Tell us a little
about your writing career:
I have been writing off and on for all of my, er, literate life. I began at about six years
old with a story about a girl pirate.
I did not begin serious writing and submitting until sometime in the 1980's and my writing "career" was generously
interspersed with raising and homeschooling children. When they more or less grew up, we moved and I became a teacher in a
Catholic school.
My first published work was mostly in the sf/fantasy/horror field, generously scattered about in the small
press. Then, while attending an Ignatian retreat, it was suggested to me rather firmly by one of the priests there that I
should use my talents in the service of the Faith. He did not quite say, "no more silly stuff," but...
Since then, I have been a regular writer of essays and articles on family life and education. I have given
up the horror field, but decided to baptise the sf and go on with it. Besides a great deal of nonfiction, I have had three
novels published and another one just about to see print. One (fulfilling my childhood dream) is science fiction, Godcountry. The others are novels for children, The Little Blue House and Christmas at the Little Blue House, stories of simple family life, and Mystery at Miner's Creek, an adventure story for adolescent boys. I have
two more sf novels finished and waiting for homes, another Little Blue House book scheduled for publication later this year,
and another myster story about half written.
What inspired your two stories for the anthology?
My two stories, "Brother John" and "Far Traveller" each had a different genesis.
"Brother John" is one of my Star Brothers stories. I've written quiet a few of them as
well as including both Star Brothers and Lost Rythans in my sf novels. The idea first came to me when, arriving at Mass one
Sunday (at a traditional monastery pretty far south of the Mason Dixon Line). I saw a smallish car draw up in the parking
lot. It had come from some ways off and the two giants who unfolded themselves from the front seat were from a traditional
Catholic group in Tennessee. They were singularly pious, serious, sang well and -- well, the Lost Rythans leaped full blown
into my head. As for the Star Brothers, they were of course, inspired by various priests of my acquaintance.
God grant we may never lack for Star Brothers at heart.
The other story is a spin off of my wrestling with the question of time travel. Or of time itself, for that
matter. And, BTW, I wrote it before Mel Gibson's movie on the Passion.
What are you working on now?
At
the moment, I am getting ready to assemble the winter issue of Hereditas. Then I have some essays to write, one on aesthetics and I'm not sure about the others. It is clean up the files time.
