Category Archives for Uncategorized

          SLIPPING BY SLEEPING DRAGONS It’s said that reading fiction requires willing suspension of disbelief. We writers strive to weave a fictional dream of gossamer threads and avoid anything that might break the spell we cast. And so we choose our genre and build our story idea around specific conventions—checking vocabulary […]

 FUNEREAL JOY This morning I attended my first-ever Hutterite funeral. It moved me. But first things first: GLOSSARY: Hutterite describes a group of pacifistic, separatist, German-speaking, religious dissenters from 16th-century Moravia (of the same Anabaptist rootstock as the Amish and Mennonite) who fled persecution and now live communally in agriculturally based, one-hundred-soul colonies clustered mostly throughout the prairies of western Canada […]

          SIGNING I spent several hours yesterday in the lovely environs of Annie McGuire, an interior design studio in Medicine Hat. I signed a few books, had lovely chats with several readers, and met another local author. It was an altogether pleasant day. Most of my writerly friends declare themselves to be introverts and, […]

          READING I’ve almost completed writing and editing (first round) on my new novel and am looking forward to hearing back from a few publishers considering it. Meanwhile I’m not forgetting my first novel, and lately I had the honour of being featured on The Mighty Pen–an excellent program on HopeStreamRadio. For those […]

        “THE END” In celebration of typing “the end” to my second novel, I brewed up a wonderful soup (made to the tastes of Libby, my main character), which I have dubbed Drunken Pepper Beef Pot. Besides the obvious ingredients of roasted bell peppers (the surplus currently drowning in Spanish olive oil and awaiting a salad […]

          CHEESE AND BREAD One of my favourite writers, G.K. Chesterton, once wrote a whole essay on the profound subject of cheese. Please enjoy this excerpt: The waiter brought me cheese, indeed, but cheese cut up into contemptibly small pieces; and it is the awful fact that, instead of Christian bread, […]

          LITERARY FICTION Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become. (C.S. Lewis) I lurk on a few writers’ online message boards, and the other […]

  ANNOUNCING THE JUNE 1 RELEASE OF MY NEW BOOK! Roots and Branches traces the image of the tree throughout the fiction of G. K. Chesterton, interpreting the underlying message of his religious convictions through biography and literary analysis. This book introduces the uninitiated to a classic British author, allows students of Chesterton to mine his […]

FLYING BEYOND THE STARS: CHRISTIANS WRITING FICTION It’s said that reading fiction requires willing suspension of disbelief. We writers strive to weave a fictional dream of gossamer threads and avoid anything that might break the spell we cast. And so we choose our genre and build our story idea around specific conventions—checking vocabulary lists for […]

FRENCH BAKING I’m currently in the South of France, where the countryside in warmer seasons is saturated in lavender and olive, yellow and azure. But it is winter even here, and so the colours are more subdued–except in bakery windows! On this vacation again I’ve pressed my nose up against the glass of many patisseries and boulangeries (they still make a […]