The Tortoiseshell Tribble

At last, our house is no longer catless! Her name is Maki, and our family is ever so grateful to Fr. Kosta & Melissa for letting us have her when they had to move to a no-pets building!

She is five years old, and unlike our last cat, she is a big scaredy cat who shows no interest in the outdoors, thank goodness. She doesn't exactly purr-- she TRILLS like a big fat tortoiseshell tribble. (But we are assured she will not reproduce!)

I have always wanted a tortoiseshell since my first published story , "It Must Be Some Place" was about a tortoiseshell tomcat (the tortie gene is sex-linked, it's generally for ladies only, so you see a tortoiseshell tom must be magical by definition!) Maki isn't magic per se, but she's a cat, so who knows? :-) She LOVEs to be petted and fussed over.

newest post at Refreshment of Spirit

Truly Valiant, a post about Reepicheep the knightly mouse of Narnia, is the latest entry at my blog Refreshment of Spirit.

Meanwhile, among other busy stuff in my life, we have finally become a cat household again. I will get photos as soon as Maki comes out from under the piano bench.......;-)

Happy St. George's Day!

Happy St. George's Day!

If you would like a little feast-appropriate fiction, check out my story Light One Candle.

New post at Refreshment of Spirit

A post on Ships and Shipmates. Part one of two.

March Miscellany

I am loathe to bump down my exciting post about the Ravens of Farne, but it's time to add in some other items. For one, it's almost Saint Patrick's day, so if you missed it last year, you can find my post about Ireland's chief saint here.

And of course I am NOT in any way leaving Saint Cuthbert behind, except chronologically--- his feast day is this coming Thursday, March 20th.

And of course I have to report that my husband's latest Orthodox Bible Study book (on the pastoral epistles) is being released any time now by Conciliar Press.

Last but not least, I have finally made a new post on my Refreshment of Spirit blog. Do not miss Diana Pavlac Glyer's terrific book The Company they Keep: C. S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community!

The Ravens of Farne

Conciliar Press has accepted my proposal for a children's picture book, The Ravens of Farne!

I am so excited about this book, which is one of my several Saint Cuthbert projects.

The story comes to us from Bede's Life of St. Cuthbert. Scroll down on that page to chapters 19 and 20, which will show much of the material I used in my free verse adaptation. Although this online translation speaks of 'crows', most others call the birds in question ravens; the behaviour of the birds in the story certainly sounds like that of the largest, most intelligent corvids, ravens.

The Farne Islands, where Saint Cuthbert had his hermitage, is today a nature sanctuary-- appropriately so, for in the 7th Century when he was bishop of a diocese that encompassed the whole north of England, Saint Cuthbert became perhaps the world's first great bird conservationist when he named the Eider Duck a protected species on all the lands belonging to his see.

Conciliar has a full slate of children's books coming up, so it will be 18-24 months before The Ravens of Farne sees print. My editor will shortly be starting the search for the right illustrator. You can see some of the covers for Conciliar's previous books here.

There's a lot of hurry up and wait for a writer between submission and acceptance, and then more between acceptance and publication. Meanwhile, I have lots of other stuff to keep me busy, including a YA historical novel set in the 9th Century-- yes, another St. Cuthbert project.

To the ends of the earth.....

I've written before about my thing for maps. I just had to share this really cool Lord's Prayer Map from the Strange Maps site.