Hailstone Mountain, Snippet One

A look at my sales figures suggests to me that I need to promote Hailstone Mountain, my new novel. So I’ll be doing some snippets. Here’s the first, actually the Prologue:

I sat in the darkness. The mountain-rats slept around me. I could see some of their forms in the firelight. My brown cat lay curled against my leg, purring soundlessly. They’d shared their supper with us—dried fish.

I felt no need of sleep just then. I’d slept a lot on my high stone bed.

“Are you awake, Outsider?” a voice asked. At first I thought it might be the cat speaking again, but then I saw it was a boy, one of the mountain-rats. Although I could not see him clearly, I thought I knew which one he was. Sixteen winters or so, with bright blue eyes.

“I’m awake, my son.”

“Why do you call me your son?”

“It’s what I call everyone. Son or daughter. It’s my business to be a father to people.”

“I never knew for sure who my father was.”

“That’s just why I’m here.”

“May I ask you a question, then, …Father?”

“Of course.”

“Have you been out in the great world?”

“Aye. And mean to be again.”

“Is it really there?” Continue reading Hailstone Mountain, Snippet One

Game of Thrones Has a Lot of Sex

I have slightly regretted posting a link to the episode map for Game of Thrones a few weeks ago. I must have forgotten what little I knew about the stories at the time. Since then, I have seen some plot synopsizes and other talk of it. I can’t say I want to see it or read Martin’s series.

Game of Thrones Season 2

Patheos has a brief review of both the shows and the novels, asking the writers to talk about how sex is handled. They say they saw a glorification of rape, no love anywhere, and a curiously distant feminism. Alan Noble writes, “In that a major theme of the series is human depravity, cruelty, and brokenness, it is appropriate that one of the most sacred and beautiful experiences in life should be depraved, cruel, and broken.”

I don’t have time for that.

Why it’s not called “Very Bad, No Good, Horrible Friday”



Tissot, “The Sorrowful Mother”

It’s a darker than usual Good Friday for me. I just got word that my boss, the dean of our seminary, a gentle and godly man, passed away suddenly today. He just wrote me a recommendation for graduate school. It must have been one of the very last things he did in his office.

He sat across from me in my office about a week ago, and we discussed our ages. I said I was pretty old to start working for a Master’s. He said, “I’m a decade older than you, and I’m not planning to go anywhere.”

Is it good to die on Good Friday? A complicated question, as is the whole matter of “Good” Friday.

As far as I can tell, there are two major ways of explaining evil in the world (outside of the popular view that “it’s all garbage, so let’s just have a good time until we die”) today. One is what might be called the Buddhist Way, which understands evil to be an illusion, because existence itself is an illusion, so there’s no point getting upset.

The other is what I’ll call the Christian Way (though there are probably non-Christians who hold it in some variety). That way calls for citing the Old Testament statement that “God is a Man of War,” and believing that evil is real, but that He is in the process of defeating it.

Both ways have their problems, and cannot be proved by logic or science. But I know which suits me better. Continue reading Why it’s not called “Very Bad, No Good, Horrible Friday”

Reflecting on a Letter by a Lesbian Believer

Double ExposureHunter Baker has blessed Christians on the Internet by posting this letter, “An Astonishing Message from a Gay Sister in Christ” and his personal response. I feel provoked to share my reflections also.

“She sees herself as a sinner and reaches for the bracing, redemptive, and cleansing blood of Christ rather than the lukewarm saliva of evolving culture.” She is like I am, though the labels differ.

Let me come out of the closet. I am an idolater.

I believe I have an idolatrous orientation. At one time in my life, I would have said one cannot be a true follower of Christ and an idolater, but I see that I am one. I was born this way. I have followed Christ since age seven, but as I became an adult, I realized I made and loved idols regularly. I worshiped (never in church–wait, I don’t think I can say that) myself, my dreams, the attention of others, my books, my relative grades, and other things over the Lord God who made me and rules heaven and earth. I have confessed of this sin, felt free of it, and returned to it within the course of a week.

Many people like me have tried to change the church to accommodate them and succeeded. Some have changed entire denominations. But I don’t want accommodation. I want redemption.

On this day, when we remember the death of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, I want to take shelter in His bloody side. I can’t change myself.

Pixar's Pete Docter

Radix Magazine, “Where Christian Faith Meets Contemporary Culture,” did an interview a while back with the director of Monsters, Inc., Pete Docter. Pete has since directed Pixar’s Up and written Wall-E and Monsters University. (via Jeffrey Overstreet)

Here’s part of it:

Radix: How would you say that being a Christian affects how you do your work?

Docter: Years ago when I first spoke at church, I was kind of nervous about talking about Christianity and my work. It didn’t really connect. But more and more it seems to be connecting for me. I ask for God’s help, and it’s definitely affected what I’m doing. It’s helped me to calm down and focus. There were times when I got too stressed out with what I was doing, and now I just step back and say, “God, help me through this.” It really helps you keep a perspective on things, not only in work, but in relationships.

At first you hire people based purely on their talent, but what it ends up is that people who really go far are good people. They’re good people to work with, and I think God really helps in those relationships.

Radix: I know you do a lot of praying, and that’s a big part of the artistic part of what you guys do.

Docter: Yes. You could probably work on a live-action movie that takes maybe six months hating everybody else and you’d still have a film. But these animation projects take three or four years, and it’s really difficult to do without having a good relationship with the people you’re working with.

Pete goes on to describe how spelling out the moral of a story, if you have one in mind, undermines your message. “To me art is about expressing something that can’t be said in literal terms. You can say it in words, but it’s always just beyond the reach of actual words.”

Kill Your Darlings, by Max Allan Collins


“I’m jealous,” she said, pretending not to be. “You could have had room service with me.” She said that flatly, without stressing the innuendo – but the “nuendo” was in there, all right.

“Kill your darlings” is writers’ jargon for one of the hardest lessons of the craft – that the particular passage you worked hardest on and are proudest of is very likely the one you need most to cut.

Max Allan Collins’ early novel Kill Your Darlings is another of his Mallory books, about an Iowa mystery writer who gets involved in real life mysteries. This is the second I’ve read of this series, and I liked it very much. Collins (it seems to me) writes meta-mysteries, mysteries that work on the surface level, but also comment on the genre and its conventions. This particular book is literally about a convention – Bouchercon, an actual writers’ and fans’ convention, fictionalized here. Collins takes the opportunity of writing about hard-boiled mystery authors to place his hero in a genuine hard-boiled adventure. As hero/narrator Mallory notes to his own amusement, every event in the story follows hard-boiled conventions plot point for plot point, until he himself decides to break the pattern, in a scene that might irritate some fans but pleased me greatly.

Anyway, in this story Mallory goes to Chicago for Bouchercon, and there reunites with his mentor and hero Roscoe Kane, a sort of Micky Spillane-esque writer who’s fallen on hard times. When Kane is drowned in a hotel bathtub, Mallory has suspicions, but he can’t convince the police to look closer. He suspects a sleazy publisher with mob connections whom he hates, and uncovers a literary fraud inspired by greed and arrogance, traits not uncommon in gatherings of writers.

Kill Your Darlings is a thoughtful, well-written, fun mystery with only mild objectionable language or subject matter. Mallory mentions at one point that his politics are not conservative, but that’s all there is about that. Highly recommended, especially if you enjoy the golden age of Hard-Boiled.

January Justice, by Athol Dickson


The bomb was interesting. I thought about the fact that it was interesting, and my first encounter with Vega and Castro had been interesting, and being followed by the guy with the medallions and the other guy was interesting, and I decided it was a good thing to be interested in something. It was a relief, and I had a feeling I should try to make it last.

Is there anything Athol Dickson can’t do? I’ve already praised his magical realism novels, like River Rising and The Cure, so you can imagine my delight to discover he’d written a mystery, my favorite reading genre. I downloaded it (got a free review copy), and it was no surprise – though a delight – to discover that January Justice is very good indeed.

The hero is Malcolm Cutter, a marine veteran. He got a dishonorable discharge under circumstances that made him briefly famous, and left him with a horror of the public eye. He’s not exactly a private detective now – he’s actually a chauffeur and bodyguard. But sometimes he looks into things for people. He worked for a top movie star named Haley Lane, and their relationship developed into something closer than employer/employee. But Haley’s dead now. Somebody drugged their food, and Malcolm himself barely survived. Today he’s still fighting flashbacks, struggling to find something real he can hold on to, so that he can orient his thoughts when they go crazy, and deal with his guilt over Haley’s death.

Malcolm is approached by two men from Guatemala, former rebels, now “politicians.” Their government has been accused of the kidnapping and murder of a former leader of the previous Guatemalan junta. The leader was married to a famous American movie star, who was kidnapped, the ransom drop used as an opportunity to assassinate him. They tell Malcolm their government was not involved, and they want him to prove it. He doesn’t like the men much, but when other men start pressuring him to stay away from the case it raises his curiosity, and he plunges into an investigation that will get him shot at, beaten up, and arrested before he figures it out. He’ll also meet a nice girl.

Dickson writes with all the style and macho you’d expect from the best in the hard-boiled genre. Malcolm Cutter is an appealing hero, with interesting vulnerabilities and flaws. His relationships with his two fellow employees at Haley Lane’s estate are sketched with wry humor and sensitivity. The Christian message is subtle and organically part of the story. I hope very much there will be more Malcolm Cutter novels.

Highly recommended. Mild cautions for adult themes.

Sometimes There Really Are Monsters Under the Bed, by Will Graham

Once again, we contemplate a novel with promising writing and some good elements, but the the author doesn’t know how to bring it up to its potential. Sometimes There Really Are Monsters Under the Bed is mostly a disappointment, except for a surprise appendix. (Also the title’s too long.)

Former FBI agent Michael O’Leary left the agency in despair after failing to save the life of a little girl. Later the girl’s mother, the wealthy Annabelle Reardon, pulls him out of his self-destructive funk by giving him a job in her new foundation, devoted to rescuing children in danger – and, incidentally, marrying him. Their work is aided by a psychic empathetic gift that Annabelle possesses – she can learn a person’s secrets by touching their hand. It’s through this gift that she gets a clue to something terrible going on at an orphanage run by a wealthy philanthropist. Going to investigate, they encounter danger and uncover a horror.

There’s not enough story here, in my opinion, for what the author’s trying to do. The book is really a novella, and the story arc is too steep. Annabelle’s “gift” really does little for the story beyond providing a shortcut to giving the heroes a reason to investigate. Some real detective work would have lengthened a story that badly needs lengthening. Also there’s too much emotion here, and the characters talk about it too much. Some of the boy-girl material was moving, but more time should have been spent developing the couple’s relationship in more subtle ways.

In contrast, the short story appended to the back of the book – “Perception” – was excellent. Tight, well-drawn, terrifying, and it provided a neat twist ending that T-boned me completely. That story’s really the best reason to buy Sometimes There Really Are Monsters Under the Bed.

Some intense situations, but no really objectionable material.

Thoughts on marriage

One of the reasons I oppose same-sex marriage…

For years, churches have been nudging men out of the ministry by making the pastorate a “woman’s thing.”

For years, universities have been nudging men out of higher education by making a college education a “woman’s thing.”

More recently, society has begun nudging men out of marriage by (among other methods) making it a “gay” thing.

This is not surprising in a society that increasingly finds heterosexual males a frightening nuisance.