“Ink and Fairydust Magazine” Interview
For its November/December issue, Ink and Fairydust Magazine interviewed me. Ink and Fairydust is an online, every-other-month publication that highlights the arts to “young Christians.”
Thanks to Courtney and all the folks at Ink and Fairydust for the interest and support. It comes at a perfect time with the release of Tempting Skies.
Check out the interview.
The November/December issue also includes Christmas-focused poetry and short fiction. Enhance the season at Ink and Fairydust.
An Ink and Fairydust Excerpt
Here’s my answer to one question from the interview (Links and pictures added):
Who are some of your favorite authors and inspirations, and why do they inspire you?
A couple favorite, inspiring novels—neither interestingly were written in English—are Anna Karenina and Les Misérables.
Anna Karenina presents such a vivid contrast in the lives of those who make wise decisions and those who betray themselves and others with choices that cannot bring happiness. As I recall, after Tolstoy’s conversion to Christianity, he rejected all his earlier work, including Karenina. But I personally find much in it to support faith.
In Les Misérables, Victor Hugo creates an absorbing story and character of redemption, sacrifice, forgiveness and selflessness in Jean Valjean. Valjean is perpetually surrounded by self-serving, thoughtless creatures, yet after his “salvation,” he acts almost inexplicably to help those very self-serving, thoughtless creatures. Even as their inattention brings his premature death, he exhibits unwavering compassion and love. (A side note: Les Misérables was new and popular in the US during the Civil War. One of the despicable characters in A River Divides reads enough of the novel to lift an idea that enables him to continue his menacing ways.)
I’m also inspired by William Tyndale for his tireless and perilous work translating into English the Bible for the common man. I honor him for the dedication, talent and work that became the foundation and much of the substance of the great artistry of the King James Bible and, I suppose, helped “open the King of England’s eyes.” And if you think about Tyndale’s great influence on the English language, you have to note William Shakespeare. A few years ago and stemming from a personal goal, I read and blogged about all of his plays and poems (many for the first time). The beauty of the language he created and his spot-on insights into the human soul are just as real and relevant today as they were four centuries ago, as is his influence on our day-to-day language. I was so moved by my Shakespeare experience that I included a Shakespeare-loving English soldier in soon-to-be-published Tempting Skies.
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