I just bought two copies of Lars’ latest on the Nordskog Publishing page. Order your copies there too and take a look at those reader blurb to see some names we’ve seen here.
Next stop, a campaign to get West Oversea chosen for many city-wide reading programs throughout the country. (I’m kidding actually, but I wonder how something like that could be done.)
British poet Carol Ann Duffy wrote a poem a while back in which someone with a knife says, “Today I am going to kill something. Anything.” That poem, “Education For Leisure,” has been removed from the English GCSE syllabus. Some British literati are upset, but Duffy says, “I never really liked the poem anyway.”
Hunter Baker reviews a biography on Francis Schaeffer. He writes about Schaeffer:
The man who cared enough to tutor a little boy with Down Syndrome is also the man who told his church in St. Louis that he would resign if a black person ever came to his church and felt unwelcome. The budding intellectual who answered the existential questions of college students in Europe is also the agitator who took up the cause of the unborn and became arguably the finest shaper of and advocate for a potent evangelical critique of modern culture.
The Warren Adler contest is taking short stories now through July 13. This year’s theme is “Short Fiction in Varied Genres” and there’s a $15 admission fee.
Sci-Fi author Paul McAuley talks about writing science fiction in the United Kingdom.
Here in the UK, there are now only three major imprints that regularly publish sf; a major reduction in the diversity of the genre’s ecological niche. And for the most part writers can no longer develop their careers in public, fostered by a sympathetic editor: they have to hit the ball out of the park with their first novel. It’s either two strikes and you’re out, or keep hitting home runs with the same rhythm and swing – if you do write a successful novel, the publisher wants more just like it, in other words. Which is why, I guess, there are more series around, now. So the market is much tougher than when I started out, but in general the ambition of writers is higher, too. I wouldn’t mind seeing some shorter novels, though. Or rather, seeing novels written to their natural length, instead of being pointlessly expanded by the equivalent of the fluff that bulks out padded envelopes.
Andrew Peterson links to an essay by N.D. Wilson for good reasons to write fiction. “For many children, the only nobility, the only joy, the only strength and sacrifice that they see firsthand comes in fiction,” Wilson claims.
Lars, did you mention this interview you did with the Christian Science Fiction blog?
Sherri is pointing out her favorite poets for National Poetry Month.
(Isaiah 53) Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.