Saturday Good Reads - July 27, 2024

We’ve been to England so many times that it’s often difficult to square what we see while we’re there and what’s reported on the news, like the riots in Leeds and the protest marches in London. We did, however, experience a protest march last September that involved the prime minister of Bangladesh, who happened to be staying at our hotel (we had to enter and leave through a guarded gate and work our way through the crowds outside). Leslie Westall at The Critic Magazine takes a brief look on what has happened in communities like Leeds, and it’s not good.

Our federal security organizations failed rather spectacularly on July 13, when former President Trump was nearly killed. The problem is deeper than the head of the Secret Service more focused on ticking off boxes on the HR chart than on keeping candidates and the President safe. Michael Ard at Discourse consider the Secret Service and why it’s long overdue for major reforms.

 

At one time, do you know which academic institution was so well known for training for overseas missions that it was known as the “nursery for missionaries”? Brooks Buser at Desiring God tells the story.

 

More Good Reads

 

American Stuff

 

The Black fugitive who inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the end of US slavery – Susanna Ashton at The Conversation.

 

Grant’s Last Battle: The Story of Ulysses S. Grant’s personal memoirs (with Chris Mackowski) – DAZ at American Civil War & UK History. 

 

James Garfield’s Presidency Part 1: The Nomination – Sean Michael Chick at Emerging Civil War.

 

Olympics

 

Ghosts of Olympics past leave their mark in Paris – Hugh Schofield at BBC News.

 

Israel

 

A Very Perilous Window – Clarity with Micheal Oren. 

 

Faith

 

Does God Care About How I Work? – Scot Bellavia at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

The Importance of Christian Biography – Nate Pickowicz at Tabletalk.

 

Fading with Age – Barbara at Stray Thoughts.

 

As a scholar, he’s charted the decline in religion. Now the church he pastors has closed its doors – Associated Press.

 

In Praise of Plodders – Nadya Williams at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Culture

 

The Era of the Noble Lie – Bari Weiss at The Free Press.

 

Dolly Parton, Charley Pride, Willie Nelson: What I Learned about Happiness from Country Music – Timothy O’Malley at Church Life Journal.

 

Poetry

 

Imagine My Surprise – David Whyte.

 

Martia Ironica: Four War Poems – Adam Roberts at Adams Notebook.

 

“The Birthright,” poem by Walter de la Mare – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Making Love Out of Nothing at All – America’s Got Talent (created with AI)

 Painting: Woman Reading, oil on canvas (1834) by Friedrich von Amerling (1803-1887), Museum of Fine Arts Budapest.

A story and its settings

To create the settings for my novel Dancing Priest, I started first with my imagination. Once the words began to move from my head to the computer screen, however, I found I needed more. And so I went looking.

Photos for the University of Edinburgh weren’t hard to find. What were hard to find were pictures of older buildings that served as student dormitories – the university likes to show off the new buildings. I found the Pollock Halls of Student Housing and knew that this was the place where Michael Kent and his friend Tommy McFarland lived; I just moved it close to the center of the university.

I searched hard and long for a place that could serve as the farm belonging to the Iain and Iris McLaren, where Michael grew up. It had to look older but not old, and it had to be near hills, where Michael learned mountain biking. Ideally, it also had to have room for the gardens created by Iris. I kept an eye out for years (literally), and then one day a monthly issue of English Garden magazine showed up at home, I opened it up, and found An Cala. As soon as I saw it I knew I had found “The McLarens.”

This is a “smallish” estate built in the 1930s – I made it smaller by whacking off a wing. It’s in Argyll on the west side of Scotland, and actually sits on the Isle of Seil. It’s famous for its gardens, and behind it are tall hills that could easily serve as the area for Michael to bike. And there was plenty of room for a barn. All I did was flip the estate from the western coast of Scotland to the eastern, closer to Edinburgh.

Then came the scenes of the Olympics in Greece. There are all kinds of cycling and motorcycling tours of the country, and pictures were relatively easy to find. The one shown here has most of what I was looking for when I thought of the road race event, including the  guardrail.

Since the Summer Olympics were held in Athens in 2008, there were plenty of photos of the events, and especially the closing ceremonies at Olympic Stadium. This is one of my favorite parts of the novel, and I worked it and reworked it until I almost couldn’t stand it. But I still love the scene and what happens when the British Olympic Team enters the stadium.

The last major setting is St. Anselm’s Church in San Francisco. There are several by that name in the area, but the one I created is entirely fictitious. I situated it somewhat close to downtown. It has a mission-style exterior, like this photo of a church in Florida. I swiped the interior from my own church in St. Louis.

Having these pictures in my mind as I wrote, edited and rewrote was important. I could see Michael greeting parishioners after worship service outside the front entrance. I could see him biking on those switchbacks in Greece. I could see Iris in her gardens and Iain tending to horses in the barn. And I could picture Tommy arguing with Michael in their rooms against accepting another roommate.

The settings, and the pictures of them, were integral to telling the story.

Photo of the University of Edinburgh – Pollock Halls of Student Housing by Anita363. Sourced via Flickr. Used with permission via Creative Commons license.

"Dancing Priest" -- The Writing Process

It started as an image evoked by a song. The image was a priest dancing on a beach. The song was “Luna Rossa” sung by Greek tenor Mario Frangoulis.

This started in October 2002. At the time, I was working as an independent consultant. The recession had taken its toll on my consulting business, though, and I would soon start to look for a return to regular employment. In the meantime, that dancing priest kept buzzing around my head.

It buzzed for three years. I essentially wrote the story – the entire novel and then some – in my head. Nothing went to paper or the computer screen.

I started mentally writing the story because of having trouble falling asleep. I began to think about the dancing priest, and what he was doing dancing on a beach. I made him part of a tour group that included a young American woman. The group had a dinner in a restaurant. The priest, an Anglican from Britain, and the American woman started a mild flirtation at dinner. I imagined a conversation between the two of them embedded within the conversation by the entire group at dinner.

The story grew and changed. The tour group disappeared. It was just the priest and the woman accidentally meeting and having dinner together. Then the beach disappeared. The priest became a young man studying for the priesthood in Scotland, the woman an American exchange student.

Two years into this “mental writing” process, I took up road biking. A few weeks later, so did the priest, except he rode for his university’s team and was a contender for the British Olympic team. By this time, he had acquired a full-blown history – born in England and raised by Scottish guardians. The mental writing at night before falling asleep continued.

Looking back, I can tell when this whole exercise started to get truly serious – early 2005. How do I know that? By the dates on documents I was beginning to collect for research. When my wife would ask about the pile of news stories on Britain, I would mumble something about a “writing project” – I wasn’t ready to tell anyone, including her, that I was working on a novel.

In the summer of 2005, the mental writing process – and the story – had become so involved that I needed a way to keep track of it. I began to make notes and outlines. And then, one day in the fall of 2005, I started writing the story on my computer.

Once I started, it was almost as if I couldn’t stop. The words came pouring out of my head, except it wasn't a “stream of consciousness” exercise – I had been writing and editing and rewriting the story in my head for three years. It flowed and flowed, and the flow became a torrent. By the time I finished, I had a manuscript of more than 150,000 words – closer to two novels than to one.

So I did what any writer would do – I split it roughly in half, and started rewriting the first half, over and over again. Rewriting, and new ideas, caused the first half to creep back up to 100,000 words, and so I began to edit and cut. (One of the cut scenes, the story of how the hero’s parents first met, is the story “Gratitude” I posted on Nov. 17.)

By this time, given the amount of time I was spending typing, I had told my wife what I was up to. At some point, she read an early version of the manuscript. I asked her just to read it for the story – and not edit it (she’s a first-class editor but at that point I had not done any serious editing myself).

She started reading. Some days into it, she called me at work and left a message. She was in tears. She had reacted to a certain scene in the way I had hoped she would, the way I had hoped any reader would. (The publisher – a man – had the same reaction to the same scene when he read it.)

I spent a good year on rewriting and editing. In the meantime, the story kept growing and developing. I completed the second manuscript, and there are six others in various stages of creation – from a 4,000-word story summary to a 70,000-word manuscript.

I went to a writer’s conference, where I met with an editor who had critiqued a section. We introduced ourselves, sat down, and then she said, “What happened to Henry and Anna? I have to know!” I took that as a good sign.

At the same conference, I met with an agent, who threw up all over it. “It won’t work,” he said. “No one will accept a romance like that. And it needs to be vampire chick lit,” a reference to the Stephanie Meyer “Twilight” series that had just become all the rage. “Look,” he said, “I just signed a multi-book deal for an author who’s writing about a woman who’s a late night radio talk show host – and also a werewolf. That’s what’s publishers are buying.”

I sent carefully constructed queries and pitch letters to all the usual agents, and received all the usual form rejections. Some of the queries were major projects – and I concluded that agents are trying to discourage as many people as possible.

I kept writing and editing. Then one day, a friend who had published a book himself and was working on a children’s book asked to read the manuscript. The world didn’t change overnight, but it began to change.

Images, from top: University of Edinburgh; men’s road race at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing; part of the ceremony at the ordination of Anglican priests; mission style church (similar to the one in the novel). All are elements of "Dancing Priest."