The Master's Artist

Wednesday Wrapup - February

For those of you interested in what the Master's Artists have been doing, we do a monthly Wednesday Wrapup.

Christopher Fisher: Things are going well at the Fisher household. I had surgery at the end of December and am as of last week officially off the pain meds. It's the first time I've been able to function without drugs for well over three years, so I'd say that's progress. Despite the general anxiety over the economy that I'm sure many of us have right now, I'm feeling more hopeful and happy than I have in a long, long time.

My biggest development of late is my new role as Fiction Editor at Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression. Between reading the current round of submissions for Relief, I'm working on finishing my novel, A History of Stone and Steel, and a collection of short stories titled "Cleanliness, Godliness, and Other Fictions." My goal is to have one of these finished before the end of the summer.

Oh, I also learned by email today that I have apparently won the British Lottery. Twice!

Mary Demuth: I have a book launch for Daisy Chain at Legacy Books in Plano, TX March 1st from 3—5. http://www.legacybooksonline.com.

In conjunction with the book, I’ve launched http://blog.myfamilysecrets.org—a place for people to share their family secrets anonymously.

I’ll teach fiction techniques at The Dallas Christian Writers Guild on March 2nd. http://www.dallaschristianwriters.com.

I’ll be attending the Christian Book Expo March 19—22nd. On Friday, March 20th, I’ll be part of a Christianity Today panel: Living Christianly in a Post-Christian Culture. A Christian consensus could once be pretty much assumed for Western culture, even if many people didn’t possess personal faith. That is no longer true. Christianity is today viewed as just one of many spiritual options—and often with suspicion. How do followers of Christ respond in both word and deed? Moderator: Andy Crouch, Culture Making (IVP), editor at Christianity Today. Panelists:    * Donald Miller, Greatest Hits, Blue Like Jazz (Nelson)     * Ruth Haley Barton, Sacred Rhythms (Inter-Varsity Press)     * Randy Frazee, Making Room for Life (Zondervan)     * Mary E. DeMuth, Authentic Parenting in a Postmodern Culture (Harvest House) http://www.christianbookexpo.com/authors/panels.php#li

And at the end of the month, I’ll fly to Mount Hermon to mentor nonfiction writers at the Head Start Mentoring Clinic and teach a major morning track called Boot Camp for Writers.

And in the midst of all that, I’m finishing up the final novel of the Defiance, TX trilogy.

Madison Richards: Well, I finally have something to tell everyone, although it has absolutely nothing to do with writing! My husband has accepted a job offer in Arizona! We'll be moving from our beloved and sometimes cold and snowy Pacific Northwest to the hot and sunny Southwest. There simply aren't enough hours in a day to complete such a major endeavor in a scant six weeks, but with God's help, I'm sure we'll make all our deadlines! Our current house is for sale, we've already got an accepted offer on a house in Arizona, and things are moving pretty fast! Wish me luck!

Donna Shepherd: I'm gearing up now for another day for writers - the Greater Harvest Workshops. This is an expansion of my vision to help other writers like me who want to glorify God with their writing. I also met with the writers' group I started - MAC Writers. We've had a lot of fun and moved forward in our goals since we started meeting.

Chizzy's Topsy Tale has been released. I posted a trailer on the book page. Kevin did such an amazing job - as usual. We have Dotty's Topsy Tale coming out soon, and he's currently working on yet another one. I have a different illustrator for another book, but more information on that to come soon!

On the grownup writing front, you can read my devotionals in two books to be released in March - A Cup of Comfort Devotional for Mothers and Daughters: Daily Reminders of God's Love and Grace and A Cup of Comfort Women of the Bible Devotional: Daily Reflections Inspired by Scripture's Most Beloved Heroines. I'm also working on a manuscipt for another book.

I'm teaching a wonderful study called Living God's Will: Reading and Applying God's Signs for Your Life (Following God Character Builders). I'd recommend that to anyone for a Sunday School class, small groups, or even a midweek church service.

The sun is shining brightly outside, but I'm not fooled - it's cold..brrrr. I don't think I will have ever looked more forward to spring than this year. Seems like I'm shivering all the time. My son says it's old age, but it couldn't be that, or could it??

Til next time! - Donna

You want to see God laugh? Tell him your plans.

I'm having surgery on my neck this Friday, so I won't be able to do the next review today like I had planned. I may not be able to blog here for several weeks, in fact, depending on how fast the recovery and what happens with the house, job, move, etc.

There is a silver lining in this cloud, though. For the first time in almost a year, I'm writing fiction again--and at a rate that is somewhat alarming. (I finished four short stories this last week.) I suspect this writing binge is spurred by the impending surgery and all the fears and worries that come along with it. I just hope it keeps up after it's all over.

Also, some very good news. I recently received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention in Pushcart Prize XXXIII, the Best of the Small Presses, 2009. The mention was for my short story titled, "The Priest of Exit 53," which appeared in Issue 1.2 of Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression. For those who have never read Relief, you should really check it out. And while you're at it, do a service for them and the literary community at large and buy a subscription. You'll thank me.

Please keep me and my family in your prayers this next month, especially my wife as she will, for a time, have to be the sole caretaker of not only four children, but also this very big baby.

Two Books, Two Reviews

 A while back, I mentioned that I would be posting two reviews--one positive, one not so positive--of two books from the mainstream market. Both of these were written some time ago (I think Mark and Jeanne have both read at least one of these, in fact), but I think they'll still give you a good idea of where I'll be going with the forthcoming CBA reviews. Taken together, they're a little long for a blog post, so I'll keep this introduction short. Check them out below the break line. 

So last time we talked briefly about literary criticism, and to get the ball rolling I provided a link to what I think is a pretty good article on the subject.(If you haven't read it yet, give it a look.) I also suggested we all ask ourselves what we think literary criticism is and, more specifically, what it is exactly that we are analyzing when we criticize a work of art?

Both questions--What is literary criticism? What do we look at when we critcize?--are important ones. But I think from a practical standpoint, the former is going to be less useful than the latter.

A Fellow of Infinite Jest

Yep. That's really me in the author pic. Click to enlarge and note the rather austere frown, like the ubiquitous, stone-set scowl on all those marble busts of very rich, very powerful, and yet for some reason very unhappy Roman aristocrats. The cause of my frown is of course not my abundant wealth and political sway.Though they can be a burden. (I say with a Peter Ustinov-ish yawn, whilst servants gently fan huge peacock plumes in the background). No, follow the angle of that frown down and back toward my deformed fifth and sixth cervical vertabrae and you'll see what's got my smile turned upside down. That, or maybe the demerol I was on when this picture was taken had me so relaxed I couldn't even control the muscles in my face.

Getting Back on Track

I had hoped by now to be well into my book critique/review project, but alas, we're still feeling the shockwaves of Hurricane Ike down here. I still have a four-ton pine down in my front yard, though I have at least managed to cut it up into several ten-foot sections and drag it out of the driveway with truck and chain. We still are down to only one vehicle, but at least the insurance company has sent us a nice check to cover the damages to "Old Glory."  The week-and-a-half I missed from work--because the power was out on most of the campus--has set me way behind on a half-dozen publications, but at least the emergency time off is paid (just one benefit of working for a state university). And it seems the phone companies are still having trouble bringing the communication networks in the area up to 100% . . . There is no positive contradiction clause in this sentence.

Actually, I'm completely bummed about that last one. AT&T is now telling us the high-speed Internet service we signed up for over a week ago will not go into effect until October 20th--courtesy of Ike and his little temper tantrum.  What really bugs me is I had hoped not only to be blogging on book reviews by now; I had hoped to be doing it from home, without the insufferable screen freezes and disconnections of dial-up. As things are, I'm still having to do all my online stuff from the office, where there are interruptions aplenty. (For example, between this and the last paragraph, I had to go down the hall to set up of photography studio.)

So anyway, here's another post coming in almost three hours late. And the purpose of this tardy little post? To set up a basic outline for my "CBA Challenge" and to set up a tentative schedule for my posts in the coming months. (Numbered in Bertrand fashion for clarity and added pretentiousness.)

Ike, Ike, bo bike...

Greetings from Walker County, Texas, where we have no electricity, no gasoline, no batteries, no ice, no charcoal, and unfortunately no post for today. Please accept these photos as a consolation prize, beginning with the author pic featuring me in front of my new ride!

Crossing the Thin Blah Line

Some months ago, on this very forum, I opened my mouth and made a rather hasty promise. Or maybe not a promise, exactly. It was definitely not an oath. “Pledge” might be a more appropriate word, so long as it’s used in a context like: “I will ‘pledge’ to donate $25 a month to National Public Radio, so long as I get that Christmas bonus, and the price of gas doesn’t go up too much more, and I don’t forget all about it before the next fund drive.” Or as in: “The superdelegates were ‘pledged’ to vote for Candidate H, before they switched and sided with Candidate O.”

Actually, the word I used at the time was “challenge,” which in my opinion is a much safer word. With this word, should I find myself falling short of what I set out to do, I can chalk it up to mere ineptitude instead of dishonesty. I’d much rather be a failure than a liar.

But whether you call it a promise, or a pledge, or a challenge, the point is that I said I was going to do something (something I very well may come to regret), and believe it or not I try to keep my promises. And I do not like to fail.

Writing and Pain

I’m laid up at home today with nothing but dial-up, and a lumbar disk that is stubbornly bulging outward toward my underwear tag. It’s a rude sounding word, “bulge.” Makes me think of “budge”, as in “Hi, Chris. I’m your weak back, and I’m here to budge in and make your life hell for the next 72 hours."

So for some strange reason, I’m thinking a lot about pain today. And though this may seem a bit of an unusual post, I want to talk briefly (probably very briefly) about how to get pain to come through on the page. (Hey, if it turns out to be retarded, I'll just blame it on the Vicodin.)

Let's Just Agree to Disaggregate

I've been thinking a great deal about Debra Gyapong's post last week, in which she lists a number of once very active Christian writing blogs, such as Dave Long's Faith in Fiction, and asked: "Has the blogging novelty worn off?"

I know why I have not been around. It's my own oil-and-vinegar-like temperament of alternating busy-ness and laziness. But I'm not sure why so many of my favorite bloggers seem to have also gone missing lately. At the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing back in April, I made the embarrassing mistake of asking Dave Long flat out:

"Dude, what's up with your blog?"