only to our nobler form of it, which disdains all the ambitious ornaments of rhetoric and attaches itself only to salvation and the beauty of spiritual contemplation, but also that external culture which many Christians by an error of judgment scorn as treacherous and dangerous and as turning away from God.
Hmmm.
I believe it’s safe to say that one ingredient that should not be included in an “Orthodox culture” is judgment. I’m not referring to the type of judgment also called “good sense” or “discernment.” I’m referring to the type which seeks corroboration in all details for its conviction that its own way is bettter than the other person’s way. Continue Reading →
