Annette and I have this show we like to watch--the Inspector Lynley mysteries.  I gather it was popular on PBS a couple of years back, but we discovered it via Netflix.  It's about a British aristocrat-turned-detective, Inspector Lynley, and his lower class partner, Sgt. Barbara Havers. So there's all this British class system stuff, the nuances of which probably escape us. Nathaniel Parker plays Lynley, and we honestly don't like him that much, especially in the third season, when he got a new hair style that somehow made him act like a total prat, instead of just looking like one.  But we love Sharon Small, who plays Havers. More...

I just finished reading well over 100 entries to Irreantum's fiction and creative nonfiction contests, narrowing them down to a set of semifinalists over which our contest committee can wrangle.  Reading all those stories and essays can be a bit of a slog, it's true.  But it's also one of my favorite things to do as Irreantum's editor.  (In fact, I like to do it so much that I'm staying on as Irreantum's contest coordinator after stepping down as editor at the end of this year.)

One of the reasons I enjoy it is because I'm a great lover of stories---stories of both the true and made up variety---and it thrills me to see story after story after story, each one original in its own way, being made about Mormon experience.  Some of these stories are better told than others, it's true, but even the most amateur entry contains a kernel of a tale.  And the best stories?  (And there are some really good ones this year, I'm pleased to say.)  The best ones kept me glued to my computer screen, had me wiping away tears, helped me yearn or thrill or discover right along with the protagonist. More...

The recent Utah execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner via firing squad became national news, and led to inevitable editorializing pro and con the death penalty.  Because Utah is the only state that allows for firing squad executions, Utah is presented, by those who oppose the death penalty, as a particularly benighted state, and the discredited doctrine of blood atonement usually gets attention.  Blood atonement is, as Scott Card once put it, "a doctrine never taught in the Church, especially by Jedediah M. Grant."  But Gardner's execution had, for me, a personal historical context unrelated to blood atonement.  Only three Utahns have been executed via firing squad in the last 70 years.  Gardner's one; Gary Gilmore (of Executioner's Song fame) was another.  The third was a man named Donald Condit, who was executed in 1940 for murdering my grandfather. More...

So, I'm working on a Mormon-themed novel with some bad guys in it, one bad guy in particular. I know this isn't a totally new discussion, but right now I'm in the thick of the issue of realistic language. I'm at the point where sometimes I delete the F-words and sometimes I add them back in or substitute "softer" crudities. But the bottom line is that my bad guys say F-words; they just do. And at least one of these guys is a very important point-of-view character who I just don't feel I can sanitize, and plus his use of profanity helps differentiate him from the other main POV character, who is of the same age, gender, and similar background. More...

In baseball, it's possible for a pitcher to achieve perfection.  A perfect game is one in which no batters are allowed to reach base, either via error, walk, or basehit. Every single batter is retired: twenty seven up and twenty seven down.  Perfect games are very rare at the major league level, with only twenty since major league baseball began its record-keeping.  And yet, there have been, improbably, three so far this season.  (Bear with me on this: a relevance to Mormon literature may yet emerge.)

The first took place on May 9, pitched by Oakland A's lefthander, Dallas Braden.  When scouts talk about young pitchers, they differentiate between 'stuff' and 'command.'  'Stuff' refers to raw talent--how fast can this young man throw the ball, with what kind of diabolical movement.  'Command' refers to control.  A pitcher with good stuff and poor command may be able to throw the ball 98 miles per hour, but with little idea where it's going, for example. Dallas Braden epitomizes a pitcher with mediocre stuff but superior command.  His fastball tops out at 85 mph, but it  goes exactly where he wants it to go, and he changes speeds admirably.  He's otherwise known as a fun-loving and admirable young man--still trying to solidify his position as a big leaguer, but a guy who's known for running out on the field during rain delays and sliding on his belly on the wet grass.  May 9 was Mother's Day, and it turns out Braden's own mother passed away when he was a senior in high school.  He dedicates all his games to her, offering a little prayer at game's end. More...

Several years ago, I was a member of a pretty remarkable ward book club. We read a variety of titles, not limiting ourselves to just national titles, just genre fiction, just LDS fiction, or even to just fiction. We had some great discussions (and great treats). We read classics and new releases, self-help books and everything in between.

But we had one member who struggled. It seemed that no matter what book we picked to read, she didn't have much to offer by way of discussion. The more emotionally intense a book was, the less she liked it. During the meeting after reading Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, she revealed what was bothering her: she didn't like to read anything that discussed issues that were upsetting. Kidd's book was about one of her two hardest topics. At the top of her list: Civil Rights and the Holocaust. More...

Note: My new novel Imprints had barely reached store shelves a couple weeks ago when a customer, upon reading the description in the catalog, e-mailed Deseret Book asking them to remove my novel from Deseret Book stores since it was a novel dealing with an "imaginative" or "psychic" element, which in her opinion, though she planned on reading the novel, should not be carried at Deseret Book. This objection prompted me to write an open letter to such readers explaining why everyone who enjoys contemporary sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal, or anyone who believes all genres have value, should not only buy Imprints (shameless plug), but should contact Deseret Book's publishing division, thank them for publishing a novel in this genre for adults, and urge them to publish and carry more.

Dear Reader:

Thank you for reading my books and for being a supportive reader throughout the years. LDS authors cannot continue to do the work we love without support from readers. I've been told of your objection to Deseret Book carrying Imprints, and though I'm surprised at the objection, particularly by the fact that it was made without first reading the novel, More...

Last week a Deseret News reporters interviewed me about Band of Sisters and the Flat Daddy Project. I've done several interviews recently, but this particular reporter asked something no one had yet.

There's a musical playing right now at BYU that I'm not going to see.  Casey at the Bat it's called, and already I'm cranky.  I'm on the committee that decides these things--I've read the script.  That's why I'm boycotting it.  It's not just a bad book for a mediocre musical.  Lots of musicals have bad books--'book' means 'script' in musicalese--including some really popular ones.  My favorite is the Elton John Aida.  Okay, at the end of the musical, Radames, the Egyptian prince, and Aida, the Nubian princess/slave he's fallen in love with are running from the cops/Egyptian army.  There's this bridge.  If they cross the bridge, they're safe.  If they don't cross the bridge, they'll be captured and tortured to death.  They stand on the bridge.  They sing a very long love duet, which goes on long enough for the cops/Egyptian army to catch up with them.  Honestly, I'm not kidding, that's what happens. They sing and sing and sing and get their silly butts caught. Apparently, it never occurs to them to sing once they're across the bridge; nope, that song's gotta get sung right that very second.  I laughed out loud in the theater, earning the eternal enmity of many many weeping coeds.  When they die together--tragically, so tragically--I kept thinking about the Darwin awards, how killing these two dunces just improved the gene pool something considerable.  I mean, that's bad writing. Right?  Well, Casey at the Bat is worse than that. More...

Last Saturday, at the AML Annual meeting, we had the privilege of seeing a public screening of Corianton, probably the first Mormon feature film.  Based on the play by Orestes Utah Bean (if there were ever a perfect name for a Mormon playwright, it would be Orestes Utah Bean), the film was produced in 1931 by Lester Park, who, as it happens, is also Orson Scott Card's grandfather.  It was long thought that no prints of Corianton existed, but the Card family did have one, and it's now been digitally restored and can be seen at the BYU library.  James D'Arc, who oversaw the restoration, was kind enough to allow AML members to see the film.  It's a corker.  Of course, it's old fashioned to our eyes; reminiscient of the early silent Bible epics of Cecil B. DeMille, in particular his 1923 Ten Commandments.  The acting style is one we make fun of today--everyone in the film sounds like Margaret Dumont (Groucho Marx's comic foil), and they do blather on.  And the film really has alarming amounts of skin.  Of course, the story of Corianton is also the story of his seduction by the harlot Isabel, which in the film is accomplished with the aid of numerous half-naked dancing girls, cavorting about in what appears to be a 1931 attempt to capture Native American dance. More...