Winterland: A Dark Fairy Tale is my most personal story, as well as one of my personal favorites. Yes, it’s really bizarre. Which is why I describe in terms of “surreal,” “fairy tale,” and ‘dark fantasy.” However, while Winterland is a journey through a bleak landscape with strange, often disgusting, characters, it is also a journey [...]
Storytelling is an ancient custom, existing long before recorded history. While the mediums and methods have changed, stories continue to fascinate mankind. It’s a thread that traces as far back as the dawn of human history. Perhaps even more interesting are the thematic elements that humans consistently return to. Mythicist Joseph Campbell gathered these threads [...]
My novelette, Wickers Bog: A Tale of Southern Gothic Horror, is now available on Kindle for just 99 cents. I’m a huge fan of the craft of short story writing. It’s how I cut my literary teeth. After writing several novels, this year I’d hoped to take a break in order to concoct a tale [...]
Pushing the fictional envelope typically ends when reaching the brick wall of a reader’s credulity. Thing is, reader credulity varies. I have a friend who refuses to watch films like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings because “it’s not real.” He will, however, watch Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis defeat legions of bad guys, infiltrate [...]
Thrilled to announce that The Ghost Box, first book in my urban fantasy, paranoir series, is now available in audiobook. At the production wheel is audio dramatist and podcaster Randy Streu. (You can hear an audio sample of the production HERE.) I’m equally excited about the fact that Randy is currently producing the second in the [...]
In a recent Unbelievable podcast, pastor Tim Keller debated atheist Jeremy Rodell about whether humans “make sense without God.” At one point in the show the host reads from Keller’s latest book in which the author makes the claim that “Christianity is the only truly cross-cultural religion” and that unlike Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, which largely exist [...]
Cosmic horror is a growing subgenre in the ranks of horror fiction. Cosmicism is “the literary philosophy developed and used by the American writer H. P. Lovecraft in his weird fiction.” The Wikipedia definition follows: The philosophy of cosmicism states that there is no recognizable divine presence, such as a god, in the universe, and that humans [...]
Literary agent Wendy Lawton, who’s a member of the team I’m agented by, recently cautioned authors about publicly voicing their political opinions. In a Facebook post, she wrote: Guess what? You can’t win if you discuss politics on Facebook. No matter how passionately you feel about an upcoming election it is potentially damaging to open the [...]
Pastor John Piper, in this podcast, proffers a brief “Theology of Art.” His conclusion is that “Christians have deeper and better foundations for serious art than anybody.” While I agree with Piper, most of the evangelical artists (musicians, novelists, poets, craftspeople, etc.) I run into do not appear to have a well-developed “Theology of Art.” For [...]
That was the question posed by Dan Balow, President of Enclave Publishing, the premiere press for Christian speculative fiction. In his recent post, Theological Accountability Partners, Balow writes: Just because an author is a mature Christian, doesn’t mean they are immune from writing something containing shaky theology. In an effort to craft compelling phrases and [...]
