Greetings, friends! I hope you have been thriving this winter, wherever you may be. What things of beauty, truth, or goodness have carried you through the dark months so far? I’d love to hear about what’s bringing you joy, especially if you’re creating anything these days. Are you writing, painting, sculpting, drawing, composing, dancing, making messes with clay, or anything else you’d care to share? Drop me a comment so I can enjoy your creativity along with you! Here’s some of what I’ve been poking away at when I can get out of bed and stay healthy long enough to summon some brain power, and I’d like to offer these creations to you now.
I’m still working away at my chapter on Occult Initiation in That Hideous Strengthfor Joseph Weigel’s book Planet Thulcandra: Magic and Science in That Hideous Strength, and I’ve learned some amazing stuff! Turns out C.S. Lewis knew more about the modern occult revival than I’ve previously thought, and he crafted THS to show two parallel “initiations”: one demonic and one divine. I hope I can continue to plow through what’s left of the draft and get it polished up before too much longer.
I started work on an introduction, co-written with G. Connor Salter, to a fascinating novel: Nor Fish Nor Flesh by Gerry Hopkins (nephew of the poet). Gerry was a coworker of Charles Williams, and he had an affair with Phyllis Jones, the woman CW loved–and then wrote a novel about it! Wild stuff. I’ve blogged about it before, and now John Mabry is bringing out a new edition at Apocryphile, so Connor and I are putting together an intro.
Theoretically, I’m also still working on The Oddest Inkling: An Introduction to Charles Williams, but what with travel, illness, and distractions like the next three projects listed below, I haven’t made much progress. Argh! I want to power on through it and hope spring brings renewed energy and focus–for any of you who need it as well as for myself.
I’ve gotten great pleasure from putting up a short series of lectures on YouTube about Williams’s novel War in Heaven, and you can find them here:
- An Introduction
- Jedi Masters
- The Quest for the Holy Grail
- Sacred Ritual Objects
- A Naked Lady on a Map?
I’d be very, very grateful if you’d leave a comment on any of these; that helps the algorithm greatly, and my goal with all this public-facing stuff is to try to get more clients so I can feed my family! And to share my thoughts on great literature, writing, and rhetoric, too.
Of course, I keep going with the podcast, Words Do Things. This month, I released the following episodes:
- “No Inherently Bad Words” with Jeremy Larson
- Rerun: Aaron Williams on Reconciliation
- “America has made itself the center of the universe” says Aaron Williams
- “The Eucharist is a Political Act” with Jim Beitler
- and “No Totalitarianism is a Good Totalitarianism,” a solo episode (a bit of a rant, really).
Those episodes covered a lot of topics and included an English professor, a PCUSA minister, the director of the Marion E. Wade Center, and, well, me. I have recorded three more episodes, which will release in March and will wrap up the “Bad Words” series:
- Fr. Aaron Warwick, an Orthodox priest
- Larry Rosen, JD, host of The Enemies Project
- Dr. Taylor Jones of the popular YouTube channel Language Jones.
These were utterly awesome conversations, and I’m eager to share them with you! Then I’ll do another solo to end the series, and it’s on to J.R.R. Tolkien after that! Woohoo! Confirmed guests so far include:
- Alan Sisto & Shawn Marchese
- Mike Drout
- Verlyn Flieger
- Tom Hillman & Joe Hoffman
- Michael Ward
- Holly Ordway
- Chad High and Chad Bornholdt…with many more in the works!
I’ve found some relief from political stress by venting my feelings through writing on my Substack, also called Words Do Things. Posts I put up in February included “Bad Things Pastors Have Said“; a response to a friend who wanted to debate definitions of “illegal”; a little review of The Night Manager season 2; a plea for compassion towards immigrants; some rhetorical advice for pro-lifers; an account of a sad conversation about Wake Up Dead Man; an immigration explainer; an impassioned plea for pluralism; a rant about how “Pastors Are the Problem“; a reassurance to a podcast guest that it’s okay to say “Transwoman”; and more. If you’re a member of my Author’s Circle, you get access to the paid version of my Substack as part of that package!
Partly due to the sad conversation about Wake Up Dead Man and partly just because that movie is so cool and I wanted to talk about it with thoughtful people, I started up a monthly virtual watch party for smart movies! Here’s the planned schedule; we meet on the 4th Sunday of the month at 5pm eastern over zoom:
Mar 2026: Children of Men
Apr 2026: O Brother, Where Art Thou
May 2026: Babette’s Feast
Jun 2026: Monsters
July 2026: Doubt
Aug 2026: The Brutalist
Let me know if you’d like to be added to the invitation list! I also host an in-person Film Fellowship at my home on the first Sunday of each month, so if you’re local, come on over!
Let’s see, what else? I was a guest on the Theology in Pieces podcast with my friends Malcolm Foley and Slim Thompson; we talked about the Inklings, occultism, and political rhetoric, tying together pretty much all of my interests. It was a great chat full of snark; you can listen to it here (I come on around 19 minutes in).
I enjoyed a couple of Author’s Circle meetings this month, one talking mostly about abortion (in response to my “Dear Pro-Lifers” post), and the other reading selections from one member’s beautiful Tolkien-inspired fiction.
Hm…. I sent out my short-story collection Shall These Bones Breathe? to a few publishers but haven’t found a good home for that volume yet. Do you know any presses that might like it? Here’s a blurb:
It’s the turn of the twenty-seventh century, and grave-robbing isn’t what it used to be. Archaeology turns into time travel, myth becomes real, birds are art critics, we have memory chips in our heads, statues come to life, people crumble into dust, and there’s a fine line between mental illness and spiritual revelation. All of this happens in my short story collection SHALL THESE BONES BREATHE? It is 58,799 words long and contains seven stories offering epiphanies in unexpected circumstances and exploring the essential nature of embodiment. They include a time-travel speculation, a myth retold, a meditation on art and faith and time, mystical science fiction, and a futuristic cop-and-robber story with a dystopian flare. A Beta reader said that he loves “the mixture of the whimsical, the mythopoeic, and the deadly serious. These are provocative in the best sense, raising our awareness of both brokenness and grace.” This collection is wide-ranging, investigating matters of faith in gritty reality or wild fantasy.
That’s about it, more or less. It was a short month, LOL. Oh, and I turned 47 on Valentine’s Day. Want to give me a belated birthday present? All I want is comments on my YouTube channel, haha. So there you have it. Let me know what you’re making these days, won’t you?
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