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Mysterious Christian Mystery

PW says Christian mystery--in the classic sense--is a tough sell.

Can "Whodunits" Still Do It? Part 1

Maybe I'm missing the point, but there's a lot of "modern" Christian mystery/suspense on the shelves. Pretty much every publisher who does fiction has some or has made a concerted go of it. Maybe there isn't a lot of classic mystery, but is there much classic anything? There's a good heap of cozy mystery.

I don't know. Is it harder for "classic mystery" than for other classic genres among all the modern ones?

Review: Compass of Affection

You know that moment before you sneeze? How the tickle gets worse by incremental degrees up to the point where you swear a static-charged horsefly is flitting against the walls of your nostril. You experience that last expectant moment of complete torture only to finally explode your face off, rocket out the microscopic irritant that couldn’t be borne any longer.

Paraclete just sent me a copy of Scott Cairns’ newest book of poetry, Compass of Affection. I’ve read many of the poems now and felt a growing sense that these are bits of life, my own life, the common experiences I’ve not had the time or ability to reflect upon as thoroughly. And if only I had the insight and the words Scott does.

Beautiful. Deep. Inspiring. True. I don't know if life can be lived fully without such reflective art. We live in our skin so tragically unaware sometimes. Yet this is what it is to be rocketed into the life around you, tapped in to the physical experiences of a spiritual reality, existing all around us, yet somehow just beyond the realm of expression. Scott Cairns gets it. Gets you. Gets us. Read it. Absorb and grow.

“Setting Out” appears on the back cover. I recommend you do too.

"Readers will wait ... if the book's good enough."

God knows I've tormented my fellow editor and friend, Shannon Hill plenty over the past year. So for my first anniversary with WaterBrook, it's nice I can set the record straight with Lauren Winner's article in PW, The Series Still Rules. I mean, how much do we admire this?

"This fall, WaterBrook is releasing When the Heart Cries, the first in a three-volume Amish romance series by debut author Cindy Woodsmall.... WaterBrook is so excited about When the Heart Cries that they considered moving up the publication date for the sequel. But after talking to Woodsmall, who didn't want to be rushed, WaterBrook decided to allow the traditional 12 months between installments. 'For the quality of the novels and the sanity of the authors, we are trying to stay with one book a year,' says Hill. 'Readers will wait if they need to and if the book's good enough.'"

And according to the favorable PW review, Cindy's good enough. But it seems editors who go to the mat for their authors like this are rare, even in CBA. In publishing, and especially Christian publishing, it's a collaborative effort to produce great books, and finding an editor who respects your timeline and provides a safehaven of loyalty to let quality develop can't be overestimated. So well done, Shannon. You'll make the Editor Hall of Fame yet.

Devil's Day

I can't make this stuff up, folks. Just read this from my inbox. Maybe you saw it too.

INDUSTRY NEWS [From Christian Retailing]

"Tomorrow, 06-06-06, marks release of 'The Rapture'

In one of the year's biggest marketing tactics, tomorrow, June 6—or 06-06-06—a slew of products both Christian and secular will release. [Among them,] Tyndale House Publishers will release the third and final prequel to its best-selling “Left Behind” series, The Rapture, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.
LaHaye and Jenkins also have partnered with a Christian bookstore to sell the “Left Behind” books' softcover versions for $6.66."

"[Oh, and by the way, in case you're from Mars and don't know] The number 666 is considered by some as the Mark of the Beast in the Book of Revelation."

Now does that strike anyone else as just a wee bit flagrant? I'm not going to call for a boycott, or even anything more than this blog equivalent of an exasperated sigh at the marketing monkeys who put this one together--and not just because I'm jealous I didn't have any part in it. No really. I'm completely disgusted and demand to know how many Satanists at Tyndale are jumping up and down for joy at this.

In other news, belated congrats to industry indie Howard Publishing and Denise Hunter for the ForeWord gold award for excellence in fiction to Saving Grace.

So, not all bad news on Devil's Day.

Real Life or Nothing Like It

I think blogging is about 4 times removed from real life.

Live is dimension 1. Writing about live is dimension 2. Typing on computer, bypassing hand to paper, is dimension 3. And typing into the little box to post on the web is probably somewhere down near 4 or 5. Even if we don’t just assume it loses a generation between every permutation, it does somehow seem to become less substantial with every step away from live. If we all lived our experiences and wrote our ideas out long-hand (rather than sitting in front of the little sanitized box on the blog service trying to think of what to say), wouldn’t that make the entries more “real?”

That’s one of the modern crises that makes Luci Shaw’s new book The Crime of Living Cautiously seem so important. Catch this thought from Chapter 7, “The Risky Adventure of the Unknown”:

As Jesus’ contemporary followers, we are offered two alternatives: to continue merely existing in the dull, assumed safety of what we think we know, a stagnant pond of sameness, remaining blindly complacent about our unfruitful, conventional (though still uncertain) little lives, or to dive into the unknown and unexpected, trusting God to carry us along on his rushing river of living into the freshness of new realms, larger horizons.”

I'm commandeering her a little to relate her thoughts to what’s currently happening with the desensitization and destruction of real life. But this "crime of caution" seems to have bearing on the pervasive escapism in our present culture. I don’t ordinarily go in for this Chicken-Little fatalism about the world going to hell in Jessica Simpson’s Arrow handbag (though it is), but many of us are in real danger of forgetting what “real live” is. Raised understanding that Dick Clark giving his “live” New Year’s Eve special was really recorded earlier, we’ve lived our lives multiple times removed from the physical situations and places that populate our existence. Though we know live is somehow better, somehow more important, we’re not entirely sure why. And maybe it’s simply because of how rare it is given that the majority of life is experienced through instant replay after the moment has passed, captured and wrapped in film. We don’t even have to go so far as Neal Gabler’s thesis in Life, the Movie. When the present becomes the past, it’s safe. We can forget about it. All that matters is what’s to come.

This homogenized, sanitized, packaged version of life is the opposite of real. And it doesn’t help when friends and colleagues seem content to “live” their lives behind the glass. Industry standards have a way of downplaying personal preference and individual experience. Maybe it’s just the way things are. Maybe it is for a higher cause to elevate our immediate experiences into universal (salable) packages. But what is the price?

I’ve recently experienced an undeniable coalescence in Luci’s book, arriving just in time to cast a soft, sepia-toned filter on this new phase unfurling in my family’s life. The influence of her ideas has affected me and I realize it will cost me something to accept it. But how much greater is a life lived, knowing every second is unalterably influencing events, your life experience deepened by everyone else’s around you, your contribution made greater by everything with which you come in contact? In reading this book I’m infected by an ancient philosophy passed down through Luci’s father’s mentor’s mentor’s mentor, past the traps and pitfalls of sanitized phony life, all the way back to Abraham’s hope, looking up to the sky and seeing the shining pinpoints of you and me and all of us twinkling a hopeful promise that real, risky life would not be discontinued. For him and all our ancestors, we were the risky unknown to come, the unfulfilled glory yet to reveal.

For those who’ve noticed a certain distance between them and real life, I urge you to slowly digest this small book. It’s been an antidote for me against common forgetfulness. Wisdom is proportional to actual experience. I can’t manufacture it or pretend it’s the same thing 4 times removed. It isn’t, and that’s why I can’t simply review this book, recommend it, and move on. A review of this book would be like trying to rate a pregnant woman on her high-diving form or absence of splash. It doesn’t really work. It’s too big, too substantial, too full of potential. I want only to recommend the wisdom herein, not the presentation, the binding, the pretty turns of phrase (of which there are many). Each succinctly told tale, each poignant thought leaves the impression that one could spend all day meditating on that single patch of ground and not fully explore its depth.

I’ve often had this feeling, a sense of present history in a place. I imagine it’s near-palpable in the Holy Land. There can be an overwhelming presence and weight of the lives and events that took place in a particular spot, under the trees, on the stones. Luci Shaw’s thoughts have that kind of presence, as though in reading them, you’re in a place where history has weight. Of course, all words existed long before we came to them. Yet the wonder of ancient truths, captured by succinct, efficient prose seems far less a rarity in Luci’s world.

It’s no surprise then that she admits she’s always written more “from enthusiasm than from discipline.” The idea that duty and commitment become irrelevant when you’re controlled by the words and phrases and connections bubbling up within. It’s an interesting antidote to the near-proverbial wisdom often repeated at writers’ conferences by career writers. Certainly, there’s room for balance between the extremes of patiently hoping the muse will show up, and chasing her down the street to pounce on her. Writing regularly ensures I’m gaining experience. But without living in the moment, bound to the risk of “real live” experience, no amount of writing discipline is going to make me worth reading.

In the end, I think her “definition-in-process” of faith sums up pretty well the gravity of these thoughts on living life fully (echoing 1 Corinthians 2:10-16):

”Faith is a widening of the imagination. Imaginative faith takes off the blinders, moves beyond pinched, linear thinking into the wide, unfathomable possibilities into which the Holy Spirit invites us.”

I’m looking forward to the on-going discovery of transposing the spiritual insights in this book to the daily practices of the writing life. I’m sure I’ll have more ideas to share soon.

PW: Fall Books on Faith More "Literary than Literal"

And there was much rejoicing throughout the land.

The Crime of Living Cautiously, part 2

It's interesting to note from the acknowledgments page (which you all read first too, I know you do), that this book grew out of conference talks and encouragement of friends. That, to me, is a good indication that this isn't just another book the author cranked out (which is to say nothing about those that don't derive from such sources. It simply tells me this information was pondered an unusually long time before hitting the page and my appreciation of it should take that into account).

The first chapter is an interesting account about how Luci Shaw came to be immortalized bungee jumping off a New Zealand bridge. She admits that while proving gravity is not nearly as significant as other risks involving service to God's kingdom, the return to solid ground held a wonderful reversal for her in the sense of what it must be like "reaching heaven" after spending time in a dangerous and uncertain place. You might think she was just being whimsical (and no doubt there was some of this present), but this wasn't something she did for a personal thrill. As one can assume from her poetry, she lives always looking for the metaphors. This author spends her life cultivating the stories. And right off, she dedicates some time discussing the origin of her death-defying impulses, the genetic tendencies passed down from her globe-trotting evangelist father, finally arriving at the summation that for her, life lived requires risk.

I should note to some of you other jaded readers here that there are questions at the end of the chapter that stuck in my jaw for a few moments. I can't help but feel these are usually implanted by some overeager marketer bent on adding some "perceived value" to the package. But when I actually took some time thinking about them, they weren't bad. "What was the biggest risk you ever took? ... What was the result?" Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't think of any true risk I'd taken that turned out badly, with no redemption. And that's really the point here, to get to the redemption, as Luci puts it, to "Live the Resurrection." (More on this next time.)

I've only read about 1/3 so far, but I'm really trying to make the short book last. Her thoughts create. They state in such a way as to suggest a response of wonder and further reflection. Some examples:

* The idea that the master returns to find the steward who did nothing with his talent, calling him a criminal, in Eugene Peterson's version. How often we forget that sometimes doing nothing isn't simply a waste, but a criminal act against God.

* The idea that another book might be written on "the blessing of rest and contentment with who one is, what one's life is about." "But this is not that book." There is balance offered here, not extremism or fanatical one-sidedness. There is, of course, an equally opposite truth to this ideal of risk-taking. Balancing the ideal of risk with its opposite seems to me we're talking of one of those stronger truths that involves paradox and leaves room for more. Something akin to the sermon on the mount.

* The idea that perfect love casts out fear. In this context, you can feel the weight of that idea. If you could know greater love than the greatest love you've ever experienced, what would that be like? Would you be afraid? I remember the song "I Can Only Imagine" and think of the line "Will I be able to speak at all?" In the presence of God, love will cast out fear. We fear God here and retain dignity. But there, fear will be banished. I can't imagine it, but it's awe-inspiring to try.

These are only thoughts from the first few chapters. There are many more, like the thought that trust requires acceptance of risk in the same way faith requires acceptance of doubt. Inherent in both trust and faith, we must all accept the presence of "some potentially dangerous unknown." Without it, one can assume, both are dead.

I'll have more to share soon, but for now (and for those of you who missed the ad playing at Marriott's during the convention because you were watching static over at Tom Bodett's) imagine this respected, dignified, well-bred older woman with her toes out on the edge of that platform. Confronting the stereotypes, the assumptions, the expectations, the reasoned advice and subjective prejudices from both sides—the extreme sports fanatics and the disapproving Christians—flinging it all off to stand at the edge and look out into the unknown. It's an image I want to hold on to as I look for the balance she's trying to inspire here in us, to find that place of consistently living into the unknown, wedged between contentment and risk, and leaning slowly out into the fall.

The Crime of Living Cautiously

Short post today since I'm behind the pile, but I wanted to at least point out one thing.

I've seen many proposals and new books on this recently, so I don't think it's a stretch to say there's a trend emerging. It has much to do with Mark Bertrand's post of July 29th "Safe or Good?" on the Narnian view of our terrifyingly holy God. I think I mentioned it before, but I want to draw your attention to one of these new books I've recently received.

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face... You must do the thing you think you cannot do. --Eleanor Roosevelt

Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either daring adveture, or nothing. --Hellen Keller

Luci Shaw's new book The Crime of Living Cautiously" is an exciting read so far, a meditation on the art of living dangerously, rather than assuming God wants us to "be careful little eyes what we see." So far I'm unable to process it all, but I plan to give a full report very soon. Check back in a couple days and I'll try to have some other good food for thought from the book.

Some Postmodern / Emergent books

Somehow it escaped mention before, but Mikal Marrs reminded me of this article over at Publisher's Weekly with the catchy title, "Pomos Toward Paradise." How I forgot to post something on it, I don't know, but it seemed vaguely familiar to me as I was reading through...

Anyway, TMI. I meant to mention it here for your very much edification, and forgot. Apologies all around my little forgetful brain.

You'll need to sign up for a 30 day free trial to view it, but seriously, it's worth it. Check out some of the books mentioned.

Brian McLaren's New Kind of Christian
The Hollywood Project: A Look into the Minds of the Makers of Spiritually Relevant Films by Alex Field
The Journey Towards Relevance by Kary Oberbrunner (both from Relevant Books)
Future Church: Ministry in a Post-Seeker Age by Jim L. Wilson (Broadman & Holman)
Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller (Thomas Nelson)
Dan Allender's To Be Told: Know Your Story, Shape Your Future (Waterbrook).

This last book, set to release in March, is "expected to appeal to the postmodernist love of story by encouraging readers to reflect on the story of their lives."

Now all you fiction-writers take note of that last line..."postmodernist love of story." I'm assuming that description comes from someone at Waterbrook. Might want to shop your pomo fiction over there.

The article.

Thanks, Mikal!

Revolution: Authenticity, Day 1

I'm pissed this evening. No use hiding it. So, sorry if I'm a bit squirrelly today.

I attended a mandatory "media group" meeting today. It's killing me right now that I'm not at liberty to be completely authentic about it. I want to say some things. It really, really bothered me. Yet even so, it seems as though it used to bother me more. I used to resist any restraint like this as slimy, disease-ridden evil. As I've gotten older, become a parent, adopted a "professional persona," it's uncomfortable, but I've adopted fears. I don't want to be seen as a bratty, impulsive miscreant by my coworkers. "Maturity" would have me believe it's silly to get all riled up about things. But that's not brave-heart talk. That's not an Aragorn notion. That's not very wild at heart, is it? (My pseudo-Biblical evangelicalism is beginning to show...)

Fact is, as I was sitting there in the back row today, I realized a few things. I'm not going to convince any hard-core traditionalists to accept the revolution. You know who I mean, I think. They simply don't see the need and think we're just fools (or sinners) for bringing it up. No matter what we do, we just don't see the same glass of water. That's abundantly clear in my line of work. It's an impasse of values and perception. Though our theology and ideology are completely in sync, what we value will always polarize us. And though they will never accept the spiritual significance of Marilyn Manson, hymns and P.O.D will continue to share the same iPod on my desk because I value what both have to offer. That the traditionalists can't see value in the same things is indeed unfortunate, but we're not going to change them. And I guess they're just going to have to continue being offended, because like it or not, true wisdom cares to understand what others value.

Authenticity! That's what we value. It's what this revolution is about. Being authentic is the sacred value of the emergent church and the writing revolution and the WTO riots and behind the loathing of politics and pretty much everything these "hooligans" claim as their sacred values, whether they can explain it or not. Remember Holden Caufield's phonies? The traditional conservative capitalists (the same ones who got Bush reelected) have a tendency to make themselves incapable of seeing the "post-modern generation" as anything other than disrespectful, slovenly, misguided, inarticulate miscreants. But at least we're real miscreants. Some of them will continue to villify whatever doesn't meet with their orthodoxy and use the slipery slope argument to deny any compromise that might allow conversation to develop. And they'll continue to think the world is going to hell on a Segway.

Yet rather than villify them right back, I want to try to appreciate them. After all, the world IS going to hell. I can see how they'd think Christina Aguillera is leading children to practice witchcraft and voo-doo. I'm the first to agree that media saturation has completely replaced God in our society. But let's also be rational and stop labeling everything for a moment. Step back. There's no underground organized conspiracy. It's the same devil he's always been. Pride, selfishness, and money-hunger are the same things today as Jesus was dealing with. And let's not forget that the gospel says there is nothing so filthy that can't be made sacred.

There is only one revolutionary answer to saving the traditionalists along with this heart-sick world, and that is in allowing authenticity to revolutionize your life. I plan to meditate on that for the next few days. I hope you'll be back to do the same.