Research a Contemporary Novel?

The four, soon to be five, novels in the Dancing Priest series are set in the near future, at least far enough away from the actual present to avoid any notion that the characters are based on real people. But they’re essentially contemporary fiction, falling into the space between general fiction and Christian fiction.

Why would contemporary novels require extensive research? Lots of reasons.

You’re writing about a country or culture not your own. You’re writing about people who do things you’ve never experienced. You write about a painter when you’re not one. You’re writing about an institution you’ve never been part of. You’ve put your characters into a geography, even if ever so briefly, you’ve never visited. 

Many people – historians and novelists alike – write about the American Civil War, or World Wars I and II, but were never part of it. Some write mysteries set a generation before they were born. Some write about peoples and cultures that aren’t their own (an often-dangerous thing to do these days).

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

Not only a call

After 2 Timothy 1:9

It wasn’t only a call,

a sounding in the night

or day, a voice speaking

into a heart, hearts.

It wasn’t because of works,

acts, deals, accomplishments

that we had done, it was

never about us, ultimately.

It was a call,

a call to a holy calling,

what we were given

from before the time

of the first page,

a call to a purpose,

not ours, but called

by grace.

Not ours.

Never ours.

Photograph by Rose Lamond via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Counting the Cost of Faith

Years ago, more than 40 to be precise, I was reading The Habit of Being, the collection of selected letters by Flannery O’Connor that had been recently published. Checking now, I see that my copy was from the third printing. And the book in various forms is still available on Amazon.

It’s a marvelous book, filled with so many great quotations and observations that they’re difficult to keep track of. One that I memorized, and sometimes used in Sunday School classes, was something she said about faith: “What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.”

It is the cross. That observation keeps coming to mind over and over as I read William Wilberforce: A Hero for Humanity by Kevin Belmonte. Three chapters in particular demonstrate the truth of O’Connor’s statement – the three that describe the “two great objects” Wilberforce said God had set before him once he had experienced the “great change’ and became a believer.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Painting: William Wilberforce by Karl Anton Hickel, about 1794.

Saturday Good Reads

I’ve been reading The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, part of a determined effort to read more of the classics. It seems these days that the classics are being thrown out in so many literature classes, and it will take time but eventually we’ll discover that is was a cultural disaster to do so. Italo Calvino, author of If on a Winter Night a Traveler and the most translated Italian writer until his death in 1985, write an article published posthumously in The New York Review of Books: Why Read the Classics? It’s still well worth reading today.

An even older document is worth your time to read, and it speaks to how Americans understand what their country is. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day, July 4, 1826, the 50^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. They were eulogized by no less a speaker and a great American by himself, Daniel Webster: They live forever in the American constellation. 

Movies, television shows, documentaries, and numerous books have been produced about one of the most fascinating topics of the 20^th century – the looting of Europe’s art by the Nazis. Lawrence Dudley at CrimeReads at why: Stolen Art, Nazis, and the Eternal Search for Justice. 

More Good Reads

Writing and Literature

The Ghost of Dickens Past – Cicero Bruce at The Imaginative Conservative.

Simple Truths for Writers – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

Poetry

The Durable Art of Elizabeth Bishop – David Mason at The Hudson Review.

Summon – John Sibley Williams at Juxtraprose.

Reversed Thunder – Malcolm Guite at Literary Life.

In Flight from the Fugitives – Mark Jarman at The Hudson Review.

Toward a finished poem – Robert Rife at Rob’s LitBits.

Life and Culture

The Past as Battlefield: The Power of Historiography – Michael Connolly at The Imaginative Conservative.

Understanding Why Religious Conservatives Would Vote for Trump – Andrew Walker at National Review.

Faith

The 4 Books You Probably Shouldn’t Write – Samuel D. James at Letters & Liturgy.

Why the Church Needs Artists – Micah Harris at Mere Orthodoxy.

Who Are We? – Kyle Sims at Gentle Reformation.

The Art of Preserving – Gina Sutphin at The Rabbit Room.

Art

Relief Carving the Spiritual Mechanics of Labor and Rest – Jack Baumgartner at The School for the Transfer of Energy.

Sacramentality on the Western Front – Josh Noem at Church Life Journal.

Swampland Sublime: The Landscapes of Louisiana – Zachary Fine at The New York Review of Books.

News Media

As Newspapers Fade, Journalists Are Finding New Ways to Cover Local News – Alexandra Hudson at Quillette. 

21 Years – Toby Mac

Painting: Young Woman Reading a Book of Hours, oil on panel by Ambrosius Benson (1532). 

Threading its way

After Matthew 6:9-13

It threads its way

from the salutation,

acknowledging

the kingdom,

acknowledging

the jurisdiction

of the kingdom, 

threading its way

forward and upward,

to the supplication,

the asks,

for bread, daily,

for forgiveness, daily,

as we forgive, daily,

and onward

the needle sews 

and embroiders,

to be delivered

from evil,

the evil one.

And we come back

to what was added,

a doxology of song,

a psalm, 

from the first years,

kingdom, power, glory,

amen.

The threading ends.

The embroidery is done.

Our hearts are sewn,

Embroidered together.

Amen.

Photograph by Anna Auza via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"The Brief" by Simon Michael

I’ve been looking for another good British detective, and, by golly, I found one. 

Meet Charles Holborne, originally born as Charles Horowitz. It’s 1960s London, and Holborne is a member of chambers in the Temple. Much to the dismay of his fellow attorneys, he practices criminal law almost exclusively. In that line of work, you meet a lot of villains. And you come to discover that not all villains are hoodlum types. Some of them, in fact, have university degrees. And law degrees.

Holborne was born in the East End of London, the one of a furrier. His family is observant Jewish. He was disowned when he married a non-Jewish girl, Henrietta, the daughter of a viscount he met at Cambridge. He hasn’t seen his family in more than a decade. He still loves his wife, but their marriage is unraveling. She’s having affairs, including with some of Holborne’s colleagues in chambers.  He’s been faithful, but he’s concluding a divorce may be in the offing.

And then his wife is found murdered, her throat slit. And Charles has been fitted up as the No. 1 suspect, with enough evidence to be overwhelming.

Simon Michael

The Brief by British author Simon Michael is the first of the Charles Holborne mysteries. And it’s a gem. The pages crackle with action, surprises, twists, and turns. Holborne is an attorney who knows the criminal scene so well that he knows exactly what he has to do to achieve justice – this time for himself. He;s also not adverse to using his fists when he has to.

Simon is the author of five novels in the Charles Holborne Legal Thriller Series, of which The Brief is the first. He studied law at Kings College, London University and was called to the Bar in 1978. He worked primarily in the field of criminal law until the late 1990s, when he focused his practice on clinical negligence. He began writing in the 1980s and resumed it when he retired from legal practice.

The Brief is a great read and a fully enjoyable and satisfying mystery. And there are four more ready to read.

"That Hollister Man" by Margaret Desmond

Sage Dolan is a young 20-something, leaving Boston and headed for Montana. Her 17-year-old brother Danny is reluctantly with her; it’s because of Danny that they’re headed west. A brush with the law after getting involved with the wrong people has convinced Sage she needs to get him away. They’ve used the money left by their late grandfather to buy a home with a barn and acreage in the Sweet Grass Valley of Montana, realizing a dream Sage has always had of living out west.

She’s bought the house along with a restaurant from one of her online pie-recipe-sharing friends, Gigi Rinard, who’s now on her way to Arizona for the birth of her first great-grandchild. She leaves a casserole and some instructions, which include a kind of warning to “pay no mind to that Hollister man.” That Hollister man is Spence Hollister, who operates the ranch that mostly surrounds Sage and Danny’s new home. Gigi has informally promised Spence she’d sell him the property when the time came, and the Dolans turn out to be a huge and rather unwelcome surprise.

Margaret Desmond

Spence is the almost-stereotypical image of the modern cowboy. When she first sees him (riding a horse, no less), she’s knocked for a wallop, never having experienced that kind of reaction before. Spence is polite and friendly, but he wants the property. As it turns out, Spence is a widower in his mid-30s with a 15-year-old daughter, and he’s determined he will never fall in love and remarry after the pain of losing his first wife. But people begin to notice that something is changing Spence Hollister, and the only difference is Sage Dolan.

The reader knows where the story of That Hollister Man by Margaret Desmond has to go. The fun is watching it go there.

Desmond is the author of numerous romance stories set in Montana, including Her Ordinary Joe, Trusting Travis, Annie and Jake, Ethan’s Bride, Return of Devin Wakefield, and The Wrangler’s Wish. That Hollister Man is the first in her Sweet Grass, Montana series. A native of northern California, Desmond lives in Montana.

That Hollister Man is an engaging story of two people who fall in love but areboth  afraid of what falling in love means.