For the complete list of columns in this series, click here.
Fear is, I’ve come to realize, one of my great personal enemies as a creative writer (along with laziness). Part of this is probably just because of the kind of person I am. I suspect, though, that part of it may be endemic to the [...]

I’m cross-posting this from my blog partly because I think it’s relevant to our site focus — and relevant to some other recent posts — and because I don’t think very many people even know yet that my blog exists. Thanks for your indulgence.
It’s interesting being the author of a novel about a topic [...]

Here’s another excerpt from Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art that struck me as worth posting and talking about. It’s from the essay titled “The Journey Homeward”:
When the priests came out of the sanctuary, the cloud filled the temple of the Lord, and the priests could not bear to minister because of [...]

I decided to go ahead and do full-fledged liner notes for “County Doctor,” my translation of the Franz Kafka short story “Ein Landarzt” (typical translated “A Country Doctor”). If you have not read the translation, you can find it here. Read it first because what follows does contain “Spoilers.”
PROCESS:
I began the translation in June 2004 [...]

Print copies of my book No Going Back are now available from Zarahemla Books and Amazon.com. (And at a pretty  hefty discount off the cover price, too.)
No Going Back is a coming-of-age novel about a gay Mormon teenager who is torn between his feelings and his desire to stay in the Church. The cover [...]

I had an unexpected reaction to Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art — on the one hand I found it sort of mundane and obvious. The themes she hits didn’t strike me as all that fresh or uncommon. On the other hand, the way she goes about describing them, and the [...]

For the complete list of columns in this series, click here.
A couple of months ago, I was listening to an interview on NPR with someone who was talking about the death of mass marketing and mass media. I can’t really do justice to the man’s arguments — I didn’t hear the whole thing, and besides, [...]

First, a quick update: My book, No Going Back, is wending its way toward publication with Zarahemla Books this fall, and should be out (a term I use advisedly in this context) within the next couple of months. Much, much thanks to all of you who read and commented and some or all of it; [...]