Category Archives: Uncategorized

Histria Books, publishers of The Fire Trail, my sixth novel, is offering a special promotion this summer, 30% off with Code FIRE30, through August 31. Now that Histria is partnering with Simon and Schuster, we look forward to more fans enjoying this literary suspense, set in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2014, about the border between civilization and barbarism:

Back Cover Copy:

UC Berkeley grad student Jessica Thierry walks the Fire Trail in the hills and witnesses a rapist-murderer leave the scene. Fearing for her life, she tries to focus on her doctorate about Christianity’s role in Berkeley’s history.

Grad student Zachary Aguilar, in love with Jessica, searches for goodness, beauty, transcendence, and truth as he tries to protect her from the killer.

Armenian Pastor Nathaniel Casparian, disfigured by burns, is resident caretaker of Comerford House Museum. He cares for his dying brother who is writing The Question of Civilization. Father Nate prays for religious freedom and for the return of faith in a loving God.

Anna Aguilar, Comerford’s docent, vets violent novels donated to her children’s library. Frightened by rising crime, she is encouraged by Nate’s belief in the Judeo-Christian tradition in the public square.

Set against the collapse of Western civilization, The Fire Trail draws these four characters to an unforgettable conclusion.

Happy Birthday America! In celebration of America’s Declaration of Independence and its 250th anniversary, I’m pleased to announce that American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) has published my post, Authoring Freedom, which considers how Christian authors exercise freedom of speech as they fashion together selected words, creating poetic phrasing, paragraphs, pages, and chapters; they show how freedom gives life to death, breathing into our souls and characters the love of the Creator.

Freedom of speech is one of the themes in my latest novel, The Music of the Mountain, a sequel to Angel Mountain, a literary inspirational novel with elements of romance, mystery, and suspense texturing a novel of ideas about faith and family, freedom and speech, truth and beauty, history and memory. As books are burned, libraries closed, shops shuttered, and gangs terrorize the streets, four intrepid heroes seek to restore freedom, faith, and truth. An atheist Ethics professor, an elderly Anglican vicar, a young Catholic journalist, and an evangelical American History teacher, plot to save Western Civilization, book by book. Set in the San Francisco Bay Area in January 2023, tyranny and freedom confront one another in a world of lockdowns, mandates, and censorship. Holocausts past and present cry for justice, but what is justice and how do we know right from wrong?

May God bless America!

On May 7 we honored the National Day of Prayer, established by Congress in 1952, a day to pray for our country. In celebration of faith in America, ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) published my post, “Authoring Faith,” how Christian novelists create stories informed by a faith that lives in the golden triangle of faith, freedom, and virtue.

James Sale, UK classical poet and author of the incredible English Cantos (think Dante’s Divine Comedy updated for today) has recently reviewed my seventh novel, Angel Mountain (Wipf and Stock, 2020), on Goodreads. You can find my reviews of his HellWard, StairWell, and Doorway posted there as well as on my website blog. Highly recommended even for those who don’t read poetry!

My traveling manuscript, The Music of the Mountain, a sort-of sequel to Angel Mountain (Wipf & Stock), has yet to be accepted for publication, so we may self-publish, as the publishing world twists and turns with the political winds, or perhaps I should say, hurricanes and tornadoes.

Goodreads Giveaway: Check Goodreads June 14, Flag Day, to July 4, Independence Day, to enter to win a free copy of Angel Mountain in celebration of America’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

And lastly, it is gratifying to see greater publicity in regard to Intelligent Design (origins) as well as Near-Death Experiences (NDE). These themes run through The Fire Trail, Angel Mountain, and the much anticipated Music of the Mountain. The amazing Andrew Klavan of The Daily Wire recently interviewed Stephen C. Meyer from the Discovery Institute in Seattle, a scientific think tank exploring evolution and genetics, a group that came out of UC Berkeley in the ’90’s. I hope to see their recently released movie, The Theory of Everything, which reveals some remarkable scientific discoveries of the last decade.

In this third and concluding volume of The English Cantos, DoorWay (2025), we enter the universe, the starry heavens of Paradise.

From garden to lake baptism to Golgotha and the cross, our Poet sees what must be cleansed, shed, shredded, for his “treachery to goodness, crimes against the truth, and letting beauty stale.” He eventually emerges “delirious almost to vertigo…” We see he is on his way, but which way? He must choose, as his lake becomes an “ocean of love,” and he meets St. Dismas, the penitent thief on the cross alongside Christ, who helps him on his journey.

And so we have come through the portal, but still have a ways to go, on “skyward routes on skating slopes of light,” pulled higher by love. We see Heaven and those who are able to go there, the theology of  “God’s greatest heist,” and a “surpassing choir where sound is joy.” As I read and reread and reread again, the images seed my own soul with echoes of Heaven. Longing becomes intense, as it is meant to be.

We meet the Poet’s grandfather who converted late in life and went straight to Paradise, for he believed. Other family members appear and teach us more about Heaven. “Michael, first born of seraphim” reminds us that our Poet is not dead but in flesh and blood, nearly blinded by the light. The angel’s voice is “tornado-like… made images arise, becoming words…” We hear of Michael’s battle with Lucifer, his twin, when “that great Fall caused Time,” and see when the redeemed sons and daughters of man will return, immortal when new time comes.

Love and truth are seeded to flower in this soaring universe of starry love. Yet our poet must still be cleansed, this time “with burning coal to touch my lips… my lips ablaze – cremating all my lies… The burning coal – mouth stuffed with its surprise and heat…” and finally, “The coal, which in my mouth had been a boulder, now slipped down my throat so pebble-small, (though ever after in my soul to smoulder).”

Part fantasy, part suspense, part pain, and part joy, DoorWay’s power is the love of God and our readiness to receive His love: “As in me fear and awe and love criss-crossed in apprehensive trinities…” so that when we see the End of Days, the New Jerusalem and the wrath of God upon Earth, we rightly understand majesty and fear: “I, both for myself and those below, shook, conscious how much I had failed to fear His presence, Name.”

Traveling through this universe of stars, we are given unforgettable images: “For somehow thinking entwined with light, whose colours, dyed so rich, yet too sounds mixed, as if the red rendered note C to sight, and other colours, notes so formed, made text!”

Our Poet wants to stay, but knows he must return to Earth to tell and warn, to “sing of plot – His plot – where all of it began: The love of God for woman and for man.”

And lastly, although there is so much more to say and see and feel and understand, I found that reading the text aloud, paying close attention to punctuation, most helpful, falling into a natural rhythm in the three-line interlocking rhyme scheme, the terza rima, the classic form of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Thank you, James Sale, for Truth told so beautifully, with such a piercing plot – His plot – one we can journey into again and again.

In this second volume of The English Cantos, James Sale leads us up the stairs of Purgatory, where intercessory prayer effects changes, allowing Christ to make us well, to drink from His well of life, to save us from ourselves. Virgil joins Dante and James our Poet as larger questions of history and philosophy and civilization form physical barriers to be scaled, tempting our Poet to remain and not venture higher.

And so we climb the stairs to wellness, keeping our eye on the higher goal and not looking down or back. And as we climb, our Poet visits great tragedy in his past, yet sees his mother in the work of redemption. But temptation is real, just as redemption is possible, and he nearly falls from grace, restrained from the brink by his companions and the love of God.

The stairs reveal levels of Purgatory, with friends and coworkers, modern heresies rife in education and business. Each step is a challenge in which the pilgrims must overcome great obstacles, mazes, confusions, and dangers.

Part satire, part suspense, part soul-searching, these cantos pull us higher, facing Covid and religious hypocrites wo are offered redemption. Herakles the trickster holds up the sky, tempting James to stay and help.

And others never make it to the top of the stairs – to Heaven’s doorway – but are tempted and soothed by their proud choices, including famous poets, both classical and modern.

In the end, a harrowing chasm opens that must be crossed by answering rightly, each verse leading to the Way.

In StairWell, like HellWard, Sale interweaves personal judgement/redemption with social and historical judgement/redemption, at times sharply satirizing, at times with witty wisdom. We see and experience the human condition, full of contradictions, full of pride and envy, and yet full of love. We climb the stairs, learning who we are, creatures created by a fiery God of grace, giving us hope for Heaven’s doorway.

This second volume does not disappoint but grows in truth and beauty that will seed the reader’s heart, and like HellWard, will be read and reread many times.

Thank you, James Sale, and bravo!

Inspired by his near-death experience, UK classical poet James Sale journeys with us into Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, in this epic poem that mirrors Dante’s Divine Comedy, set in the modern world.

In HellWard (Amazon KDP, 2019), the first of three volumes, we enter the ward-dungeons of Sale’s hospital, encountering friends and family – his mother, a pupil, a boss, a poet friend, then meeting those public figures who influence others through through art, politics, and philosophy, poisoned with pride.

We learn that choices matter, free will matters, and we see what happens when the wrong path is chosen. We spiral downward, deeper and deeper into the wards of Hell.

This epic poem reads like a great adventure, pulling the reader along with rhythm and reason, sound and suspense, self-insight and sudden truths denied or ignored. Sale warns us, look and see, the blind are leading the blind. Do we want to follow?

The tension between love and unlove, between humility and pride, is illustrated graphically, continuous and frightening, as if led to a cliff and pushed, then caught in the freefall motion and wafted up, suddenly saved.

And in the end, we realize we create our own Hell here and now with each choice, so that in death we are given what we have chosen and continue to choose. Our free will is our destiny.

We enter these pages and discover ourselves, woven into words, a tapestry showing us who we are and who we are meant to be, the two being disparate, but also longing for union. Sale has gifted us with a mirror reflecting not only our downward turns but the love of God present, desiring to change us into love, to become what He intended when he created us.

For it is not so much a choosing of Heaven or Hell but of being there already – by the choices we have made and the person we have become. If we desire to be away from God and His light, we continue a choosing we have made all our lives.

A unique, powerful, and life-changing epic poem! Lots to think about and revisit again and again. Open the door and enter, guided not only by James Sale, poet, but Dante himself. Highly recommended! And it would make a great movie…

Passiontide is observed the two weeks before Easter, Resurrection Sunday, when the Son of God conquered death to give us life eternal. Lent leads into Passiontide, and we have prepared ourselves with ashes and discipline to face the fullness of Christ’s love for each one of us. To face the fire of this love is no small thing, and so we step carefully through this penitential season, reading and learning the words of love that need to be written on our hearts.

For Passiontide is about freedom, the freedom to love, the freedom to express that love, the freedom to accept that love, the love of our Creator. My bishop of blessed memory often said that “passion” in this sense is the union of love and suffering, meaning the Way of the Cross to death and resurrection. We choose to travel that Way (or not) in our own time on Earth, the days and months and years given to us in which we learn how to love. For love means sacrifice of self to make room for the beloved. A curious conundrum, this love and sacrifice, and each Lent as winter folds into spring we see and hear and know a bit more of that suffering love through our Lenten sacrifices and offerings, through our sacraments and songs.

We are on a journey of love and suffering, a schooling for Heaven. The lessons are life and death to us, literally, so we must pay attention. We learn each time we fall, each time we fail to love enough. We look up from that fallen place, and reach for His outstretched hand. We confess we have not loved enough and He raises us from the dead.

The lessons in this school of love – our own lifetimes – are taught throughout the Church Year. The Church has organized these marvelous works of God, these marvelous words of God, indeed, the Word of God Himself, in seasons throughout our 365 days so that we can walk this path with and within the Church, alongside Christ, re-membering and re-enacting the great moments of salvation history – Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Trinity. They are “tides” or seasons and repeat just as the year repeats, so we walk with those gone before and those alongside and those to come. We are schooled in this story, this passion, engrafting words and deeds on our hearts.

I have found memorizing prayers and scripture to be a good discipline as well as sustenance for the soul. This Lent I am working on the prayer For Our Country found in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer:

For Our Country.

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech thee that we may
always prove ourselves a people mindful of thy favour and glad to do thy will. Bless our land with honourable industry,
sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogancy, and from
every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many
kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in thy Name we entrust the authority of
government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we may show forth
thy praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day
of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP 36)

It seems an appropriate prayer for this anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence, particularly the “honourable industry, sound learning, and pure manners” and the union of “the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues.” America is indeed the great experiment, and it is true that the Founders of our nation assumed certain truths to be self-evident, given to them by God, for they were largely Christians – Protestants from a Judeo-Christian world.

The prayer was written not by Archbishop Cranmer, who wrote many of the British prayers and put together our marvelous Book of Common Prayer in the 17th century, but in 1882 by Rev. George Lyman Locke (1835-1919), Rector of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Bristol, Rhode Island. For it is an American prayer, not British. It was added after his death (but I’m sure he looked on from above) in the 1928 edition.

America is a nation founded on free will, freedom of choice, which is founded upon self-evident truths and moral obligations, laws ordained by God. And so we pray at this time that “through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the earth.” And we write these laws on our hearts as we follow Our Lord to Jerusalem, walk with Him the Way of His Cross, and learn what love truly is.

Happy Presidents’ Day!

Thank you ACFW for publishing today my post, Authoring Peace, how Christian novelists celebrate the Judeo-Christian tradition of peace and concord, respect for life, and our inalienable rights granted by God. Thank you, American Christian Fiction Writers!

January is the month celebrating the Holy Name of Jesus. It is a month of seeing, of recognition, of friendship, of love. For only with a clear vision of reality can we choose the Way to Heaven, the Truth of our world, and Life everlasting.

My novel, The Music of the Mountain, takes place in the month of January, and as I plotted the days and weeks I looked at the face of a calendar with squares marking time disappearing. In the course of this month, the Feast of the Epiphany (the sixth) grows into a tide of epiphanies, revealing Jesus, the Son of God, and in this “face-time” we can see him, who he was, is, and ever will be. And as we look upon the holy face, we know him. We recognize him and he recognizes us, smiling.

For with our time and our words and our love, all embodied in daily, hourly, prayer, we have invited him into our hearts, to sit with us in our present moment, encourage us to face the next, and recollect those of the past, the losses and the loves. We live the truth, calling on the Holy Name, Jesus, breathing him in and out as we go about our day. We witness to him with moments of remembrance, praying Jesus my Lord, I thee adore, teach me to love thee more and more. For it is this time between morning prayer and evening prayer, this time of temptation and trial, of tedium and testing, that we see more clearly his Holy Face.

If we remember to see. If we remember to say. If we remember to listen and to love.

For he sees us then; he speaks to us then; he listens and loves us. It is then we know joy.

And so as we travel through January, through the gospels of the boy in the temple, the baptism by John, the changing of the water to wine, the healing of the centurion’s son, we grow in grace. We pray the Holy Name and see the Holy Face and know that life wins over death in this precious and glorious journey through time given to each one of us.

January recalls death, remembering the holocaust of abortion and the killing of unborn children, the holocaust of World War II and the genocide of Jews. We mourn and weep, just like Rachel weeping for her children.

January is a dark month, with short days and long nights, but we also see signs of spring, a path toward the light. We reach for the light in January, preparing to meet Ash Wednesday, live through Lent, walk alongside in the Passion, and arrive at the Resurrection of Our Lord on Easter.

In January we hear the faint melody of angels singing, just as in The Music of the Mountain. Storms buffet, cold engulfs, darkness threatens. Yet in the distance the angels sing, and day by day, as we pray his Name and see his Face, we draw closer to the music of light and life, so that soon we sing with angels and the heavenly host, praising our God of love, life, and light.