Some Wednesday Readings - Aug. 19, 2026

The Joy of Baseball – Daniel Darling at One Little Word. 

Know your rights as an author and don’t get scammed – Nathan Bransford.

 

Submerged memory: C.S. Lewis and the art of forgetting – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Remembering Blaise Pascal’s Night of Fire – Emily Kleinhenz at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

On the third day: On the religious illiteracy of college students – The New Criterion. 

 

Child – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Britain: How taboos have stifled truth – Guy Dampier at The Critic Magazine.

 

Short Story, Deep Treasures: Biblical Allusion in “The Gift of the Magi” – John Savoie at Literary Matters.

 

Flashback: The Uses of a Novella – my post at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

 

Painting: Blaise Pascal about 1691.

Some Monday Readings - May 18, 2026

A Realist Outline of History – Joseph Woodard at The Imaginative Conservative. 

Why Read? Reading, print culture & liberal democracy – Roosevelt Montas at Commonweal Magazine.

 

God vs. Machine: How to Handle the Rise of Religious Objections to AI in the Workplace – Kit Eaton at Inc. Magazine.

 

David Copperfield: A Hero Beside the Point – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

“Octopus’s Garden” – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know: Lord Byron’s Memoirs – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

Case Study: 80-Year-Old Author Crushes It! – Dave Chesson at Kindlepreneur.

 

“Language matters: On the media’s anti-American animus – The New Criterion.

 

Fuel for Another Disappointment – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

Consider the Small Town – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog.

 

St. Irenaeus on Christian Memory & Tradition – Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative.

Painting: George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824).

Some Monday Readings - May 11, 2026

Revolting England – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Not-so-bookish thoughts about book clubs – Kelly Belmonte at Bandersnatch Books.

 

Serious Reading Was Always a Minority Sport – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Back When the Pulitzer Meant Something – Liel Leibovitz at The Free Press.

 

When You Hear Crickets – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

The Spitalfields Roman Woman – Spitalfields Life.

 

The Royal Festival Hall at 75 – A London Inheritance.

 

The Gratitude Shift – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog.

 

Photograph by Clay Banks via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings – April 1, 2026

On Judging Books – Matt Reynolds at Mere Orthodoxy. 

Waking Up Chancellorsville – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Civil War.

 

Canada wants to make quoting the Bible illegal – Jane Stannus at The Spectator.

 

What Memoir Scandals Tell Us About Two LLM Writing Scandals – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

The Abolition of the Hereditary Lords & the Death of England – John Horvat at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Activism, Uncensored: No Kings in LA – Ford Fischer at Racket News.

 

Traveling America and Lecturing Like a Madman – Bradley Birzer. 

 

What Are Iran’s Centers of Gravity and How Are They Being Attacked? – John Spencer at Urban Warfare. 

 

Photograph: A hall in the Palace of Westminster in London, home of the House of Commons and House of Lords.

Some Monday Readings

Publishing’s Little Secret: It’s All Gambling – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

Nothing is more practical than falling in love – Joy Clarkson (Hat tip: Amelia Friedline). 

 

John Dempsey’s Street Portraits – Spitalfields Life.

 

Everyone Gets Rejected – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

The View from the Garden at 120 – A London Inheritance.

 

The Good Shepherd – short story by Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine – Churck Chalberg at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Top: The cover of Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth.

The Sweet Agony of Waiting

A publisher asks to see your full manuscript. You read it three more times, trying to eradicate all typos, missing words, unclear passages, and confusing lines. You attach it to a politely professional email, which you hope disguises what you’re experiencing in equal measure: hope, fear, and anxiety. 

You hit send.

 

And then you wait.

 

Waiting may be as much or more exhausting than the writing itself, but it is a fact of life in book publishing.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog. 

 

Photograph by David Taffett via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Samuel Pepys at St Olave’s – Spitalfields Life.

 

Meaning in Mystery: Why Noir Speaks in a Morally Ambiguous World – Adam Hill at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Mississippi Heat: Stops along the Vicksburg Campaign – Nathan Provost at Emerging Civil War.

 

“The Rejected Member’s Wife,” poem by Thomas Hardy – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Some Monday Readings

The New Push for Censorship Under the Guise of Combating Hate – Paul Thacker at Tablet Magazine. 

A Blockbuster Met Exhibition Takes Visitors Back to Siena to Trace the Origins of European Painting – Christian Kleinbub at Art in America.

 

“Poor Eddy”: A New Life of Edgar Allan Poe – Mark Jarman at The Hudson Review.  Law Student Faces Expulsion for ‘Aggressive Pointing’ – Olivia Reingold at The Free Press.   Appreciations: Bram Stoker’s Dracula – Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen at The Lamp Magazine.   The other side of TS Eliot – Jeremy Noel-Tod at Prospect Magazine.   Do the Hard Work of Publishing – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.   Murders for November – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.   James Mackinnon, Artist – Spitalfields Life.

 

A New Mozart Work is Discovered – Stephen Klugewicz at The Imaginative Conservative.

“Write & Publish Organically” by Catherine Lawton

Sometimes I think more people write about writing than actually write. I follow several writer blogs, web sites, online magazines, and Substack listings, and just keeping up with those can be overwhelming. I’ve read and read lots of books on the subject. This is all in addition to the writing itself. 

But it is a good idea to step back from time to time and think critically about what you do and how you do it. And to figure out if you can do it better. A new book on writing that is aimed at Christian writers but easily applies to all writers is Write & Publish Organically by Catherine Lawton. And it is a gem. 

 

Lawton uses a rhyming scheme to explain what she calls organic writing and publishing.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Shrouded Veterans: A Soldier for the Pope and Lincoln – Frank Jastrzembski at Emerging Civil War.

 

“The Raven Days,” poem by Sidney Lanier – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Remembrance of What Is – Christine Norvell at The Imaginative Conservative.

Some Monday Readings

Britain: This Machete’d Isle – Rod Dreher at Diary. 

On Bram Stoker’s Forgotten Dracula Play – Olivia Rutigliano at Crime Reads.

 

Boiling the British Frog – Sam Bidwell at The Critic Magazine.

 

The Lyrical Tradition in Classical Christian Education – Benjamin Myers at Credo Magazine.

 

Early Bookcases, Cupboards, & Carousels – Suzanne Ellison at Lost Art Press.

 

King’s English: The Making of a Writer – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review on Stephen King.

 

John Steinbeck’s Library: 10 Works that Captured an Artist – Carter Davis Johnson at Dwelling.

 

Ted Vanner, Model Steamboat Pioneer – Spitalfields Life.

 

Like Herding Cats – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

Solzhenitsyn on the West’s ‘Decline in Courage’ – Douglas Murray at The Free Press. 

 

Photograph: Bram Stoker, author of Dracula.

Some Monday Readings

“Recuerdo” by Edna St. Vincent Millay – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern. 

The Tragedy and Triumph of The Killing Fields – Bradley Birzer at Law & Liberty.

 

Turbulence After the Trump Verdict – Charles Lipson at The Spectator.

 

What Lowry saw in the sea – William Cook at The Critic Magazine on the philosophical side of the British painter.

 

How Hadrian’s Wall is revealing a hidden side of Roman history – Julia Buckey, CNN.

 

A Confederate Buried at Mount Vernon? – Evan Portman at Emerging Civil War.

 

AI, Poetry, and Prayer – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Comps and Circumstance – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

Daniel Defoe: The first futurist – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

London Maps in Books – A London Inheritance.

 

Photograph: Hadrian’s Wall near Waltown Crags,by Ray Harrington via Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Why Publish? Why Write?

My head’s swirling. I’m editing, rewriting, drafting, doing other projects, maintaining a rather hectic if not torrid pace when I’m suddenly stopped cold by a question.

Why do I want to publish?

I have three novels and a non-fiction book published. A fourth novel and a collection of stories are in the works. 

Why?

It’s not as if the novels have been so wildly successful that I can live off the royalties. So why am I doing this again, when each novel has turned out to be far more of a wrestling match than I expected?

To continue reading, please see my post at Christian Poets & Writers.

Writing: The Right Reason

I was at a writer’s conference, carrying with me my selection of a work in progress like hundreds of others, scheduled for a meeting with both an editor and an agent. Like most of the people there, when not in a general session or a seminar, I spent a lot of time milling about, looking at the writers’ books for sale, talking to a few people, trying to understand what I was even doing there.

At one of the luncheons, a woman sat next to me, her arms full of books, papers, notebooks, purse, briefcase, and water bottle. She smiled expansively at the rest of us at the table and announced, “I am a writer.” Loudly. Loud enough so that the people at the next table turned their heads. 

She went on to tell us, knowing we were all phenomenally interested, that she was in her positive affirmation mode. Declaring herself to be a writer meant, as night followed day, that she was one. And she went on to explain what that meant.

To continue reading, please see my post at Christian Poets & Writers. 

Talking with Literary Agent Mark Gottlieb – Part 2

On Tuesday, Trident Media Group literary agent Mark Gottlieb discussed what a work day is like for him, a recent project (Tropic of Kansas by Christopher Brown) he’s worked on, and how he became a literary agent. Today, he concludes our interview with a discussion about “platform,” self-publishing and its role in the industry, and the state of the contemporary publishing industry. You can read Part 1 here.

I've heard that some publishers won't even look at an author who has fewer than 10,000 followers on Twitter. Overstated? What are publishers looking for in terms of an author's "platform?"

I’m finding that the importance of platform in author’s career has also made its way into the world of fiction, to an extent. In looking for an ideal fiction client with a platform, I look for authors that have good writing credentials such as experience with writing workshops, conferences, or smaller publications in respected literary magazines. Having awards, bestseller status, a strong online presence, or pre-publication blurbs in-hand for one’s manuscript is also very promising in the eyes of a literary agent.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by Ehud Neuhaus via Unsplash. Used with permission.