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Select a Month February 2019 November 2018 October 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015

April 2018

April 04, 2018

On Committing Fiction as a Pastor

What follows are some concluding remarks to a talk I am delivering at Eastern Nazarene...

January 2018

January 17, 2018

You’re So Special! The Real Dark Art of Harry Potter & Stories Like It

I’ve come to see that Harry Potter truly is a Trojan Horse in one respect–and...

December 2017

December 04, 2017

The Purloined Boy is Here!

Well, lookie what came in the mail! My young adult fantasy series has just had...

November 2017

November 16, 2017

Returning the Gift

Idolatry is making too much of a good thing. And this is what makes it...

November 04, 2017

Give the Gift of “Eucatastrophe” this Christmas!

Like so many other people, the works of J. R. R. Tolkien have stirred me...

June 2017

June 06, 2017

Flannery O’Connor and the Meaning of the World

I've been reading essays from Flannery O'Connor's occasional prose. Since I write fiction, I'm interested...

March 2017

March 31, 2017

Honest Work in a Virtual World, Thoughts on Working with Your Hands

I learned how to frame when I was in seminary. What I mean by "frame"...

March 24, 2017

Return to Fruitfulness, that’s an Order

By their fruits you shall know them. Matthew 7:16 The hermeneutics of suspicion have made...

February 2017

February 28, 2017

Freedom: I don’t think it means what you think it means

One of the conceptual blocks I ran into as a young convert was the notion...

January 2017

January 26, 2017

Feminism, the Women’s March, and Aesthetics

The other day I stumbled across a post by a fellow Patheos blogger entitled, The...

November 2016

November 15, 2016

Fish Stories: Is Fiction Just a Well-told Lie?

One of my favorite films--definitely in the top 5--is Tim Burton's, Big Fish. The story...

November 01, 2016

Tolkien’s Leaf by Niggle: What Will Become of Our Work?

Leaf by Niggle is a personal favorite. It's right up there with Smith of Wootton...

October 2016

October 18, 2016

Story-telling and Sovereignty

When my daughter was a little girl she didn't like stories with bad-guys in them....

October 11, 2016

Was Jesus a Self-Promoter?

I've been working to reconcile myself to a reality I've been denying for years. What's...

October 04, 2016

Christian Humility and the Self-Promotion Problem

A little over a decade ago, when I first began writing fiction, a few of...

September 2016

September 27, 2016

Getting Published is Easy, Getting Read Is the Tough Thing

Karl Marx, among the absurd things he said (some things were pretty sound, but I'm...

September 22, 2016

Focus! (Some changes coming to this blog.)

Art makes its demands. Anyone who believes it is merely a matter of self-expression hasn't...

September 19, 2016

What Inside Out Managed to Leave Out

Pixar seems to have found that little spot behind the collective ear that we like...

September 14, 2016

I Like It When a Children’s Book Scares Me a Little

I'm nearly done writing the text for a children's picture book. It's called Daisy (at...

September 09, 2016

How to Tell a Story Like an Inkling

Chapter One: Kick the Allegory Habit (Editorial note: this puts my last four posts on...

September 06, 2016

And Now, in Conclusion: How to End a Story

"Have the courage to conclude." (Don't recall where I read that, but it's good advice.)...

September 02, 2016

Tales of the Sublime: They aren’t Safe, but They Can be Good

G. K. Chesterton once spoke of nature as our "little sister" and C. S. Lewis...

August 2016

August 31, 2016

How to Tell a Meaningful Story without Preaching It

The movie mogul Sam Goldwyn once said, "If you want to send a message, use...

August 29, 2016

How to Tell a Story: a Primer for Preachers

(Note: this is the first in a series of forays on the subject of preachers...

August 26, 2016

If you like folk music, you may like this: ChurchFolk!

In my last post I spoke about taking one of my sons to college. Well,...

June 2016

June 28, 2016

Is the Scientific Method a Form of Mental Illness?

I had thought of naming this post: Science and the Quotidian Mind, but I was...

May 2016

May 23, 2016

Why Beer Commercials Are the Best and What That Says about Creativity

I actually had a Dos Equis for no other reason than The Most Interesting Man...