Pleasantly Disturbed Friday

It’s been a while since I gathered up my “notes to self” and Post-Its and what-not, and had a Pleasantly Disturbed Friday.

The picture above is none other than Roller (Caden) (because he likes to roll) and Cameron (Dancer) (because he likes to dance). Cameron, unbeknownst to his mother, was hiding in Caden’s pop-up bed. Mom got a real surprise, and Caden, who was supposed to have been sleeping, remained unflappable when Cameron yelled.

We had the opportunity to babysit them last Saturday. Grandpa had a ball.

I mentioned last weekend that we had seen Les Miserables, the movie. I still have the scenes and music running through my head. And I’m still amazed at the quality of the singing by actors I didn’t know could sing. A friend at work told me all of the songs were recorded live, on the set and not in a recording studio, which, if true, makes the singing all the more remarkable.

Current reading: Hurt, by Travis Thrasher, the final installment in the four-volume Solitary series. He’s managed to maintain and increase the momentum of this young-adult-but-older-adults-will-like-it-too story.

Next up on the reading list: an advanced reading copy of The Crystal Scepter by C.S. Lakin, another volume in the Gates of Heaven series. These are the books that helped convince me to read fantasy again. The book will be published Feb. 15.

And on the Can’t-Wait-to-Read List is Adam Blumer’s The Tenth Plague. Adam’s first book, Fatal Illusions, was one suspenseful read. His new one will published as an e-book next Tuesday. (Adam is the editor who slogged through both of my novels, and he did a wonderful job.)

My Novel News: My two novels have been getting some attention. Pastor Ron Edmondson of Immanuel Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, called Dancing Priest one of the best descriptions of relationship evangelism he’d come across; I did a guest post for his blog on where the novel came from. And the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a “Penned in St. Louis” about A Light Shining.

My Not-Novel News: It’s early in the process, but I’ve signed a contract with another publisher for a non-fiction book. I’m being deliberately vague; we’ve agreed on the idea and I’m working on a very extended outline, which will have to be accepted and then turned into a draft. If all goes well, it will be published late in 2013.

Finally, a picture of Roller (Caden) that I absolutely love. Taken by my daughter-in-law, it shows him peering around the corner of the sofa. Did I mention that I love having grandchildren?

Chris Fabry's "June Bug"

I think I’ve decided to stop reading the blurbs publishers put on covers of books.

I noted this in the review I posted this morning over at Amazon, but when I first saw this one on the cover of Chris Fabry’s June Bug, my mind went on autopilot: “Fabry’s retelling of [Les Miserables] is a stunning success.” I say my mind went on autopilot because, as I began reading it, I immediately began to look to the connections to the Victor Hugo novel.

It’s understandable. When you seen the Broadway production of Les Miserables two or three times; when you’ve saved the Susan Boyle rendition of “I Dream a Dream” to your favorites on YouTube; when you’ve listened to the soundtrack enough to sing along even with the more obscure songs, well, you know you have a case.

And that became a problem with reading June Bug. Because it’s not a simple retelling of Les Miserables. There are similarities, to be sure, but June Bug is a separate work in its own right, and it’s a terrific story. I bought the book because I had read Fabry’s Dogwood over Easter weekend this year and loved it, particularly with how he posed an immediate problem for a novel published by a Christian publisher: A man’s in love with a woman who’s married with three children.

I stopped reading June Bug and started over, determined to read it for its own merits and ignore trying to figure out how Fantine could be Dana or that the sheriff wasn’t anything like Javert. And where, by the way, was the street revolution?

I’m glad I did. June Bug is a great story. Fabry gets inside the heads of his characters and lets them speak in an authentic, believable way. That’s no small feat when you consider the characters range from a grieving grandmother and a local sheriff to a former Navy SEAL and a 9-year-old girl. And the story has a hook similar to Dogwood – the little girl was kidnapped as a toddler, and the man she calls “Daddy” seems anything but a kidnapper. As you see where the story is headed, you begin to fear what’s going to happen to the father. And you wonder, how is this going to be resolved?

It’s a great story. Don’t let allusions to Les Miserables confuse your mind about it.