Animal Crackers in My Soup

Animal Crackers in My Soup

Twice this past week, I’ve waited in an office and finally departed, ready to bite someone’s head off, like I used to do with my animal crackers. Talk about a zoo. Instead of spinning a Tin Collector’s Tale about animal crackers, I hardened my heart and collected grievances. Never mind that I prayed for some…

This is Not the Real World

This is Not the Real World

While cynics and pragmatists are quick to carp that the Gospel and the Christian worldview don’t offer solutions to real-world problems—as if this punch delivered the ultimate technical knock-out—I’d like to suggest that this world we live in now is not the real world. Fiction writers, too, are frequently criticized for not focusing on real…

Comfort Food in War and Peace

Comfort Food in War and Peace

What’s your favorite comfort food in good times and bad? Mine’s pizza with the works, spaghetti and meatballs, or chicken pot pie…and any of the above followed by a handful of warm chocolate chip cookies and a tall glass of ice-cold milk. Today’s legacy tin symbolizes the homey comfort of cookies to me. It’s a…

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

“Art takes nature as its model,” Aristotle said. In other words, art imitates life—and I believe that to a point, since much of my own writing reflects the settings and characters I interact with every day. While I’ve never suffered from a scarcity of story ideas, after experiencing the Chilean version of a “24” season…