L. Jagi Lamplighter's Blog, page 27

Mab’s Handy Guide to Surviving the Supernatural — Dragon World Tour

Hey Folks,

Mab Boreal here. You know me—the Northeast Wind who works for Prospero Inc. as a company gumshoe.

It has come to my attention that many of you are woefully uninformed about dragons. More innocent tourists get eaten every day. Yeah, they blame on natural disasters, terrorists and outbreaks of disease, but we all know its dragons.

Well, not all of it. There are a lot of other nasties out there. But dragons eat more and more people every year.

So, my assistant and I have headed out on a special world tour. We’re checking out the dragons in each part of the world and giving you a few pointers on how to avoid a fiery, roasted death.

Without further ado, today’s report from the Dragon World Tour!

Name: Sea Drake

Description:   And no, I don’t mean a sea-going duck. And no, I don’t mean one of those kooky, leafy undersea horsey-things either.

A sea drake is a water dragon. One who lives in the ocean, probably eating fisherman when he can’t get yacht owners. Sometimes they look like dragons with flippers. Sometimes, they look like long snaky serpents. Sea drakes are also called Cetuses. Cetoi?

It is a matter of debate whether Jormungander is a sea drake. Other debated sea drakes include the Loch Ness Monster and Leviathan.

Basically, a sea drake is a sea monster, only classier and more dragony. But I guess the classiness doesn’t really matter once the thing starts chowing down on your ship.

These guys were big stuff back in the age of the Greeks. Folks were always tying up maidens and leaving them for sea drakes to eat, so that the drake would not terrorize their shipping. Or because they mouthed off and offended the gods, and Poseiden sent one of his fishy dragony companions to munch on them. This would go on for a while until, invariably, some hero like Perseus would come along, slice the thing’s head off—or turn it to stone, and muck-up the whole system.

Of course, I bet Andromeda was pretty pleased. That lunch meats look would not have looked good on her. Probably would not have gotten a constellation and a galaxy named after her, either, had she been in the stomach of a sea monster.

For that matter, Cetus might have missed out on its constellation as well, had that nosey Perseus guy not interfered.

Where To Find It: Under water…usually in oceans.

However, Miss Miranda, her brothers, and I fought one in Hell. It was inside a giant kronosaur. Guess it had been eaten for lunch. Nothing beats being swallowed by a monster and then having to fight another monster while in its stomach.

Oh wait.

Almost anything beats that.

Frequency: Used to be really common. Not so much any more, except in the middle of the Pacific where those miles and miles of plastic bags are. They hang out in that stuff.

Danger Level:  Pretty peepin’ dangerous, unless you are on land. I recommend staying at least fifty feet away from any shoreline. Make that lake shorelines, too, just in case.

Mab’s Eye View: Sea drakes are pretty mean customers, but they’re actually quite pretty from a distance. If you could catch sight of one from a plane, you might get a nice photo as a souvenir—that is if a Roc doesn’t eat your plane, it you survive the gremlins, and if the Orbis Suleimani does not come and erase your memory if it gets out that you’ve seen one.

I’d tell your friends the picture was photoshopped, if I were you…just to be safe.

Kooky, underwater, leafy thing.

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Superversive Blog: Christian Magic — Part Two

 

In Part One, Deeper Magic From Before the Dawn of Time, I discussed the philosophy, the idea, of Christian Magic. In this second part, I want to give some practical examples.

First, the definition: Christian Magic is when objects or ideas from the Judeo-Christian tradition appear in the story as part of the magic. By magic here, I mean specifically “a mood of mystery and wonder,” and not “the occult” per se.

Also, I am differentiating between this use of Christian ideas and stories that have a pious nature. By pious, I mean a kind of assumption that Christian and holy things are good but everything else is bad. In case not everyone understands what I mean by the term pious, as applied to writing, here is an example from the work of fanfiction, Hogwarts School of Prayers and Miracles:

“Tell me how to get to this heaven place!” Harry cried wistfully, clapping his hands together. Sometimes the wisdom of the little ones is really amazing. We think we grownups know it all; but then God speaks through the mouths of little ones; and shows us how we are all mortals struggling along the path of life. Humility.

 This is a superb example of what Christian Magic is not.

Pious stories do not feel magical. There is no mystery, no wonder. Instead, the basic assumption is that everyone (who matters) already agrees with the premise, so things “we” agree with are praised and everything else is trashed.

In stories of Christian Magic, on the other hand, the Christianity is introduced in the same mood and manner as the rest of the magic.

And now, some examples:

First, I will include, yet again, the quote from C. S. Lewis about deeper magic from before the dawn of time. Yes, we just read it in part one, but it’s that good…

"It means that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards." (Aslan, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.)

At this point, perhaps you are asking, is there Christian Magic, outside of Narnia? The answer is yes—even if no one else does it quite so well.

An early example of Christian Magic comes from the book Dracula. We now think of it as par for the course that crosses drive back vampires. So much so, that many vampire stories have to take time to establish that crosses do not affect vampires, if they don’t want readers to assume they will. But when the matter came up in Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, it was new. (Or rather, it was an old folk lore idea brought to light in a new way.)

In Dracula, crucifixes, not crosses, drive back vampires—much to the dismay of the Protestant main characters. Holy wafers are also used to keep vampires at bay, and holy ground is considered important. These things are introduced into the story as if they are natural and part of the same background as the vampires, flocks of bats, and other elements of the story. They are not handled with hands wistfully clapped together or cooing over the amazing wisdom of the one who lays the holy wafers around the newly-risen vampire.

Holy ground also played into the movie Highlander, adding just a hint of Christian Magic there. ( By the TV show, holy ground was interpreted to mean any kind of holy ground—Indian burial grounds, etc., making it merely spiritual magic rather than Christian magic—but in the movie, the scenes involving holy ground were in churches.)

Another great example of Christian magic comes from The Dresden Files. This ongoing series includes such Christian elements as swords made from the nails of the cross, the cursed silver coins used to pay Judas for betraying Jesus, and the noose Judas used to hang himself. Also, I believe the latest book introduced the Spear of Longinus. The series also includes priests, churches whose holy ground protects from various evils, and angels.

Yet all these things are introduced in exactly the same mood as the vampires, fairies, talking skulls, fire magic, and the rest of the things that Harry Dresden encounters. The author weaves them all together so seamlessly and expertly that those who do not care for Christianity seldom object or possibly even notice.

But these elements are there.

Some readers even believe that Butcher is superversive–that the big bad Outside may turn out to be the devil and that Michael and Uriel will be proven right in the end. But the agnosticism of the character Harry allows the author to introduce these elements as easily as he introduces Odin or Temple Fu dogs. If he has a “true meaning”, it is not yet visible to his many adoring readers.

As a young person, I remember enjoying one of Katherine Kurtz Deryni books very much. I think it was Saint Camber. The thing I remember most was that this was the book where I first came upon the concept of wards. In particular, protective wards maintained by angels who were called to stand watch in the four directions. I still remember how amazed I was because it was the first time I had seen Christianity and magic portrayed as not inimitable to each other.

I had wanted to describe a great Christian Magic bit that comes up more than once in my husband’s new, up-coming novel, Somewhither. However, he tells me that this bit is a secret until it comes onstage in the story. So, after the book is published, I will write a post about it.

A few final examples:

I am sure there are many other great examples of Christian magic out there, but I cannot recall them off hand. I hope, dear readers, that, as you come upon hints of Christian Magic in the books you read, you will let me know. For now, however, we are reduced to examples from books that most of you probably have not read.

My apologies.

From Prospero In Hell.

In this scene, the King of all Djinn is burning a chamber holding holy relics collected over the years by the magician Prospero. One of the items is a wheel made by the carpenter, Joshua Ben Joseph. Caurus is one of Prospero’s airy servants.

A loud snapping-crackle behind me caused me to whirl about. The table in the Holy Chamber was aflame. To my horror, the tent made by St. Paul and St. Peter’s fishing net ignited. In a single instant, the fire consumed the two thousand-year-old relics that had once belonged to the most holy men who ever trod the Earth. Helpless, I saw the tongues of fire began licking the Savior’s wheel.

Unable to watch, I turned away and ran the rest of the distance to the Weapons Chamber. Behind me, to my great joy, I heard Caurus’s voice.

“Look!” he shouted, amazed, “The God of the Bloody Cross is more powerful than the Lord of Djinn!”

“Arrgghhh!” The cry of Iblis al-Shaitan shook the room, followed by a burst of heat worse than any that had come before. Caurus screamed. Turning again, I saw the Fire-King reeling back, clutching the simple cart wheel. No matter how he tried to burn it, the wood remained untouched.

(A brief aside, I have often wondered why we don’t hear more about wooden objects made by Jesus when he was a carpenter. Did they sell these, too, back in the middle ages when they were selling all those other relics?

Also, as proof that this is not a pious treatment of the material, in the next scene, they use that same wheel to hold down the top of the vessel in which they have trapped the djinn king. )

From Prospero In Hell

A fallen angel speaks of his memories of Heaven:

“Imagine you went to live in a house that looked a great deal like your father’s mansion, only nothing was ever quite right. The doors would not close properly. The well did not work. The servants were rude. The walls were moldy. The halls smelled of rotting fruit, and no matter how many logs you put on the fire, you were always cold.

“Nor can you ever grow used to this new house, precisely because it reminds you so much of your old home. You cannot see the blighted rose without recalling the beauty of your old gardens. You cannot walk the corridors without its layout bringing to mind the house you loved. You cannot look through the dingy windows at the overcast sky without remembering the glorious skies above the mansion of your youth. Everything you see makes you heartsick for the original, of which this current place is but a dark reflection. That is what it is like to remember heaven and dwell on earth.”

 

From Prospero Regained,

The main character’s brother is questioning to Hermes, who has explained that as Christ came to mankind, a different Savior came to visit the gods.

My brother was not so forbearing. He frowned severely, “But how can Our Divine Father approve of you? You are a pagan god, a devil! Does not your very existence violate the First Commandment?”

The Swift God snorted. “You are lucky, Twice-Pope, that you amuse me, or you would be but a cinder now. We divine beings who serve the All Highest are forbidden from inciting mortals to worship us. This is why, since our conversion—which came your Savior visited you—we no longer have priests and keep up temples on the earth. But that was ever a small part of our nature. We have our tasks to perform, our spheres of influence to oversee, such as my duties as a messenger.”

The previous examples had hints of Christianity. This, however, is an actual example of what I truly mean by Christian Magic—the Christianity is providing the magic. This scene takes place in the throne room of the demon queen Lilith.

“Is that so? Then, have you not heard,” he opened his mouth: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.”

…

Everything within the sound of his voice suddenly seemed tawdry and hollow, as if its true nature had been revealed and found wanting. The chamber became so flimsy that, for a tiny instant, for a fraction of a split second, I saw right through it….

That’s the best example of what I mean that I have, but here’s one final example from the yet unpublished Rachel and the Technicolor Dreamland—an encounter between the main character and the Lion of Judah.

Out there before her now, invisible behind the fog, lay the memorial gardens with its many shrines, where offerings could be made to numerous gods. Rachel wished, not for the first time since she came to school, that her family had chosen a household god—someone she could pray to for guidance, for strength. She wished recklessly that some deity would manifest, as in the tales of old, and offer her comfort in return for loyalty.

No figure appeared amidst thunder and lighting. The only moving thing visible on the lawn below was Kitten Fabian’s familiar, padding its way across the damp grass. The little Comfort Lion, a golden-maned lion the size of a house cat, stopped and turned its head. Its golden eyes seemed to stare straight up at Rachel. It was probably a coincidence, but an eerie horripilation ran across Rachel’s body.

She thought back three seconds. In her memory, the Lion was gigantic—bigger than elephants, bigger than houses, bigger than trees. It looked down from the sky, its expression reminding Rachel of Mistletoe, when he sat watching a hole from which he expected a mouse to emerge.

There was no mistaking it. Its great golden eyes were focused directly upon Rachel.

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Superversive Literary Blog — Hearing from the Opposition

Ordinarily, I would consider Ulysses by James Joyce the opposite of everything Superversive stands for. However, a reader contacted me and asked if I would consider a guest blog from an alternate point of view. 

So, here, without further ado, is Gabriel Mamola discussing James Joyces Ulysses from a Superverisve point of view:

 

This is not how you draw a straight line:

 

Nor is it a very good circle. What it is, however, is a decent celtic knot, a pattern characteristic for its complexity and its, well, its celtic-ness. And let it here stand as a metaphor for another piece of work notable for these same characteristics: James Joyce’s Ulysses.

My intention in writing this guest blog is to present a slight apologia for a book that has been so successfully appropriated by mainstream (read: worthless) academia as to appear to be something close to its foundational text. I am not interested in delving into the reasons for this here. I am instead interested in presenting Ulysses as a super-versive text and offering a few simple but novel ways of thinking about the book that may perhaps allow a reader to circumvent the sterile cloud of academic jargon that surrounds it, as well as offering a few assurances that Ulysses is indeed a book worth the investment it requires.

So, thirteen (superversive) ways of looking at Ulysses. (Not really. I only have four, five if you count the whole celtic knot, complexity-as-a-peculiarly-celtic-artistic-ideal thing above. But I digress.)

1. Ulysses is a deeply moral book.

While Leopold Bloom (the hero of the novel, for those who have not yet read it) is touted by the currently established amoral literati for being the paragon of modern, shlubby, slightly perverse anti-heroism, this is an outright misrepresentation. The actions for which the narrative itself calls us to praise Mr. Bloom include:

            Forgiving a man who has gravely insulted him to his face and in front of others. 

           Raising alms for a recent widow who has no other means of support.

           Doing an honest day’s work.

            Refusing to think of himself as a victim (and refusing to act like one).

            Being an attentive and loving father.

            Admonishing a hateful hypocrite.

            Helping a blind man cross a busy street.

            Empathizing with EVERYONE, especially women trapped in difficult situations beyond their control.

            Taking care of a self-destructive young man undergoing an emotional and spiritual crisis while undergoing his own emotional and spiritual crisis.

            Forgiving his unfaithful wife by never losing sight of why he fell in love with her in the first place.

Granted that these are little things. But they are also the work of one man in one day who is not even going out of his way to be kind and empathetic. While certainly not the “classical” hero, and while certainly not perfect, Leopold Bloom is a good man, and one whose virtues are only visible in the day-to-day humdrum of life. But speaking of classicism…

2. Ulysses is nonetheless a very classical book.

Joyce’s inspiration for Ulysses came not from desire to mock Homer but from a desire to enter into the epic tradition in the way that he (Joyce) felt his talents and artistic calling warranted. In seeking to present a (not really so) ordinary Dublin man as a new Odysseus, Joyce was working within what he saw as a tradition of “all-round” or fully three dimensional characters like Odysseus who are admixtures of dubious motives and unmistakable heroism. The “sordid” details of everyday life included in Ulysses are as much Joyce’s tribute to Homer’s ancient realism as they are a humorous subversion of literary norms in the comic tradition of Swift or Carroll.

But Joyce liked him some Virgil too. Indeed, Joyce’s career was a self-conscious attempt to follow the Virgilian Poetic Vocation followed also by Dante, Spenser and Milton, in which a man cuts his teeth writing his Pastorals (Eclogues/Georgics, Lycidas, Shepheardes Calendar, Dubliners/Portrait) before moving on to his Epic (Aeneid, Paradise Lost, Fairie Queene, Ulysses). This is a pattern, interestingly enough, that Tolkien himself accidentally followed with his epic Rings trilogy coming after the simpler, more pastoral Hobbit.

As for the philosophical foundation of the book, it is Aristotelian and Thomistic (in its own peculiar way), which leads me to my next point which is that…

3. Ulysses is a very ordered book.

John C. Wright recently wrote a blog-post in defense of the craftsmanship and artistry of Ayn Rand. Much of what he said in defense of Atlas Shrugged (which I have not read) could very easily be applied to Ulysses  through a switcheroo of the names and gender-specific pronouns. I (sort of) quote:

“I am aghast that even those who disliked the book would dismiss its craftsmanship. There is no one who has even ATTEMPTED anything this ambitious and universal since Milton tried to marry Moses and Homer in his PARADISE LOST.

[James Joyce] is the only novelist I have ever heard of who invented [his] own theory of aesthetic principles and then wrote a huge and hugely successful novel according to those principles without any smallest deviation from them.

There is an old saying. “Even Homer nods” which means even the greatest of poets makes lapses in craftsmanship. The saying is not true in this case. [He] makes no lapses, that is, not a single page has a word [he] does not intend to be there for a reason [he] could no doubt articulate. This reader or that may not care for what [he] is trying to articulate, but even a bored or hostile reader, if [he] is honest must be astonished at the precision of a book like a vast garden of many acres without a leaf or a grass blade out of place.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Make that garden Dublin on June 16th, 1904, and every leaf or blade of grass a cobblestone or newspaper and there you go.

As for those aesthetic principles that Joyce developed? Well, they are the same ones the T. S. Eliot would use and further develop for his little poem The Waste Land. (http://people.virginia.edu/~jdk3t/eliotulysses.htm)

But, ultimately, what I really want to say is that…

4. Ulysses is a very good book.

So sure, modern life sucks. And I will be the first to defend the value of so-called “escapist” or genre literature as a real and effective antidote to it or weapon against it. But it is not the ONLY weapon. There is also transformation, transmutation, the alchemy of art to work upon base materials. Joyce is a master alchemist and Ulysses is his masterwork and magnum opus both.

Now, to conclude, I will say that to call Ulysses a novel is slightly misleading. If you sit down with the book expecting Little Dorrit, you are going to be disappointed. And yes, it can be quite obscure. But no one thinks any less of you for looking up damned obscure13th century Florentines, so don’t be embarrassed for consulting Wikipedia while reading Ulysses.

For if you give to the book the same attention you would give to The Divine Comedy or Paradise Lost, you will be rewarded in like fashion, as you will receive both entertainment and edification proportionate to the effort spent appreciating and learning from what Joyce has accomplished.

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Signal Boost Tuesday

Signal boost for an author who was kind enough to boost me.

Katherine Lampe is an author and musician based in Paonia, Colorado, home of fruit and coal. She learned to read from mythology texts, and has wanted to write fantasy since reading The Hobbit in second grade. With an English teacher for a mother and a Historian and Minister for a father, she has always been fascinated with comparative religions and non-standard systems of thought; her father once threw her out of Sunday School class for challenging the accepted interpretation of the Expulsion from Eden. For fifteen years, she was the host and producer of the Celtic music radio show, "Whiskey in the Jar," on KVNF-FM in Paonia. A professional Tarot reader and Iconoclast, she specializes in urban fantasy with a blatant Contemporary Pagan slant.

You can see all her works here.

 

http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/katherine-lampe.html

https://www.facebook.com/KELampe

http://theshadowsanctuary.wordpress.com/

Follow on Twitter @KeleGrrl 

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Caption This!

In honor of Halloween:

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In Honor of Halloween — An Excerpt From Book Three

Here, in honor of Halloween, is an excerpt from Book Three: Rachel and the Technicolor Dreamland.

The scene is that Rachel Griffin and her boyfriend, Gaius Valiant, are flying on her steeplechaser to crash the Dead Men's Ball, a gathering of the restless dead (mainly sailors who drowned in the most dangerous part of the Hudson River.)

 

They passed marshes and then a length of forest. In the silvery moonlight, the hemlocks along the shore swayed in the dark like shaggy specters. The shoreline moved east, and Rachel flew over the rocky island with a single lone fir tree that she knew was located close to the northmost edge of the wards of the school. Then the shoreline moved west again, and more hemlocks swayed.

When the trees changed to marsh again, and she caught sight of cattails, Rachel knew that they were now along side Bannerman’s house. Looking up the hill, she could see the silhouette of the mansion’s turrets against the moon-bright sky. As she navigated her steeplechaser eastward and inland, she caught sight of an eerie light gliding through the darkness of the marsh—a large and florescent white glow accompanied by small florescent green ones.

A tingle ran down the back of Rachel’s spine. The shadow-strewn night suddenly seemed spooky and dangerous. The haunting strains of violins, horns, and bells played in her mind in three-fourth’s time. Behind her, Gaius began to hum the tune she had been imagining.

Rachel halted and backed up her broom.

“What?” asked Gaius.

“That was eerie. I was just imagining that same waltz.”

She felt Gaius shiver. He said, “I can ‘hear’ it perfectly, but I can’t hear any music…with my ears, I mean.”

Together, they hummed a few bars of what they were imagining. They both hummed the same tune in unison. Rachel shivered, too, and leaned against him.

“You know, we don’t have to keep going,” Gaius murmured softly. “You are still astonishingly brave for having made it this far.”

“No! I want to go on. It’s just…”

“Spooky? Unnerving? Terrifying beyond the capacity for rational thought?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” Rachel smiled into the darkness. “Unnerving is a good word.”

“Why do you want to go forward? Not that I am saying your shouldn’t,” Gaius amended quickly. “It’s just that I am rather curious as to your reasoning. At least eighty-nine percent of the girls at school would pay not to see a ghost, and we go to a school of sorcerers.”

“Why?” The question caught Rachel off guard. She had to think about it for a time. “I guess it’s part of wanting to know things. I’ve realized recently that I say ‘I want to know everything,’ but what I really want to know is secrets. Forbidden things. Forgotten things. Especially forgotten things. I feel so sorry for the things that no one remembers.

“And that’s what ghosts represent, isn’t it? All ghosts have a forgotten thing—something no one knows about that is holding them to the mortal world. If we could find it, we might be able to help them pass on to…wherever it is that the dead are supposed to go. It is as if each ghost is its own mystery.

As Rachel spoke, it occurred to her that now that Azrael was bound up again, Myrddin might feel his business on earth was finished. The idea that she might never see Thunderfrost’s Boy again made her feel both hopeful for him and slightly sad.

Gaius nodded. “That makes sense.”

“Does it?”

“Yes, I can understand that,” Gaius said. “I know that ever since the princess told me about her vision of my past, I’ve been obsessed with who I might have been and how I came to be here. I can’t stop thinking about that space station that blew up. I…think I had something to do with that. I’m seventy-nine and a half percent certain.”

Rachel thought of Dream Gaius, staring at the star-faring galleons. “You have no way of knowing that for sure, Gaius.”

“Rachel, I have this persistent feeling that I was…not good person.”

“But you are now,” Rachel said firmly.

Gaius swallowed and nodded. She waited a moment, but he said no more.

“I want to see what those lights are.” Rachel gazed down the shoreline at the eerie luminescence coming their way. “Shall we proceed?”

“No time like the present.”

Rachel flew her broom over the marshes. She could smell the boggy water. They flew cautiously toward the eerie gliding glow. Once closer, they saw that the iridescent white came from the gowns of a procession of young women with long flowing hair who glided barefoot over the marshes toward the mansion. The green glow came from wild will-o-wisps—the kind that would lure a mortal to a soggy, boggy doom—hovering above the outstretched palms of the young women. The sight of the dead maidens with their ropey locks bearing the pale light of fey wisps sent shivers dancing up and down Rachel’s body.

“What are they?” Gaius whispered.

“Willies.”

“Which are?”

“The spirits of maidens who died from a broken heart. Like in Gizelle.”

“Which is?”

“Don’t you watch classical ballet?”

“Not on a regular basis. No.” Gaius’s voice sounded tight, as if he were trying to contain his mirth.

“Aren’t you an Upper School senior?” Rachel turned at the waist and frowned at him. “We’re learning about them in Freshman Music. How could you not have studied Willies?”

“I know. I know. Shameful. But, frankly, if it doesn’t give me magical powers when I summon it up, I haven’t really paid a whole lot of attention. Unless it’s dangerous. Are Willies deadly?”

“Only to handsome young men, whom they dance to death,” Rachel replied dryly.

Gaius’s mouth formed a silent O. “I will make a point to avoid those particular beauties. Luckily, I brought my own.”

Rachel blushed in the darkness and quickly turned the broom up the slope toward where the mansion stood at the top of the hill. 

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All About That Spook. Bout That Spook. No Terror! — Guest Post at Magical Words

The Superversive Blog will return next week with a Guest Post.

This week, we have a writing article over at Magical Words. 

Here is the opening:

 

My youngest son has a longstanding problem with nightmares. So he has learned to avoid things that might spark them. He will not walk through a modern bookstore, unless either he’s mapped out a safe route to the kids section that passes through language tutorials and books on auto repair, or I am there to cover his eyes. He knows I am also not a huge fan of horror and gore, and nowadays, many Halloween displays are quite horrific.

So it has been quite a challenge to make it clear to him why I love Halloween so much. I tried to explain:

Me: “I love the parts of Halloween that are creepy and spooky, but not scary or horrific. There are a lot of movies like that.”

Son: “Like what?”

Me, thinking: “Well, Arsenic and Old Lace.”

Son: “What’s that about?”

Inexplicably, I totally failed to convey the humor of old women poisoning lonely men. You should have seen his face.

Maybe I should have started with It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

 

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Mab’s Handy Guide To Surviving the Supernatural — Dragon World Tour

 

Hey Folks,

Mab Boreal here. You know me—the Northeast Wind who works for Prospero Inc. as a company gumshoe.

It has come to my attention that many of you are woefully uninformed about dragons. More innocent tourists get eaten every day. Yeah, they blame on natural disasters, terrorists and outbreaks of disease, but we all know its dragons.

Well, not all of it. There are a lot of other nasties out there. But dragons eat more and more people every year.

So, my assistant and I have headed out on a special world tour. We’re checking out the dragons in each part of the world and giving you a few pointers on how to avoid a fiery, roasted death.

Without further ado, today’s report from the Dragon World Tour!

 

Name:  Wyvern

Description:   A lot like the Classical Western, except it only has wings and back feet. No hands or forward arms.

Might breath fire. Might just have a poisonous breath or bite.

Wyverns have barbed tails. Sometimes, the barbs are poisoned. Sea-going wyvern have fish tails insead.

Wyvern, the word, comes from wyver, from Old French wivre, from the Latin v?pera—as in 'viper'.

Where To Find It: Mainly in Europe, though some have been spotted in Siberia or America. They live in mountains, hills, and wells. Really sucks when you go to get water, and a wyvern comes out of your well. Luckily, most people today get water out of faucets, and most wyverns can’t fit through there.

Though they did recently have a problem in Pennsylvania with wyverns running away from frackers and breathing out of people’s sinks.

Frequency: Semi-common. Often mistaken for oversized bat.

Danger Level:  Well, what do you think? Do I need to repeat the words FIRE and POISON?

Mab’s Eye View:  Look. Ugly critters. Nasty temper, too. They’re perpetually in a bad mood because they don’t got arms. Can’t blame ‘em. I would be, too.

 

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Overheard At The Wright Household

My son Juss has engaged in MORTAL COMBAT (cue appropriate music) with the…blind cat.

He may need a new opponent.

Signal Boost Tuesday — Bible Camp Mysteries!

Hey Folks, A Signal Boost to author Cheryl Rogers:

Interview with the main character:

Chet has to know. If he’s going to take his third trip into the Florida backwoods with a group of preteens and teens, he has to hear from God. On the first trip, 13-year-old Zack went missing in the middle of the night. Then a hurricane headed their way! On the second trip, two boys left the trail to explore – even though they knew very well what happened to Zack. Then a forest fire struck!

Chet’s a city boy. While he is no longer a newbie at camping, he wants to be absolutely sure it is God’s will for him to return to the backwoods for his most ambitious adventure: A two-night canoe trip.  One of the members of his youth group, Jeff, loves canoeing and has been begging for the group to go. Chet’s lined up a canoeing lesson from a wilderness expert. Now he needs to know if you want to join them (virtually, of course) .

We talked with the fictitious youth leader Chet about his wilderness Bible Camps — and what he has lined up for the next trip.

Q. Are the boys from church eager to return to the backwoods for another retreat, Chet?

A. I have a core group that’s very interested in these wilderness retreats. Zack. Jeff. They always rope in Chang, although I suspect he’d rather have a video party. Then there are the younger boys, Alfonso and Sammy. They are ready. The parents, however, have been somewhat of a challenge. No one wants his boy to go missing like Zack did on the first trip. They need to be convinced. I need to take as many precautions as is humanly possible. And I need to be sure to seek God, to be sure I am in his will. That’s why I’m reaching out, to ascertain the interest in what I’m doing.

Q. What’s the idea behind the Bible Camps?

A. Camping is an integral part of growing up for some kids. They love it. And it gives me an opportunity to teach them about God, amidst his creation, and encourage them to surrender their lives to him.

Q. Spiritually speaking, it seems your Bible Camps have had an astounding amount of success. Can you tell us what God has done?

A. I am always glad to give glory to God. I owe him everything. He picked me up out of a New York gang and turned me into a youth fellowship leader. There was a time when I never thought people would trust me with their kids, at all. Now, I’m wondering if they’ll trust me with their kid in the backwoods. God is so good.

Well, the first year, Zack had a beautiful encounter with God’s love and mercy when he ignored instructions, and wandered off in the middle of the night from camp. It was a traumatic experience, I am sure, and Zack sought God like he was taught to do. In his desperation, he surrendered his life to God, and was born again in the Spirit.

This was a major breakthrough, not only for Zack, but for the group. Zack began praying for others and sharing God’s love with them.

Then, the second year, God demonstrated his ability to heal through a woman named Sandy.  The boys found her camping far off the beaten trail to avoid electricity.  She was born again, and healed. The boys got to pray for her and witness her miraculous recovery from an incurable disease, Environmental Illness. I expect to see great things happen this year – if God does indeed want us to return to the backwoods.

Q. Tell us how you prepare for these trips.

A. Well, a lot goes into them, actually. It’s easier, in some ways, to plan because we’ve been there before. But we still need to recruit and sign up the boys, get the permission slips signed, collect the money, buy/rent supplies, train them in outdoor skills, and pray. I learned with the first trip you can never pray too much.

Q. What about canoeing? Why canoeing this trip? Is the group ready to boat with alligators on the Crooked River?

A. I don’t think I could ever personally be ready for that. Children are bait for alligators. Our core group of boys, however, are not little anymore. If they were, I wouldn’t go.  I would never do anything to jeopardize their welfare. The experts from Florida tell me alligators are no problem. We just need to stay clear of them and they will stay clear of us.

Because I don’t believe an overnight canoe trip is advisable for inexperienced canoers — including myself, by the way — I have planned for a canoe lesson prior to the trip. That way everyone who wants to accompany us can have some real canoe experience beforehand. We also will have our canoeing instructor, a wilderness expert, accompany us on the trip.

Q. It sounds like you are well prepared. What should our readers who want to accompany you on the trip know?

A.  Get ready for an adventure! We want everyone to have a great time. Every one of the male characters in the book will have a canoeing buddy, and they’ll be plenty of time to chat and visit, swim in the river, cook over a wood fire, sing and praise God. As readers, and virtual participants, they’re along for the ride – without actually facing the mosquitoes and bugs, or whatever else we encounter.

Q. Why should they sign up for this retreat?

A. Every one who signs up will be among the very first to read the third Bible Camp Mystery, and they’ll get a free e-copy.  The 50th person to sign up will receive an autographed copy of the upcoming trilogy: The first three Bible Camp mysteries, slated for released in print sometime next year.

Q. Where can people learn more about the Bible Camp Mystery series?

A. Hop over to www.newchristianbooksonlinemagazine.com, which features some exclusive interviews from some of the series’ characters. The magazine is published by Bible Camp Mystery author, Cheryl Rogers.

Q. How do readers sign up?

A. If they’re ready to sign up for my third expedition into the backwoods, they should visit www.newchristianbooksonlinemagazine.com/ signup-for-virtual-bible-camp/  Registrants receive a free copy of Disaster on the River, scheduled for release this November. Remember, you’re not obligating yourself to actually face snakes, alligators, or summer rainstorms in the Central Florida backwoods … but, you’ll enter their world through the book. Hope you can join us!

 

Official announcement:

The third in a series of Bible Camp Mysteries for preteens and teens is slated for release in November. Called Disaster on the River, the novelette centers around an ill-fated canoe trip in Central Florida.

“The characters model the biblical path to salvation and the biblical lifestyle,” says author Cheryl Rogers, who was enthralled with Nancy Drew Mysteries as a child.

In Disaster on the River, a group of 10- to 16-year-old boys from The Boys’ Den, a group from the fictitious Living Water Community Church, return to the woods only to encounter a rainstorm, crashing tree, invading bobcat, alligators, a few snakes and a mysterious Indian trail. The boys are led by a former New York gang leader, Chet Harrigan, who does his best, but never quite measures up.

“Life always throws Chet a curve ball. He must live on faith,” Rogers says. “The boys aren’t always adequately prepared, but they act on what they are taught – demonstrating how to enter a life-saving relationship with Jesus.”

In the book, the boys become separated as they float down the Crooked River. When Chet and Zack hurry after the boys, they can’t catch them right away. That leaves the group to sleep in three different places under a rainstorm.

The first book in the series, Lost in the Woods: A Bible Camp Mystery, is about the disappearance of 13-year-old Zack in the middle of the night. The second book, Alone in the Woods, involves a mysterious woman who makes her home far off the trail in the backwoods.

Rogers decided to become a writer because her love of mystery stories as a child, She earned a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Sociology before working for 12 years in the newspaper industry.

She now works as a freelance writer and self publishing assistant, offering writing, editing, page layout, book cover design and formatting to other authors. She is a regular contributor to Central Florida Ag News, Central Florida Health News and Central Florida Doctor magazines.

Rogers enjoys writing fiction and nonfiction for all age groups to share her faith. Among her other books are Just Like Jonah Wail Tales, a short story collection featuring modern Jonahs who make wrong choices and land in a heap of trouble, just like Jonah. Parents and teachers get the short stories, discussion questions and Scripture cites in the companion ebook, Just Like Jonah Wail Tales Workbook.

She also has written Fast Track to Victory, A Christian Guidebook, a 40-lesson nondenominational devotions book encapsulating biblical principles. The book teaches how to truly love and forgive others, why it’s important to set aside pride, how to deal with tragedy and death and more.

She shares new Christian book announcements at www.newchristianbooksonlinemagazine.com, along with book excerpts, devotions, features and author marketing news.

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