Review, THE BURNING ROOM, Michael Connelly

I have often said that of the Big “C”s of crime-mystery-adventure fiction, [Crais, Coburn, Child, Cornwall, et al] Michael Connelly is the best, or my favorite, or both. THE BURNING ROOM [Little, Brown, 2014] does not really change my mind. It is, however, a little disappointing.

It is the most recent in the series featuring Los Angeles detective Harry Bosch. [A TV series called just “Bosch” is in the works.] Connelly, a former crime reporter, also writes the Lincoln Lawyer series, featuring Mickey Hatcher, Bosch’s half-brother.

The Bosch novels have always been at least partially police procedurals, but this one is almost exclusively so. That’s the reason for my disappointment. In TV terms, it’s a documentary instead of a drama. I like to read about the ways crime is solved, and, being a former trench warrior in my profession, often hampered by witless administrators, I enjoy seeing police administrators made to look foolish as they try to control their rogue cops only to have the guys and gals in the trenches proven correct. Still, I’d like a little more action that does not sound like it’s just more procedure.

Certainly it has some action, and some drama, but I just don’t think it is as interesting as the earlier Bosch novels.

Having said all that, I shall be glad to read the next Bosch, or Hatcher, knowing it will be well written good story.

Maybe I should choose Child as my new favorite, though. No, Jack Reacher is running out of steam. The last Reacher novel, PERSONAL, was even more of a documentary than THE BURING ROOM. So maybe Crais? No, Elvis Cole and Abe Glitzky are getting predictable, too. I’ll stick with Connelly as my favorite of the Cs. But there are the As, like Kate Atkinson…

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: You can make your own decisions, but you can’t choose your own consequences.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write, once in a great while, Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

Writing Can be Fun, Just Like the Dutch

Writing can be satisfying, frustrating, monotonous… a whole bunch of stuff, but there are times when it is just fun. Those are usually when a character or a story take a turn the writer never expected. That happened when I started out to write a poem about the moon…

One cannot really be a poet

Without writing about the moon

Comparing it to something silvery

And luminous, like a clean plate

In a still-life by a Dutch master

Or the gleam and spark

From the blades of Hans Brinker

As he glides along a canal

Or the mushroom that sprouts

From rotten wood in the ship

Of a flying Dutchman

Who mistakes it for a beam

From the moon through the porthole

Reflecting on his mirror

The problem is that poems about the moon

So easily become poems about the Dutch.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in early 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write, once in a great while, Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

When It Is Time to Give Up on a Piece

I recycled a novel today. Well, not the novel itself. I recycled the paper, handwritten and printed pages alike, and the note cards.

I have spent a lot of time on it. I did a lot of research. I like it. It’s a good story. I like some of the characters, or am at least sympathetic to them.

But I have not worked on it in a long time. I’m never going to finish it. I have just lost interest in it, mostly because I have gotten more interested in other things. Even if I finish it, my name is not Patterson or Koryta or Crais or Connelly or Child or Grisham, so I couldn’t get anyone to publish it. There is no reason for it to take up space in my file drawers.

Writers hate to give up on a piece. We have invested so much time and energy in it.  

In fact, not only do we hate to give up on a piece, but we try to use a piece of writing over and over, in different guises and disguises. That's the kind of recycling we prefer.

I’m all in favor of getting as much mileage out of a piece as possible. The idea of getting no use at all out of something I have worked on so long and hard is abhorrent to me as a writer, just as a vacuum is to nature, and to dogs.

There comes a time, though, when we just have to admit that, like any other relationship, it’s over, through death or divorce or neglect. That’s okay. There is no use sending good time after bad.

I do still have it on the unlimited space on my hard drive, though, and I am thinking about changing my name to Connelly Grisham Patterson.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat:

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write, once in a great while, Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

EDITORS-Dreaming & Waking

I’ve had a lot of correspondence with my editor, Mike, at Black Opal Books, about my novel, VETS, which BOB will publish in 2015, so I guess it’s not surprising that an editor showed up in last night’s dream. Yes, the Dream Editor, the dreaded DE.

I first learned of the DE from Kathy Roberts, when the DE showed up just as her dream was almost done and told her she was dreaming wrong and had to start over.

My dreams often occur on a college campus. The first and most frequent of those dreams is the one where you suddenly realize it is time for the final exam and you haven’t even been to class yet because you forgot you were in that class.

My final exam dream is all the more embarrassing because the professor is always my friend, political philosopher Dr. Walter Mead, who writes books with titles like Extremism and Cognition. I never took a class from Wally, even though I like books with titles like that, but because we are contemporaries. That doesn’t stop my dream writer from putting him in as a character, though.

Wally and I live a long way from each other now, but I saw him in person recently at a memorial service. Afterward I told him about his role in my dreams. “Remember,” he said, “if that happens again, I’ll give you an Incomplete so you don’t lose credit.” Now, that’s a real friend, one who has your back even in your dreams.

Last night’s dream, though, was my other campus dream, where I have been to class but now can’t find my car. I look all over, conclude it’s stolen, call the police to report it, then remember where I parked it. Each occasion of this dream, the car is in a different place. Last night it was in the lot behind my rooming house.

I go to get it, but there is a new lock on the gate, three locks to be precise. I discover the keys for the locks in my mail box and try to use them, but the emblems on the keys, to match the emblems on the locks, are all the same. But wait, they are not all the same. There are small, subtle differences. I can do this… and then I woke up.

I begged the DE for more time, so that I could figure out the locks and get my car, my way of going places, but DEs aren’t much good if you are awake.

My waking editor, Mike, did not tell me that I was writing wrong and had to start over, but he did say I needed more action along about chapter 3. I had already agreed with him. I had a great action scene in there, but an agent had told me to take it out. I did so, but the agent declined to represent VETS anyway. Now it’s back in, and I appreciate Mike for understanding it needs to be there, because it moves the story and characterizations along, just like my car would if the durn DE would ever let me get to it!

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: “There are no words left in the English language that can’t be used for sexual innuendo, including innuendo, if you know what I mean.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

In Case You Make a Mistake

I’ve been fortunate to talk with so many interesting people, and to correspond with some who were not available to talk. You wouldn’t recognize the names of most of them, but they were far more interesting than most of the celebrity names you would recognize. Some have recognizable names, though, like Dave Barry, who was very kind when our grandson, the same age as his son, had cancer; or Frank Deford, who disagreed with my defense of 3 on3 women’s basketball; or Katie Couric, who wrote me a personal note thanking me for writing when her husband got colon cancer.

None of them compare, though, to the children at Bottenfield Elementary in Champaign, IL, when our daughter, Mary Beth, taught there, and when I was the guest author for their day-long writing fair.

Later, the kid wrote me letters, about 50, most of them decorated with quite lively and colorful art work. Mary Beth must have impressed them with my qualifications, for almost all of them thanked me “for taking time out of your busy schedule.” Here are some other excerpts:

Lynsey: “I’m The Blonde With The Blue Shirt and Flowered Shorts. Books Are Life! I would die without them.”

Mukta: “My imagination is like yours. You are a great writer.”

Kate: “I want to be an author like you when I grow up.”

Rachel: “The writing fair was fun, but having you come made it better.”

Natalie: “I think it’s amazing that you are a minister and a writer. Being a minister takes a lot of time and writing takes dedication. 5 years ago you also had cancer. Now that’s amazing!”

Sara: “The questions you answered were easy to understand.”

Marc: “Thank you for telling us about your life. It has amazed me of how you can accomplish so much in such a little time.”

Mark: “The next time I write a story, I’ll be sure to use your advice.”

Jan: “I want to write for the soul reason you do.” [Jan is either quite perceptive or a little off in spelling.]

Roger: “It really helped me to see how to get characters and settings. You said you didn’t consider yourself famous, but I think you are.”

Christopher: “Thank you for letting us ask you questions.”

Hans: “If I could remember the titles of your books, I would check them out of the library.”

David: “I was the kid who asked that question of how was it like having cancer.”

Jenary: “I have your autograph on my dresser. I saw someone buying your book.”

Kellie: “Maybe my next story will be about my two hermit crabs. One of them died, though.”

Lauren: “It was neat to meet a real author.”

The one I like best, though, is a little blond first-grader whose name I can’t remember.

“Do you ever make mistakes when you write books?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” I replied.

“Well, then,” she said, “it would be good to write them in pencil, wouldn’t it?”

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: “Language is a constant source of humor because we misuse it so much.” Helen Karr McFarland

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

A RANDOM BOOK REVIEW: To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

If Paul O’Rourke had simply gone to Henry Louis Gates, Jr, he could have saved me 335 pp of confusion & good writing, and then Joshua Ferris and I could both be able TO RISE AGAIN AT A DECENT HOUR. [Little, Brown, & Co, 2014]

O’Rourke is a young and highly successful Manhattan dentist and, despite of and because of his NYC presence, a die-hard Red Sox fan. He desperately wants an identity beyond dentistry, a sense of who he is rather than what he does. It is a restless search that keeps him up nights, hence the title of the book.

He tries to find identity in a succession of women, each of whom is attractive to him because of her family, a place where there are roots, where there is identity. He wants each one more for her family identity than for herself, and thus always loses both.

Someone impersonates him online, and claims that he is actually an Ulm, part of a small clan that originated in the Holy Land. It is both attractive and disturbing, a real and exotic and unique identity, but his own individual identity had been pre-empted. People think it is he who is posting online, including some vaguely anti-Semitic ramblings, even though he once tried to be Jewish to get a girl.

Ferris never seems to be able to figure out which direction he wants to go, the best way to explore identity. The book is a mishmash of themes: family, women, whether to have children, religion, ethnicity, identity theft in the cyber age, etc. Maybe that is his theme; that there is no theme. Finally he just sort of gives up and has O’Rourke becomes a Cubs fan, which in the baseball world is both total identity and total frustration.

It’s good writing, but I’m glad it’s over so that I can, indeed, rise again at a decent hour.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

One of the great things about having more clothes and gadgets and sports equipment and tools than one could ever need or use up is that the only gifts left are books. So almost all my reading is from gift books from my wife, and our daughters, Mary Beth Connolly and Kathleen “Katie” Kennedy. Katie’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: “A person should live their own life.” In this age, the singular “their” makes good sense, but it clanks so badly when I hear it I just can’t use it.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write, once in a great while, Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

The End of Your Life Book Club

A RANDOM BOOK REVIEW: THE END OF YOUR LIFE BOOK CLUB, by Will Schwalbe

First, let me admit that I fell in love with Mary Ann Schwalbe. A fascinating woman. She was a classmate of John Updike at Harvard/Radcliffe. She chose both to work and to raise a family, with three children, at a time when most women were required to do one or the other, but not both. She started her career as a London actress. She became head of a girl’s school and director of admissions at Harvard. She founded the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women & Children and spent months at a time in refugee camps around the world. She was a woman of simple but profound faith in God.

                    

Throughout it all, she was a reader.

After she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she and her son, Will, formed their book club. He often went with her to doctor’s appointments and treatments, and they discussed what they were reading in those times, from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo to The Elegance of the Hedgehog. [As one who has spent a lot of time in such places, this sounds like an excellent plan, although I used to make my fellow patients in the treatment room sing songs I “enhanced,” like Chemo Pushers Ball and Gonna Wash that Cancer Right Out of My Bod.]

One of the fascinating things about Mary Ann’s reading: she always read the end of the book first, because she didn’t want to waste her time on an author who didn’t know how to end a book.

If you want to meet a fascinating woman, or get a lot of good book recommendations, I recommend The End of Your Life Book Club.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

One of the great things about having more clothes and gadgets and sports equipment and tools than one could ever need or use up is that the only gifts left are books. So almost all my reading is from gift books. I think this one was from daughter, Katie Kennedy, whose Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: ”Some people are nice… and if you talk to them properly, they can be even nicer.” Colm Toibin, in Brooklyn.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write, once in a great while, Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

Joe Benevento & THE MONSIGNOR'S WIFE

JUST WORDS: A Review

Joe Benevento’s THE MONSIGNOR’S WIFE is one of the best mysteries I have read in a long time.

Monsignor Tony Cupelli is a modern Catholic priest, with a doctorate and a feminist theology and a strong ambition and faithful friends and a traditional Italian family, and a secret “wife.” He is rational in his theology and rationalizing in his behavior.

When his “wife” is murdered…

The story is set in NYC, Queens specifically, with a polyglot population, in the Roman Catholic ethos, and I wondered if a hillbilly Methodist living in the remote Upper Peninsula of Michigan could even understand it. Not to worry. Queens is one of the characters in the story, and Benevento writes so well that I not only could follow along, I enjoyed getting to know Queens, along with Cupelli and his friends and family and enemies.

The writing is good, the setting and characters are interesting, the plot is multi-layered. It’s just a very good story. I recommend it.

Now, don’t pay attention to the following quibbles. That’s all they are. This is a good book, and the quibbles don’t really distract from the story, because Benevento does so very well what Elmore Leonard called the secret of good writing: “Leave out the parts people skip.”

A tiny quibble: Do all RC priests in big cities, especially NYC, have to have brothers who are cops or criminals? I guess so. Cupelli’s cop brother, with whom he has always had a competitive relationship, is a necessary part of the story, though.

A small quibble: There is a LOT about food. Benevento uses it, of course, to illustrate the appetites in general of Monsignor Cupelli, but if Cupelli, in his mid-40s, really ate like this, he would weigh 400 lbs. And the food is ethnic, Italian and Lithuanian and everything else that a hillbilly, even a college-educated hillbilly, will not recognize. Past pork chops and sweet corn, I’m lost. I know, of course, just to enjoy the sounds of the names of the dishes. I can enjoy a story without understanding every word. In fact, being introduced to new words/dishes is a good thing. So forget everything I just said in this quibble.

Perhaps a larger quibble: Benevento is a professor. He uses long words. Not big words, not difficult words, just long words. They are not the words one usually sees in a mystery. The author is not showing off; he just has lengthy ganglia in his brain. Long words don’t distract me. In fact, I enjoy them. And Benevento uses them well. I worry, though, that some readers might be turned off when they encounter those words, along with references to Borges, Poe, et al.

Benevento’s next book, Saving St. Teresa, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

John Robert McFarland

A Disclaimer: My novel, VETS, will also be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015. BOB is a well-established publisher of romance novels but is branching out into other genres with writers like Benevento and myself. I wanted to read another BOB author but am not inclined toward reading romance novels since I have lived in a romance reality for a long time. I did not know about Benevento previously but liked the title, The Monsignor’s Wife. I’m glad I did.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: Some writers show you words. Others show you pictures.

I tweet as yooper1721.

                    

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

Author Shortcuts

JUST WORDS: Author Shortcuts

I’m always uneasy with writer shortcuts. I understand the need for them, especially in this digital age. Still…

Lisbeth Salendar, for all her good qualities, was not adequate for the digital age, so she had a friend who knew all about computers and could produce any knowledge she needed out of the air. [1] Most heroes in the digital age, even Lee Childs’ lone cowboy Jack Reacher, have such a friend. Just how they became friends is never quite explained, nor why the friend is willing to go to such lengths to satisfy the hero’s every internet need. The digital age, and total surveillance, are a reality. Even a hero cannot escape the robot spies with the camera eyes. They are ubiquitous. So a writer has to explain how the hero negotiates that labyrinth. A friend who knows how to do it without him/herself being detected, perhaps even is ahead of the government and big business and the spy masters, is a nice shortcut. Still, it seems a bit of authorly dishonesty.

The same is true of the robot killers with the dead eyes. If any explanation of why they are like that is given, it is usually perfunctory. He was mistreated in an orphanage, or he was just born that way. It shortens the story, and allows the writer to concentrate on the hero character and his friends, but evil is not that simple, either in origin or function.

On the other hand, a good mystery/action story is not a theological exploration of the origin of evil, nor is it a computer manual, so I guess I need to learn to live with the shortcuts. I think it is a bit more honest, though, to do it by not putting the hero into a situation where she needs the shortcuts.

John Robert McFarland

1] Steig Larrson, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” Dorothy Parker

I tweet as yooper1721.

                    

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

KEEPING CHARACTER NAMES STRAIGHT

Jennifer Moss is a novelist http://jennifermoss.com/ and an expert on names, especially baby names. http://www.babynames.com/ She recently started sharing her naming ideas for authors via http://characternames.com/

To Jennifer’s helpful list I would add the method I use to keep my characters straight at I write. I use the initials of the person’s role for his or her name. For instance, the county sheriff might be Charles Slabaugh; the first wife, Fran Winslow; the bar tender, Brad Taylor, if he’s young, and Bud Taylor if he’s old, and so on.

As I write, I know, of course, I know that my case includes a county sheriff, a first wife, and a bar tender, so their names come quickly to mind.

If the sheriff’s county is in Scandinavian territory, and that is germane to the story, I would use Slajus instead of Slabaugh. If the first wife is French, she might be Francesca. Taylor isn’t a highly memorable name, so if I want people to recognize the bar tender quickly, and outside the bar, his last name might be Thistle or Toomey.

Of course, you need to be careful of duplicates. If there are in the story both a pervert preacher and a philosophy professor, you might get confused, but there are obvious workarounds.

[I can’t resist cutesy names, so I’m likely to call the philosophy prof something like Plato Professino as I write and then realize that will make readers cringe and have to change it to Peter Parker. Oh, wait, that won’t work…]

A further suggestion I make as a reader: Don’t assume that the reader can keep character names straight. If Amy Reynolds, the army recruit, hasn’t shown up for a few pages, don’t just refer her to as Amy. I don’t want to have to waste time thinking, “Is she the volleyball player or the sidekick’s girlfriend or…” Either say directly “army recruit Amy,” or let her appear as “Amy, a bit awkward in her new army uniform…”

John Robert McFarland

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: What will writers do when everything has finally been compared to everything else?

I tweet as yooper1721.

A RANDOM BOOK REVIEW: I don’t normally like dead-eyed psychopathic villains. They are one-dimensional and thus not very interesting. However, Michael Koryta gets around that in Those Who Wish Me Dead. The villains have a different way of relating to each other, and the other characters are able to rise to their challenges. Koryta keeps getting better.

           

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

JUST WORDS: WWHD?

When faced with a dilemma, Christians ask, WWJD? What would Jesus do? When faced with a dilemma, of plot or characterization or anything else, writers ask, WWHD? What would Hemmingway do?

The answers of Jesus and Hemmingway are surprisingly similar: go fishing. Hemmingway’s answer is more complete: WWHD? Get drunk and go fishing.

John Robert McFarland

I am indebted to daughter, @KatieWritesBks, writer of MG and YA books, for the insight into what Hemmingway would do.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: Without courage no other virtue is possible.

I tweet as yooper1721.

           

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

JUST WORDS-Gilt & Gladness, a poem

I love to read a prayer

By a Wesley or William Barclay

Full of Thees and Thous

And dosts and wilsts.

It is good to know

That Thou wilst.

Language about the holy

Should be edged

In gilt and gladness.

John Robert McFarland

JUST WORDS: It’s Hard to Be a Poet

It’s hard to be a poet

in a dull town

with a name like Witch’s Teat, Maine

or Empty Plain, Texas.

Where small minds

look over their own shoulders

and yours.

Or in a city full

of empty bottles

and broken promises.

In a desert spot

where nothing grows

save mean sand and a lizard

which would be the name

of a pub, Mean Sand & A Lizard

if only England

had a desert.

A pub where a poet could create

his uni-

verse.

John Robert McFarland

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, A TWEET REPEAT: I have a sweat-shirt that says “Eschew Obfuscation.” I don’t wear it in public because if I do, I have to explain it… and people still don’t get it. 

I tweet as yooper1721.

A RANDOM BOOK REVIEW: Donna Tartt, THE GOLDFINCH A really long book that is worth the effort. It should have won a Pulitzer. Oh, it did

           

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

JUST WORDS: What the Muse Says-a poem

I start most mornings by writing a poem. They are not for publication, just to get the words flowing. I write in a very pretty little 4x6 journal my daughter, Katie, the MG/YA author gave me. [1] There is one simple rule: Only ink, no cross-outs or do-overs. Once it’s on the paper, that’s it.

I find it to be a useful discipline, to learn how to think about the words before I use them, to get it right before I get it write.

Here’s the one from April 16.

At the breaking of the dawn

my muse appears,

riding on a cloud

of caffeine,

a tiny smear of jelly,

raspberry,

on her flawless cheek,

and says, “Write something true

and beautiful.”

Although she has a basket full

of pre-warmed words

and rhymes,

I cannot do both.

John Robert McFarland

1] Katie is on twitter @katiewritesbooks.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: The editor kept telling me to shorten my ms. I finally got it down to one word. “Couldn’t you find a shorter word?” she asked.

I tweet as yooper1721.

A RANDOM BOOK REVIEW:  William Kent Krueger, ORDINARY GRACE. A sparkling book that I read with pleasure. It deserves all the plaudits it has received. I have read and enjoyed many of his Cork O’Connor Northern MN mystery books. This one is about the family of a Methodist minister in a small town in MN in the 1960s and is also a murder mystery, but diff from the O’Connor series, and a good examination of theodicy. At first he portrays the ways of the Methodist Church and parsonage so accurately I thought he must be a Methodist PK [Preacher’s Kid], but he made two mistakes toward the end of the book. They don’t affect the story at all, which remains an excellent mystery and an excellent examination of the ways people in a family cope, with life and with one another.

                    

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

I also write The Periwinkle Chronicles. You need a rather strange sense of humor to appreciate it, but occasionally it is slightly humorous. http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

JUST WORDS: In Naming Characters, Remember the Reader

I loved reading Alistair Maclean, especially his WWII books, like Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare. [My wife still shudders when I mention the latter because she had just read the scene where the hero is fighting Nazis on top of a cable car when I decided we should ride a cable car up to a remote French village.]

He really knew how to tell a story, but he did not name characters well.

Maclean had a thing for the name “Mary.” He did name one character Marian, which was far as he ever strayed from the name Mary for his female characters. In one book, he named the female characters Mary and Mary Two, and had the gall to claim it was the other characters in the book who did it.

His male characters were all Johnson and Henderson and Peterson and Nelson, et al, ad nauseum. Those names are too much alike. I couldn’t keep them straight.

It is important to keep the reader in mind when naming characters. Will the name help my readers remember who this character is, and differentiate him/her from the others?

John Robert McFarland

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: I have heard that when the first baby laughed the first laugh, it broke into pieces and that is how we got fairies.

I tweet as yooper1721.

A RANDOM BOOK REVIEW: John Boyne, NEXT OF KIN . Set in London, in 1937, with writing style appropriate to the time. An examination of how integrity does and does not work, and how we delude ourselves about who we are. Well done.

                    

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

JUST WORDS: In Amazon v Hachette, Authors Are the Losers

Amazon is the Wal Mart of books. Amazon’s multibillionaire Jeff Bezos is on record as wanting to be the ONLY source of books, and wanting an end to print books, leaving only ebooks. There can be only one outcome for that scenario: Amazon has all the money and power and authors and readers have none.

Absolute power is never good for anyone except those with absolute power.

One of the first things you do when you want to mistreat folks is to depersonalize them. That is why authors are now called “content providers.”

In his interview with Stephen Colbert, Sherman Alexie pointed out that although Hachette is the smallest of the five extant publishing dinosaurs, Hachette and Amazon are both giant corporations. Cheering for Hachette is not like cheering for David against Goliath. [1]

In this contest, Amazon and Hachette are both Goliath. The authors are David. Remember, no one, especially the Philistines, but not even his own people [readers], expected David to win.

When my cancer book came out, the publisher printed two thousand hardbacks and forty thousand paperbacks. Many were purchased by patients, but most were bought by people who loved a cancer patient, to give as a gift. The hardbacks sold out almost immediately. I was surprised. The hardbacks cost more. But people said, “I wanted to give her a hardback rather than a paperback to show I have faith she’ll be around a long time, the way a hardback is.”

There is a large emotional element in book-buying. Price is rarely the most important consideration in buying a book.

So I suggested to the publisher the printing of more hardbacks. “No, the marketing models show that two thousand is enough. [Even though they were already gone!] And when the paperbacks are sold out, the book will go out of print because the marketing models [computers] say that will exhaust the market for the book.” I said, “But the market will never end. That’s unfortunate. I’d like for it to be otherwise, but there are a million new cancer patients every year.” I did not prevail. Authors do not prevail against marketing departments.

I loved the editors and artists I worked with at AndrewsMcMeel, and they loved my book, but they were no match for the marketing department and its computers.

For readers to get what they need, authors must be successful. They must have some power in decision making. Likewise readers.

At any level of the economy, the only “job creators” are customers.

That is why a monopoly like Amazon, already controlling half the book market, is a bad thing. Competition spreads the power and the profits, so that all in the reading and writing community, not just a few, get in on the action.

This is why independent book stores, and boutique publishers like Black Opal Books, are important. They are the Davids, only 5 smooth stones in their bags, but nimble and not burdened by heavy armor. With a Big 5 publisher, the maximum author’s royalty is rarely as high at 10%. With Black Opal Books, the standard royalty is 45%. But book prices are low. Authors and readers are the winners.

Now I’m off to our local book store…

John Robert McFarland

1] I highly recommend Malcolm Gladwell’s David & Goliath, in which we learn why the underdog often has an advantage.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015. http://www.blackopalbooks.com/about-us/about-us

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: “Conflict is that which prevents a character from getting what he or she wants.” Stuart Spencer, Playwright’s Guidebook

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

I have a few of each of these. If you would like a signed copy, contact me at jmcfarland1721@charter.net

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

JUST WORDS: Sacrificial Interruptions

I once wrote for Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion radio show. It was not a long gig. Almost as soon as I had started, GK decided to end the show and move to Denmark. I don’t think my writing was the reason. It was the Danish woman. I’m sorry for him that the marriage to the Danish woman did not work out, but I’m glad he moved back to the US. Humor, and poetry, and music, and story-telling are all so much better for his contributions to those arts every Saturday evening.

One of his staff members was once asked about how to approach him so as not to interrupt him. “Any time you approach him, you’re interrupting,” she said, “because he is writing in his head ALL the time.”

I think that is true of most writers. We are working on our writing all the time—doing the dishes, mowing the lawn, driving to Mother’s, just staring into space.

When William Faulkner went to Hollywood as a screen writer, his producers complained that he didn’t work hard. “All he does is stare out the window,” they said. He may well have been working harder than anyone there. Kierkegaard would have approved.

So if you speak to a writer, if just to say “Hey,” you are interrupting.

How, as a writer, do you deal with this? I have no answer, except to say that we learn as much through sacrifice as any other way. Sacrificing for the sake of those we love, and who love us, by accepting the interruption to pay attention to them, is better than any mental writing we might do. Everything, to a writer, is material, including the interruptions, including the sacrifices.

John Robert McFarland

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: “When will there be good news?” When you read Kate Atkinson.

I tweet as yooper1721

           

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml