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.
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.
I don’t like to do politics on this site, but occasionally some “leader” makes a remark that’s so asinine, it just has to be answered.
Our president says, of the Occupy Wall Street dingbats, “I understand the frustration… People feel separated from their government.”
No, dude–no! You couldn’t be more hopelessly, cluelessly wrong!
We are not separated enough from our accursed government!
on Amazon or on Chalcedon’s Store!I have a new computer. Heaven help me!
They changed everything. So at this writing I don’t know how to send email, or reply to email–and this new keyboard is the worst example of built-in silliness I’ve ever seen. Two days ago I could do all those things, and more. But now I can’t. I’ll have to learn everything all over again.
Wouldn’t it be great if they made cars like that? If every time they brought out a new model, you had to go back to driving school?
(I absolutely hate, loathe, and abhor this keyboard!!! It was obviously designed for elves, not human beings.)
All I can ask is that my dozens of readers please bear with me while I try to orient myself…
I’m going to write a full-scale book review on this for Chalcedon’s print magazine, Faith For All of Life, but in the meantime I’d like to give readers of this blog a heads-up on Ellen C. Maze’s new vampire trilogy, starting with “Rabbit: Chasing Beth Rider.” (TreasureLine Publishing, 2010)
Some of us have been wondering when the first “Christian vampire novel” would come along. Well, this may be it. In fact, Maze has already written a series of four “Corescu Chronicles” that might qualify.
What makes this book qualify? The “Christian element” of the story is not just tacked on; it is the story.
Some critics say C.S. Lewis beats the reader over the head with the Christian symbolism of his Narnia books, while some others say J.R.R. Tolkien buries Christian symbolism so deeply in his Middle-Earth books that nobody can find it. (Well, I say that.) Ellen Maze does something very different: her Christian element is overt, and the mainspring of the story.
To me, contemporary vampire fiction is the nadir of literature–and I say this as someone who has actually had a vampire book published (“Lifeblood,” Pinnacle Books, 1986). I was pretty much a pagan when I wrote that, and I can’t say “Lifeblood” reclaimed any ground for the Kingdom of Christ. But compared to all the “Twilight” knockoffs floating around today, “Lifeblood” wasn’t so bad. But “Rabbit” is a conscious effort to plant Christ’s banner in the heart of enemy territory, for which I applaud Mrs. Maze.
Rather than steal my own book review’s thunder, let me ask readers of this blog: What do you think a “Christian vampire novel” ought to look like? What should the author do, and what should he or she most definitely not do?
If you have any questions about the story collaboration, please ask them here as “comments” instead of attaching them to the story.
Just for fun, I invite readers of this blog to collaborate in writing a short fantasy story. To join in, just write the next paragraph of the story as a “comment.” It should, of course, bear some relation to the paragraphs that went before it. I’ll delete anything obscene, any graphic sex or violence or profanity, anything disrespectful to God or Jesus Christ, and anything that’s just incoherent. Otherwise, your paragraph becomes part of the story.
Got it? Good! The game is now open to anyone who wants to play. Let me get the ball rolling with a first paragraph. After this, I’ll clam up and the rest will be entirely the fruits of the readers’ imagination. Here goes…
Jennifer woke on a snowy morning and looked out the window. There was a centaur in her back yard, standing by the bird bath–not at all the kind of thing you expect to see in the suburbs: or anywhere else, for that matter.
The rest is up to you, folks.