And the Winners Are—

By Donna Fletcher Crow ~ September 4, 2010

A huge and heartfelt THANK YOU to all who entered my giveaway drawing to celebrate the North American release of A VERY PRIVATE GRAVE. I was completely chuffed to have 43 responses— until I read a posting on DorothyL that someone who did a giveaway on GoodReads had 600 responses. But never mind, your responses were quality!

I especially appreciate your taking time to give such thoughtful replies to my question, "Which endorsement did you like best and why?" The winners were pulled out of a hat (my rainy day in England travel hat) purely at random, but I did find it interesting that two of the winners chose Liz Curtis Higgs’ blurb:

I enjoyed Liz Curtis Higgs comment as she referred to Donna's " thorough grasp of ecclesiastical history." I love mysteries that contain accurate history. I look forward to reading this book.

Liz Curtis Higgs. . .I like the rhythm of "History and mystery and murders most foul"... I can just hear them in a lovely British accent

And one chose Kate Charles, who over-all was the preferred endorser:

I'll choose Kate Charles' endorsement. I love her mysteries, and since she has such a high opinion of yours, I bet I'll love yours too!

So there you have it from Elizabeth, Lillian and Sheila. Your books will be in the post Tuesday and I do hope you enjoy them.

In June I also ran a giveaway to promote the UK release. That time I tossed the entries on a map of the world. The winners were those who landed closest to England. Roger, appropriate landed in the North Atlantic near to Ireland while Alison overshot her home in Liverpool and landed somewhere near Finland, but it was close enough.

It’s all been great fun for me and again, my deep appreciation to all who helped me celebrate by playing along.

Donna Fletcher Crow (US) is the author of 35 books, mostly novels dealing with the history of British Christianity. Her newest book is A VERY PRIVATE GRAVE, book one in The Monastery Murders.
www.donnafletchercrow.com

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The Closed-off Entryway Mystery

By Betty Waller ~ September 3, 2010

Is the whole process of starting and running a successful church library a mystery to you? Betty Waller, head librarian of a library with more than 20,000 holdings that regularly checks out around 3.000 items a month tells how she sorted through the clues and offers free (for the price of copying and mailing) her own BETTY’S BOOK that can guide any struggling beginner to the same success.

The committee walked down the hall and paused before a narrow enclosure. This, formerly an entryway, had been closed off during remodeling.

"This," announced the church minister of education, " will be our library."

MYSTERY! How to make a library from an unlighted narrow space with piles of scrap lumber and pieces of carpet on the floor and no lighting.

I heard the unmistakeable still, small voice:

Betty Waller (US) is a retired school teacher of 30 years, Head Librarian of a church/ community library with a monthly circulation of nearly 3000 items, and a regular reviewer for Pacific Northwest Association of Church Librarians.

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A Hero for All Seasons

By Donna Fletcher Crow ~ August 31, 2010

My guest today, coming to us all the way from Manchester, England, is Dolores Gordon-Smith, author of the delightful and excellently  well-researched Jack Haldean Mysteries.  I have described Jack as the man you would want your daughter to marry:  Intelligent, reliable, loyal, decent and yet never boring.   The world needs more Jack Haldeans— Dolores alone has five daughters to marry off.  (Or is one married already, Dolores? I've lost count.)  Anyway, I wanted all our Deeds of Darkness;Deeds of Light readers to meet Jack because I think you'll find him fully as engaging as I do.  So, over to you, Dolores.

Why not, said Donna, do a blog? Tell us about the 1920’s and how Jack came into being. Especially, she added, his attitudes….

Well, by gum. I come from Manchester (just like Daphne from Frasier) so I’m allowed to say "by gum" when slightly perplexed. You see, in a way, Jack and his world have always been with me.

I’ve always loved classic detective fiction. Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Lord Peter Wimsey and slightly more forgotten types such as JG Reeder, Roger Sherringham, Philip Trent, Anthony Gethryn and Dr Thorndyke. Add to that a deep and abiding love of PG Wodehouse and John Buchan you can see a predilection for the 1920’s and 30’s growing. Part of the reason is, of course, that the stories are so well written. By and large the detectives detect, the plot zings along and the lead character, to whom we entrust ourselves on our literary voyage, is, more often than not, someone who you wouldn’t mind being stuck in a lift with. It isn’t true of all interwar, or, as it’s sometimes called, Golden Age fiction, but it’s usually true.

Those Golden Age attitudes filled my imagination when I was growing up and certain truths, as it were, seemed to be self-evident. For instance, a hero should be a hero. And what are heroic qualities? Well, chest-drumming, unless you really are Tarzan, is out. These people were suave; good-mannered; self-deprecating. They’re great in a fight but they don’t boast about it. They’ve just won the First World War. They don’t like (see the First World War) extreme violence. They’ve had enough of it, thank you very much. They’re hugely inventive but never smug. They have a wicked sense of humour and a nice line in repartee. They’re utterly reliable and – this is my favourite brand – kind. They’re allowed – nay, definitely encouraged – to have moments of angst and secret sorrows – but they’re not emotional cripples. Even when they should be fussy old maids, such as JG Reeder, they’re interesting people to be with because such interesting things happen when they’re around. It’s not murders as such, it’s a murder mystery and we want to know what happens.

And Jack? Well, come on guys, I wasn’t messing around. If I was going to sit stewing at a hot computer for hours on end thinking about the man, by crikey, he was going to be worth thinking about! Fancy him rotten? I’ll say so. There’s another element, too. A classic detective is always an outsider in some way, so Jack’s a Catholic. Because I wanted to make him an everyday sort of Catholic, (rather like me, in fact!) I had to think of some credible reason why, in that Anglican world he’s a Catholic. So his mother’s Spanish and he’s got another layer of outside-ness and, English prejudices being what they are, cleverness is a bit suspect but we don’t mind foreigners, even part-foreigners, being dead clever. Which is just as well, because Jack has a mystery to solve…

Dolores has just made it possible for friends of Jack to read sample chapters of her books through her website: http://www.doloresgordon-smith.co.uk/ select Books from the menu.

 And I want you to know about Dolores' latest, hot-off-the-press news— she has just published an Ebook.  FRANKIE'S LETTER  is an all-new mystery with an all-new hero to fall in love with.  To read all about its publication, go to Dolores' blog:  http://www.doloresgordon-smith.co.uk/wordpress/?p=289 to download to your Kindle, iPad, PC, or your reading device of choice, go to the Kindle store at Amazon or Amazon UK.

Donna Fletcher Crow (US) is the author of 35 books, mostly novels dealing with the history of British Christianity. Her newest book is A VERY PRIVATE GRAVE, book one in The Monastery Murders.
www.donnafletchercrow.com

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Going Up the Candle: Spiritual Authenticity

By Donna Fletcher Crow ~ August 28, 2010

Welcome, Edgy Christian Fiction Blog Tourers.  Can you believe this summer has gone so fast and this is the last post in our summer beach reads tour for edgy fiction?  Wait a minute— what am i saying?

 Me? Edgy? I’ve been known to describe my Monastery Murders series as "cozy thrillers." How edgy does that sound? And yet, I somehow feel that, as far as the Christian market is concerned, many will consider the high church world of A VERY PRIVATE GRAVE to be edgy.

So first, what is Edgy Christian fiction? That’s one of the topics we’ve set ourselves to explore on this exciting, first-ever blog tour by the "Marketing, Marketing, Marketing" brigade from the Edgy Christian Fiction group.

Does it mean our books are cutting edge in their subject matter or style? Perhaps. Does it even mean some of us deal with controversial topics? I suspect many, perhaps most of us do. Although, I believe controversy is in the mind of the reader. That is, I don’t think we set out to be controversial— I know I don’t. And I suspect that my fellows, like myself, simply set out to explore the topics we have on our hearts and let the chips fall where they may. Yup, that can be edgy, all right.

Are Edgy books ones that make you think? I certainly hope so.

For me, any edginess that may apply to my stories will, I suspect, come from my desire to be authentic. Although I don’t deal specifically with church issues as some other writers working in my chosen Ecclesiastical Thriller subgenre do, the writing would not be truthful if hot topics such as ecclesiology and human sexuality didn’t play around the edges.

And simply the whole high church setting may be edgy to some readers. But for me, that is a matter of spiritual authenticity. A matter of "calling" even, if you will,. I have a passion to present the historical foundations of our faith, to draw on the rich heritage that I fear we are in such grave danger of losing to modern pandering to popular culture. And so I have withdrawn into a monastery— which, of course, is anything but a withdrawal because in that rarefied atmosphere the conflicts are magnified.

And I got there through my own spiritual life. In the year 2000 while others celebrated the turn of the millennium, I was starving to death. Oh, I took my daily multiple vitamins and had a more than adequate calorie intake, but I was shriveling inside. Spiritual starvation is harder to diagnose than physical. Especially in one who has been a believing Christian all of her life and a faithful attendee and worker in an energetic evangelical church. But that was the problem— all those hours in a pale beige sanctuary with pale beige music and pale beige preaching. Where was the beauty? Where was the holiness? Where was the mystery? Where was God?

After eight years "on the Canterbury Trail" moving from Evangelical Protestant to Anglo-Catholic I found myself more true than ever to the roots of my faith but I had experienced a paradigm shift of seismic proportions as my worship experiences moved "up the candle" and I learned to express my faith by liturgical and sacramental means.

And so my characters do the same, because for me, that is authentic.

Edgy? Maybe. You decide. But certainly a place where I love to tell my stories. A world I hope my readers will find fun and fascinating to explore as Felicity and Antony race through ancient holy sites chasing and being chased by murderers. As I promised earlier— a story to keep you from falling asleep on the beach and getting sunburned. Perhaps even enough to lead you to explore the cool, stained-glass lit interior of a church to light a candle or say a prayer in holy solitude.

Donna Fletcher Crow (US) is the author of 35 books, mostly novels dealing with the history of British Christianity. Her newest book is A VERY PRIVATE GRAVE, book one in The Monastery Murders.
www.donnafletchercrow.com

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