“Then I fell at [Aslan’s] feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, ‘Son, thou art welcome.’ But I said, ‘Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash.’ He answered, ‘Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child?’ I said, ‘Lord, thou knowest how much I understand.’ But I said also (for the truth constrained me), ‘Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days.’ ‘Beloved,’ said the Glorious One, ‘unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.’

“Then he breathed upon me and took away the trembling from my limbs and caused me to stand upon my feet. And after that, he said not much, but that we should meet again, and I must go further up and further in. Then he turned him about in a storm and flurry of gold and was gone suddenly.”

I have read the Shack of Mack.
I have read this paperback.
I would not give it to my friends.
I might just spoil how it ends.

[. . .]

That Mack in Shack!
That Mack in Shack!
I do not like that Mack in Shack!

Instead of writing like his favorite authors, though, he simply asserts in his own sentences the effects that their writing has on him. The result is oppressive, as in the description of a tree that the character Mack crashes into: As he lies prone and looks up into the tree, it is said “to stand over him with a smug look mixed with disgust and not a little disappointment.” Take a moment right now, reader, to see if you can arrange your face into an expression that communicates smugness mixed with disgust and disappointment. You will find it “not a little” impossible, and you have greater expressive range than trees. This is typical of the way Young projects attitudes rather than actually describing anything.

[. . .]

Whatever religious readers may make of the theological Trinity in this book, the most heretical trinity is surely this trinity of the Foreword and the first chapter, wherein three personas speak to us in a single confused voice, crying out with a shrill faux-folksiness, “Please like me! Please like me! I’m ever so authentic!”

[. . .]

And the clichés became flesh, and they dwelt in the shack. Throughout this section, the worst narrative passages sound something like “By the time Mack woke up, Jesus already had the waffles a-cookin’, and the Holy Ghost had cracked a couple eggs.” That is not an actual quotation, but here is one: Papa, the woman who portrays God the Father, reflects on her tendency to love everybody by saying, “”Guess that’s jes’ the way I is.” And before the reader can finish rubbing his eyes in disbelief, three lines later Papa says “Sho’ nuff!” Though he comes perilously close, Young at least manages to keep his God character from saying “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout rulin’ no universe!”

Eugene Peterson
Said it was good as Bunyan.
He must have meant Paul.

[. . .]

My copy was free
But I almost lost my mind
Inside of the Shack.

... And again, the complete column is available here, on Speculative Faith.

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be enslaved by anything.

1 Corinthians 6:12 (ESV)

Chuck Norris doesn't actually write books, the words assemble themselves out of fear.

-- “Chuck Norris Facts”

Perhaps that explains this?

About two days ago I saw this item in a Christian book catalog and was slightly stunned. After all, hardback copies of the first book in this series were once available by the dozens on the shelves at the Christian bookstore where I used to work, at about $24.95 apiece. After less-than-lackluster sales, the store finally shipped many of them back to the publisher as dead weight and sometime later received paperback reprints at about $10 apiece, which gained similar non-blockbuster status.

Perhaps the credits on the front, strongly implying the book was actually written by CHUCK NORRIS (!!!) but may actually be the combined products of the three-man committee whose members' names follow, had something to do with this?

Surely, Chuck Norris may be able to beat everyone at the computer game “Oregon Trail,” change the law of physics, bench-press the Earth, etc., but no one has time to do all that and become a real professional novelist.

Yet the mere strength of the name seems enough to warrant a sequel — albeit a $10 paperback first print — even to a first book that only got 10 reviews on Amazon, some negative, and the others positive mostly only because this was a Clean Old West Novel (as if no Christian writer ever thought of that idea before).

The publishing industry is indeed strange; the Christian publishing industry, even stranger.

Disclaimer: I realize that, especially as I have not actually read the book, I am supposedly risking horrible deaths by roundhouse kicks and possibly subsequent cannibalism by the inimitable Chuck Norris.

However, in my defense, I must reluctantly cite the karate fighter/actor's columns at the uberconservative WorldNetDaily cyber-newspaper — especially this one — as proof that the man is actually a rather gentle, overall harmless soul; and aside from the apparently poor forays into fiction “authoring,” thus far I have much admiration for his accomplishments and Christian faith.)

You might be looking at the calendar and thinking, “Oh, the Fantasy Fiction Tour Wayne is on is over.” Well, that's what I thought. God {who is in the habit of doing so} had other ideas.

The first thing is: on the FRONT page of Today's (Wednesday) Washington Post, there is an article about Christian Fantasy, focusing quite a bit on my work with The Door Within and Isle of Swords.
Here's the link if you'd like to read the article online:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2007/07/17/AR2007071702182.html

Then, my agent, Gregg Wooding, calls in the middle of our last Tour Signing at the Timeless Treasures Store in downtown Manhattan. “Wayne, you might want to sit down,” he says.

“I saw it, Gregg,” I say, misunderstanding him. “The Washington Post put the Christian Fantasy article on the front page—my book Isle of Swords, right there on the front page.”

He pauses, “Uh, yes, that was great, but there's more.”

Stunned silence.

“Fox News just called. They want you to stay in New York so that they can have you as a guest on Fox and Friends, Friday morning 6:45 am.”

More stunned silence, punctuated by rapid heart rate and shortness of breath.

This is real. God is making me into one of the small stones that starts an avalanche in the mountains. It's happening. Adventures are funny things...they may appear down a seldom trodden path or even arrive with...a phone call. But they always begin with the unexpected.

The interview time was later changed to 8:45 am EDT, more convenient for Americans with cable all across the fruited plain. Of course, I ensured to catch the show myself this morning. About half an hour later, I added this to Wayne’s Speculative Faith post:

Recommended The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis

What's happening with C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters?

It's in development with Fox and Walden Media. Fox has owned the property for decades. They bought it in the 50s. There was management at Fox that wanted it and bought it, and they've owned it for decades.

So what's the current status?

We're signing deals right now. We're finishing the Fox option deal, we're finishing my deal with Walden. Doug Gresham's deal is done.

Does the movie have a green light?

Not yet. We've been talking to Randall Wallace about writing and directing. We need to have more discussions with Fox and Walden about that, and make sure that Randy's still available. Everybody wants to make this movie; I think it's going to happen, I just don't know what the timetable is right now.

We're very excited about that. With the right script, dealing with temptation and that whole upside down world, it could be a very, very interesting movie. And it's going to be dark. This isn't a light, happy, Narnia piece.

The C.S. Lewis name alone should be enough to draw people into the theaters.

We've been telling people that for years, and they wouldn't believe it. And now that Narnia has happened, they're a lot more open to it. (Laughs.)

My reaction to this is not as excited as I might have expected to have, say, five years ago. For instance, Frank Peretti's recent thriller novels, such as House and Monster, are fairly much only assembled prototype lower-budget movie screenplays in advance — a far cry from the two Darkness epics with which his career began.

Also, along with Screwtape, Ralph Winter wants to produce a film version of The Purpose-Driven Life. How exactly can one do that from a nonfiction “inspiration” book? Easily, by crafting a story about someone who goes through the program; an hour-and-a-half-long commercial would result, but Purpose and its merchandise and program spinoffs has already become such a parody of itself that one could hardly fail to expect a movie commercial version.

But the fact that Winter wants to give that book the same attention he gives a classic like Screwtape Letters — which, unlike PDL, actually has something original and thoroughly Biblical to say — leads to some reluctant skepticism on my part.

However, as I wrote on Feb. 9 in a resultant forum thread, I believe a film version of The Screwtape Letters, with its elements of fiction along with Deep And Sardonic Theological Magic, could be fantastic.

The film would be called The Screwtape Letters, to be sure, and quote the actual letters frequently, perhaps with Screwtape's voice-over as we watch Wormwood (CG demons, of course!) attempt to tempt the central human. He would have a name, along with Wormwood having a voice, neither one of which exist in the book).

The new storyline would be focused on this man becoming a Christian and going about his standard, day-to-day early-40s British activities without much fuss — while the demons correspond behind the scenes and we see just exactly how much effort they put into trying to deceive a Christian.

Can it be done without changing what we know of the man — let's call him William — from the Letters themselves? Absolutely. It's all there: his first impressions of the church, arguments with his mother, falling-in with the sort of family and especially the young lady whose nature makes Screwtape want to throw up (and then, in his anger, assume the form of a very large centipede). All of this would make a great story.

Artistic license is fully possible without ruining the book. After all, it's not like they can change William's name or job (we didn't know what either was from the Letters) or toss in a noncanonical romance (it was in the book) or make up a bunch of violence and conflict (World War II was in the book).

We could even have deviations into the bigger picture, in which Screwtape performs his own job, perhaps further down in Hell's lowerarchy. What does he do all day? besides write letters? We can find out. Perhaps involved with the war. Perhaps he's even helping Hitler's regime in Germany. But the fact that even while doing all of these “big” things, he takes such interest in a “junior tempter” like Wormwood and the latter's “minor” project, would show viewers that every human life is a focus of tremendous spiritual unheavel.

Now about Ralph Winter, I'm a tad underwhelmed. He seems to be the go-to guy so far for faith-based movies that don't have much depth to them -- at least so far.

I haven't yet seen Thr3e for example, which he produced, and I love the novel, but it's not a very deep and specifically Christian story. Meanwhile House, by Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti, was a slipshod construction, bringing all of the two authors' various quirks in one product but with very few of the benefits — and Winter is reflexively producing the “story,” such as it is. (The movie announcement was in the back of the book and his endorsement was on the front.)

However, with Douglas Gresham involved, things will surely go well. And because it's The Screwtape Letters, how could one make a shallow film? One would need to work as hard as possible to pull that off, much more labor than it would take to simply stay true to the in-depth original. ...

Yes, Gresham is involved, and in a recent interview he said something which I thought very nice, and which is even now gracing my signature image at NarniaWeb:

Widescreen fiction: a speculative story with realistic characters, epic elements and engaging plot that includes strong, Christ-honoring themes of good versus evil and growth in faith.

Recommended The Paradise War: Song of Albion Book 1 (Song of Albion Trilogy) by Stephen R. Lawhead

I'm not trying to impose anything on anyone; that is, I’m not writing propaganda. On the other hand, it’s my book, so it’s going to come from my point of view. Like any writer, I naturally take up what I know or what I’m interested in. In Hood, for example, I liked exploring the distinction between these highly organised, politicised, corporate-type Norman priests ... and the more disorganized, unsophisticated but often more spiritual Celtic clerics.

It’s the year 1878! Sierra Samantha Victoria Hutchinson Dick Cheney O’Regan Begorrah Lancaster is a (select one: frontier doctor/lawyer/U.S. Marshal, daughter of Irish immigrants, abandoned orphan, child of stern Amish upbringing), who is (select one: trying to make her way in a career dominated by men, struggling to understand a new land and find true love, struggling with her own loneliness brought on by the man who left her behind, trying to reconcile her faith and childhood abuses).

Will her faith in God be put to the Ultimate Test?! Maybe!

These and other scintillating questions will be answered herein and also in the forthcoming next eight books in this series, available next month — same Bat-time, same Bat-channel! Same peril! . . .