I have recently completed a series of short stories all fiction and all from a Catholic point of view. I am now in search of a Catholic publisher that might pick up this sort of thing. After an exhaustive search there is no such animal. I have heard and read that there is no audience (outside of magazines) for this type of work. I have found some that will do Christian Poetry and one that specializes in Catholic fiction: Sophia Institute Press. They have some excellent guidelines for success; the most I’ve seen from any publisher Catholic or not. Their main point is to hide the faith or rather make it very subtle. Here are a couple of their tips for Writing About Faith and Faithful or Holy Fictional Characters: Some Recommendations

"...3.) The secular rule, which still holds true for us is: you can get away with any amount of preaching if the character doing it is sufficiently insane, off kilter, evil, or unexpected.

I'm not talking about using a colorful old Irish priest to present your rules on marriage: I'm talking about having a homosexual debaucher pointing out to the main character that he's losing his soul. (Evelyn Waugh brilliantly does this in Brideshead Revisited: "I warned you at great length and in great detail about Charm. It kills art. It kills love. And I fear, Charles, that it has killed you." Charm here is the socially-acceptable compromise with morality that Charles has embraced to escape his boring marriage: no one in the entire book points this out to Charles except for Anthony Blanche, the sinister homosexual character). Readers expect priests and nuns to stand for and speak of morality. They don't expect your villain or your loser or your sappy wallflower to do it. So, for maximum impact, use them, not your openly religious characters!

Don't show normality. Be wary of showing consolations in prayer.

Characters can pray if:

a) they are sufficiently under stress, or better yet, there is a situation causing stress - there is a fire, shooting going on, etc. Anyone, including atheists, can pray then! Having characters getting worked up and crying in prayer really only should be used when circumstances demand it: someone shedding tears mainly over their own sinfulness or someone else's is generally going to read as false.

b) the prayers aren't answered, apparently. This is almost always acceptable. A) works best, actually, if the prayers don't seem to help.

c) the character is sufficiently strange or unexpected

d) the characters are priests, monks, or nuns, whom the reader will expect to see praying and acting in a holy, upright manner. (In fact, if such characters are not seen praying, it might weird the reader out, especially if the nuns or priests are engaged in too many other "normal" activities like playing cards, riding bikes, etc. The reader might think, "If they're just like me, why are they wearing those funny clothes?") For better or worse, prayer is expected from religious, but lay people who are devout are still seen as abnormal.

e) prayer is used for irony: someone prays for chastity and then goes out and starts lusting. The juxtaposition has to be sharp in order to work. This isn't me being nasty: think of how many times we Catholic parents can go from praying devoutly for patience to screaming at our kids!

f) the framework is humorous. Think of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof chastising God, or the Mouse character in LadyHawke bargaining with the Almighty. If someone has a unique or offbeat relationship with God, constant prayer can be fine."

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Seriously, they have laid out some excellent points for any writer and probably should be used in any creative writing class.

I will continue my search for a publisher but my hopes are not as high as when I started. Or as my Dad used to say, “Now the real work begins.”

The Glenn Beck Conspiracy Generator

Promising “Fair and Balanced Paranoia on Demand,” the Glenn Beck Conspiracy Generator, from About.com’s Political Humor blog, is a fine example of internet technology in service of a greater good.

I don’t have a joke for this one. I just like it. Copy down these algorithm-base screeds, bust them out at your next party or faculty meeting and see if anyone notices the difference. Good, clean, American fun.

To paraphrase G. K. Chesterton, when people stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing, they believe in everything ...The credulous and the gullible are having their day."

Heads up, culture warriors: The Secular Student Alliance, which promotes atheism and humanism among its more than 200 college chapters, is moving into high schools. The organization hopes to launch 50 high school chapters this year, to give young atheists the same social benefits of court-sanctioned after-school religious clubs. Barry Lasco, a senior at Stephen Austin High School in Huston, told USA Today he finally launched a chapter this week after months of administrative resistance.

Maybe he used Chesterton’s argument that ‘if there were no God there would be no atheists’ to win the administration over.

At these meetings, after the Sargent of arms declares there is no God and everyone cheers and congratulates each other on right thinking, what do they talk about?

“Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.” GKC

I was going to regale you all with my latest hospital adventure but then realized the only thing more boring than old people telling stories about their grand children are stories by old people about their hospital stays.

So here is something more important:
I have mentioned before I hate when comic book heroes get killed off but not as much as when they are brought back to life a few issues later, ie: Superman and Captain America.

Oh, but now they have gone to far! Marvel announced last week (when I was hospitalized to avoid the confrontation) that Spider-Man will be joining the Fantastic Four as the replacement for the Human Torch, who was killed off last month. Spidey will join Mr. Fantastic, The Thing, and the Invisible Woman in a new series called "FF" - which now stands for "Future Foundation."

As loyal readers know we hate to editorialize here at Chesterton and Friends. But let us be frank - this the approximate equivalent of Bruce Springsteen joining KISS. And the new costumes would make Edna Mode go screaming into the night. We should not stand idly by.

Signs that the Apocalypse is upon us

In a time when Taco Bell is being sued for not having meat in their meat taco we come up with meat water. For those vegetarians out there do not despair for you can still join the fun of drinking food with a grilled cheese and tomato soup martini.

I just hope they finally solved the problems Willy had with his Three-Course-Dinner gum.

And they want to regulate crisis pregnancy centers.

No one has been beaten, raped or killed in a crisis pregnancy center.

We are not hearing from the MSM about this because They Know It's True.
and
The Grand Jury has summed up this conspiracy of silence in a single damning paragraph. “Bureaucratic inertia is not exactly news. We understand that. But we think this was something more. We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion.”