Author: leeduigon(patty)

I have lived in Metuchen, NJ, all my life. I have been married to my wife Patricia since 1977. I am a former newspaper editor and reporter. I was also the owner-operator of my own small business for several years. I wrote various novels and short stories published during 1980s and 1990s. I am a long-time student of judo and Japanese swordsmanship (kenjutsu). I also play chess, basketball, and military and sports simulations.

Splat! Goes the Writer

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Yesterday it was raining cats and dogs (as usual–and I don’t even live in Seattle), and as I was going out the front door, my foot slipped on the wet doorstep, my ankle buckled, and I was launched into a swan-dive to the cement sidewalk.

It could’ve been very nasty, but I escaped with a scraped knee and nothing else. Obviously God was watching over me. But I must also thank my judo instructors of long ago, who drilled us incessantly in the art of taking a fall. After all, if you can’t fall without getting hurt, you really can’t practice judo. Even after all this time, I have retained this skill. I might’ve wound up like Humpty-Dumpty, otherwise. Certainly I would recommend this training to everyone!

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for the signal to start writing Book #6 of my Bell Mountain Series. Our artist, Kirk Douponce, says he’s ready to start work on the cover of #4, The Last Banquet, and I’m in the process of proofreading it. Hopefully it’ll be ready for publication by the end of this summer; and then we can all get to work on #5, The Fugitive Prince… provided I continue to survive any additional falls I might take.

 

Audio/Video: What’s Bell Mountain All About?

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My Spam

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I have a lot to learn about blogging. For instance, I just checked to see what WordPress could possibly mean by setting aside some of the comments as “Spam.”

Would you believe it? They’re commercials–lousy commercials! Not only that: they are also attempts to use my blog space for advertising, without paying for it. This is a new form of parasitism.

There was also an oddball in the bunch: a one-line message that said, simply, “I think I’m pregnant.” What’s that going to turn out to be an ad for? I don’t think I want to know.

Oh, I know, it’s a little thing, a trivial annoyance. But we are getting awfully slipshod about our ethics lately, aren’t we? A more casual approach to “Thou shalt not steal” can hardly be imagined.

So What’s ‘Bell Mountain’ All About?

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I’m always asked this question when I give an interview; and so far I’ve been very simple about answering it. “It’s about these two children who believe God has called them to climb a mountain and ring a bell on the summit…” Well, yes, that’s true enough. But it’s also just a peek at the plot. It’s like saying “Moby Dick” is about a whaling voyage. True, but terribly incomplete.

I have finally realized what my books truly are about.

“Bell Mountain” is about a human race that has grown deaf to God’s voice. It’s about how they learn to hear God’s voice, and how they learn to call on Him. Above all, the books are about restoring the human connection to the Living God–learning to know Him, to love Him, to obey Him, to trust Him.

In other words, the fantasy world depicted in the book is an indirect way of looking at our world, the one we live in here and now.

See what people do, these days, and hear what they say. We as a nation, as a whole civilization, don’t hear anymore; nor do we see. We proceed as if there were no God–worse, as if we ourselves were gods. This is how we wind up worshiping fornication and every form of filthiness.

The church in the world of “Bell Mountain” is a dead church which has severed its connection to God (for only God can give it life). That description fits most of the institutional churches of our own world.

To connect to God is to live. To carry on without Him is to die.

That’s what “Bell Mountain” is about.

2011 in review

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,500 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Reading Fare for Teens – Christians vs. Witchcraft, Dystopian Death Games, & Vampires

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Stories about girls vomiting themselves to death and dystopian death games entertain the youth of the present day. Kevin Swanson takes a brief journey into popular teen reading fare, and discusses a Christian view of fiction with Christian author, Lee Duigon.

Check It Out At Sermon Audio

Thunder King Review by Rev. Stephen R. Wilson

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Originality – 4/5
Writing Style – 5/5
Plot – 4/5
Characters – 5/5
Aesthetics – 4/5
The dog Cavall and First Prester Reesh steal the show.
I’ve been a big fan of the Bell Mountain series since reading the first volume. In book 3, the Boy King’s formerly-Heathen army continues to grow in their faith in the One God under the tutelage of the Old Prophet. But is the Boy ready to be King?
As the action and characters in this novel shows, God more often than not calls us to do things that are much bigger than ourselves, and hardly ever reveals how He’s going to help us accomplish them.

BOOK GUIDE: “The Thunder King” @ Movie Guide

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Third in Bell Mountain series takes readers to the brink of apocalypse

By Robert Knight

In tough times, it’s difficult enough to convey hope without sounding like Pollyanna, the ridiculously upbeat heroine of the Disney movie of the same name.

But, how about offering real hope while the world is coming apart at the seams, evil is on the march, and prophets are predicting doom?

It’s all there in The Thunder King, Lee Duigon’s third installment of the Bell Mountain series, a fantasy of epic proportions set in a medieval world that arose on the ashes of a sophisticated civilization.

Duigon, who wields one of the sharpest and funniest pens as a cultural/political columnist, keeps the action crisp, the characters believable, and the reader guessing where it will all end.
Read More”

Fantasy Disguised as Politics

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Sorry to bring up politics again. But when utter, unadulterated fantasy is repackaged as a political program that people are urged to vote for–and actually do!–it mightily cheeses me off.

This particular fantasy raises anguished howls of protest over “income inequality”–as if there were ever such a thing in the real world, or ever could be, as “income equality.” The message is that if we elect a bunch of really cool Democrats, they’ll get rid of all that inequality and transform America into the land of equal incomes.

Does this mean that a gang of crooks and schnooks in Washington will wave a magic wand, and you and I will suddenly be blessed with incomes equal to Nancy Pelosi’s, or Al Gore’s? I mean, what is this–the Arabian Nights?

The only place in the real world where there is income equality is the cemetery.

How to Set Up Your Fantasy

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How do you get your reader into the fantasy world you’ve created? Here are some of the methods that have worked for various writers.

Don’t bother with a fantasy world: set all your action in Southern California. This is the method of choice for cheaply produced movies. Bring He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, or the Predator, some other set of fantastic characters, to L.A. It saves on production costs, and saves writers the trouble of being creative. Please don’t even think about using this method.

One exception–Ellen C. Maze’s vampire novels (if you want to count them as fantasy instead of horror). She makes it work.

Make subtle adjustments to our world to turn it into a fantasy world. I’m not a Harry Potter fan, but J.K. Rowling deserves a big hat-tip for coming up with this technique. It remains to be seen whether anyone else can pull it off.

Transport protagonists from our world into the fantasy world. No one ever did this better than C.S. Lewis in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. This would appear to be the easiest way to present a fantasy, but don’t get the idea that it’s easy to do it well. But it is very easy to do it badly.

Treat the fantasy world as if it were the only world. This is the approach most commonly used–Tolkien, Fritz Leiber, Harry Turtledove, and (blush!) I, just to name a few of many. How to do it is the tricky part.

I think it’s best to start the reader off with people and places that will seem familiar, or at least easy to adjust to, and introduce him gradually to people and places that are increasingly fantastic. This is why The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings start with Hobbits in the Shire. Although Hobbits are the product of Tolkien’s imagination, they are very much like us, inwardly; and as the story progresses, and they move out from the safe, comfortable Shire, they respond as we would to the more exotic regions of Middle-Earth: with wonder, joy, awe, and terror. He makes it so easy for us to identify with Hobbits, he doesn’t need to start the story somewhere in our own world.

Always assume your reader can’t help being skeptical. You’re asking him to believe in something he knows to be fantastic: and in this you have to give him all the help you can.