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Meet Catholic Action Writer Declan Finn

Meet Catholic Action Writer Declan Finn

Last updated on: July 31, 2026 at 6:57 am by Mark Wilson

Meet Catholic Action Writer Declan Finn 2026-07-31T06:57:51-05:00 Mark Wilson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

When I asked Christian Writer L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright if she wanted to do an interview for the Meet the Writer series she gave me an enthusiastic YES. She passed on the questions to her husband who submitted an interview several hours later. She then asked if she could send it to other writer friends of hers. I then got this email from Declan Finn.

L Jagi Lamplighter Wright (wife of John) sent me your contact information and said you were in need of authors to interview. You should have about six other authors right behind me, assuming they haven’t sent in interviews yet.

I am expecting good things from upcoming authors. The most interesting thing about Mr. Finn is that his output of fiction that he has put out. He just keeps on writing and reading and writing all the while incorporating his Catholic faith into his speculative worlds made of words and worlds of philosophical , theological and imagination filled with action.

He has a lot to say and a tale at the end about his life you will want to read. So lets cut to the action and…

Meet Catholic Action Writer Declan Finn

1. Tell something interesting about yourself.

I don’t know. I’m pretty boring. I’ve been writing since I was 16, I have around 40 novels published, a few more on the back burner, while I’m running an editing company and a review website.

I was also kicked out of my Catholic school for being a terrorist. Apparently, Gilbert and Sullivan song parodies aren’t funny to idiots who aren’t knowledgeable about 19th century comic operettas.

Other than that, most of the interesting stuff is in my head.

2. What makes a good Catholic writer?

Someone who is Catholic and a good writer. I know that sounds trite, but to discuss Catholic fiction, we must focus on good fiction. For example. John C Wright. Awesome person. Absolutely brilliant writer. Also a good Catholic. In his case, he was a good author before he was a good Catholic. Personally, I think he got better once he stopped being an atheist.

I’ll spare you my rant about “Christian Fiction,” but I’ve noticed that much of the Catholic fiction I’ve read (or tripped over) has been good fiction first. But most importantly, it’s not “message fiction”—where preaching at the audience is given a higher priority than the story itself. You can’t do that.

3, What do you like about being a Catholic/Christian Writer?

Getting letters from people who tell me that they converted because of my books, or they’re coming back to the church because of the work. I love it because all I can do is smile and nod. Because I write books where things blow up. It’s all I can do to avoid saying, “Really? Why? Better yet, how?”

4. What is the Main focus of your particular Writing or what do you like to write about?

I write action novels with a Catholic philosophical base. I’ve got a Crusade against alien fish. I’ve got alien knights Templars against cannibal hordes. I have a wonder worker detective fighting possessed serial killers. I have a vampire who goes to confession, teamed up with someone who but is channeling his homicidal impulses against demons. I’ve even got a Catholic spy teamed up with an agnostic assassin, trying to temper pragmatism with mercy…

I don’t write shoot ‘em ups. I write blow ‘em ups.

5. How does your Catholic Faith influence your writing?

My faith is pretty much who I am (he said, wearing a t-shirt with the papal tiara and the crossed keys, and Saint Dominic minis in front of the monitor). Thomist metaphysics is literally and clearly how the universe works. The Doctors of the church are dead bang on about everything.

I took Thomism and applied it to vampires for nine books. I wrote an angry history paper defending Pius XII in grad school and made it a trilogy. I took the charisms of saints and used them to create a superhero fighting demons in an urban fantasy series twelve books long. I used the history of Catholic warrior ethos and threw them into a crusade against aliens—in two difference series.

It leaves a mark here and there.

6. What’s your favorite article/Post/book/story you have written?

It must be a toss up between my Love at First Bite series and my Saint Tommy NYPD series.

7. What is your favorite topic/subject to write about?

Mostly about writing in other venues, and how good writing can fix some things that have been in decline.

8. Favorite scripture verse.

Luke 22:36: “But now he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise a scrip: and he that hath not, let him sell his coat and buy a sword.” (Douay–Rheims forever.)

Too many people want to delete that line, or ignore it, and maybe hope that the cowardly little Christians will go away and let evil rampage everywhere.

We were Crusaders, blast it. And we did nothing wrong (except overall strategy, but no one wants to go into those weeds).

9. What Are you currently working on?

What am I not working on?

I’m editing book six of my space opera, White Ops (alien Templars).

I’ve got the next Crusade against alien hordes novel (in the Land & Sea series) to edit when it comes back from the series creator.

I’m half-finished with a magic school novel that I’m piecing together from short stories.

I’m trying to put together omnibus volumes of my vampire series.

I’m working with Tuscany Bay Press to put together omnibi of my Saint Tommy NYPD series.

I’m trying to build up a backlog of reviews for when the Upstream Reviews substack comes back from hiatus.

10. Name a favorite saint or Catholic or some other figure who inspires you in your life.

Aquinas. Utterly brilliant, a bit of a flake, and fierce defender of the church… intellectually, anyway.

Panel of an altarpiece from Ascoli Piceno, Italy, by Carlo Crivelli (15th century)

Joan of Arc is a close runner up. Truly, evidence that politics is the enemy of God. Also, she had some great one-liners.

11. Who is your favorite Living Writer?

That’s hard to quantify, since on the one hand, I read a lot. On the other hand, I know people who need to write faster.

Dan Humphreys is a great author … needs to write faster.

NR LaPoint is another great, Catholic author… who needs to finish his epic fantasy series.

Mr. La Point also did a Meet the Writers Interview.

Love Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden.

John Pretorius is doing a great job with dragons and Christian fantasy.

Ann Margaret Lewis has a great Sherlock Holmes meets the Pope novel…

And then there’s Bill Willingham, who probably wrote the best comic book series ever.

Sorry, you asked a book question to a guy who has more books than the public library.

But best living author … Timothy Zahn. His books are smart, brilliantly executed, and when I finished his last Icarus novel, my first thought was that I wanted to show my father—who had died three years before.

12. If you could have lunch with any deceased writer who would it be, what would you eat and what would you talk about?

The temptation would be to invite Dante for pizza and ask him what he thought of Dorothy Lee Sayers’ translation of his work. Or maybe bring back Martin Luther for beers, to show him the state of his church.

Frankly, I’ll settle for lasagna with Walter B Gibson (The Shadow) or Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan, John Carter) on how to make a small writing empire out of a single character. Because I, and some other authors I know, could use some help with that.

13, Name a favorite movie/tv show or music you find worth sharing with others.

That could take a while.

Babylon 5, Murder, She Wrote, Blue Bloods, Batman: The Animated series (with associated universe), Secret Agent (with Patrick MacGoohan), Maverick (until James Garner left), Have Gun—Will Travel. I’ll even suggest Stargate: SG-1.

And while I do occasionally just plug myself into TCM, if you don’t mind a dark comedy, Arsenic and Old Lace. If you don’t mind really dark comedy, The Hospital (George C Scott.). The Thin Man films are always fun. Charlie Chan. Mister Moto.

We could be here all day.

14. Can you see one of your books being made into a movie or tv series? Who would you want to star or direct?

Love at First Bite or Saint Tommy NYPD would work, but good luck casting them today. The former would need actors who could pass for college students. The latter would need to take an even-handed view of policing.

Chad Stahelski (John Wick) could at least be brought in to block the action sequences. And he doesn’t seem to mind a little religious iconography here and there.

But Curry Barker or Kane Parsons could probably get away with directing. Not because they’re the latest hotness with Obsession and Backrooms, but because they both understand how to get the desired effect without blowing half a billion dollars on a movie.

15. Favorite Historical event.

The Battle of Vienna, 1683. The city is under siege by the Ottoman empire for sixty days. The defenders out outnumbers 60 to 1. Ottomans are digging tunnels under the walls in order to set off explosive charges and open up a breach.

A depiction of Sipahis during the Battle of Vienna

On September 12, Polish King John Sobieski III led the largest Polish cavalry charge in history down Kahlenberg Mountain to break the Ottoman siege. It inspired the charge of the Rohirrim for Tolkien, and makes for a solid Sabaton song.

This interview was published on July 19, 2026

The day these other Historical Trivia events happened.

1733 – The Ottoman army defeats the Iranian army under Nader Shah in the battle of Baghdad.

Nadir Shah of Persia (1732-1747).

1963 – Joe Walker flies a North American X-15 to a record altitude of 106,010 meters (347,800 feet) on X-15 Flight 90. Exceeding an altitude of 100 km, this flight qualifies as a human spaceflight under international convention.

Walker in his pressure suit
with the X-1E[N

1981 – In a private meeting with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, French President François Mitterrand reveals the existence of the Farewell Dossier, a collection of documents showing the Soviet Union had been stealing American technological research and development.

2013- The Conjuring opens in theaters

16. What else do you want people to know about anything.

My wife insists that are there more things about me that are considered interesting than I first proposed.

I find myself pretty boring. I grew up as a mascot for the American Society for Clinical Laboratory Scientists. My mother was a lab scientist, my father an educator, and the ASCLS meeting was our summer vacation. I saw San Francisco, Chicago, New Orleans, and a few other places I’ve since blown up in my novels. I think what matters more is that I took those settings and turned them into set pieces—or that I took the microbiology I learned and applied it to vampires.

An ex-girlfriend once took my attitude of chastity-before-marriage as a personal affront and slipped me a mickey so I would be cooperative. I think the lesson is: “Don’t try to be friends with an ex.”

Is it interesting that I was nearly thrown out of high school for being a terrorist? Three months before graduation, I wrote a song parody of “I Have a Little List” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, making it fit my high school. Being a stupid teenager, I brought it in one day and showed it to a small group of friends on the yearbook staff.

Everything was fine until one of them announced, “This is great! This should be in the yearbook!” and started passing it around. It ended up four tables away, right next to someone who hadn’t liked me since freshman year.

Later that day, an associate dean pulled me out of the library and took me to the principal’s office. I walked in confused—I genuinely had no idea what I could have done to get on anyone’s radar. The principal closed the door and said, “We hear you have a little list.”

I laughed. I thought it was something serious.

They slid a copy of the parody across the table. I tried explaining Gilbert and Sullivan and The Mikado. They barely knew who that was. This was March 26, 2000—less than a month before the first anniversary of Columbine.

The high school offered me a deal: see a psychologist and a psychiatrist, get declared sane, and it would go away. That night we sent an email to my friends explaining exactly what happened and attached the parody.

The next day I took the MMPI. My father was waiting when I finished. The email had spread. One parent saw it, called the school, and the high school called the cops. They went after my family at work and harassed my friends. Then the school withdrew their offer and gave us an ultimatum: withdraw in 48 hours or be expelled for “issuing terrorist threats.”

My parents tried talking to them. My uncle—the family lawyer who modeled himself on Nigel Bruce—read the parody and bellowed, “IT’S THE BLEEPING MIKADO! THE BLEEPING IDIOTS!”

On Wednesday, I kept the appointment with the psychiatrist, since that was part of the original deal.

The psychiatrist asked “So, why don’t you want to burn down the school?”

I blinked, then explained to him in small words that burning down the school and killing people would be wrong. After an hour of questions like that, where I questioned his sanity, he not only found me sane, he signed it as an alumnus of the high school. I still have that paperwork somewhere.

On April 4th, 2000, I was in a judge’s chambers. The new deal was simple: I would graduate from the high school, working from home. I told him about the AP classes, and he said arrangements would be made. He asked me what it was for, and the entire room laughed when I said “Psychology.” The judge, court reporter, the bailiff, and even the school’s lawyer laughed.

The principal and the president of the high school did not.

When I left the courthouse, it started to drizzle. When we were all secure in the car, it rained in earnest. We drove past the principal and the president as they walked all the way back to the high school … several miles… in the pouring rain, and without raincoats or umbrellas. My family and I had a good laugh at their expense.

Suddenly, my life became strange. Friends disappeared, and people I never heard of magically started talking to me, consoling and supporting me. I became popular with people I had never met. People who I had been friends with just quietly slipped away, never to be heard from again. I still can’t get some of them to be friends on Facebook.

The school valedictorian became one of my best friends, and was going to write an article on it for the school newspaper.

The article was spiked because I gave a chocolate rabbit to the secretaries for Easter.

“The incident of the terrorist bunny” was a Charlie Foxtrot that could have only happened to me.

My local bakery sold three-foot chocolate rabbits for Easter, and I always gave the secretaries a little something for holidays. My mother, who had been picking up my assignments, delivered it. The principal took a piece of the chocolate rabbit. It’s a good thing he did, too, because that’s the piece that supposedly had glass in it.

Supposedly, somewhere, over in Germany, a glass jar broke in a factory, fell into a vat of chocolate, which became a chocolate block, shipped to America to be shaped into the foam of a chocolate rabbit, just so my principal could bite into it. Lucky me, huh?

This was used as a pretense to spike the story about the absurdity of my whole Kafka-esque ordeal, since I was now “a continuing threat to the school.”

Oooh, ain’t I scary?

An entertaining postscript on this incident is, of course, that Memorial Day weekend, where I joined my father on his trip to Boston for the annual meeting of the American Association of Physician Assistants.

Now, the PA’s came out of the military —there were too many medical personnel experienced in trauma, but they aren’t technically doctors. It comes up in my Love at First Bite series, as background for one of my characters.

Since I had off that Memorial Day, I joined him up in Boston. It was … interesting.

So when you have a Memorial Day panel at the AAPA meeting, it’s going to be something special.

And you will never… I mean never… really fully recover from a room full of officers in full dress uniform, holding hands and swaying as they sing along to “I’m proud to be an American.”

Learn More

Declan’s Newsletter | Substack
Declan Finn (Author of Hell Spawn)
The Catholic Geeks | We have a +5 prayer bonus to Fun.

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