Personal note: Blogging from me will probably be light for the rest of the month. My publisher's publicist has booked me for a “virtual book tour,” in which I'll do guest blog posts and interviews for what looks like a daunting number of web sites.

My plan is to throw myself into this thing and work the (Charles) Dickens out of it. A virtual book tour would appear to be tailor made for my personality, so if I can't shine at this I'll be a man pretty much with nothing to say for himself.

While I'm thinking of it, buy my book.

It's been in the news lately—The University of Baltimore is offering a credit course on zombies in literature.

Blumberg's course is not without precedent. Brendan Riley, an English professor at Columbia College in Chicago, introduced a course called "Zombies in Popular Media" in 2006, a few years into the nation's zombie revival. He believes he was the first to offer an entire course on zombies, a perennial entry on lists of oddest college courses.

"It was kind of a fight to get it as a recognized course at the school," Riley said. "Because, at first, it appears to be kind of a frivolous topic."

I suppose if I object to this, I'll be identifying myself as not only a dinosaur, but a fossilized dinosaur.

But I do object, and I'm pretty sure I'd have objected back when I was in college. Read the rest of this entry . . .

Just added The Book Haven to our bloogroll (via Frank Wilson). Looks like a good, smart blog.

What's that roar of clarity and wit you hear on the horizon? It's Doktor Luther criticizing the movies. Yes, he's back, and he's on Twitter. To wit:

• Lutherans who have not read Bo Giertz's "Hammer of God" should be forced to wash Joel Osteen's wife's car for a year. http://bit.ly/bNggXW
• That also goes for the works of Lars Walker, despite his retrograde fashion sense. http://bit.ly/16Ujpg
• If you don't buy this book now, I will find you and sit on you. http://amzn.to/bPXrBM Fascinating and sad.
• This guy created 20 rooms out of 350 sq. ft. He should be a Marvel superhero or something: Efficiency Man. http://bit.ly/bsRTvM

You've been blessed, haven't you? Yes, you have.

When referring to the blog, "Writing, Clear and Simple," do not cite rmjacobsen.squarespace.com, but writingclearandsimple.com instead. When referring to the blog's author, use "Roy Jacobsen the Magnificent" when quoting and "Roy Jacobsen the Beneficent" for all other references.

Michael Hyatt has some interesting thoughts on author websites and points to a tool for grading your site. I thought BwB would rank fairly low, and I could see how we could improve our grade, but our website grade is 95. I wish that meant something. Maybe it means more than I know. Perhaps a more realistic score comes from the blog-specific grader, which gave us a 68. And the grader did not find our Twitter account, so I wonder if that put us down a notch.

Anyway, I'm a little encouraged by our 95 grade. That's a solid A, and we have room to improve. Our traffic could be much better. Our images could have alt tags, and our pages meta tags. We could allow Sissel to guest blog. Anyway, I'm encouraged.

The Sun Chronicle hasn't appreciated reader feedback recently and has now guarded its article comments with a 99 cent fee. So you can fill out the order form, pay almost a dollar, and comment freely thereafter. I don't know if that system will apply to only this Massachusetts paper or also to the other two papers the D'Arconte company owns.

I'm sitting here dumbfounded. Andrew Klavan--THE Andrew Klavan, the power cord of whose laptop I am not worthy to untangle--has linked to my story about the "outing" of my pastor, in its separate life over at The American Culture.

Nunc dimittis.

Loren Eaton at I Saw Lightning Fall reviews Andrew Klavan's Dynamite Road, and--to my horror--is not entirely sure what to think about it.

It makes sense, then, in telling such a story to join tough-guy mystery with breakneck thriller. What seems a little odd is the unabashed romanticism infusing the proceedings.

I'll tell you what to think about it, Loren! It's brilliant! It's a timeless masterpiece! It will outlive us all!

I'm sure he'll come over to my view once he's read the rest of the trilogy.

If not, I have ways to persuade him...

We had bad weather in Minnesota last night, but it came not near me. Here at Blithering Heights we had rain and clouds, and weird light that would do a Broadway stage production proud, but nothing serious. However, down in Rochester where I had supper Sunday night, they did have serious property destruction (three people were killed in small towns in the area).

I thank God it wasn't worse. One feels a strange, irrational chill when a disaster happens somewhere you recently visited, even though technically it wasn't anything like a near miss. Strange to think that there was wreckage strewn across Highway 52, on which I drove.

But I've given it a lot of thought and have concluded (tentatively) that it probably wasn't my fault.

Guest blogger Celestine Chua writes, "Top bloggers of excellence have 8 consistent habits – 8 habits, which, when we practice duly, are guaranteed to bring you results." I don't see wordiness on the list, so that may be a ninth habit thrown in for free. [/snark]

I got into a disagreement with the gang over at Threedonia today, and found myself decidedly in the minority. They are participating enthusiastically in “Draw Mohammed Day” today, and I said I couldn't support that.

The odd thing is that, unlike most instances where I find people I like disagreeing with me, I remain pretty sure I'm right.

Which doesn't necessarily mean I think they're wrong.

I think we're dealing with essentially different goals.

I believe I see the point of “Draw Mohammed Day” pretty well. In fact, for a short time I was considering participating. I can see it as a line drawn in the sand against Islamic noodgery, the constant “what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too” mindset that says they are free to insult our religion, but we have to keep our unclean hands off theirs. “This is America,” the Mohammed Drawers are saying. “In America, we may not like it if somebody insults our religion, but if somebody does, we don't kill them. They don't even go to jail. If you want to live here, then get used to our rules. Otherwise, go back to the Sharia paradise you came from.”

If promoting Americanism is your primary value, I entirely understand.

But my primary value is not Americanism. It's the Kingdom of God. I want to win the Muslims for Christ, and Christ's commandment is to love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us.

I don't want anybody to insult my faith. So I won't insult theirs. Even if they started it.

Seems pretty simple to me.

I've been tweeting on a BwB profile here, saying things like this:

1. People can't talk about themselves with total honesty, but its harder 2 avoid t truth when you pretend 2B other people http://bit.ly/baPrBB
2. "Massive Oil of Olay slick causing fresher, younger-looking fish" http://bit.ly/9PXrqR HT:Lars Walker, http://bit.ly/16Ujpg
3. RT: jaredcwilson "The very thing we are allergic to -- our helplessness -- is what makes prayer work." -- Paul Miller
4. RT @bwladd: Spurgeon:The greatest enemy to human souls is the self-righteous spirit which makes men look to themselves for salvation.
5. "It will be a Republican year. The question is how much." Joe Savino #p2
6. Read O'Connor's "The Life You Save May Be Your Own." Didn't get it. Is the incomplete man acting dishonorably b/c he's incomplete?

Rachel Deahl of PW writes about who is influential on Twitter. She notes, "One firm fact of the publishing Twittersphere is that it's a meritocracy. CEOs and editorial assistants—if they're skilled (and frequent) tweeters—can draw equal crowds."

Rados, who was named repeatedly as someone who 'gets' Twitter, said she believes the social networking site can sell books. 'An author can tweet about their life, their process, start a conversation about their characters, and those readers who feel a connection will most likely buy a book. I know I do,' she said. Rados then elaborated with an example, pointing to Jen Lancaster, author of My Fair Lazy, who she follows. The day Lancaster's new book came out, Rados said she bought it, in hardback.

I'd think blogs can do that too, but one does have to be where the people are. I've thought about tweeting a bit, microblogging as it were. I'm not sure it's for me though. I don't even have a smart phone or a personal laptop, so why should I try to get involved in the Twitterverse?

Be sure to vote for BwB as the best blog by a heretic on The Crescat.

The invaluable Roy Jacobsen has a daughter bookselling and blogging now. Her name is Patricia Schnase, and here's a post of her tips for a more pleasant experience for everyone at the local bookstore.

Just to let you know that I've been invited to join the blogging crew at S.T. Karnick's The American Culture blog. This will not affect my blogging here in any way. Mostly I'll be reposting reviews from this blog over there.

The American Culture is not a conservative blog, as Sam Karnick describes it, but a classical liberal blog. Its two principle er... principles are freedom of expression, and personal responsibility as the mechanism that makes freedom possible. Sam writes:

I don’t have any formal ground rules on story/essay angles other than this: we’re for liberty, and we enjoy and appreciate culture, including popular culture. To wit, we don’t just complain about the culture but instead report on what’s good as well. To this end, it’s important to note a principle I consider essential and which nearly everybody on the right fails to understand: depiction is not advocacy. Instead of blindly totting up instances of various events in a work and then complaining about it being too dirty and not at all like The Sound of Music (which is of course a darn good film but not the only way to communicate edifyingly), we go deeper and consider the real meaning of it. Thus a book full of gory murders can be very edifying while a book about a Christian family can be very bad art. It’s the assumptions and thoughts they purvey that count.

I think that's an extremely important principle. It means (which ought to be obvious) that a book that deals with adultery is not necessarily a book in favor of adultery. A book that depicts bigotry is not necessarily a bigoted book (a principle generally out of fashion today). A book that wrestles with questions about the goodness of God is not necessarily blasphemous. Any subject, no matter how disturbing, can be handled morally in a moral story. It's all in the treatment of the material.

(Just don't ask me to watch a movie with two guys kissing. Ick.)

Just when I was wondering what to blog about, Loren Eaton at I Saw Lightning Fall uses... that word!

He links to an interesting book review by Newsweek's Jennie Yabroff, dealing with the thorny subject of... subtext!

The title in question is Joshua Ferris' The Unnamed, a novel about a lawyer struggling with an undiagnosed compulsion to endlessly walk until he keels over. An odd and evocative premise, one that Yabroff wrestles with mightily. She initially wonders if the affliction may be a metaphor for environmental destruction or the search for the divine or the nature of addiction, but concludes that it doesn't really matter. "What if the book is about nothing more than a man who takes really long walks?" she muses before launching into a discussion about the dangers of overanalyzing....

This leaves me no choice but to quote one of the best movies of the 1990s, Whit Stillman's brilliant Barcelona, the story of two American cousins grappling with cultural differences, sexual mores, love, and anti-Americanism in 1980s Spain. This movie contributed one of the greatest bits of dialogue ever placed in two actors' mouths:

FRED: Maybe you can clarify something for me. Since I've been, you know, waiting for the fleet to show up, I've read a lot, and--

TED: Really?

FRED: And one of the things that keeps popping up is this about "subtext." Plays, novels, songs--they all have a "subtext," which I take to mean a hidden message or import of some kind. So subtext we know. But what do you call the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious? They never talk about that. What do you call what's above the subtext?

TED: The text.

FRED: OK, that's right, but they never talk about that.

Note to self: Must get the DVD.

How Andrew Breitbart Hacks the Media

Go see the new look of Hunter Baker's blog. I like it, and you should too. It's new, improved, and doesn't have any high fructose corn syrup. What's not to like about that?

I didn't know this until just now (Thanks to Jared Wilson). Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, has advanced cancer and has been told not to anticipate remission. His wife, Denise, gives some details on his blog.

She says, "Day by day I continue to see the Holy Spirit at work in him, molding him, softening him, giving him a more childlike faith than I believe he has ever known. When the moment comes, I am assured Michael will be ready. I am the one who doesn’t want to let go."

Michael has a book coming from WaterBrook Press this September, titled Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality.

Two writer/bloggers we're familiar with on this blog are featured in Publishers Weekly this week: J. Mark Bertrand and Gina Holmes. Click through the first link to read the interviews.

I’ve (we've) been tagged for a "Creative Writer" Blogger Award! Which means I get to lie shamelessly to you all and test your truth-detecting skills. The rules are ...

• Thank the person who gave this to you. (Thanks [or something] to Loren Eaton of I Saw Lightning Fall.)
• Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
• Link to the person who nominated you.
• Tell up to six outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one outrageous truth - or - switch it around and tell six outrageous truths and one outrageous lie.
• Nominate seven "Creative Writers" who might have fun coming up with outrageous lies.
• Post links to the seven blogs you nominate.
• Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know you nominated them.

1. I have the power to drive women wild with desire (but only the desire to kill me).

2. I was born a poor sharecropper's son.

3. I know how to field-strip a trebuchet.

4. The child I sponsored through Christian Children's Fund is now the murderous dictator of a small East African country.

5. One of my novels is banned in Chechnya.

6. I have a secret superhero identity, but unfortunately he can't find a job in that field, and is currently working as a greeter at Wal-Mart.

7. I'm actually perfectly normal, but this crazy act impresses the chicks.

When I was a kid in school, one of the most common criticisms I received from teachers was that I did things my own way, rather than the way I was instructed. I have not changed that policy, so I'll only tag a few bloggers with this. Loren linked more than his quota, so he can have some of mine.

1. Roy Jacobsen at Writing: Clear and Simple.

2. Patrick O'Hannigan at The Paragraph Farmer.

3. Any of the crew at Threedonia.

4. Will Duquette at The View From the Foothills.

A Fantasy/Sci-Fi blog is giving away two sets of Auralia's Colors (via Jeffrey Overstreet)

The Culture Alliance's (subscribers' only) Friday Fiction e-newsletter focused on me today—very flatteringly, and I'm grateful. You can read most of it yourself here at S. T. Karnick's The American Culture blog.

With all due regard to the passing of J. D. Salinger, my own reading universe has been far more powerfully impacted today by the death of Ralph McInerny, who passed away this morning. (Thanks to Southern Appeal for the heads up.)

McInerny was a noted Catholic religious scholar and University of Notre Dame institution, as well as being a highly successful mystery writer. His Father Dowling mysteries (not—I repeat, not—to be confused with the awful television series starring Tom Bosley which purported to be based on them), along with his Roger and Philip Knight books, set at Notre Dame, formed only the tip of his fictional iceberg, much of which consisted of books written under pseudonyms.

Although I am far from being a Catholic, I always found McInerny an author whose faith and principles I could identify with. I don't think anyone would call his books sentimental or naïve in their depiction of the real world, but they breathed out an atmosphere of spiritual peace and rationality that must have been generated by a rare spirit. I wish I'd had the chance to meet him.

(Artist's conception)

Congratulations are due to our friend Roy Jacobsen, of Writing Clear and Simple, who got a place on Universitiesandcolleges.org's "Top 100 Blogs to Improve Your Writing" list.

The rest of the list is worth checking out, too.

The Culture Alliance can be found here.

The Culture Alliance is based on the awareness that social reform and cultural renewal cannot be achieved through politics alone. Politics rules, but culture shapes politics. People's basic assumptions come from cultural institutions—the education system, entertainment outlets, the art world, and media—currently dominated by those on the ideological Left. People who embrace classical liberal ideas have largely abdicated these institutions, thus those ideas cannot penetrate the public's basic assumptions.

TCA has been founded to address this crucial need. Certainly, there are numerous fine organizations attempting to influence culture, but they are a separate and dispersed lot. Our objective is bring people who understand and appreciate the nation’s founding values into the cultural influence professions and create a grand narrative of cultural renewal, to make a case for the development of a Culture of Liberty in the United States today. The Culture Alliance is designed to build synergy and connection among groups and individuals, resulting in an impact, through cooperation and outreach, which is greater than the sum of its parts.

You can sign up for their Weekly Update, which includes what they call Fiction Friday. Rumor has it that a certain good-looking author of Viking fantasies will be featured this week.

Here's a shout out to Meg Moseley, a writer, blogger, and reader of Brandywine Books. Thanks for stopping by, Meg. I need to read more of those great books too.

Conversational Reading is now at conversationalreading.com. Accept no imitations.

Over at Evangelical Outpost, Rachel Motte reviews a book called Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture. Looks fascinating, and (in my humble opinion) it's long overdue.

I probably don't need to mention that this is an issue of considerable interest to me (though to call myself an introvert is a gross understatement). I've heard of churches where every single member is required, as a condition of membership, to do house-to-house visitation. It seems to me that that kind of one-size-fits-all Christianity is entirely false to the true nature of the church. As the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:14-20, “Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.... But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.”

A church, as I understand it, isn't meant to look at its membership and say, “Where can we find people to do this and this and this?” It shouldn't try to shoehorn members into pre-defined roles. Instead, the leadership ought to understand that God has already given them the parts He intends, for the sort of ministry He has in mind. They should get to know their fellow members, and prayerfully try to set each one to work doing what God has gifted him (or her) to do.

That's not to say that a certain amount of personal growth isn't necessary, or that people can't learn to do things they've never thought of before. But I think many churches are in the position of the man who looks at himself in a mirror, decides he's too short, and resolutely sets about finding a way to be taller. God (one assumes) made him the height he is for a reason.

As I mention in my comment to Rachel's review, I attended a church years back (in Florida) whose pastor was also an introvert. He preached extremely well, and many people came to listen to him. But he himself admitted that he was poor at the one-on-one aspects of the ministry. He was blessed with an understanding board of elders, who were willing to back him up by finding others, both assistant pastors and laity, to take much of that burden off him. That church was dynamic and growing, one of the most exciting churches I've ever been involved in.

The Silver Key is blogging his thoughts while reading The Silmarillion. I see that he has blogged through a reread of The Lord of the Rings too. (via Books, Inq.)

First of all, our friend Roy Jacobsen of Writing, Clear and Simple discusses the all-important matter of "crappy first drafts." I've said this before myself, but Roy marshals the awesome authority of Ernest Hemingway in support. And he's even got an official "Crappy First Draft License" in .pdf format, which you can print out to post in your writing space.

I found this fascinating post by Christine at Mirabilis. She links to an article from The New Scientist which proposes what looks to me like a very strong argument as to what the "real meaning" of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is. It all goes back to the author's being a mathematician. Although I'm hopeless with numbers, the gist of the thing makes sense as far as I can tell.

And finally, from the redoubtable Dr. Gene Edward Veith at Cranach, a link to an article from the Biblical Archaeology Review, giving further support to an argument we've noted here before--that there's actually not a lot of evidence for the oft-repeated claim that "Christians celebrate Christ's birth on December 25th just because they took the holiday over from Roman pagans." Share this with that irritating guy in your church who tells you you're going to hell because you have a Christmas tree.