Edgar Allan Poe used a Greek-mythology-inspired way of expressing the comforts of home, hearth, and spouse: Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o’er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, …
Category: love
Aug 21 2022
Strokes
I’d intended to write a Jeremiad about this bit of viciousness — thank you, John Hinderaker, for bringing that to my attention — but I’m just recently back from Sunday Mass, and events, or perhaps non-events, have pointed me in another direction for today’s tirade. You’re unlikely to read anything else today like …
Jul 22 2022
What Matters
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away childish things. [First Epistle to the Corinthians 13:11] A fiction writer must know what matters to the reader. But this is far easier if …
May 30 2022
Why I Write Love Stories
Yes, I’ve been asked that question…mostly by people who dislike love stories and exhort me to concentrate on other themes. I call them “romances,” because that’s the name of the genre. However, they don’t bear a lot of resemblance to typical contemporary romances. The attraction comes early, as does the commitment. There isn’t …
Feb 07 2022
The Cruelest Consequence
“Death is the price we pay for life, and for all life.” — Ursula Le Guin It is so. All that lives must die. Whether it’s by accident, disease, violence, or simply old age, all that lives must die. Realists know it. We know it couldn’t be any other way. That doesn’t …
Jul 25 2021
Gifts, Love, And Miracles
Today’s Mass reading from the Gospel of St. John told of the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes: After these things Jesus went over the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias. And a great multitude followed him, because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased. …
Jul 08 2021
For The Masculine Readers Of Liberty’s Torch
Has a woman ever betrayed you? Has a woman you’ve cherished abandoned you? Do you live with the inability to trust to this very day? Then this is for you: They think we do not value them. They think their bodies are all that matter to us. They …
Fran’s Recent Novels
Margaret’s Recent Novels
