Tag Archives: fiction

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Year of Reading Buechner: Wrap-up

I know it’s now been a couple months since 2018 wrapped up (how did that happen?) but I have just now realized that I never did a wrap-up post on my reading series from last year, The Year of Reading Buechner.

Last year I took on the challenge of reading one Frederick Buechner book a month. The books I read are as follows (all linked to the posts about them):

Year of Reading Buechner: The Remarkable Ordinary

Year of Reading Buechner: A Sacred Journey

Year of Reading Buechner: Brendan, A Novel

Year of Reading Buechner: The Alphabet of Grace

Year of Reading Buechner: Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation

Year of Reading Buechner: Godric

Year of Reading Buechner: Telling Secrets: A Memoir

Year of Reading Buechner: A Room Called Remember

Year of Reading Buechner: Lion Country

Year Of Reading Buechner: Eyes of the Heart

Year of Reading Buechner: Crazy, Holy Grace

Highlights and (not really) Lowlights

I am so glad that I spent a year with Frederick Buechner, an author I had heard much about before but had never got around to reading. His books were challenging, beautiful, layered, and impactful. It’s hard to summarize exactly how I feel about his books, but here’s some of the highlights of the year for me, anyway.

  1. Favourite book of the year (nonfiction) – this is tough. But if I have to pick just one as a favourite, it would have to be A Sacred Journey, his first memoir, which I read way back in February 2018. This is an astonishing book. It is short, but packed full of insights and sentences that make you want to stop and ponder your own life. Probably one of the best memoirs I have read. It’s so wonderful how he can take the tale of his life, a very ordinary life in many ways, and make it into a profound meditation on life, death, and faith. I don’t want to give too much away. I want you to read it for yourself and discover its treasures as well.
  2. Favourite book of the year (fiction) – see how clever I am? I can get two favourites this way! But I should really say, look how clever Buechner is, that he can write both nonfiction and fiction with such skill. I will admit that his fiction was harder for me to get through than his nonfiction. But that says more about me than about him. My favourite that I read this year was Brendan, the tale about the Dark Ages monk who set out with some other monks to find the land of the saints. This book featured a saint whom I am particularly fond of, and I loved seeing him brought to life in Buechner’s tale. Buechner is such a clever writer, and he’s not afraid to tackle life as it is in his novels, not life as we wish it would be. So he presents us a very human saint, which is not a bad thing at all. But don’t read this book if you are expecting a sanitized view of life in the Early Middle Ages, or a “typical” Christian fiction book.
  3. Favourite book I didn’t read this year – Son of Laughter. It’s perhaps cheating a bit to include this book on my list of favourites seeing as I didn’t read it this year, but I don’t want you to miss this one. The story of Jacob, the scheming son of Isaac (whose name means “laughter”, as his mother Sarah laughed when the angel of the Lord told Abraham he would have an heir), was my first introduction to Buechner. I read it a few years ago, but it has stayed with me ever since. Jacob is no sanitized saint in Buechner’s hands. But it is in his very real and flawed humanity that the grace of God shines so brightly. A brilliant book, and I loved it very much!

Although I really enjoyed most of the books I read this year, there were a couple that were my least favourites. Which means out of a scale of 1-10, they would get a 6 or 7, instead of the 9-10 the others got. In other words, they are still excellent books.

  1. Least favourite nonfiction – if I had to pick one, I would choose the last one I read, Crazy, Holy, Grace. And that is only because it is a compilation of essays and pieces of some of his other books, some of which I had already read during the year. But for someone who was looking to get an introduction to Buechner’s works, you wouldn’t go too far wrong with this book.

   2. Least favourite fiction – Lion Country. So many people love the tetraology of books    called The Book of Bebb, of which this is the first book, that I hate to put it down as my least favourite. It’s very well written, and I like the way Buechner presents the tensions in the book between doubt and faith, dark and light.. But the whole insinuation of Bebb possibly being a pedophile was just a little too much for me. That being said, I do have the other three books on my Kindle. I will read them, because I love Buechner so much that I am willing to go a little further into the story just to see where he goes with it.

What I learned as a writer. 

I would be foolish not to take some tips from Buechner, the writer, to carry with me from my reading series this year. He is a master of the craft, hailed by many as one of America’s best writers. So, what have I learned from Buechner?

First of all, be honest. In both his fiction and non-fiction books, Buechner is not afraid to explore all aspects of what it means to be human. His memoirs are painfully honest at times, and in his his fiction he is not afraid to use a lamp that throws into stark relief both the best and worst of humanity.

This is terribly important for all writers, but especially, I think, for those of us who write either about faith or about people of faith. It’s so tempting to gloss over the character flaws and hard times, and to just show the sunny side of life. Buechner’s writings are a good reminder that as writers we need to show the truth, both good and bad, in order for our readers to come to terms with that truth in their own lives.

Secondly, make your words sing. Buechner is a beautiful writer. I’ve said before that he is probably the most quotable writer I have read (C.S. Lewis and he vie for this honour in my mind). He hones his words well, polishing them until they shine. The quote that I have had as the featured picture for each of the posts of the series is a good example.

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. 

Three phrases, each of them short and to the point. But all together they give us truth and hope in equal measure, stiffening our spine for our forays down the paths life gives us.

And what about another one of his most famous quotes?

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. 

– From

These are words that speak to the hidden springs within us, that make us stop, give us eyes to see things we may not have seen before. It’s not just the thought, which is profound, but the way he expresses it, which brings the thought to life in our minds.

He does this in his fiction, too:

What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup. (from Godric)

“To lend each other a hand when we’re falling,” Brendan said.  “Perhaps that’s the only work that matters in the end.” (from Brendan)

I could go on and on. Pretty much each page I have read has some kind of underlining or note on it. He is just that good.

What I learned about life.

You can’t come away from a year immersed in Frederick Buechner’s words and not learn something. In my case, his words were a reminder of the importance of paying attention, to listen and see all the ways that God speaks to us every day, and to look back and see the ways in which He has been present all along.

Buechner reminded me that everything is important. Even the most mundane encounters or events holds layers of mystery that we would do well to examine.

His flawed characters gave me hope. If God could use them, and He does, then surely He can use me, too. The bumbling steps of faith these characters make, sometimes stubborn, sometimes naive, sometimes clueless, are a picture of all of our journeys. It’s always comforting to know we are not alone, right?

It’s been a marvellous year reading through a few of the works of Frederick Buechner. I heartily recommend him to anyone who loves good writing and is not afraid to slow down a bit to catch a glimpse of the glory of our lives.

 

 

 

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Cover Reveal! 

This is it! If you are one of my newsletter subscribers, you got a sneak peek at this last week, but today I’m releasing to the wider world the cover of my first book, Wilding: Book One of the Traveller’s Path.

I think it looks awesome, how about you? The designers at Ebooklaunch did a fabulous job, and I am very pleased. I would recommend them if you are in the market for a cover. And bonus: they are Canadian, to boot!

Someone asked me, “What are the significance of the elements of the cover?” I wasn’t able to give a very coherent answer, mainly because we were sitting at a table at a social event with loud music and lots of conversation in the background, so it was difficult to explain anything in-depth. But it was a good question, and I thought I could answer it properly here.

1. The Celtic Cross – the main bulk of the story action takes place in 7th century Northumbria. The cross represents this time and place because it was a time when the Christian faith was beginning to become the dominant faith, and in particular, the variety of Christianity that we now call Celtic Christianity was the one the people there adhered to. This Celtic Cross could be found dotted across the Northumbrian landscape, at various monasteries and as well as at places where they would be known as “teaching crosses”, places where travelling monks would stop and preach the Gospel on their rounds throughout the kingdom. The cross on the cover also represents the monastery at Lindisfarne, where Thomas, my main character, finds refuge. And finally, it symbolizes the spiritual journey Thomas undergoes as he is swept away from everything familiar, and his already struggling faith is challenged in new and unexpected ways.

2. The crows – I don’t want to give too much away, here, but I can just say that the crows represent Thomas’ main adversary in the Travelling Path series (which will likely be three books, but I’m not exactly sure yet).

3. The mist – Thomas, and others, have a recurring dream, of him walking through the mist, heading towards an unspecified, but earth-shattering, threat. So I thought it would be good to include this on the cover.

I wanted a cover that was not too cluttered but gave readers a sense of the book’s content and genre. One thing that was tricky was to impart the sense that this is not just a historical book, but a historical fantasy. In the end, we decided to do that by making the font stylized and artistic, rather than just block letters. Barring dragons and wizards on the cover (neither of which appear in my book) I think it helps to give the cover a fantasy feel.

It was an interesting process to get this designed, and a fun one. And to see my name on the cover…whoo.

My final bit of news is that I have firmed up my publication date. Wilding will be available on Amazon and all the other e-book retailers on February 5, 2019. 

Lots to do until then….stay tuned!

If you are interested in a sneak peak at the first chapter of Wilding, sign up for my newsletter!  You will also get other exclusive book content, interesting articles, and maybe even a fun contest or two along the way. A new edition will land in your inbox about once a month, unless I have something important to share. Your privacy is important to me, and I will never spam you.

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Year of Reading Buechner: Lion Country

Frederick Buechner published Lion Country as a stand-alone novel in 1971, to great acclaim. It was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction in 1972. Buechner would go on to write three other novels featuring Leo Bebb, one of the main characters in Lion Country: Open Heart (1972), Love Feast (1974) and Treasure Hunt (1977). These were all compiled together and published as a one-volume tetralogy called The Book of Bebb, in 1979.

Lion Country wasn’t the first novel Buechner had written (it is his sixth), but it does come before the other novels I have read in this series. I was greatly anticipating reading it, based on some reviews and comments I have read about it.

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The original 1971 cover

Unfortunately, I have to say that I struggled with this book.

Buechner’s fiction is often populated by slightly grotesque figures, and this book is no different. He delights in writing about odd, deeply flawed people who nonetheless, have a hint of the holy about them. It’s a stock character that he first encountered as a boy in King Rinkitink, in the Oz books, but continued to be haunted by throughout his life. He explains his attraction to these characters in his memoir, The Sacred Journey, writing about the whiskey priest in Graham Greene’s  novel, The Power and the Glory:

…what Greene fathomlessly conveys is that the power and glory of God are so overwhelming that they can shine forth into the world through even such as one as this seedy, alcoholic little failure of a man who thus, less by any virtue of his own than by the sheer power of grace within him, becomes a kind of saint at the end…

Buechner’s characters, from Godric to Brendan to the biblical patriarch Jacob (in Son of Laughter) all have this hint of the “holy fool” about them.

Leo Bebb, the holy roller diploma-mill charlatan, is definitely cut from this mold. He is a slippery character to pin down, sometimes heroic, sometimes foolish and vain, and with a shadowy past of jail time for exposing himself to children, hovering over him. And to be honest,  this last part of the book is where the novel fell down for me. Perhaps the times have changed too much from 1971 until now. This possible scandal of Bebb’s past, which surfaces again in the novel’s present time action, is too fraught with pain and sorrow and agony, in our modern-day reality of pedophile priests. Especially since Buechner uses it as a sort of strange comic relief at the end.

The main character, Antonio Parr, is pretty much a regular guy, although slightly neurotic, and drifting through his life. He has a girlfriend that he hasn’t been able to commit to for seven years; he has tried teaching, writer, and artist as a career, never getting too far with any of those. He is a man very much waiting for something to happen to kick him out of his rut, and Bebb comes along just in the nick of time.

Antonio answers an ad in the paper which states “Put yourself on God’s payroll–go to work for Jesus NOW”, and after enclosing a love offering and a self-addressed envelope, receives an ordination certificate in his name, from the Church of Holy Love in Armadillo, Florida. Antonio writes back, offering to meet with Bebb the next time he was in New York to discuss various ministries he might do, but secretly planning on exposing Bebb as a charlatan.

The novel opens with their meeting in New York, and Antonio is immediately captivated by Bebb, with his odd appearance and mannerisms, and his strange way of speaking. I am here to save your soul, Antonio Parr, Bebb tells him. How could Antonio not be intrigued?

Antonio ends up making a trip down to Florida to do more in-depth research for himself, leaving gloomy New York with his dying twin sister and his stalled relationship, and finds himself in sunny, hot Florida, where he meets Bebb again, along with his assistant Brownie, wife Lucille, and their adopted daughter Sharon. All of these characters are odd in their own ways, and it adds to the circus-like atmosphere of the world surrounding Bebb.

The action of the book moves between these two worlds, Florida and New York, and takes us along with Antonio on a journey of doubt and faith, but not in the way you might think. This is not a story of an unbeliever who has a dramatic faith conversion. Far from it. This is a glimpse at the beginning of someone’s faith journey, of those first few musings, the beginning back and forth between belief and doubt, when doubt very much has the upper hand.

There are a lot of ambiguities in this book. Is Bebb a charlatan, or no? What happened to Bebb and Lucille’s infant daughter, exactly? Are the “silvers and golds”, as Bebb calls them, really aliens from outer space? Did Bebb really resurrect Brownie from the dead? And when Bebb exposes himself during Herman Redpath’s ordination, was it done on purpose, or not? And if he did, why would he?

I suppose there are layers in this book that I am missing. Perhaps I need to read the rest of the books and get Bebb’s whole story.  I probably will, but not just now.

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Just to give you another view….This fellow obviously got more out of the book than I did. 

So, I can’t say I loved it, which I’m sad about. It’s the first thing of Buechner’s that I can’t wholeheartedly recommend.

But that’s ok. There’s more Buechner to read, and I’ll be diving into more of his non-fiction this month. Look for my next Year of Reading Buechner post at end of November, where I will be discussing Eyes of the Heart, his fourth (and last) memoir.

For more posts in my Year of Reading Buechner series, see the links below

2018 Reading Challenge: The Year of Reading Buechner

Year of Reading Buechner: The Remarkable Ordinary

Year of Reading Buechner: A Sacred Journey

Year of Reading Buechner: Brendan, A Novel

Year of Reading Buechner: The Alphabet of Grace

Year of Reading Buechner: Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation

Year of Reading Buechner: Godric

Year of Reading Buechner: Telling Secrets: A Memoir

Year of Reading Buechner: A Room Called Remember

 

 

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Year of Reading Buechner: Godric

Godric is the second of Frederick Buechner’s books that take place in early medieval England. I reviewed Brendan: A Novel, here on the blog a couple months ago. This month, I turned with great eagerness to Godric.

Godric was published in 1981, so it came before Brendan, which was published in 1987. Probably if I was clever I should have read them in order of publication, but ho hum, oh well.

Godric was published to great acclaim. Edmund Fuller of The Wall Street Journal said in his review, “With a poet’s sensibly and a high reverent fancy, Frederick Buechner paints a memorable portrait.” Similar praise came from The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic, and Publisher’s Weekly. The book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1981.

All this to say that this is a remarkable novel, and again, Buechner succeeds in bringing this all-to-human saint to life, warts and all.

I didn’t realize until 3/4 of the way through this book that this story, like Brendan’s, was based on the life of a real person, St. Godric of Finchale (1065 – 1170AD). Godric was a popular medieval saint, but he was never formally canonized.

His official hagiography (life of a saint) was written during his lifetime by Reginald of Durham, a monk who knew Godric, and who apparently had Godric bless his manuscript before Godric died. There are apparently other hagiographies of Godric as well, but Reginald’s is the most important.

Godric-Finchale

St. Godric of Finchale, from the Cotton Faustina B manuscript, in the British Library. Image from Wikicommons

The bare bones of Godric’s story is that he was born to poor parents, and became a pedlar, merchant, and finally a sailor, plying his trade to places both near and far. It is possible he owned the ship that ferried the crusader king Baldwin I of Jerusalem to Jaffa in 1102 AD to prepare for a siege against Jerusalem.

During his years at sea, he apparently went to Farne Island, where he had a spiritual encounter with Cuthbert, the beloved Bishop of Lindisfarne, who was long dead by this point. This encounter changed Godric. He dedicated himself to Christ and devoted the rest of his life to Him.

Eventually Godric ended up at Finchale, which is around four miles from the monastery at Durham, where Cuthbert was buried. He lived there for around 50-60 years as an extremely ascetic hermit and died as a very old man.

Godric’s story is a fascinating one. That Reginald actually knew the saint makes his hagiography even more interesting, I think. But even so, it is a “official” account of his life, with hardly a wrinkle showing.

Buechner’s account has no such restraints. There are plenty of wrinkles in this tale. Buechner’s Godric is irrascable, selfish, bitter, and guilt-ridden, and he spends much of the book pining for the love of his life, who happens to be his sister.

I’m glad that I have read a couple of Buechner’s other biographical works – The Son of Laughter (the story of the biblical patriarch Jacob), and Brendan. Both of those books I enjoyed, but they gave me some familiarity of Buechner’s penchance for presenting “holy” figures as all-too-human, no halo attached.

As always, the writing in this book is strong. Buechner gives us lyrical and thoughtful prose, filled with sentences that make you stop and ponder. For example, when he takes his mother to Rome to pray for his father’s soul, they look out over the ruined Coliseum and weep.

Why did we weep? I asked myself. We wept for all that grandeur gone. We wept for martyrs cruelly slain. We wept for Christ, who suffered death upon a tree and suffers still to see our suffering. But more than anything, I think, we wept for us, and so it ever is with tears. Whatever be their outward cause, within the chancel of the heart it’s we ourselves for whom they finally fall. 

The book is full of passages like this. It’s a book that wrestles with faith, doubt and devotion, and what those things meant to Godric in his time and place, and gives you pause to ponder what they mean to you in yours. It’s a portrait of a sinful man who seeks absolution and mercy, and who tries in his humanness to overcome his flaws.

It’s a book that requires more than one reading, I think. I will admit that I did not love it upon first reading, but as I flip back over the pages and see all the places that I underlined and marked, I feel a greater appreciation for it. It’s a book that, like Godric himself, I suspect, you have to sit with awhile to really get to know and appreciate.

There’s a reason why this book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. This honest look at one person’s spiritual journey refuses to rest on pat answers or platitudes, yet it remains reverent all the same. In the book Buechner gives Godric more than one encounter with Cuthbert, and as well with a mysterious figure named Gillian, an angel-type being that encourages him even before he meets Cuthbert to embrace Christ. And despite his flaws, and turnings away, Godric’s life is a trajectory towards Christ all the same.

Godric’s story is not told in chronological order. It starts with Godric as an old man, looking back on his life, telling the story to Reginald, and this older Godric’s story is interspersed with the tale of his life as a child and going forward. I think this makes for a richer book, as we get Godric’s interpretation of his life’s choices and reflections on them as the book moves along, which makes the story deeper.

I can’t quite decide whether I found this book depressing or hopeful. It’s a bit more gloomy than the other two biographies, to be sure, and because of that I found it more difficult going. But it’s not all shadows. The light peeks in here and there, sometimes more strongly than others. Godric’s final words in the book, just before he dies, are, All’s lost. All’s found. Farewell. That pretty well sums up  the tension in the book between despair and hope.

At one point Godric remarks, How seemly is a life when told to children thus, with all the grief and ugliness snipped out. I suppose it’s how monk Reginald will tell of mine. 

This book contains all the grief and ugliness, to be sure. But because of that, the light that shines is all the brighter.

It’s a complex book. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But it’s a marvellous portrait of one man’s life, in all it’s glory and shame, and the telling of it asks questions of us. And in the end, that’s the kind of book that means the most.

Other posts in the Year of Reading Buechner series:

2018 Reading Challenge: The Year of Reading Buechner

Year of Reading Buechner: The Remarkable Ordinary

Year of Reading Buechner: A Sacred Journey

Year of Reading Buechner: Brendan, A Novel

Year of Reading Buechner: The Alphabet of Grace

Year of Reading Buechner: Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation

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The Struggle is Real

I thought it might be time to update you all as to the progress of my book.

Just as a quick review, the last time I posted about this, back in February, I told you I hoped to have my revisions and edits done by mid-May. Seeing as I have hit that milestone, I thought I would report back as to how it’s going.

Well, I’m not done, but I’m not far off. I had a goal of revising 10,000 words a week. I wasn’t sure if I could hit that target, but you never know until you try, right? It’s been a challenging goal but in all honesty, it’s helped to have that target. It’s pushed me to keep going and to stick to my writing schedule, which has been hugely helpful.

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Right now, I have about 22,000 words left to edit. I should be able to get those done in the remaining couple weeks of May. So, I figure I will be done my edits by the end of the month. Which is only a couple weeks off of my stated goal, so I am going to give myself a pat on the back for that!

Another thing I have checked off my list of things to accomplish this spring was to start an author newsletter. To do this, I signed up to MailChimp and began to learn all about it, both in terms of the mechanics of how to do it as well as tips on what makes a good newsletter. This all takes so much more time than one thinks it might!

I found it hard to figure out some of the mechanics of MailChimp, especially how to link the sign-up form to the blog and to individual blog-posts, but I think I have it figured out now. If any of you have tried to sign up and have run into difficulty, please let me know by commenting below, or email me at lasnews@telus.net.

My next task after the edits are done is to sit down with the whole MS, read it over, and see what I have. One book? (pretty sure that won’t be the case). Two? Three? And then I have to figure out where to divide it up if I have more than one. And finally, I have to see if my editor’s advice to stick to one POV only is working.

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It’s been interesting. I have had to cut out a lot to keep the book to one POV. I can see where that advice has been good, for it has enabled me to focus more clearly on my main character’s story. But I do think that the book will likely have more than just that POV in it, once I make my final decisions. Some of that will depend on feedback from my beta readers, and some from my own instincts as to what I think works best. Stay tuned!

Assuming my edits are done by the end of the month, I will take the month of June to do my re-read and my final tweaks and decisions about how to structure the book, and then send it off to my beta readers. Once I get Book One, Wilding, nailed down, I will focus on it from now until launch in October. The rest of the MS I can set aside until after its launch, when I will immediately start the count-down to launch of Book 2.

The other task I have from now until the end of June is to get a book launch plan nailed down. I need to set a budget, and figure out all the steps I need to take along the way, and when to take them. I’ll probably also start the book cover design process, or at least researching options for that. I have made the decision that I will get a professional design done, as the cover is too important to scrimp on. Besides, I just couldn’t handle a cheesy design.

As I’ve been doing the edits and delving into the latter parts of my MS that I haven’t actually looked at for quite some time, I have felt a mixture of emotions.

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First of all, I’m continually surprised at how much I have learned as a writer. What I wrote a few years ago, that I thought was pretty good at the time, actually was pretty bad. Which makes me nervous. Is what I’m writing now, the changes I am making, also going to look equally as bad to me a few more years down the road? It tends to erode your self-confidence, let me tell you!

Conversely, I’m also surprised at how engaged I got in the story. After all, I know exactly what is going to happen! But I still got a great deal of pleasure in the story as I read it. There were even a few things I forgot, that I was excited to read again. I think it all works. I hope so, at any rate.

Don’t forget, if you want to keep up with my book’s journey to publication, please subscribe to my author newsletter. You’ll get first hand info there on my progress, plus a lot of other fun stuff that I think you will enjoy. Sign up at the link at the bottom of this post!

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Everything Means Something, or How To Think Like a 7th Century Celtic Christian

I’m off on a winter holiday, so I thought I would look back in the vaults again and share another post from my first year of blogging. It didn’t get a lot of looks, but it’s one I’m fond of!

I sat on my chair, reading, the afternoon sun pouring through the windows. My dog, a big goof of a Labrador/Newfoundland mix, came into the living room and I watched as he walked around the room, sniffing at things. I had to watch him carefully; at this stage in our lives together he was known to not stop at sniffing, but to take the next step of grabbing some treasure in the hopes of inducing a mad chase around the house as I attempted to get the treasure back. But no, he was content to wander and sniff this time, circling the coffee table a few times as he did so. I watched him carefully, seeing that he was circling the table counter-clockwise, and he did it three times, before settling down, and I thought about “widdershins” – circling counter-clockwise – and the number three. I wondered the deeper meaning of this, what sign could I read in it?  Three is the sign of the Trinity, true. The movements of Creation, in this case my dog, often held deeper meanings than the obvious, so why counter-clockwise? What did it all mean?

It was a brief thought, fleeting, only, and in the next split second I snapped back to my more modern-day mindset. But I treasure that small split-second, because it gave me just a tiny glimpse into the worldview of a Celtic Christian back in the 7th century.

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A Celtic Cross in Knock, Ireland. Photo from Wikicommons

At that point I had been studying the Celts and their unique take on Christianity for a couple of years, on and off, all part of my research for my Traveller’s Path trilogy. I had also started writing the book (which turned into three, and now maybe back into two), and had come smack up against one of the great difficulties of writing historical fiction: how do I, as a 21st century novelist, truly represent the worldview of a 7th century person?

The short answer is, I can’t. Not really. If you think about the gulf that exists between here and then, the changes in the world, the history that lies behind us which the 7th century people could not even imagine, it becomes pretty clear that to write with the “true” point of view of someone from that time and place is nearly impossible. However, I believe that this element of historical fiction is often where the “bad” is separated from the “good”, and the “good” from the “excellent”. When I finish a historical novel, do I feel like I have truly visited that time and place, or do I feel like the characters reacted in a far too “modern” fashion to the events of the day? Writers come their work with lots of ideas about religion, equality, wealth, democracy, etc that, for most people in most of the world’s history, would be utterly incomprehensible. If they are not careful, those ideas can leak through into a story in inappropriate places.

So what is a historical novelist to do? How do you step into the mind and worldview of a time so far removed from your own?

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Well, I don’t want to speak for all historical novelists, as I’m sure every one has a different method, but I can tell you what I did.

First of all, I cheated. Hah. I knew from the outset that I couldn’t do justice to the time and place in a way that I would be satisfied if I tried to make my POV character someone from that time. And besides, the type of novel I  love to read is the portal fantasy, in which a person from our time/place is somehow transported into another. Think of the Pevensies going through the Wardrobe, or even Harry Potter entering Hogwarts. So I decided that my main POV (point of view) character would be from our time, who, on Halloween, has an unfortunate encounter with demons and ends up in the 7th century.

This enabled me to write about the 7th century from a modern mindset, and allowed me to insert some explanations of events or culture that the person native to that time and place wouldn’t think twice about. And I could do that without too much difficulty or awkwardness in the narration.

After I got going, I did some writing from the POV of some of the characters in the book, just to help me get into their heads, so to speak. Some of those made it into the book, eventually. Hopefully they will “sound” realistic to the readers!

Secondly, research. Which goes without saying, of course. I found this fascinating, but also harder than I expected. For example, one of the best ways a historical novelist can learn about the mindset of people who actually lived in the time they are writing about is to read documents and letters actually written during that time period. There isn’t much of that available for 7th century Northumbria. This wasn’t an especially literate age. So while you can extrapolate a certain amount of things, in the end a lot of what the scholars have to say about the lives of ordinary people is speculation. So at times I felt like I was skating on thin ice as I wrote, but I consoled myself with the fact that, hey, this is fiction, after all, not a strict historical survey of the times.

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Well, yes, Google is helpful! But I promise I also did research that involved actual books…

Immersing myself into the people and times of the book, and imagining in fictional form what life was like from their point of view brought me to that day as I watched my dog wander around the living room.

The Celts practiced a polytheistic religion, worshipping many gods which controlled many different aspects of life, especially nature. When they converted to Christianity, this sensitivity to the natural world was enhanced, for now they recognized God Himself, the Creator, as being responsible for everything around them.The pagan Celts would see significance in the direction a crow would fly, so too would the Christian Celt, but in a slightly different way. God created all and directs all, they reasoned, and since God is a loving, intelligent, all-powerful Being, it is obvious that everything that happened was directed by Him to happen. Christians today still believe this of course, but the Celtic Christians took this very seriously. So, in their view, if my dog was circling around the table counter-clockwise three times, he was prompted by God to do so, and therefore there was divine significance in it, and if I would meditate on this, and prayerfully ponder it, the message might become clear.

To live as a Celtic Christian was to live in a world that was hyper-saturated with God’s presence, where the natural world was a form of revelation to us in a way we find hard to understand today. It takes a certain form of seeing which we dismiss now as superstitious, but in reality was far from it. As the title of this post say, basically Everything Means Something, and not just “something”, but in particular, Everything is a message from the God of Creation to us, if we would but have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Which is why, that day in my living room, when I got a tiny flash of what it would mean to live in a world like that, I was profoundly grateful. It was a very small link to some of my ancestors in the faith, and it gave me a glimpse of a world drenched in meaning and haunted with God’s presence in a way I hadn’t experienced before.

I don’t have the ability to stay in that world for too long. My mind has inherited the Enlightenment and the Age of Rationality and Materialism and all the other schools of thought between that time and our own.

But that’s why historical fiction is so much fun. For a short time we can leave our time behind and enter another one, and get a taste of what it was like “back then.” And for the writer, this is both a terrifying challenge and a deeply satisfying exercise, if your words come out just right.

Photo credit: Celtic Cross, St. Patrick’s, Drumbeg, by Albert Bridge

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2017 Year of Fun Reading: Wrap Up!

All good things must come to an end. Before I head off bravely into a brand-spanking new year, I have to pause for a moment to say farewell to my last year’s reading challenge, the Year of Fun Reading.

This was a reading challenge that I found on the blog of Modern Mrs. Darcy (if you don’t listen to her What Should I Read Next? podcast, you should!). Each month I read a book that fit into the category she suggested, and, as the title suggested, it was actually a lot of fun.

To put my own spin on it, I tried to read books that fit into either speculative fiction or history, to complement my focus here on the blog.

As I went though the year I discovered authors I had never read before, which was great. I read good books, and not-so-good books, and rediscovered an old favourite. As I close up the series, I wanted to follow my previous pattern and do a wrap up of what I learned through this year of reading.

Just as a refresher, here are the categories, in order, and the books I read for each one. I didn’t do them all in the order that the “official” list suggested, and I borrowed one or two from the alternate list of “Reading for Growth” instead of “Reading for Fun”…which got me into a little trouble. I realized as I compiled my list I actually read two Books I was Excited to Read but Haven’t Read Yet because I has forgotten that I did this category at the beginning of the series instead of at the end, so I did it again. I also only read eleven books, not twelve, due to less time for reading that I thought I would have in the summer, and Way of Kings was a long book! Oops. Oh well.

Links included to each post, just in case you want to refresh your memory, or are visiting my blog for the first time (hi!).

January – Book I Chose for the Cover – Hot Lead, Cold Iron, by Ari Marmell

February – Book You Are Excited to Read or Borrow But Haven’t Read Yet – Queen of the Tearling, by Erika Johansen

March – Un-put-downable Book – Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch

April – Book Set in a Place You’ve Never Been But Would Like to Visit – Daughter of Smoke and Bone

May  – Book I’ve Already Read –  Book of the Dun Cow, by Walter Wangerin, Jr.

June – Book About Books or Reading – Ink and Bone (Great Library #1), by Rachel Caine

July – Book of Any Genre Addressing Current Events – Company Town, by Madeline Ashby

August/September – Book That Has More Than 600 Pages – Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

October – Book Recommended by Someone With Great Taste – Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

November – Book in the Backlist of a New Favourite Author – The Forgotten Girl, by Rio Youers

December – Book You Were Excited to Buy or Borrow But Haven’t Read Yet – Kin of Cain, by Matthew Harffy

Without further ado, here’s my wrap-up of the 2017 Reading Challenge:

  1. The book I liked the least – Well, this was tricky. I didn’t hate any of the books, but unknownthere were a few that were definitely underwhelming. But, Queen of the Tearling has to be the one I enjoyed the least. The plot holes and thinly veiled hostility towards religion was just too much for me. Meh. A close runner-up would be Daughter of Ink and Bone. I actually gave that book two stars, and Queen I gave three, mainly because of the sexy angel element in Daughter. It’s plot is much tighter than Queen of the Tearling, though, so all in all Queen of the Tearling gets the dubious nod for the book I liked the least.

 

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2. Book I liked the best – in contrast, it was quite easy to pick the book I liked the best, even though there were strong contenders for this one. But far and away the book I enjoyed the most was The Book of the Dun Cow. I love so much about this book, from the writing, to the characters, to the plot, to the beauty of the story. I read it under the category of  The Book I’ve Already Read, and I’m so glad I did. I loved it way back when, and my appreciation for it has only deepened with time. Fantastic and highly recommended.

3. Book/s I wished I had written – It goes without saying that Book of the Dun Cow would

Unknown fall under this category also. I can only hope to ever write that well, and it’s the kind of book that hits me in all the right ways. But in surveying the other books on the list, I would have to say Way of Kings would be my second choice for the book I wish I had written.  I do love epic fantasy, and found the world-building and concepts explored here interesting. It’s a great feat to build a world and characters as ably as Sanderson does. But I would try to trim that beginning just a wee bit, if I were to do it. But, hey, he’s a multi-best-selling author and I’m just a wannabe, so what do I know anyway?

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4. Book/s I’m still thinking about  – again, Book of the Dun Cow. ‘Nuf said. But setting that one aside, I would have to say that the book that lingered with me the most was Dark Matter. Aside from being a terrific thriller and a fun read, it raised questions that lingered long after I finished it.

 

5. Book I was most disappointed in – the nod for this has to go to Company Unknown-2Town. I had high hopes for this one, and I really wanted to like it, but it just didn’t succeed in the ways that I wanted it to. Aspects of plot and characters were a bit too muddy, and the ending a little too out of left field. I want to support Canadian authors, and I was excited to read this one, which was picked as one of the Canada Reads books of 2017, but it just didn’t live up to my expectations of it. Bummer.

225x225bb6. Book that pleasantly surprised me – This was a pretty easy pick. I had been avoiding Ready Player One because I really dislike the “teen hero saves the world” plot, AKA Wesley Crusher. I haven’t read Ender’s Game, but I saw the movie and just couldn’t get into it because of that very reason. I figured that Ready Player One was just the same. But,my book guru recommended it, and as she and I have similar tastes in books, I gave it a try. And I liked it! Yes, perhaps the author got a bit carried away by the 1980s references and relied on them too much to carry the plot along, but, whatever. I found it a fun read. Really looking forward to what Spielberg is going to do with this on the big screen. If ever a book was made to be a movie, this one was!

7. Best writing – our of all the books I read this year for this challenge, there were three that stood out to me as having writing that is better than the rest:

  •   Book of the Dun Cow, by Walter Wangerin Jr. tops the list.  Wangerin’s poetic, yet5139RwDhQDL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_ simple style of writing here is a master class for writers. The voice of the book is distinct, with its folk-tale feel, and the reader falls under the story’s spell from the first page. But with the first introduction of Chauntecleer the Rooster and Mundo Cani Dog, you realize there is something more to this story than a simple children’s tale, depths which slowly unfurl along the way of the story’s slow telling. This book won the National Book Award for the U.S., and it is a deserving winner.
  • The Forgotten Girl, by Rio Youers. I fell in love with Youer’s writing when I read Weforgotten girlstlake Soul, one of the best books I’ve read in the last couple years and probably the one I have recommended to other people more than any other book recently. The Forgotten Girl didn’t have quite the same impact, but Youer’s skill in writing was still on display in this suspense thriller. I loved the way he wove a sweet love story into the midst of this story. I also love the portrayal of the main character and his father. Youers ability to write about love and relationships in more than just a superficial way is one I much admire, especially as he does it here in the midst of a super-charged plot. Very well done and a great read. Unknown
  • Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson. As I mentioned above, it’s not easy to create a whole new world and make it believable, but Sanderson does that here. Although I love big, long books, it’s been awhile since I’ve read any, just because I haven’t had the time. But this book reminded me why they are so much fun. Even though the beginning was a bit tough to get into, once I did I thoroughly enjoyed it. Now I understand why Sanderson is so very much admired for his epic fantasies!

All in all, I really enjoyed this year’s Year of Fun Reading. Thank you to Ann Bogel, the Modern Mrs. Darcy herself, who inspired this challenge. If any of you are wanting to do something similar, she has her new challenge for 2018 up on her blog right now.

However, I’m going to do something different for 2018. Come back next week for the reveal of my new Reading Challenge for the New Year!