Archive for the ‘Faith’ Category
Just Reviewed Katharine Eliska Kimbriel’s “Night Calls” at SBR
Folks, today’s review of Katharine Eliska Kimbriel’s NIGHT CALLS is up over at Shiny Book Review (SBR for short) and it’s something special.
You might be wondering why that is. Well, today is the ninth anniversary of my beloved husband Michael’s death. It’s not easy for me to do much of anything on days like this, so if I feel strong enough and competent enough and capable enough to review a book, right there — in and of itself — you should realize I feel very strongly about it.
But more to the point, NIGHT CALLS is a heartwarming book that should delight all lovers of fantasy. It features a strong, capable young woman in Alfreda Sorensson who’s no one’s plaything; unlike the meek and mild female characters in Stephanie Meyer’s conception, Alfreda does for herself, thank you. And in taking on responsibility slowly, we can see how Alfreda grows and changes and learns . . . all good, all life-affirming, all an excellent message if you need one, but done in such a way that it’s subordinate to the story itself.
To write a novel that’s more than the sum of its parts is very difficult. Now, I’ve reviewed four of Katharine Eliska Kimbriel’s novels, and all four have been able to do this to one degree or another, in two different genres, no less — an outstanding record that I’ve rarely seen out of anyone not named Rosemary Edghill. And best of all, to my mind, is this — NIGHT CALLS is a comfort book in that there’s so much good in it, so much meaning in it, that it’s something that I can see myself turning back to read and re-read many times over the years — just as I’ve done with Rosemary’s TWO OF A KIND and MET BY MOONLIGHT and all her shared work with Mercedes Lackey, not to mention Rosemary’s excellent “Hellflower” series (written as eluki bes shahar) and her three novels in the “Twelve Treasures” series.
That’s the highest praise I can possibly give.
Now, why would I want to write all this on one of the most difficult days of the year? Well, it’s simple. Michael and I both loved to read young adult novels. We found them to be interesting, in the main, because seeing a coming of age story done well is, in and of itself, life-affirming. If you can do it with some humor and heart — as Patricia C. Wrede did in CALLING ON DRAGONS, say, or as Diana Wynne Jones did in her “Chrestomanci series” — so much the better.
And trust me, Ms. Kimbriel did exactly that in NIGHT CALLS.
It was reading books like Ms. Kimbriel’s that inspired me to start writing ELFY in the first place. Which is why I’m very glad to be able to read and review her work, even though until this last year I hadn’t a clue it was available. The good part about that is that I’ve read four of her excellent books this year, and all four of them — the three in her “Chronicles of Nuala” series and NIGHT CALLS — are likely to be on my “best books of 2013” list.
This makes me wonder how many other excellent writers are out there that I don’t yet know about. (“More writers left to explore?” I say. “Whee!”)
And it also gives me some hope that my own writing career is not yet dead, even though my health this year has been terrible and I’ve been slow off the mark to get things done despite all the good will in the world due to that.
Anyway, that’s why I reviewed Ms. Kimbriel’s excellent NIGHT CALLS today. For hope. For inspiration. For the belief that despite bad things happening, good people can still win out.
And I think that if you give Ms. Kimbriel’s work a try, you, too, will be favorably impressed.
Easter Week Odds and Ends
Folks, I’ve been engrossed in several major projects this week, which is why I haven’t had much time for blogging. That said, it’s Easter Week and there are several topics I’d like to discuss — so let’s get to it.
First, there have been a number of stories recently about good deeds that have gone viral. (This particular phrase is vexing in and of itself, mind you. “Gone viral” used to discuss epidemics, not Internet usage. But I digress.) The latest one is about a family who had their meal “comped” at Olive Garden in Vernon Hills, IL . . . and of all things, people are actually posting comments saying this particular complimentary meal was a stunt by the public relations firm that represents the Olive Garden chain.
Look. I really don’t understand the motivation behind people posting every single thing that happens to them online, as if it’s not real unless it’s discussed on the Internet. But I’ve seen story after story lately about good deeds (such as the forty dollars left by an anonymous person on a windshield because a woman had a “half my heart is in Afghanistan” bumper sticker on her car), all of which have been picked up after some individual posts a story online — usually at Reddit or Twitter or Instagram, or any of the services that allow you to post a picture and a short caption of what’s going on.
I adore stories about good deeds. Yet there’s something about how people are posting these stories themselves that bugs me.
I’m glad that people are reaching out to help others in a time of need. (The first story about the Olive Garden is a case in point.) But I’m very concerned about this trend of posting every single thing you see or hear or want to discuss online, because it’s a way of eroding your personal head space.
Or to put it more bluntly, people seem to be giving their privacy away much more easily than ever before. And that is an extremely worrisome trend.
Second, there was a sad story today that I wish I didn’t have to write about. A retired couple from Indiana had moved to Washington to be close to their son, his wife and their newborn grandson, and had spent the first ten days of the child’s life with him. But today, a drunk driver who had already surrendered his driver’s license hit the couple as they were crossing a street with their grandson and daughter-in-law, killing the retired couple instantly.
The only good thing is that so far, the mother and child have survived. But they are both in critical condition, and the outcome is far from certain. I hope to post an update (with luck, a positive one) in a few days’ time.
This particular drunk driver had five previous DUIs, this according to the UK newspaper The Daily Mail. Somehow, he managed to slam into not one person, but four — and his weak excuse amounted to, “The sun was in my eyes, and I didn’t see them,” according to newspaper reports (such as this one from the Washington Post).
Mind you, this is a paraphrase of what the various newspaper and TV reports I’ve read (and heard) have said. But from all reports, after hitting four people including a newborn baby, this is all the drunk driver in question (I refuse to name him) had to say for himself.
He’s obviously learned nothing.
And last but not least, it is Easter Week. I’ve written about Good Friday before (last year, in fact), and about Easter itself (two years ago) . . . basically, Easter Week is all about transfiguration, repentance and redemption. And as such, it can be a very stressful time to deal with if you have any empathy at all, or any sense of what, historically, Christianity has meant to this world (for good and ill).
Religious historian Mircea Eliade wrote extensively on Christianity, and because I’ve read most of Eliade’s work, I realize that in many respects, Christianity was a major step forward.
Mind you, there were good Pagan cults that were suppressed, subsumed and/or stamped out. That was not good by any stretch of the imagination.
But there also were bad Pagan cults and bad pre-Christian religions of all sorts that were also suppressed, subsumed and/or stamped out, too.
On balance, Christianity when it was adopted was a major step forward. There were women who advocated for the church in early times — perhaps more of them than we’re currently aware of, because the chroniclers of that time were largely male.
It was only later, when the Church fathers (always fathers) got their hooks into Christianity that abuses were suffered. And while there have always been good and kindly priests of all sorts in the Catholic Church and other Christian sects (as there have been in other churches worldwide throughout our history), the Christian faith as a faith must be vigilant against anyone or any thing that perverts its overall message.
Which, believe it or not, boils down to one and only one thing: love one another. (Jesus said so, too. It’s in the Bible. Go look it up.)
Or, if you want two things, try the Golden Rule. (Which Wiccans know as, “An ye harm none, do as thou wilt.” Same thing.)
Everything else is window dressing. And everything else, as such, should be viewed that way — with extreme caution.
Jesus is celebrated because he loved everyone. The widows. The orphans. The lepers. Those who didn’t have enough to eat. The homeless. The scared. The dying. The condemned.
Jesus loved them all.
Yet the modern church, for the most part, has gone away from this. (There are individual exceptions, such as Mother Teresa, Father Damien the Leper Priest, and so forth.) They need to realize that any faith, if it’s any good at all, needs to care about everyone.
Not just those it understands.
Everyone.
Meaning the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community. Meaning women who want to be priests rather than nuns (great as nuns are, it’s not the same job, yet it’s the best any female can do in the Catholic Church). Meaning kids who get so many piercings, you can barely see their skin.
Or convicts. Prostitutes. Villains of all sorts and descriptions . . . because redemption is possible even in the worst of all circumstances.
That’s what Jesus said, and that’s the life Jesus lived. It was a heroic life in many respects, which is why Christianity is a very tough religion (I’m not the only one who’s said so, either; so did G.K. Chesterton).
We tend to view Jesus as an example rather than a man like any other man — or, perhaps better stated, a man with a spark of divinity in him that could not be denied even by his detractors.
Maybe we’d do a little better in this life if we viewed what he did as a man in comforting widows and orphans, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc., etc., and tried to do the same in whatever small ways we possibly can.
That way, we would show how much we truly care for others. And we’d be following both the Golden Rule and Jesus’s “Eleventh Commandment” (that of loving one another as Jesus loved us) — which is something worthwhile to do whether you’re a Christian, a NeoPagan, a Muslim, an atheist, or a Martian.
Reflections on Good Friday
Tomorrow is Good Friday, the day Christians observe Jesus’s crucifixion. It can be a very depressing day, partly because the idea of anyone being crucified for any reason is abhorrent, mostly because Jesus is adjudged one of the best people who’ve ever walked the face of the Earth even by most non-Christians. (Of course, Jesus is seen as the Son of God by Christians.) But he died via crucifixion, in agony, despite his goodness/divinity.
Yet for whatever reason, most non-priests would rather speak of Easter than Good Friday. Granted, Easter is a much easier holiday to speak of as it’s a day of celebration, forgiveness, and hope. (I wrote about Easter last year.) It’s a day that should be celebrated. But we also need to consider the importance of the day that preceded Easter — the day made Easter possible. That day is Good Friday, one of the worst days in the history of the world . . . the day the Son of God was “cut down to size” and forced to endure horrible suffering, then death, mostly because the politicians of his time were afraid of him.
Without getting too much into Jesus’s story (that’s for the Bible to tell, not me), I believe the reason we still observe Good Friday is because as a people, we cannot believe that perhaps the best person ever created was treated this terribly. Most religions, aside from Judaism, see Jesus, bare minimum, as a very good man: for example, some Buddhists see Jesus as a bodhisattva — someone who’s delayed his entry into the positive afterlife because he knows people alive on Earth need his help.** Others see Jesus as an important prophet, even if not the very last Son of God; the religions who see Jesus this way include the Church of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) and all branches of the Muslim faith (including my favorite branch, the Sufis).
That the politicians of that time could see Jesus, a very, very good man who helped others and went out of his way to do so, as some sort of threat to themselves still rings true 2,000 years later. That even the Son of God could be treated this way, with such callous cruelty, does not sit well with anyone of any reputable faith.
The good news is, we haven’t forgotten what happened to Jesus, and others like him (many other Christian and non-Christians). And because we haven’t forgotten, such terrible things as crucifixions became less common in the Western World within decades, then nearly extinct within a few hundred years.
Of course, the fact that Jesus was killed in this particular fashion — the most revolting, scary, dishonorable death known to the ancient world — resonated with anyone who heard it as the disgusting, disgraceful act that it was, which might be why crucifixion eventually died out. (Yes, Emperor Constantine I abolished it throughout the Roman Empire in 337 due to his faith in Jesus. But many others were disquieted by it before Constantine took his first breath, otherwise Constantine wouldn’t have been able to outlaw this form of punishment.)
Christians view what Jesus did as transforming the worst imaginable form of death into a sacred thing. Jesus took the pain of the world on his shoulders (and hands, and feet), and was able to largely keep from bitterness. Then, he was cut down from the cross and laid in a tomb.
Jesus died on the cross and is said, by Christians, to have saved everyone else who believes in Him from sin, and that is a weighty message indeed. But to put it in plainer, more secular, terms, we should try not to lose hope no matter how bad things are. Because no matter how bad we think it is, there’s always the possibility something better can happen. Which is why the death, and resurrection, of Jesus Christ should be of interest even to non-Christians.
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** Please excuse this very rough way of looking at Buddhism; while I know better, I can’t seem to explain it any better than this. My late husband Michael was a Buddhist, and my late best friend, Jeff, admired Buddhism also . . . I’m sure they’d do a better job explaining Buddhist views on Jesus, but I hope this will serve.
Jeff’s Memorial Service, and Why I Can’t Go
Folks, this is a terrible thing. I’ve been struggling all week with the fact that my friend Jeff Wilson is dead, that I’ll never be able to help him again, that I’ll never hear his voice again . . . and now, I can’t go to his memorial service, either.
The problem is very simple: the money isn’t there. I really want to go. I feel terrible that I can’t go. I want to be around people who knew Jeff at least a little bit — people who will understand why I feel so awful that he’s gone in a way my family can’t, my friends can’t (except for the very few who knew Jeff at all) — and it’s not going to happen without a major miracle (like winning $500 tonight in the state lottery; while I do have a ticket — I always played my numbers when Michael was alive, and I’ve continued to play them — I know how unlikely it is that I’ll win just the amount needed to go to Colorado at the absolute last minute).
Now, I suppose a major miracle is still possible and if so, I will be glad to come back here and say that if it happens. I know I prayed all week and hoped that somehow, in some way, I’d be able to get to Jeff’s memorial. But it’s in Colorado; I live in Wisconsin, and that’s the only reason I hadn’t already found a way to get out there and visit Jeff during the last five weeks of his life — while he fought a major medical crisis, looked to all concerned as if he’d turned the corner, was getting better and was sent to a nursing home for long-term rehabilitation and care — and then he died.
I know that Jeff wouldn’t care where I mourn him. That’s not the point. The point is that I wanted to be there so others who didn’t see Jeff in the same way I did would know to look for his good qualities. As I’d said before, Jeff’s personal situation was far less than stellar. Some people only view life in materialistic terms and don’t see that a life well-lived, where there’s a great deal of personal growth going on and a deeply spiritual outlook to boot, is one that’s worth living.
Jeff was poor in material things, except for books and his cats. But he was rich in everything else. That’s why I wanted to be there, so I could counter some of the materialism I was likely to find at his memorial service; Jeff wasn’t someone who had a big career or job or any money at all, but he was a wonderful person.
At any rate, I will never forget Jeff Wilson. Never. And I guess that’ll have to be enough for me, even though it surely doesn’t feel like it right now.
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Edited to add: Jeff’s memorial service has been called for 3 p.m. on Monday in Fort Collins, CO. He will be cremated, which was his wish . . . and the memorial service is to be held on what would’ve been Jeff’s 48th birthday. That’s yet another reason why I wanted to go, even though I have a plethora of reasons as it is. (As I’m sure you saw.)
Periodic State of the Elfyverse
Folks, it’s been a while, so it’s time for another “state of the Elfyverse” blog.
What’s going on with the Elfyverse right now is that I’m stalled in part 47 of AN ELFY ABROAD (the sequel to ELFY, which still hasn’t found a home). I have figured out an alternate beginning to ELFY which may help me find an agent who’ll understand it and help me find a publisher, but I haven’t yet managed to get it down in a way that makes any more sense than what I already have. (“May” being the operative word, of course.) And I managed to get a few thousand words into the ELFY prequel, KEISHA’S VOW . . . mind you, KEISHA’S is a big-time prequel as it’s set in 1954 and ELFY is present-day. (The dead characters in ELFY are alive and well in KEISHA’S, and it explains in part — or should, once completed — why one of the ELFY characters is such a mucked-up mess.)
Things get a bit more problematic when I start trying to fix an Elfyverse short story “Boys Night In,” as so far I’ve had comments like, “The dialogue makes no sense.” “They get into this way too easily.” “What’s the point of this again?” and so on. (I did get high marks for humor from one test reader. So I’m still doing something right.) So that story is in need of extensive revision, perhaps to the degree Carolyn See recommends in her book MAKING A LITERARY LIFE, complete with the wine, the red pen, and more wine.
The good news is that I’m still hard after it; the bad news is that when I get stalled in a chapter (as I am in part 47 of EA) I just sit there until I figure out whatever’s bothering me. This is a far different process than what I had while Michael was alive, as we were both writing the story then and talking things out with him — always an interested audience, even when I wasn’t writing an Elfyverse story of any kind — made big messes like this one get solved a little faster. Or in this case, a lot faster as I’ve been stuck in the same place for at least three weeks.
Some of my friends who are authors write different things — say, a romance instead of a Western, or a hard SF story instead of a mystery — to break a hard block like this one. I’ve tried that in the past and for whatever reason, unless I have a really good idea in a different genre that takes off, it just doesn’t work for me. Whatever it is in my backbrain has to take its own, sweet time toward resolving itself, and then and only then can I get on with the business of writing.
While I’m doing all that, I continue to edit. And, of course, I comment, I blog when the mood strikes me (or a really big story hits that I know I can’t pass on no matter how blocked I feel at the time), and I just let things play out as they will.
See, the best thing we can do when we’re stalled on a project is to continue to have faith in ourselves. We’ve already written X words (in my case, probably well over 600,000 in the past seven years, and who knows how many before then? Many, many, many.), and we’re going to write more, so why fret it?
Or, as Michael used to tell me, “If you can’t write today, you will write tomorrow. And if you’re too ill to write tomorrow, you’ll write three times as much the next day.” (He knew me very well, and he was always right about such things.)
The upshot is, it’s pointless to fret, even though it’s very human that we do so . . . and sometimes, the best “medicine” with a story is to completely get away from it (perhaps by what my other writer-friends have suggested by writing something completely different, or perhaps a change of scenery or a vacation away from the MSS) so you can come back at it afresh.
I’m doing my best to listen to Michael’s advice, as it was always good, and try to be patient with myself. I’ve got a better shot that way at breaking the block in part 47, and then, once that’s gone, working on part 48 and winding up the first draft of EA, however many more chapters that’s going to be. (I estimate seven. But who really knows?) Once I’ve done that — completely managed to get the whole EA story out of my head and onto the page — then I have a better shot at fixing “Boys Night In” and perhaps writing an alternate opening to ELFY that might increase its chances of finding an agent or publisher who’ll love it and can’t live without it.
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