The #CatholicFictionChallenge took place on Instagram (and to lesser degrees on Facebook and Twitter) during February 2020. With more than 150 posts, Catholic readers and authors shared their favorite selections from 29 categories. If your to-be-read pile wasn’t teetering before, it was after!
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Would a God who truly loves you allow things to get this bad?
Lapsed Catholic Erin Rafferty has the life she always wanted. Or at least she did, till the moment her fiancé of five years announces he’s leaving her for another woman. Heartbroken and humiliated, a further devastating development leaves her wondering if she can ever live a normal life again.
Mark Ashcroft is a devout Catholic looking for an equally devout Catholic wife. A chance encounter with Erin leaves Mark completely captivated, yet deeply unsettled, knowing Erin is not in a place to accept him, nor is she the model Christian woman he’d hoped to start a life with.
A tentative friendship begins, and Erin finds herself questioning her long-held rejection of her faith, while Mark finds himself healing from memories of his own wounded past.
But as love grows, further tragedy in Erin’s life threatens her burgeoning faith and her hope for a future with Mark.
What follows is a difficult journey of love, surrender, trust, and faith in the ultimate knowledge that Christ is always in the midst of our sufferings.
Welcome to the March 2020 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart AND CatholicMom.com! My husband recently listened to An Exorcist…
8 CommentsWriting Catholic fiction feels simultaneously universal and narrow. Universal because, well, “catholic,” with common themes of finding freedom, mercy, conversion, etc. within romance conventions, yet…
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There’s nothing quite like unrequited love. It’s a different kind of heartbreak than that from a breakup, I think. I know of what I speak, starting with my one-sided affair with Speed Racer.
One of my one-sided loves had a strength and staying power I’d not anticipated.
In a move totally out of character, fueled by I don’t know what–desperation?– I confessed my feelings. In writing, of course, not in person. I said “out of character,” not momentary insanity.
Of course, the verbal insanity confession would have at least produced instant results. In the days when remote communication happened via either written word or the family landline telephone, response time lagged.
4 CommentsWelcome to the February 2020 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart AND CatholicMom.com! Once Christmas Day passed, I had an…
9 CommentsA Single Bead really drives home the power of prayer in such a compelling way, one that is entertaining and organic to the story and gives us that big-picture glimpse of what many of us know intellectually about the efficacy of prayer but rarely recognize in daily life. Did you know from the start how that theme would permeate the book or did it develop as you wrote?
To really answer that question, I have to share the story of how I came to write A Single Bead in the first place. Having consecrated myself to Jesus through Mary in early October of 2013, I found myself feeling renewed conviction to write a Bible study on the Rosary. By mid-October, I was researching publishers and came across Pauline Books & Media, who said they were specifically seeking Catholic young adult fiction. That single sentence set bells ringing in my head, as if the Holy Spirit were saying, Stephanie, pay attention to this! I had never even considered writing fiction, though, so I said out loud, “God, if you want me to write Catholic young adult fiction, you’re going to have to
give me the idea. Because I’ve got nothing!”
Welcome to the January 2020 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart AND CatholicMom.com! While he’s preparing for Marian consecration, my…
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