Church Should be Like a Cover Letter

I enjoy getting constructive criticism. The need for helpful feedback has been hammered home to me as a writer. Not complaints: you have to earn the right to complain and most folks only get to complain to me only if they also come with a solution or how THEY can make it better (with that as my policy, I get surprisingly few complaints).

I remember a couple of comments I received after our Mo*Con III service. It ran along the lines of “the service was often insightful, but it needed a good editor.” I get that, we were trying to cram a lot into that one service. However, it got me thinking about church services in general.

Every now and then, we’re prone to being over-produced or are guilty of trying too hard. With the ease of multi-media technology at our fingertips, it’s easy to inflict sensory overload on a group. This can lead to the exact opposite of what we want: creating an atmosphere of chaos, leaving participants unable to retain anything because so much was going on.

I like the wisdom and perspective Kelli Dunlap provided (NOTE: the words “wisdom”, “perspective”, and “Kelli” were all used in the same sentence). She suggested that when we get a lot of newcomers to the church, we ought to do a beginner’s service. A sort of intro to the philosophy of our church, one that explores the idea of what we try to be and why we do what we do. Then she compared church services to cover letters. They should include:

Title – the theme of the day
Word count – how well we met the guidelines
Valid/relevant publications – how we live out the mission/the core message

They should not be an academic resume that goes on and on. Just something to keep in mind. I know I will. What do you think?


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Gen Con 2008 V: Gamer’s Delight – A Wrap Up

“In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” –Matthew 5:16

From what I was told, that Matthew verse was Gary E. Gygax’s favorite Scripture and goes a long way to illuminating how Gary chose to live his life. Gary, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons and founder of Gen Con, passed away earlier this year. His death sent reverberations throughout the gaming world and at Gen Con we were reminded of not only his legacy, but also of how many lives he touched. As D&D sees its 4th edition this year, the equivalent of seeing a new pope, his loss was felt by the entire gaming community and community is what Gen Con is all about.

Gen Con is kind of like taking the typical high school hierarchy and inverting it. Suddenly the A/V squad, band members, and chess club as shoving jocks into lockers (literally, as Colts fans anxious to tour the newly opened Lukas Stadium had to give way to a parade of stormtroopers).

We all want a place where we can be included, where we can be who we are and not only accepted, but understood. For many folks, conventions like Gen Con are family reunions, where the blood of the family is found in their united passion for all things related to gaming.
The gaming community/culture encompasses writers, artists (like Steve and Becky Gilberts), gamers, collectors, role-players, filkers, and a whole host of like-minded individuals. The overwhelming spectacle of costumes, exhibits, games and activities takes four days to experience. Or at least do as much as possible. By Sunday, the body breaks down and almost everyone has “gamer’s cough”, that rasp from talking, laughing, partying, and gaming too much (while sleeping too little).

Of course there’s a hierarchy of nerds. Where would we be as a society and culture if we weren’t able to compartmentalize folks or better yet, rank them. Of course I consider myself in the upper echelon of nerdom (he who makes the list is automatically at the top). I’m good for a little Dungeons and Dragons, maybe a few games of Magic: the Gathering. I like my share of sci-fi shows. Star Trek (Deep Space Nine was the best. This isn’t even a discussion.) Babylon 5. Farscape. Dr. Who (Tom Baker and Christopher Eccleston – this isn’t even a discussion). So I’ll leave you with a few last Gen Con thoughts:

-Lucien Soulban was robbed at the ENnies!
-Seriously, spandex wasn’t made for everyone.
-Black nerds unite! (Cause we represented at Gen Con)
(And I may have one more follow up piece to the Gen Con Experience. I had to earn my free press pass.)





In memory of E. Gary Gygax use the characters he helped create for Dungeons and Dragons to inspire Halloween costumes for the whole family. First you could take a quiz with the family to determine what D&D character you happen to be, and then get busy making kids costumes that closely resemble their characters. After the kids are fully costumed get busy on the adult costumes. It’s a great way to pay tribute to Mr. Gygax and a wonderful creative exercise for the whole family.



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Gen Con 2008 IV: Christian Gamers Part II

Continued from Part I: The Sinister Minister and the Geek Preacher
Is this another way people can learn to minister to others through gaming?

Derek: We, as Christians, need to be social. We need to get outside the four walls of the church and be in our communities in every way. If you love to game, get out there and game. If you love to play golf, get out there and play golf with everybody else. Don’t segregate yourselves. We have ghettoized ourselves as a community and we need to break down the four walls, get out there, and be Christians and love people. And let them know we are Christians. Don’t just be a nice person. Let them know that “I’m a Christian and I’m going to love and care for you.” Do it in our games and do it in our every day lives.

Dave: Two stories about that. Seven years ago, I was living in an apartment and got a new neighbor. I was at work, my wife was helping them unpack, and said “oh, Dungeons and Dragons books. My husband used to play that kind of stuff. Fantasy’s not my genre and D&D is not what I usually play, but I thought, “hey, it’s a way to get to know the neighbor.” And what was nifty was that on a Tuesday night, around 8:30, put the kids to bed, knock on the door and say “hey, how about we play for an hour.” That was really convenient. We got to know them really well and within five months, he started coming to church with me and he and his wife were baptized. He asked me if I would be the one who would baptize him and I was really honored.

But, a sadder story, is that a year and a half ago, a friend of a friend, who had just joined my game, died in his sleep. He was just 25 and it was real obvious that he wasn’t leading a godly life. But I was never able to bring up the topic of God to him. And the opportunity was closed. I decided from that point that anyone at my gaming table was going to know where I stand and if there’s any way that I can help, I will do that.

How can people better develop a sense of discernment when it comes to gaming?

Dave: I suppose the same way you develop discernment in any category: you learn by making mistakes. The only way to get good is to start off being bad.

Andy: I think prayer is key in everything that we do. When we’re trusting God to lead us, I think God will do that for us. And I think God will give us discernment even if we’re not emotionally or spiritually mature enough to have that discernment. If we’re trusting in Him, I think He comes through for us.

Derek: I’d add to it get a good education. We have so many people who are woefully ignorant about the origins of things. I am an uber-geek. At nine years old, I read Bullfinch’s mythology. So I understood when I read the D&D books that this was based off Greek mythology. Many kids don’t have a good, classical education nor do their parents. Being married to a teacher makes me say this as well. So get a good education, have prayer, and the Bible better be central to a good Christian’s life in that. There’s no pat answer, you just have to work at it.

In light of all of the “what would Jesus do?” slogan, would Jesus game?

Dave: I think he certainly would. He sat and ate with “sinners”. He met the woman at the well and spoke with her. There’s a book called God Loves the Freaks (it’s the book centered on the site FansForChrist.org). In it, he takes the approach that Jesus approached everyone differently. He walks up to Zaccheus and says “hey, I’m going to have dinner at your house tonight.” And he talked to the wise young ruler, who was not all that wise, and said “I want you to give away all that you have and then come follow me.” He didn’t have any pat answers or pat approaches. He used people where they are as a way to get into their lives. And if Jesus was trying to minister to a gaming community, he would sit down and he would start gaming.

Derek: I would say that there’s not an easy answer to that question. I’m sure Jesus played games as a child. I’m sure He played games and used his imagination. A great book that I read was Christ the Lord by Anne Rice. Of course it was a fictionalized account of Jesus’ childhood but I think she does a great job of talking about some things.

But I also view Jesus’ life as His vocation. Jesus came for a purpose. So while He is fully man and fully God, I think sometimes we try to bring Jesus down to our level and that negates His vocation. What would Jesus do? Jesus came to seek and to save that which is lost. Jesus came to die on a cross to redeem an entire world that we might be resurrected and have new bodies and have a new life for all eternity with Him. When we ask ourselves those questions, we miss the central part of who Jesus is and that is the Redeemer of the world.


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Gen Con 2008 IV: Christian Gamers Part I

“We may throw the dice, but the Lord determines how they fall.” –Proverbs 16:33

The Church has a lot in common with gaming, from arguing over which edition (version) to use to arguing over the minutiae of gaming rules. So on a related note, the Christian Gamers Guild, founded in 1996, is an online community of Christians who play games of all kinds. They believe that "Christians have too long allowed non-Christians to dominate the imagined world of role-playing, which was originally inspired by Christian men like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis (not to mention Dante, John Bunyan, and John Milton). And that it’s time to be a creative force in role-playing and other forms of faming for the true author of all creativity and imagination, Almighty God Himself."

The Christian Gamers Guild not only had a panel on what it means to be a Christian gamer, but also held a standing room only traditional church service: including hymns, a sermon, and communion. Reverend Derek White preached out of Galatians 2:14-16 about the branding of the church, that what should define it should be to remember the poor, to be inclusive, and to love.
I had the chance to sit down with Rev. White, a United Methodist Church pastor; Dave Mattingly, the president of BlackWyrm Games, the exectutive director of the Games Publishers Association, and vice president of the Christian Gamers Guild; and Andy Mathews, the art director for Hero Games (Derek and Andy pictured).
How did the Christian Gamers Guild get started?

Dave: It’s primarily a mailing list, people gathering together to talk about how their games affect their faith and how their faith affects their games. Various issues of how do you deal with evil in a role-playing game or magic; where do you draw the line between what is good/right, and what is a hobby.

At your panel, you discussed the idea of honoring God in gaming. What sort of issues are involved in that?

Derek: At its plainest, we should be honoring God in all aspects of our life. As long as you honor Him in everything that you do, you’ll honor Him in your gaming.

Dave: And this is not a hard line in the sand of “you have to do this” and “you have to do that”. If you feel uncomfortable doing a certain thing in a game then don’t do it. We went through the “weaker brother argument” which is where some people feel okay eating meat that was sacrificed to a pagan idol and some did not. So when you’re with your friends who don’t feel comfortable, then don’t eat that pagan-sacrificed meat around them. But when you’re by yourself or with other who feel like you do, then it’s fine. You can go ahead and, in a super hero game, send your heroes to hell and have them make a deal with a demon to get back home. As long as those around the table are all okay with it, then it works.

Why do you think the church, as a whole, has been hesitant to embrace gaming?

Dave: A lot of it came from the suicide of Irving Pulling in the early 80s. A woman had lost track of her son for two years and blamed gaming. It’s a long story, but to us it looks like a case of bad parenting rather than some books. He struggled with manic depression and had been off his medication, yet it wasn’t her fault, it was these “weird” games that must’ve done it.

Derek: To add to that, I think today more and more churches are becoming open to gamers. Not as much as we’d like, but for the church to survive, and to be true to the biblical text, it must be inclusive.
And to many more than gamers. And I think that’s the easiest way. “So you’re going to reject someone because you don’t like gaming?” My response has been “good, because I don’t like golfers.”

Andy: In a lot of ways, gaming suffered from some bad design decisions and bad press. Some of the early D&D books—Fiends Folio, Dieties and Demi-gods—it would be easy for someone not ready for it to see that and think the entire game was slanted against Christianity. The fact that you can play evil characters rubbed my mother the wrong way.

Derek: Even though Gary (Gygax) said in numerous Dragon articles that you shouldn’t play evil characters. He put it there so that there could be a balance of the alignments so that the DM would have the evil characters. But Gary, the game’s creator, steadfastly referred to [D&D] as heroic fantasy and that’s what he always wanted to see people do. Now don’t get me wrong, he didn’t mind seeing them take a bad path or a dark turn, but it would be like falling away and coming back.

How would you respond to people saying that magic is glorified through role-playing?

Derek: The first thing I’d do is laugh to be honest. I know people that I’ve talked to, that are friends, who are Wiccans or pagans and they laugh at the concept because their own view of these spells are so completely different. A lot of it was just Gary’s sense of humor. To say that it glorifies magic, I’d say “okay, then what about you guys that like to play Risk or Axis and Allies? Are you glorifying war? Or Monopoly … so you glorify greed?” It’s nothing more than a game. You glorify what you want to glorify.

Dave: One of the things we can do is show that evil does have consequences. The game master can say “okay, if you really want to torture your prisoner for information when there’s no real need to … you can do that but it will come back on you.”

Do you think there is a moral stumbling block to playing evil characters?

Dave: As a game master, we have to role play evil characters: we are all of the antagonists in one person. While the player characters play heroes. Sometimes we have to come up with sick, twisted characters and play them out in order to make our heroes shine more brightly.

Derek: I’d have to agree with that. But I’ve seen some people work through some issues playing evil characters. As I’ve run games, and I’ve had people want to play an evil character, sure I’ll let them do that because I like to tell a story and I want my game worlds to be consistent. They face the consequences of their actions. But I’ve also seen these people, some Christian, some adamantly not, want to turn their character around and want to make their character better. And sometimes I see people just go down this dark, dark path and I realized—as a friend, not as a minister, but as a friend—that they were dealing with some issues in their own lives and they were trying to find an outlet in the game. The thing is, as a mature friend, what do I do? Do I condemn them or say “wait a second”? to me, it’s like any other game. When I was playing baseball with my brothers and I’d see my brother just pounding the ball it was just coming off, I knew my brother was angry about something. There’s always something going on.

That’s the good thing about the social aspect of a game, is that in the many games I’ve just played in as a player, other folks will come up to me and say “you know, his girlfriend just broke up with him.” It lets me see them as a real human being.

(to be continued)


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Gen Con 2008 III: Flames Rising Interview

Flames Rising is an online resource for fans of Horror and Dark Fantasy entertainment. This horror fanzine offers reviews of Games, Fiction, Movies as well as interviews. The site took the Silver ENnie for the Best Fan Product category at the Gen Con 2008 ceremonies. I sat down with project manager/reviewer for Flames Rising—as well as horror and dark fantasy writer—Monica Valentinelli.

How did Flames Rising get started?

Flames Rising started out as a site dedicated to a vampire LARP. From there it grew into exploring all forms of gaming, including indie gaming and White Wolf. And from there, we started expanding the content into some industrial music with bands like Midnight Syndicate. After that we started really expanding our content, doing reviews for Tor, DAW, Permuted Press – big publishers, small publishers, even some self-published authors. Recently we started doing indie films. We recently got an indie film called The Beckoning which we reviewed for our site.

We continue to keep growing the content focusing on both the quality and market of the product. By keeping in mind the market, we strip away the branding of if it was an indie game or a larger budget project and focusing on the quality.

What are you trying to do in terms of reaching out to the horror community?

We always encourage interviews with names in the industry, whether they’ve worked on one specific project or multiples. We have a project going on right now that’s a horror design project, where, for example, we have a first time screen writer who is talking about what gave him the idea, who helped him put it together, how he got his start, and a little bit about what the movie is about. So it’s a little bit more about the design aspect of what goes into a horror movie rather than just a back cover promo for the movie. It’s a little bit more from the creators viewpoint which is really fascinating to a lot of our readers because they get a more intimate take of what horror is about.

We also like to tie in interviews to our reviews. One of the most recent interviews we did which we’re most excited about is with the guy who created Darkwing Duck, Tad Stones, who worked on the animated Hellboy films. He had the chance to talk about not only the two animated Hellboys that came out, but his experiences working with Mike Mignola, the creative staff, what it’s like for new people getting into the industry (he’s a long time veteran). And also about the status of the third animated Hellboy, which he had written himself.

Where do you see Flames Rising going in the next year? What would you like to see happen?

Well, a lot of it is dependent on where we can take the content, because we never want to lose the focus on where that content is going to go. We don’t want to sacrifice the content in terms of the larger scale stuff. We don’t want to scale that back but rather develop more of it and have this community where people feel like they can really review and get into the products and get excited about what they’re fans of and interested in. And to be able to share that with a community of readers.

How does it feel to bring home an ENnie?

We’re just very grateful. One of the things we’re very grateful for is anybody that has either “fed the fire” or “spread the flame” as we like to call it. This is not something that we’re doing to shine the spotlight on us. The whole reason behind Flames Rising is to shine the spotlight on other people and let them know what the cool products are that are out there. It’s really about the genre of horror as a whole, but focusing on ways people contribute to that. We’re about what goes into these products, the love and the passion. That’s why the indie gaming and independent publishers have been so important to us because they’re very passionate people—just as much as the large guys—but never get that exposure.


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Gen Con 2008 II: Keep the d20s Rolling

How many Jedis can dance on the head of a lightsaber (or at least clog up the streets of downtown Indianapolis)? Look, a 100,000 gamers/fans, many of whom look like they haven’t left their basement since last year’s Gen Con descended on the convention center. Let’s just say that if a bomb went off down there, many computers wouldn’t be fixed for a long time.

Early standout booths include the Champions Online and Privateer Press (Monsterocalypse). And while some of the independent stuff has broken through, sometimes you just want to punch a Nazi and ride a dinosaur.

So anyway, we have a pod of whales. A murder of crows. A stink of gamers. You’d be a stink of gamers also if you went 24 hours with no sleep, no showers, and barely eating so that you can focus on playing games. Mind you, that’s 24 hours on the go for four days in a row. How serious do they take their gaming?

The 9' x 5.5' Sultan Gaming Table features a 4' by 7.5' sunken play space and stands 36" tall and includes over a dozen drawers, book racks, drink holders, dice trays, a removable area for game mats, fold out desk sections, all done in sugar maple and black walnut. The price of this ode to nerd lust? $9650.

The ENnies were held Friday night. The awards were dominated by the big dogs (Wizards of the Coast, Green Ronin, Paizo, and White Wolf – each having their own theme music for accepting their award). Dungeon Cult Classic’s stuff is really sharp, bringing an old school feel back to gaming (adventures amounting to kicking down doors, killing everything in the room, and then taking everything not nailed down).

Robin Laws and Ken Hite, who took the silver in the Best Rules category for their Trail of Cthulhu (the gold going to the Star Wars Saga Edition by Wizards of the Coast), developed the gumshoe system which after having played it, one assumes that the only way investigative games should be run.

White Wolf’s rabid fanbase represented, but Paizo brought home the gold in the Fan Choice for Best Publisher.

Fairly new to the gaming circuit myself, I got into a conversation with Anthony Gallela about the difference between Gen Con and Origins:

Tell me a little bit about Origins.

Origins is a five day game convention and is the gamers’ game convention. Our focus is not on science fiction or any guests; it is on games and gaming. We have more role-playing than any other convention, we have more historical games than any other convention, and we have better offerings.

How is Origins different from Gen Con?

Origins is different from Gen Con in its focus. Gen Con focuses on a lot of things. Peter likes to say that he is throwing a party for his friends who are gamers. Origins focuses more on the gaming and the game play. One’s about the party experience the other is about the game experience.

What is the Game Manufacturers Association?

It’s a 501-3-6 non-profit trade association for the game industry. Table top game, publishers, manufactures, distributors, and retailers are all members of our association. Plus freelancers and other interested parties. As an association we put on Origins. As a consumer show we put on GAMA trade show. And we have a number of programs which advertise games, games and education, games for troops, we have free commercials which we give to retailers to use in their areas. We have credit card processing, health insurance, 401K, and other educational components.


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Gen Con 2008 I: Diana Jones Awards

How does it feel to be the only black person in the room?

Business as usual, actually, but that was how I was greeted at the Eighth Annual Diana Jones Awards by my friends the lovely and talented Jesse Scoble and Lucien Soulban. The Diana Jones Award is an annual award created to publicly acknowledge excellence in gaming, from a game system or supplement, a magazine, a company, a designer, a convention, or a web site. The event itself is like trying to have the Academy Awards in the middle of the party.

Held in the Jillian’s bar, bars typically being where the business of conventions get done, I got to hang out with Matt Forbeck and founder of Wizards of the Coast (who launched Magic: the Gathering) and owner of Gen Con LLC, Peter Adkison (the conversation went something along these lines: me: “I’ve donated thousands of dollars to your cause.” Peter: “And I’ve gladly spent it.”) The announced winners were a tie between:

-Grey Ranks by Jason Morningstar from Bully Pulpit Games
-Wolfgang Baur and his Open Design projects

I spent the bulk of the evening trying to work out the various factions represented at GenCon. Card games. Role-playing games. Video games. Board games. Miniatures (after all, GenCon was originally a war-gaming convention). Massively multi-player online, the crack of the game industry (where a moderately successful game would have 150-200 thousand players, World of Warcraft has around 10 million players). Fluff vs. crunch writing. For that matter, trying to figure out the difference between game designers (rules and systems) and game writers (story and character) – though apparently there’s not much of a difference since there’s a lot of cross over between their roles.

This was the Gen Con pre-party, btw. Gen Con proper begins on Thursday. But it's important to get acclimated early.


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Starbucks Spirituality

People keep trying to strap a label on what it is I believe. Somehow, that’s supposed to determine “how” I believe or how I live my life. But I firmly believe that the days of your beliefs being summarized with a word (e.g. Baptist) are numbered if not already past. Something without a denominational label and all the baggage that comes with that label.

People are often guilty of relational laziness and need these sorts of labels rather than engage the people around them. Yet our faith walks defy easy categorization even though we may have a lot in common. We may begin in similar places, maybe an end of self or something else which causes a person to realize they should be living life differently. Up to their full potential/how they were meant to live. They are moved to change their lives and be better people. In turn, they are moved to reach out to others, to help the poor or otherwise live for others.

I can’t be pegged down with words like Baptist or Calvinist or Emergent or post-Protestant. Sometimes even Christian (relax, Interwebz, before too many of you start sending me letters. That wasn’t a renunciation of faith, merely pointing out that as adjectives go “Christian” often comes up as fairly useless). In fact, when Matt Cardin described himself along the lines of him being a Christian Buddhist with a streak of agnosticism (at Mo*Con), he was right in saying that a lot of our spiritual walks are kind of like a Starbucks order.

I think I’d be a bit of a mocha missional Christian (follower of the way of Jesus), with a double shot of historical tradition, topped with a half and half of community. With a dash of Buddhism and agnosticism (again, Interwebz, relax. I’m merely commenting on my seeking of peace and use of meditative practices as well as having a spirit of “not knowing”). What about you?

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Saving Grace – A Commentary

“He who thinks that he is finished, is finished. How true. Those who think that they have arrived, have lost their way. Those who think that they have reached their goal, have missed it. Those who think they are saints, are demons.” (Henri Nouwen)

In the pilot episode of Saving Grace, a “last chance” angel, Earl (Leon Tippy, Deadwood), reveals himself to hard living police officer, Grace Hanadarko (Holly Hunter). Yet, by the end of the first season, with an angel personally discipling her, not much has changed in the life of Grace. She’s still drinking, cussing, promiscuous, hard-living, and self-destructive.

Where is the virginal teetotaler that we've been conditioned to expect after an encounter with the divine?

Saving Grace drives home a lesson too many of us forget: there no such thing as instant perfection. We’re all works in progress. Take churches for example. They are communities of people shaped by their fellowship with one another around their common belief in Christ. Churches aren’t supposed to be creating these uniform Christians in pursuit of the ideal of community. Have you spent time with these “one size fits all” kinds of people? You get the feeling that there’s only one way to be spiritual. Reality dictates that my spiritual walk and journey isn’t like yours. Life would be boring if we were all uniform and the church even more ineffective if we all had the same gifts. We have a bond in Christ, and the result of this bond should be a loving relationship, the picture of family at its best. Unity in diversity.

We weren’t created to be islands of solitude. This self-sufficient image may work for some, but it is not what we were created to be. We’re born for relationships–be they family, friendships, or colleagues–and that is what shapes us (though the absence of relationships also form us).

Grace is on a slow and long journey. A road of self-discovery as she roots out and confronts the forces that have shaped her into the person she is and then has to unlearn much of what she has come to believe about herself.

To quote Michael Yaconelli in his book, Messy Spirituality:

“Spirituality is not a formula; it is not a test. it is a relationship. Spirituality is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spirituality is not about perfection; it is about connection. The way of the spiritual life begins where we are NOW in the mess of our lives. Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we LET GO is seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. Spirituality is not about being fixed; it is about God's being present in the mess of our unfixedness.”


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I’m an Artist Dang It (Or I at least Play One on the Internet)

Okay, here’s what set me off: I was on a message board (mistake number one. I really keep learning that the main board I need to be visiting is my own) and a writer was extolling the need to write irregardless to “artsy” things like grammar. That was then coupled with the idea that we should be concerned only with the story, not with pretensions to “high art”.

This is exactly the attitude I’m really tired of encountering. It’d be one thing if I just heard it from the occasional newbie writer (mind you, it’s not like I’m swelling the ranks of the mid-listers), but it seems to be a fairly tenacious thought among too many writers (and even more fans) of the genre. This idea that we write solely to entertain, with the intimation that we aren’t creating art because art is the realm of snooty critics.

It’s almost like the take home message is that one’s devotion to one’s craft is a bad thing.

It’s typically perpetuated by those who love the genre, so it’s hard to be too mad at them. They’ve embraced horror as a community and are protective of it. I get that. However, it’s that same slavish fan devotion that can threaten the health of the genre. It reminds me of the panel I was on at Necon: “KICKING HORROR TO THE CURB: Why genre horror deserves a quick and nasty death, and how every one of us can help!” aka “KILLING THE GENRE IN TEN EASY STEPS: Why Category Horror Deserves to Die a Brutal, Messy Death and How You Can Help!”

[Aside #1: I’m all about “transcending the genre”. Here’s how I look at it: I’m a casual sports fan at best. The kind of fan drawn in by the Tiger Woods, Michael Jordans, and Danica Patricks of the world. If you’re a sports franchise and you aim your product at your hardest core fans, you’re going to lose me. If you can give something for the casual folks to latch onto, you do so, knowing that you’ll get most of your hardcore fans to come along anyway.]

Anyway, these brand loyal horror fans have gone out, seen a bunch of movies or read some Stephen King, Clive Barker or whatever author drew them to horror and then end up writing stuff that mimics them. They end up creating derivative stories, never as good as the stories they’re imitating, trying to rekindle the feelings evoked from the first stories that inspired them. In short, they are like a drug addict chasing a high: always trying to repeat the experience of the first high (not appreciating the diminishing returns with each attempt).

[Me, it was Poe. And I kept churning out Poe pastiches and re-hashes until I found my own voice. After that, I started turning out a new brand of dreck, but at least it was dreck unique to me until I was good enough to start getting some stories published. Actually, I received one of the best compliments the other day. A fellow writer said "Let me say how impressed I am with how much you've grown as a writer ...Your storytelling has always been strong, but you have, for me, stepped across that threshold that separates writers and artists." I hope to keep living up to those words.]

These are the same folks who get hyper defensive when critics take works seriously and discuss their merits seriously in terms of language use, theme, characterization - standards by which we can judge what is good. I think when folks here critics talk, they confuse matters of taste with standards, confusing good with entertaining. Look, I Rocky 4. Yeah, I admit it. It entertained me to no end. I could probably sit down and watch that movie right now. But I know that it wasn't a good movie. If the movie’s sole job was to entertain me, then it accomplished that. If the creators strove to do something … good (and we can measure that in terms of coherency/depth of story, characters, acting, direction, and the avoidance of, say, every boxing/sports movie cliché in the book), then there was a massive fail.

The debate about being a writer vs. being an artist is a false one. There’s nothing wrong with aspiring to tell the best story possible, without “writing to impress the critics” (if by that you mean writing for their approval). You write for yourself (the artist) or for you audience (to be commercial, again, not a pejorative); those are the only two targets worth aiming for (and their aren’t an either/or proposition).

There’s nothing wrong with being original. There’s nothing wrong with aspiring for more. You respect your audience by respecting your craft. By giving your stories theme, strong characterization, and depth, in addition to your plot - that’s the “high art” of the craft.

Look, you’re going to fail readers as you experiment and stretch … but you’ll fail yourself (and eventually them anyway) if you don’t.


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I'm the Fluffer

Being a maid of honor is hard work.

For the record, my main task was as fluffer. My dear friend Katy had a train so long that whenever she moved, I was in charge of getting it back into place. So the wedding basically went like this for me:


-walk to position
-fluff train
-take bouquet from her
-fluff train
-hand over ring
-fluff train
-don't fall down steps or else my wife would have it caught on camera and would be blogging it from the service
-fluff train

And then I had to give a toast. Since my wife also informed Katy that she may want to check my rough draft before I give it, here's the toast that I ended up giving:


Katy's Toast
My name is Maurice Broaddus and I'm Katy's maid of honor. Have you ever have one of those days where you wake up and go "how did I get here?" Well, I've had two of them and they both involved Katy.

I moved to Indianapolis when I was eight years old. We hadn't lived here but a few days when there was a knock on my door. When I opened it, these two redhead little girls stood there saying "Avon calling."

Come to find out, they were selling their mother's makeup. They asked for my mom or sister, but it was only me home. Now I was big into Charlie's Angels at the time and I had decided that I was going to be a spy and every good spy needs a disguise kit. So I took my mom's cookie jar money and bought the makeup and the three of us ended up played Charlie's Angels the rest of the day.

That was my introduction to the Swan girls. They would both go on to be an important part in my life. We went to church together, went through Youth Group together, survived our teen years together, but I always had a special relationship with Katy.

I'll spare you tales of the special joy that was tutoring Katy in math. However, I was also there when her son Bryant was born ... since I was Katy's LaMaz partner. This was the first time I ended up asking how did I get here. Katy has always had that effect on me. She could talk me into anything. I'm surprised we survived high school.

At my wedding, eight years ago, my wife (the same woman who has been advocating for Katy to make me wear a dress for this) and I dismissed our guests by rows, giving us a chance to thank and hug everyone. Katy and I hugged so long, my other guests started murmuring "who's that hugging him so long?" Then my wife turns to them and simply says "That's Katy." You would have thought the place was hit with the Holy Ghost the way everyone fell out. You could hear ripples of "oh, that's Katy" throughout the building because they knew, they all knew, how much Katy means to me.

We've shared the good, the bad, and the ugly. But I wouldn't trade even the ugly times, because that's what friendship is all about. It's the history and the love that ties us together. And that very same sense of history and love has brought us here today.

Not too long ago, Katy calls me up and says "Hey, I'm dating someone and I think you ought to meet him." I know you know, Katy can be serious. So when she says I need to meet him, for whoever it was, play time was over.

Now you need to understand something, if you couldn't tell by now, I love Katy. A lot. So whoever's going to date her, much less marry her, had better be someone special.

So I invited Katy and Adam over for dinner and, man, Katy has him prepared, after all, I had to know the young man's intentions. I barely got any questions out and he came back with answers. Good answers. But what he didn't know was that the questions were only half the test. The other half was me watching him. You know what I saw? A man who adores Katy the way she deserves to be adored. Who respects her, listens to her, and wants to meet her needs. A man who holds her gently and most importantly love her.

And don't you stop. Just because you said "I do" don't mean I don't still have my eye on you.

So here I am, asking myself "how did I get here?" as Katy's honor attendant. What else is there to say? I don't have to tell any of you just how special Katy is. She has the heart of a fighter and a spirit that won't give up. And while she's never gone at things the easy way, she's one of the strongest women I know. Her life touches all of those who are blessed to know her.

And I know she's in good hands.

To Katy.


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Revival is at Hand Tonight!

It’s been a busy week. Besides the wedding thing, I also attended the The Church Basement Roadshow: A Rollin’ Gospel Revival at Lockerbie Central.

Dragging some members of Team Broaddus along, I got a chance to hang out (and by "hang out" I mean they made Lauren and I dress up) with Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, and Mark A. Scandrette who have been touring the country in a friend’s RV to talk about their latest books. To do so in an original way, they put together a 90 minute show where they connect themselves to alter egos who existed in 1908.

A hundred years ago was another time of great innovation and change, a time of ideas and questions. Technology was changing rapidly with advances in transportation and communication. Science was moving far faster than we could figure out its ramifications. Sixty per cent of the wealth in the country was controlled by two per cent of the population.

And people were trying to figure out how the historic Christian faith met the contemporary society.

Dressing up as old-time revivalists, they presented a simple message. There are moments when we feel our souls wake up, that starts us on a path to … something. We react to a realization that God is active in the world and we are out of sync with His agenda. We long for a real encounter with God, a relational connection, yet we’re often force-fed a “one size fits all” brand of faith. So we’re left to wonder what to do with our faith questions and thoughts about God if they don’t fit into the mold so often presented to us.

Part beat poetry, part tent revival, part story-telling circle, the crowd—used to manipulative, overwrought sales pitch type presentations—got into the irony of the revival meeting. So maybe using campy elements were a good way to touch folks too jaded for their own good.

I loved the selling of the "Balm of Gilead" snake oil, though I was the victim of an amateur anointing. (On the positive side, there were these junior high school kids who asked if the balm really worked. I told them "yeah, it cured me of my whiteness.") Plus I got to rock my new Alex Ross designed Obama T-shirt.


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Gossip Girl – A Review

“A Gossip Girl for a Gossip Boy”

I’ll admit it: I’m a notorious gossip. However, I’m not as into Gossip Girl as thought I might have been. Based on Alloy Entertainment's book series, Gossip Girl gives us privileged teenagers attending an elite private school in New York City. In other words, it’s Beverly Hills 90210 transported to the East Coast, powered by the producers of The O.C. Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage.

The show navigates the waters of the inner social circles of the school, though unlike The O.C., we don’t have an outsider new to the situation or an acerbic-witted loveable sidekick. Instead we have a gossip blog via authorial voice-over (Kristen Bell doing her version of Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City for the teen set). Most of the escapades center around Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively), one-time alpha princess, returning to find her empire run by a new crew, led by her former best friend.

“The more you hide yourself away, the more people think you have something to hide.” – Lily van der Woodsen (Kelly Rutherford)
As the tagline of Gossip Girl says, “you're nobody until you're talked about,” appealing to our tabloid entertainment instincts. We subordinate our lives to follow the lives of others, inadvertently ending up leading lives not worth talking about (I seriously can’t explain the popularity of Twitter any other way). We live in a world of Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, blogs, and message boards, where information is disseminated faster than it can be thought through.

“This world is crazy.” –Serena

The Internet has brought us many innovative tools and has ushered in a whole new era in how we communicate. Among its mixed blessings is the public journaling called a blog. Whole friend communities can form circles at places such as LiveJournal and Xanga. This presents an interesting modern twist on the dilemma of gossiping.

Look at some of the behavior it produces. Such as the sort of passive-aggressive (non-)confrontation fueled by the shield of seeming anonymity provided by the Internet, leading to a kind of cyber-bullying. And how people forget that just like words said in the heat of the moment can never be unsaid, things sent into the ether called cyberspace float around forever.

The take home lesson for me has been to further drill into my head the need to be careful in what I say. There’s a reason the Bible spends so much time talking about the power (and potential sin) of the tongue more than just about anything else.

“I’m sorry I’m not who you thought I was.” –Serena

Gossip Girl portrays teens as being fairly vacuous, with their lives being little more than a series of hook ups and break ups while playing at being adults. Wait, maybe that was what being a teenager was like. At any rate, I don’t know what I was expecting, perhaps more Gilmore Girls and less The O.C./90210. Maybe watching lily white, privileged teens cavort and struggle doesn't do it for me. Or maybe I just hate seeing something I’m so often guilty of being playing out in front of me. However, the cast is good and the show moves at a pretty hectic clip. Though it has had a fairly strong start, it still needs more of a sense of humor about itself.


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Battlestar Galactica: Gaius’ Progress

“Life can be a curse as well as a blessing.” –Gaius (“Gleaming I”)

Probably the most intriguing character on Battlestar Galactica is Dr. Gaius Baltar (James Callis). The reason he resonates especially with me is because of his internal struggle, as a man of science, to embrace the idea of faith. His is the battle of the scientist versus the theologian, trying to reconcile worlds for faith and facts.

“What is the most basic article of faith? This is not all that we are.” –Leoben Conoy (Callum Keith Rennie)

All truth journeys begin with a leap of faith, that is, what we choose to put our trust in. For some, it is ourselves (the individual or humanity); for some, it is science (the determination of our senses, empirical evidence, and measurable/reproducible data); for some, it is the spiritual (under the assumption that there is more to this life than presented, both in terms of the spiritual and in terms of after this life; that there is more to us than body and consciousness including a spiritual dimension to the universe beyond our senses).

The fact that there might be a world beyond what his science could measure, categorize, and deal with was the thing that sent Gaius into his version of the dark night of the soul, nearly driving him mad at one point.

“We’re all just trying to discover who we are.” –Gaius

If you watch what drives Gaius, beyond self-preservation, it is redemption. He begins with the search for his true identity, in order to quit being a traitor either to the Cylons or humanity. He wants to come to terms with who he really is and is looking for a place to belong. Once he finds the community to which he can belong, it would provide his identity (this is who you are), provide his mission (this is what we do), provide training (this is how we do it), and then send him out to live their mission (now go do it).

In other words, Gaius Baltar is on the journey of what it means to be fully human.

“Life has a melody, Gaius. A rhythm of notes that become your existence once played in harmony with God’s plan.” –Caprica Six (Tricia Helfer)

He realizes that we live in a “failure condition,” that we largely sleepwalk through life, wondering what’s it all about, why we are here, and what we’re supposed to do and be. He wrestles with the idea of being originally created in God’s image, related to God, in right relationship with Him, under His rule and agenda. Something along the way went wrong, with humanity, with the Cylons, with creation. Something cause humanity to disconnect themselves from the rhythm of life set out by God, becoming alienated not only from each other, but God and creation.
“Our people need a new beginning, a new way to live in God’s love. Without hate. Without all the lies. All they need is for someone to show them the way.” –Caprica Six

With the half-human, half-Cylon child, we have echoes of the story of Christ. With Christ, He seeks to rescue His people and usher in His kingdom, modeling a new way of living.

“Repent of your sins and you will be saved.” –Caprica Six

Embracing this new way of living, this way of being fully human, begins with repentance, exchanging your old way of life for a new way. Gaius offers up this prayer: “Dear God, I now acknowledge that you are the one true God. Deliver me from this evil and I will spread the rest of my wretched life to doing good. I want to carry out your divine will is what I want to do. To carry out your divine will.”

“Stop running from our lives and start living them.” --Gaius

The final and longest part of the journey is joining the story of the mission to restore. To live out a life of love, becoming part of the ministry of reconciliation between God and creation.

Science and religion don’t have to be at war with one another. If allowed room for each to do what they are called to do, there are areas where the two meet. True spirituality and true science abhor certainty, it is because an attitude of certainty stops you from questioning. once you're certain, you "know" and not only do you close your mind to further conversations, but there is no point in further investigation. Both science and religion are truth pursuits, and all truth is God’s Truth.

Gaius continues to have what passes for his faith tested. It’s uncertain whether he understands what he believes, the tenets of his faith, or even the idea of who God is and how He works. Only by continuing to question and test does he stand a chance at the redemption he so desperately craves.


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Battlestar Galactica (Seasons 1-3) – A Commentary

“Spiritual Colonialism”
Battlestar Galactica continues to intrigue with it twists and turns as well as its political (a world at war) and religious subtext. The introductory mini-series had its 9/11 overtones to the traumatic attack of the cylons on the colonies. Throughout the series, the Cylons are portrayed as colonizers, using God as a weapon, essentially forcing faith on Gaius (and by proxy, the colonies). Seeing humanity as pagans, the Cylons are cast in the role of religious fundamentalists, terrorists (though in the file of there are no villains because we’re all heroes in our own story: you’re not a terrorist when you’re fighting for your cause and outnumbered)—who even use suicide bomber tactics such as in the episode “Tigh me up, Tigh me down”—after having declared their Jihad on humanity.

“Genocide murder vengeance they’re all sins in the eyes of God. That’s what you and I know. That’s what they don’t want to hear. Because then they’d have to re-think what they’re doing. They’d have to consider that maybe the slaughter of mankind was a mistake.” –Caprica Six

The show comments on our own history with spreading the Gospel message and our often questionable methods. In some ways, our missionary work, our Manifest Destiny, was a Bible and whip theology: taking the land of native peoples, stripping their cultural identity, and profiting from their resources. If slaves weren’t made of the people, then at the very least their inferior culture was replaced with the colonizers superior one.

This mélange of cultural supremacy linked to a message of salvation reduced religion to a weapon. That mindset bled into all areas of religion, life, and culture, blinding them to the fact that God was already at work in the cultures they traveled to (as He is already at work in everyone’s lives). Instead, the colonizers brought in and attached their own cultural baggage: trading one sin-soaked culture for the dominant sin-soaked culture. Naturally, this had to impact the portrait of the God they were presenting, first in their own minds and next in the minds of the people they were presenting Him to.

“God has a plan for you guys. He has a plan for everyone and everything.” --Caprica Six
For a view from the flip side, we only have to think back to the exile of Israel. The Israelites were taken to a foreign land, not all of them, but their best and brightest young men. In effect, the exile robbed Israel of its brain trust, its future. Those men were in turn re-enculturated: indoctrinated with new language, new customs, even new names. Essentially using culture to brainwash, to be a form of systematic control, this is the fate that awaits humanity at the hands of their Cylon oppressors.

In effect, the message was that in order to come to know God, you have to become civilized, absorbed into the dominant culture. Change your language. Change your names. Change your gods. Change your native ways. Become assimilated. Integrated.

This partial, baggage-laden Gospel (has been and) will be rejected. It isn’t true to their heritage, pride, and sense of self-worth. It isn’t true to the Gospel of the Bible and it certainly isn’t true to the triune God in whom we find our worth, identity, and mission. You can judge the truth of the message by the fruit of the lives of the messengers.

“We need to be free men and women. If we’re not free then we’re no different than Cylons.” –Tom Zarek (Richard Hatch)

The colonialist mindset tends to creep into our American brand of Christianity. It leads to a mentality of “reclaiming” or “taking back” communities for Jesus. It works its way into our language, as we have evangelism “Crusades.” Battlestar Galactica continues to bring real world relevance to what some might dismiss as escapist science fiction fare. Through it we can continue to examine and question both the message of our faith as well as its political impact.


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Writerly Type Updates/I Blog Therefore I Blush

I told a friend that I’d blog less and concentrate on my fiction for a while in order to push my career forward. In that regards, and to spare myself his wrath, I sent out my story "The House of Blue Lights" for an anthology looking for regional ghost stories. Also under loving threat, I recently revised my novella, "Devil's Marionette" and have sent it off. I'm currently wrapping up my story for an anthology ("Shadow Boxing") then I'm going to revise the first three chapters of my young adult fantasy novel "Knights of Breton Court" and send it off to a friend to look over by the end of the week.

In order to keep up my goals set out at the beginning of the year, I have to have "Strange Fruit" (my first novel) re-written by September 1st because an agent is interested in seeing it. And I need to get two short stories written for a humorous horror story market (one a collab with Kelli Dunlap*). Then it’s revising two stories to send out ("Warrior of the Sunrise" and "Here, There be Pirates") before I outline a story for another anthology I was asked to submit to.

Yes, I know, I know. I have one other collab to wrap up before I start a new novel in November (I don’t necessarily do Nanowrimo, but that time of year works out pretty well for me in terms of having time to devote to a new novel). With all that in mind …

The latest "issue" of Apex Digest has been posted. In it is a story by Wrath James White as well as an interview with him and yours truly.

In a bit of news that ties together a couple of markets I was published in earlier this year, my story “Just an Old Man on a Bench”, is also up. It was originally published on the Horrorfind web site (accepted by then editor, Brian Keene - thus why this story is a sentimental favorite of mine because it marked me hitting his radar). Interestingly enough, my story “Just a Young Man and his Games” (published in Doorways Magazine) was a continuation of that story.

An early review of Legends of the Mountain State 2 is up on the Dark Scribes site. Allow me to share a bit of it:

“Buyer beware” is the cautionary theme of Maurice Broaddus’ sublime “A House is Not a Home” – the standout of the collection. When a young artsy couple goes house hunting, they find more than they bargained for as an appealing fixer-upper soon becomes a conduit back through time. Soon the couple finds themselves part of living history as they find more than termites in a basement that once served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Broaddus’ commanding use of language coats the story with a lushness that belies its short fiction format and places it in a class of its own.

Although I firmly believe that if you live by the review, you die by the review so on the whole I try not to pay too much attention … you may now picture me dancing naked in my kitchen.

In other writerly news, congrats to Cullen Bunn with his announcement of his new comic from Oni Press, The Hollows. And big ups to Alice Henderson: her novel Voracious will be released from Penguin in February 2009.

So I am getting writing done and not just blogging. I can’t be held responsible for blogs set to auto-post. That’s my latest excuse: anything you see for the next few months was OBVIOUSLY set to autopost.


*Speaking of which, hear and obey teh Kelli.


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No Kids Today!!!

The boys are at their Aunt Natalie's today, so me and the wife are going to get a chance to do what so few married couples get to do once they have kids ...







NAP DURING THE DAY!!!


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No Time to Write Today

This morning, bachelor party. Paintballing with a bunch of guys nearly half my age.

Lesson learned: apparently my sedentary lifestyle has caught up to me. My ankle paid the price.

This afternoon, Broaddus family reunion.

Lesson learned: My dad + me + other Broaddi + food + alcohol = a blog to come.

This evening, bachelorette party. I offered bar hopping and doing shots out of the navels of sculpted guys. We went with an alternative involving dinner and a comedy club.

Lesson learned: she's REALLY going to need to see a rough draft of the toast that I'm writing for her wedding.


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