The panel will be moderated by Dan Wells and feature Nathan Shumate, Eric James Stone, Jaleta Clegg, EC Buck and Steven Peck. They’ll talk about how their stories came about, the delights and dangers of mixing Mormonism with genre fiction, and more. It’s gonna be great.

Click here for conference registration details. Note that it uses UVU’s enrollment process so you will need to register for an account.

Love of Nature Nature of Love Month has arrived on Wilderness Interface Zone, and we’re looking to publish love abroad.  Do you have a message of friendship and love you’d like to send someone? WIZ is looking for original poetry, essays, blocks of fiction, art, music (mp3s), videos or other media that address the topic of amour while making references to nature.  We’ll also take the flipside: We’ll publish work about nature intertwined with themes of love.  Besides original work you’re welcome to send favorite works by others that have entered public domain.  So if you have a sonnet you’ve written to a wild thing of one species or another or perhaps you’ve composed a video Valentine or an essay avowing your love for a natural space near and dear, please consider sending it to WIZ.  Click here for submissions guidelines.

Besides rolling out a (hopefully) plush carpet of love-art, we’ll also be running two WIZ, nature-laced, romantic DVD giveaways, Typhoon, starring Dorothy Lamour and pre-Music Man Robert Preston, and a Pre-Hays Code movie, King of the Jungle, starring scantily clad Buster Crabbe as Kaspa the Lion Man.

We hope you’ll attend the month-long celebration.  Come join us at WIZ and help thaw out February.

Take the story of Meredith, for example. When her husband of fifteen years decides he is gay and leaves her, it is almost unbelievable that she could ever find that “eternal perspective.” But in reading the details of her story you find out that, well, it actually possible for a woman to move forward with faith. Jana Reiss (of Flunking Sainthood fame) is startling–both in her bifurcated path to baptism and her tendency to pray with people at the drop of the hat–but also delightfully familiar in her struggles for devotional perfection. And then there’s the story of Bindu that makes you stop and say, “Wait. There are Mormons in India? I never even though to ask that question.” What is most astounding is how many, many Mormon women are changing the world at large through creative humanitarian forays.

Reading the MWP interviews is a little bit like climbing on a merry-go-round. The stories spin quickly enough and pull you in enough different directions that you think you will be pulled right off the ride. But what you are really experiencing is like centripetal force–something that pulls you in enough directions that you end up being held exactly in the center.

LHC: Do you have any favorite stories that have been shared on MWP?

NM: I think every interview we publish is the best one yet, so it’s hard to pick just a few! What I love about working now with a group of volunteers – I have about half a dozen saintly interview producers who work with me regularly – is that everyone finds different stories interesting. I’m constantly surprised by which interviews on the site go through the roof and which have a more tepid response. A volunteer will suggest a story or pick someone from off our list of nominated women and I’ll think, “Well, I guess that’s okay,” and then when then interview’s published it’ll be hugely popular. Objectively though, the interviews that have been read most are our anonymous interview with the author of Seriously, So Blessed, and our interview with Elaine Bradley, the drummer for the Neon Trees. I am most proud of our forays into the “unspeakable” subjects: our sexual abuse forum, our interviews that discuss eating disorders, infertility, divorce, pornography, homosexuality, adoption, etc. I feel that in these interviews we uncover not the proactive choices a woman makes about her job or how she’s going to spend her time, but the reactive choices about how she’s going to respond to a situation and who she’s really going to be, which are usually even more defining than her hobbies or jobs.

LHC: Are there themes or ideas that come up again and again in the interviews?

NM: The theme that arises in almost every interview is the idea that Heavenly Father knows who this woman is and He is directing her path. Regardless of whether that path leads her to be a drummer in a rock band or the mother of twelve foster children, God knows each woman and acts as a cheerleader, a prompter, a supporter and even an instigator of dreams, ambition and righteous goal setting. The common thread of His presence in these interviews never reveals Him to be an oppressor or a killjoy.

LHC: MWP is coming up on its second year anniversary in January. How has it grown in its second year? What hopes do you have for its future? In what ways can others who are passionate about the stories of Mormon women help out?

NM: Although I launched the MWP in January of 2010 without a distinct publication calendar, we’ve managed to average one new interview per week since that launch. We just published our 114th interview, and we’ve featured women in fifteen countries. There is power in that sheer volume of contemporary Mormon women’s stories. We also introduced this year Snapshot Portraits, which offer our readers the opportunity to submit their own short essays in response to specific prompts.

Our major achievement as an organization this year was to receive our 501©3 status, designating us as a non-profit. The MWP follows in the grand Mormon tradition of being a volunteer endeavor, but we chose to pursue this designation for a few reasons. First of all, it was an issue of establishing our brand as something that is of valuable even outside of the Church community. One of the pieces of feedback we receive time and time again is that members really like to share our interviews with non-member friends because they feel like it looks like and has the quality of a professional endeavor. Of course it takes money for the MWP to look that way, and for us to maintain the website. Even though we don’t need very much money, establishing ourselves as a 501©3 allows us to raise money from official sponsors as well as from private donors. Above and beyond website upkeep, we want to continue doing live events, like our annual Salon, so that the MWP has a physical presence in our community and provides us with a forum to come together as like minded women in person. I also have a dream of being able to subsidize transcription services for our volunteers so they don’t have to spend 5-15 hours transcribing (and sometimes translating) the interviews from the recorded conversation.

I think it’s quite obvious that the MWP approaches the subject of Mormon womanhood from positive, almost culturally apologetic, positioning. Some have called this naïve, that you can think the Lord loves you to bits but it doesn’t make up for the fact that the currency of power is not distributed equally within the institution. I believe there are many valid and important conversations going on online about the role of women in the Church, but I think the MWP plays important role in those conversations by reminding women that our spiritual lives are played out in our relationships, our actions and our prayers, and not in our institutional roles. I’ve had MWP readers tell me they appreciate the safe haven the project offers, the ability to step back and say, “God’s plan for me is real and it is beautiful,” rather than focus on the deficiencies of the modern church. For women who are seeking for a way to be actively involved in forwarding this emboldening vision of Mormon womanhood, I invite them to join us at the MWP. We’re always looking for more interview producers. Reading the interviews, discussing them, sharing them and letting them resonate really is the best way women can support the project.

For more of Neylan McBaine’s writing check out this podcast at The Round Table, this post at By Common Consent, or her articles at Patheos.com and Busted Halo. She has also authored a book, How To Be a Twenty-First Century Pioneer Woman.

Now, besides the gross error that Mormon women aren’t allowed to speak in Church, it’s pretty distressing to me that what characterized this group of women as liberals was that they wanted change tables in the men’s room. Really? Getting the men to help care for the babies? Isn’t that a little quaint? The picture this anecdote paints is one done in broad strokes with inexact coloring where the women come out in an ill-educated, unsatisfied, barefoot-in-the-kitchen kind of way. There is little nuance or subtlety and it is ultimately dissatisfying to me in a very personal way.*

However, what makes this piece stand out from so many other misrepresentations is the fact that there was a group of Mormon women who saw a need and found a way to get it met. They were polite, they were strong, and they got the job done. That’s the kind of Mormon woman I identify with–and the kind of women Neylan McBaine is seeking out and presenting to the world with through her Mormon Women Project. The stories she chronicles are the kind so many, many Mormon women identify with as their own. Subjects covered include women of many nationalities, races, and backgrounds. There are stories about surviving sexual abuse and difficult marriages. There are women who come from long legacies of Mormon membership and new converts. The portraits drawn by MWP are detailed, with many tones and hues, and offer a great richness to the picture of Mormon women.

Neylan graciously agreed to answer some of my questions regarding the project and it’s significance in Mormon culture.

Laura Hilton Craner: You have a unique name. How is it pronounced? Does it have any significant history in your life?

Neylan McBaine: I’m so happy you asked about my name! It’s pronounced “NY – lin,” (The first, stressed syllable rhymes with “high”.) It was my great-grandfather’s surname – John Francis Neylan – and thus my grandmother’s maiden name and my father’s middle name. John Francis Neylan was a powerful and brilliant man who was William Randolf Hearst’s lawyer and best friend and was known for his red-headed Irish temper. In fact, the Joseph Cotten character in “Citizen Kane” is based on my great-grandfather, and he was on the cover of Time magazine in 1935. But even more interesting to me is that he is a genealogical mystery: We can’t find where he came from, who his parents are, where he was born…

How much programming in our genes comes from our ancestors has always been a fascinating subject for me because, quite honestly, I’m uncomfortable with the idea that the choices and personality traits I have made and cultivated in my life are not entirely my own but come from predetermined traits. However, either because of admiration or intrigue or some unknowable connection, I do feel a special kinship with John Francis and am honored to carry his name.

LHC:What inspired you to start the Mormon Women Project? How does it coincide with other work that you’ve done?

NM: Usually when I explain the motivation to start the MWP, I don’t have time or context to explain how my family and my upbringing played a critical role. But since I’ve already introduced you to my great-grandfather and my father’s side of the family, allow me to introduce you now to my mother: the middle of five children born to a humble school teacher of extensive Mormon pioneer heritage. How, you might now ask, did a Mormon girl who grew up in a trailer in Southern California end up marrying a lapsed Catholic of San Francisco high society? The answer was opera. What my parents didn’t share in socioeconomic or religious background was made up for in their love of opera, but the tension between the identities of my two extended families produced in me – the only child of this union – a paradox of interests and influences that has allowed me to have a foot in different worlds: it was my father who pushed me to attend the best schools possible, travel and enjoy the best and most beautiful the world has to offer, and it was my mother who kept me rooted to faith and family.

My mother was a professional opera singer the whole time I was growing up in New York City and, as you might have already guessed, a single mother for much of that time. As a single, working mother with only one child, you wouldn’t imagine her to be the poster child of the Mormon faith. But she was. During the ‘80s and ‘90s, my mother was asked by local church leaders and general authorities to present firesides, perform for church and political leaders, and to appear in official church videos and messages. Her skill as a singer and her willingness to share that talent for the glory of God catapulted her into a position of spokesperson for the Church. As a child witnessing the tremendous affection of church leaders for my mother and, in turn, my mother’s affection for the Church, it never occurred to me that there wasn’t a place in the Church for women whose lives don’t fit a mold.

My mother also did a beautiful job of teaching me that getting the best education I could, working as hard as I could, and enjoying the beauty of the world as much as I could – all those good qualities my dad had brought to the table – were actually a way of magnifying God’s presence in my life and honoring Him. Our doctrine encourages us to aim high, and she fiercely taught that performing at the “worldly” standard that my earthly dad expected was actually the way I could magnify my Heavenly Father’s expectations for me. “The world” was never a scary, evil place in my home; on the contrary, it was a glorious gift to be enjoyed and learned from. It was simply my job to bring God into it through my active participation.

But when I left my home in New York and started functioning in a broader community of LDS women, I realized that I was unusual in feeling that my doctrine was the very thing that gave me permission to explore my potential. Even at Yale, where I went to college, I encountered Mormon women who were pursuing education sheepishly, fighting a constant internal struggle between the seeming paradox of their innate gifts and the kinds of pursuits they believed were “right.” I saw these internal struggles continue among some of the women in my San Francisco ward after college, culminating in one very dear friend leaving the Church over these issues and several more since then, and I was forced finally to ask myself the question, “What does it mean to be a Mormon woman? Is it a limiting proposition, or an emboldening one?”

Both because I think it is a much happier way to live and also because I fiercely defend that it is true, I see being a Mormon woman as an emboldening way to live. In contemplating an effective and positive way to assert that belief so that it might take root in our broader culture, I turned to the age-old tradition of story-telling. My mom had been held up throughout my childhood as a woman for Mormons to look to; why couldn’t I take some of the other women I admired and share their stories in a similar way? In Mormon culture, we don’t have a systematic way to tell the stories of our women, the way many of our men do in formal speaking and writing assignments. My goal was to create an environment of “deliberate disorientation” for the reader: by sorting through hundreds of stories about women who prioritize the gospel and yet still make unique and intriguing choices about how to maximize their potential, it is impossible for a reader to pick any one story and say, “This is who my church wants me to be or that is what my church wants me to be.” The breadth of examples forces the reader to turn within herself and ask, “What does the Lord want me to be?”

LC: You are not only an accomplished writer, but you are also the mother of three young girls. How has being a woman in the Church and then having daughters to raise in the Church influenced MWP?

NM: Like many other Mormon mothers, the foremost goal I have for my daughters is that they have a testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. (And that they love music comes in a close second.) But I recognize that, at some point, they will have to define for themselves what it means to be a Mormon woman and decide if they are emboldened or limited by that definition. For many Mormon women, that internal struggle surfaces in young adulthood or even older as they come to terms with the Church’s gendered institutional structure and so I don’t expect my little girls to self-define for quite some time yet. However, I believe the MWP can play a role in their lives now by establishing a paradigm for that self-definition in which doubt of God’s intentions regarding His daughters is not a factor in their construction of themselves. In other words, as they grow up with the MWP as a presence in their spiritual lives, they will launch their self-defining journey from a solid foundation of trust in the Lord’s support for them as women.

Growing up with Mormon women I admired allowed me to sidestep the question “What does God think of me as a girl?” and focus instead on developing a very personal relationship with Him as my Heavenly Father. I am trying the best I can to provide a cleared path of spiritual development for my own girls as well.

Tune in tomorrow for Part II: Emboldening Women (Through Story)

For more of Neylan McBaine’s writing check out this podcast at The Round Table, this post at By Common Consent, or her articles at Patheos.com and Busted Halo. She has also authored a book, How To Be a Twenty-First Century Pioneer Woman.

*Now, now, I know this interview was about Romney and the anecdote was meant to show how he was able to deal with politics within a charged religious setting. But still. Gross factual error and dirty diapers? Come on.

For more E.M. Tippetts, visit her author site. Emily as writes science fiction and fantasy. Visit emilymah.com or follow her on Twitter.

I read the Amazon description of Paint Me True. Could you expand on it just a bit? Without giving out too many spoilers can you tell me a little more about Eliza and the scruffy video gamer?

Eliza is the last surviving daughter in a family cursed with the BRCA gene mutation, which makes the carriers susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer. On top of this, the family’s had awful luck. Women don’t tend to see their fortieth birthdays and Eliza’s lost two sisters, two aunts, and a lot of cousins. Of all her female relatives on her mother’s side, only her Aunt Nora survives, so these two share a very close bond as survivors in a silent war. It’s Aunt Nora who suggested that Eliza follow her dreams and become an artist and who continues to give emotional support as Eliza struggles financially. At the opening of the book, Eliza is living rent free in her stepmother’s old house in Portland. She’s thirty years old, and about to age out of the singles ward. None of the daring life decisions she’s made have paid off. She’s broke, single, and there’s no end to either condition in sight.

Len, the scruffy nerd, works as a sysadmin at a law firm and likes to spend his free time playing video games. He’s had a crush on Eliza for a long time, but he’s aware of the fact that she’s only dating him because she has no other prospects. At the beginning of the book, he’s finally coming around to the idea that he doesn’t deserve to be treated this way. I assume most readers will identify with him in the first scene, as I think he is the most sympathetic character.

Your previous novel for the LDS Market has fairly strong Mormon elements, in fact it was about an LDS convert. How does Mormonism figure into Paint Me True?

All of the main characters are LDS, though not all are active. Eliza’s at an age (30) when she’s still considered young by American standards, but is verging on an old maid by Mormon standards, so she feels trapped in a netherworld. If she stays true to her faith, she’ll stand out as an unmarried woman in a family ward. If she leaves the faith, she’ll have to make her way in mainstream culture, and she doesn’t have the first clue how to do that. She’s never been on a date with a non-Mormon.

And as with all my LDS novels, there are prayers and revelations that let you know my character isn’t going it alone. It’s written from a religious person’s worldview.

Why did you decide to publish it as an ebook through Amazon Digital Services (ADS)? [Wm adds 1/23 at 11:10 am: the novel is also available on Smashwords and for the Nook at BN.com. I focused on Amazon because it tends to lead to the most sales, but don't forget those other platforms if you are thinking of self-publishing.]

My main goal in life and writing is to make it as a science fiction and fantasy writer, so if it makes sense, my LDS and romance books have been sort of a hobby, something else I did on the side for fun. The usual contracts offered by LDS publishers are not worth the hassle to me. They tend to be grabby, demanding way more rights than is good for either party, and in my experience these companies are used to working with people desperate to be published authors, and that isn’t me. As an attorney who’s worked with a lot of writers, I do know what a standard publishing contract from a national house looks like, and I’m not interested in settling for less in order to get published in such a small niche as the LDS market. The prospect of not ever getting published in LDS fiction doesn’t scare me.

When the indie publishing movement got underway, it looked like a lot of fun. I decided to join up with my romance pen name so that my science fiction and fantasy prospects wouldn’t be affected one way or the other. I also decided that I really needed to learn how to build a platform as a writer, as this is becoming more and more necessary, so again, I figured I’d try it out with my romance pen name so that if I failed miserably, the speculative fiction writer in me would escape unscathed.

Do you have any tips you could share for other authors who are interested in publishing through ADS?

Yes, I’d say first of all, examine why you’re doing this. If you have a huge stack of rejection letters, be open to the possibility that there is a good reason. Publishing is a business. You’ll succeed or fail based on the quality of your product and your marketing efforts. Secondly, I’d say be ready to work your tail off on marketing. Don’t expect to sell any copies if you don’t work for those sales. To put this in perspective: there are 8 million Kindle books on Amazon. When I sold my first copy, I was ranked somewhere in the 100,000 range, which means that I outranked 7.9 million other books by making one sale. When I say most Kindle books don’t go anywhere, I mean nearly all Kindle books don’t go anywhere. No one is going to trawl through all those titles to discover your genius, and someone who works harder will beat you, no matter how inferior their product. Last of all, I’d say enjoy it. Find what’s fun about it, because if you aren’t having fun, there’s little reason to bother. Even if you are ultimately a success, you’ll start out with months making little to no money and the very real prospect that It might not get better. I have a lot of fun designing the chapter headings and putting in graphics. I love being able to sell a book that looks pretty (to me, at least!) And I love seeing what kinds of outreach to fans move copies. It’s liberating to know that I can make some difference here.

What are you digging right now in terms of art? (Mormon-themed or not; fiction or not)

I read a lot of children’s books these days, and I love my Kindle Fire because I can display them in color and let my boys turn the pages.

What else you currently working on?

I’m writing another LDS novel, working title: Castles on the Sand. It’s starting to roll forward with its own momentum, but I’ve got some characters whom I really need to figure out. I’ll be spending the next few days daydreaming up a storm as I try to understand who they are and how they’re likely to behave in various circumstances — I need to understand that before I start trying to move the plot forwards.

And then I’m always working on a short story that I hope to sell to a good short fiction market. I’ve sold two stories to Analog and two to Black Gate and I’d like to maintain a relationship with both. That’s where, in the speculative fiction market, you’re likely to get noticed by editors and agents.

Thanks, Emily!

Entry one:

Zombie Porter Rockwell sniffed the air. The smell of singed hair slowly triggered the synapses in his decaying brain. He needed brains soon. But he had business to take care of first. He was on the trail of Cain, and this time, he was going to take the hairy wanderer out.

He jiggled the tank strapped to his chest. It sloshed reassuringly — still at least half full. His bulbous, unblinking eyes scanned the dessert. Cain had managed to survive P-Rock’s trap, but little did the large-footed fellow know that fire, which was his only weakness, was now portable. Zombie Porter sniffed the air again and fell into a jerky, but surprisingly fast lope. It was bbq time and [MORE]

Entry two:

The rain always made her sad. It reminded her of her grandmother. It also reminded her of her dead husband. And that cat she had had for two weeks in seventh grade. The rain was coming down in sheets now. It made her feel like the world was crying. She was crying too. But even though she was crying, she knew that she was not alone. The footprints in the sand were not hers. The battered violin that was her soul could still produce a beautiful tune in the master’s hands. So she decided to cheer herself up by firing up her Provo Craft cricut and breaking out her brand new six-inch by 13-inch Cuttlebug Cutting Mats. [MORE]

Entry three:

Truth was a complex, ever-evolving thing for an educated man like Walter C. Habermavinaseiggeridastraullard. Nuance was his watchword. Context his Title of Liberty. Which was why he spent so much time commenting on blogs.

Walter loved his fellow Saints with a pure love, but he also knew that too many of them were in danger of having their simplistic testimonies fall to pieces at the slightest breeze of opposition, the tiniest crack in the correlated shell. In short, they were in need of maturation, and it was up to him to be the sunshine, the water and the soil — not to mention also taking the role of the fertilizer, the pruner and the grafter. [MORE]

(Obviously these aren’t really my entries. Revealing the real ones would be against the rules. Also: you have two weeks to polish up your entries and get them in.)

iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch (iOS devices)

Edit to add: the Dropbox + Bluefire method in the comments below also works quite well. I’ve used it myself.

iBookstore is difficult to work with for small publishers, so you won’t find it there and Apple doesn’t let other apps buy directly in-app so you’ll need both your computer and your iOS device. So fire up your laptop or desktop and click here and buy the ebook directly from B10 Mediaworx and download it to someplace where you easily find it (desktop, your documents folder, an ebooks folder). Your best bet is to buy the epub version (click on the “epub” button). The only exception is if you are already using the Kindle app on your iOS device, in which case, click on the “kindle” button.

Next, you need to install an ereader app on your device.

1. If you went the Kindle route, use the Amazon Kindle App.

2. If you went the epub route, use Bluefire Reader.

Open up iTunes on your computer and connect your iOS device to your computer. When your device shows up on the left nav in iTunes, click on it. You should see a new navigation show up in the main section of iTunes. Find the “Apps” button and click on it. Scroll down to the bottom to the section that says “File Sharing”. Click on the Kindle or Bluefire icon. You should now see the list of files in that app (or none if there aren’t files in it yet). At the bottom of that section (which will either say “Kindle Documents” or “Bluefire Documents”, you’ll see a button that says “Add”. Click on that button, navigate to where you downloaded your .epub or .prc (Kindle) file, select the file and click “open”. The file should now show up in the Documents list on iTunes. Sync your device, eject it and it should show up on your iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch your Kindle or Bluefire app.

Kindle/Kindle Fire

There are two ways to go here:

1. Buy directly from Amazon and have it automatically sent to your device via Whispernet. This is easier, but we (the publisher, editors and contributors) get less money. But hey, it’s easier so we don’t mind if that’s way you gotta go.

2. Buy directly from us and sideload the Kindle file onto your Kindle device. Here’s how you do that: from your laptop or desktop, click here. Click on the “kindle” button and go through the check out process. When you get to the point where you can download the file, save it somewhere where you will be able to easily find it.

Next, click here for information from Amazon on how to transfer content via usb. Because you’ve already downloaded the content to your computer, you can skip the first section in the guide and following directions for “Connecting your Kindle device to your computer” and “Transferring Kindle content”.

Nook (or Kobo or Sony Reader)

For non-Kindle ereaders, you should click here and buy the “epub” version of Monsters & Mormons directly from B10 Mediaworx and download it someplace where you can find it.

To load the file onto your Nook, click here and follow the instructions. Note that you can also manage this via Adobe Editions if you already use it to load books on to your Nook that you don’t purchase directly form B&N.

To load the file onto your Kobo, connect it to your computer using the USB cable that came with it. Tap “Connect” on your Kobo eReader’s screen. Your Kobo should now show up as a connected device on your computer. Open it up and you should see the contents of the eReader. Open up another explore window (PC) or finder window (Mac) on your computer and navigate to where your Monsters & Mormons epub file is. Drag it to the eReader window and drop it in. Eject your Kobo and you should be good to go.

For the Sony Reader, connect it to your computer using the USB cable. If you have a Sony Reader, chances are you already have Sony’s eBook Library installed on your computer and know how to use it. Do that. There are other ways to go but they aren’t as easy to explain.

Mac, PC or Linux laptop/netbook/desktop

There are quite a few ereader software options. The best, imo, is Calibre. Download Calibre here. Install it. Buy the “epub” version of Monsters & Mormons directly from B10 Mediaworx and download it someplace where you can find it. Open up Calibre, click on “Add Books”, navigate to where you downloaded the file and select it. Calibre can also help you load books to almost other devices you might have, including Kindle, Nook, iPad, Sony Reader, Android smartphone/tablet and Kobo.

Android Smartphone or Tablet

Edit to add: the Dropbox + Bluefire method in the comments below also works quite well for those who are (or are willing to be) Dropbox users.

I don’t know the Android world very well. If you already use the Kindle app on Android, it’s probably easiest to buy direct from Amazon. But if you really want to have the epub version and not be tied into Kindle (a sentiment I fully understand and support), then it looks to me like your best bets are either the Kobo app or the Aldiko app. Click here for details on how to load books using the Aldiko app. For the Kobo app on an Android table the best bet is to load the epub file onto the SD card for your tablet and then follow these linked instructions.

MORE OPTIONS

If none of the above work for you, you can always purchase the PDF or HTML version of the anthology and use your favorite PDF reader or browser/html renderer.

I hope this helps. If you have questions, leave a comment below or email monsters AT motleyvision DAWT org, and we’ll do our best to help you out.

* not sure exactly what to call them, but in the series are short short stories, creative exegesis, anecdotes, extended jokes — many of them some or all of those at once. I use prose poem because I approach each one by looking for the rhetorical conceit and poetic rhythm and language that I would with poetry.

I know that many of you are anxiously awaiting the print version of Monsters & Mormons. We are too. Unfortunately, the vendor that Peculiar Pages/B10 Mediaworx is getting the trade pub editions from isn’t moving as quickly as they have in the past. See, we knew the schedule would be tight. But the order went in 10 days ago and Lightning Source, a print on demand company that works with small publishers,  hasn’t printed and shipped the print run yet to Elizabeth so that she can fulfill your orders. This delay is unusual. We don’t know yet when it might arrive. We very much hope that it can happen in advance of Christmas.

B10 does have your orders on file if you’ve already ordered the print version. And, of course, the ebook version is available to download now. Or you can get it directly for the Kindle here. As soon as the shipment comes in, we will let you know.

The Bechdel test (to quote from the BoingBoing post linked to above)…

asks three questions: 1. Are there two or more women in it that have names? 2. Do they talk to each other? 3. Do they talk to each other about something other than a man?

I bring this up because, to be frank, I’m tired of the same stuff coming up again and again in both cultural products and news commentary that involve Mormonism, especially when it ignores the realities and complexities of modern Mormonism. Almost of it flattens us a people and elides vast parts of our beliefs, socio-cultural practices and history. Actually, let’s ignore the news commentary — that’s probably a separate list of tropes that should be put together (and that list starts with magic underwear and the Mountain Meadows Massacre). The same is true of some of the cultural references; however, where there are actual Mormon characters in narrative art, there needs to be some sort of way to evaluate how they are being deployed (or not-so-much deployed).

I don’t think we can formulate this quite like the Bechdel test. Almost every work of narrative art has women in it; most don’t have Mormons. So perhaps it’s something more like: Do the Mormons have names? Do they get to talk at all? When they talk or are talked about is it about something other than Mormonism? If it is about Mormonism, does it go beyond the tired tropes? Are the Mormons being used as stand ins for generic cultural conservatism? This all lacks the snap of the Bechdel test which is devestatingly awesome in its simplicity so help me out here. What would you suggest?

I also want to be clear that this not a call for Mormon apologetics in culture. Not every use of Mormonism needs to be positive or thorough or even super-nuanced. Certainly it’s valid for writers to use Mormons as a type of cultural shorthand in some cases. But by the same token, creators of Mormon narrative art should be attuned to how they’re doing it. The Bechdel test is an effective piece of criticism. Perhaps Mormons need their own version.

Oh, and I propose we call it the Pratt Test in honor of Orson Parley P. Pratt who vigorously defended Mormonism by emphasizing its unique doctrines (and yes, there’s a bit of a mean pun there, which is fully intentional [as in those who fail the test are...]. Hmmm. So maybe that’s not the best idea. Maybe call it instead the Orson test in reference to Orson Pratt, Orson F. Whitney and Orson Scott Card).

12/4/2011: edited to reflect the fact that it was Parley — not Orson that I was thinking of. Although Orson also did write several defenses of Mormon doctrine.