Submitting to Castalia, the Intro

As I've mentioned, went I have them both ready, I'm going to send Set to Kill and Sad Puppies Bite Back to Castalia House.

Their submissions page is interesting.

We are looking for writers who believe there is a fundamental distinction between good and evil. We are interested in writers who harken back to the Golden Age of SF and the Inklings. We are seeking writers who respect the past as much as they anticipate the future. We want to publish writers with souls, writers with chests, writers who possess a sense of the numinous and the ineffable. We hope to hear from authors who are just as interested in telling a fascinating story and entertaining the reader as they are in demonstrating literary pyrotechnics.

Oh yes, this looks awesome. I have found my people! Yay!

Now, what they require is a single document of

• a one-page synopsis
• a one-page author bio describing who the author is and what the author stands for rather than the author’s credentials
• the completed manuscript.

Huh. The first one is standard, the third one is obligatory, the second one ... huh.

Okay, granted, doing a synopsis of Sad Puppies Bite Back is going to be a train wreck. SWATting here and there, some replies by the Puppy Kickers, counter attacks by the Puppies, ending in the arrest of The Stalker, then an interlude for A WorldCon Carol, and ending at WorldCon .... with the head of Castalia as the Supreme Evil Overlord trying to kill them all. Yeah, that'll go over well.

There's a reason I'm holding off on that until The Hugo nominations come out. After all, if SPBB is a nominee, that would be great.

As for my bio, that needs some work. Especially the way they want to do it. I should probably just sum up my entire worldview as "See the Baltimore Catechism and the Summa Theologica" and go from there.

Anyway, this is what it looks like thus far. Be amused.

As an ultramontane Catholic and as a realist, I believe in the Nicene creed and in Murphy's Law, usually in that order. My beliefs can be summed up by the Baltimore Catechism, the Summa Theologica, sprinkled likely with the Demotivators of Despair.Inc. As Thomist by training, I have no problem taking reductions to absurdity and making them a punchline. (See “Sad Puppies Bite Back” for prime examples).

Evil is real, and cannot be negotiated with, sated, or reasoned with. The Prince of this World may triumph, but said Prince can have it over my smoldering corpse. There are only two paths for evil. Either evil is redeemed, or evil is ended at the point of a sword. More often than not, the cliché that “a villain does not see a villain in the mirror” is merely an excuse to justify evil; it also presupposes that the villain believes in villainy, or heroes, or good, or evil, as moral equivalency and subjectivity are the first refuge of villains.  Though, every time I have a fully developed, three dimensional villain that lasts for any length of time, they are either killed off as soon as possible, or redeemed.

I write because fiction should support the truth. When researching Pope Pius XII as a graduate student in history, I was so angered by the lies told about “Hitler's Pope,” I proceeded to write an epic trilogy dedicated the truth around Pius XII. Making Dan Brown look like the pompous lying idiot that he is was an added bonus. 

Yes, I know, needs work.

Now, let's look at the odds for a second, shall we? None of these are science fiction or fantasy. Okay, maybe Sad Puppies Bite Back is a fantasy. It's just that deranged. And when you get to A WorldCon Carol, we are so far into la la land, we might as well be in Los Angeles.

But Set To Kill? Different kind of fantasy, and a different kind of deranged. I somehow suspect that it's the wrong kind of both. It's a murder mystery at a science fiction convention where the cops don't solve the mystery.

It's as much a fantasy as, well, Jessica Fletcher

Again, I suspect the wrong kind of fantasy.

There's a reason I'm already making alternate plans to get them self published.

What's that you ask? I'm not running them through the publisher of Honor At Stake? Nope. They've already got a series under contract from me, and they have enough problems. Backlog can be a bear and a half.

Anyway, Hugo nominations are announced on the 26th. So, I have a few days to get this all submission ready.

This is going to get so very, very strange.

What Do You Mean There's Philosophy in A Pius Man?

I'm a simple fellow. Simpleminded, at times. Which is why there are a lot of people who know me and say, “I can't really believe you have a degree in philosophy. You don't spout out gibberish about how the table isn't a table..”

Hegel never looked
this good.

I understand that. I do, really. Try to read Hegel, and you get stuff about consciousness-- which is the key turning point of his entire philosophy-- and you basically get gibberish, since his terms are undefined. (If you are a science fiction fan, look up Minbari theology on Babylon 5, Hegel is the same babble, only without the reincarnation bit). Read Descartes, who basically said that you had to look at every little thing with a highly skeptical eye, and start with what you know for absolute certainty, concluding that the only thing you can ever really know for certain is that “I exist,” the rest is negotiable. (Popularly known as “I think therefore I am.” Does not cover instances of drivers during rush hour, who obviously don't think, but are real enough to get you killed.)

I'm sorry, Mr. Descartes, I'm slow and stupid. If I get hit in the head with a rock, I'm going to think that the rock is real. And that someone threw it at me. And that I will have to hurt someone.

Which is why I am a Thomist.

At which point the audience asks, “A what now?”

Philosophy, Religion, and Sex.

Dear Pope Benedict, I've been a fan of your career since you worked under John Paul II.  The press hated you because you were hostile to them, and for that I applaud you.  But you have to stop having statements come out so close together, it messes up my schedule.

Last week, I explained why the Catholic Church wanted to hire exorcists.

This week, because no one in the Vatican can shut up, I'm going to try explaining something else that was recently in the news.

The New York Times recently reported that, "Yippie, the Pope is giving in and endorsing condom use."

The old gray hag of The New York Times has, once again, gotten it wrong.  One day, they may actually try to get a theologian to explain theology to them.  Unfortunately, given most theologians, that may not help much.

Let's start at the beginning: Why does the Catholic Church have an issue with condom use?  Or any contraceptives?

It basically involves philosophy ... bare with me a minute, I'll keep it short and comprehensible ... and what is the function of "a thing."  In the case of sex, the mechanism of sex is "insert tab A into slot B."  The "function" of sex is procreation, and a darn good time, if you're doing it correctly.

Contraceptions mess with the natural function of sex by removing elements that are inherent to the act -- procreation comes with sex.  The Vatican position is, that if you mess around with it and start taking out elements, then you are messing around with things that are not yours to mess with.

If you are pondering what the Catholic church's advice is on STD prevention when you have sex with your boy/girlfriend, the Church's position is that you should be having sex with your spouse, only with your spouse, have a nice day, thank you.  Under this rubrick, STDs are not a problem, since if you only ever insert one tab A into one tab B, STDs are not an issue; pregnancy remains in effect, but in the Catholic church, marriage is a contract to have sex, have kids, and spread the spawn around the globe, carrying the faith with it.

You are currently up on previously held positions.


The NY Times said, on November 21st .....

“Pope Benedict XVI has said that condom use can be justified in some cases to help stop the spread of AIDS . . . .”

However, George Wiegel, papal biographer and general Vatican busybody, corrected the Times report.  You can find the full text online, but since that will take forever for you to read, I'm going to translate it for you, gentle reader, into something easily comprehensible.

The pope's actual statement, in context, was during an interview.  The pope mentioned how the Catholic Church runs more AIDS hospitals, and stresses "prevention, education, help, counsel, and accompaniment."  IE: The pope pointed out that, unlike pontificating reporters, the Church actually does something,

The pope even stressed that "we cannot solve the problem [of AIDS] by distributing condoms. Much more needs to be done. We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them; and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease."

The pope continued:

.... people can get condoms when they want them anyway. But this just goes to show that condoms alone do not resolve the question itself. More needs to happen. Meanwhile, the secular realm itself has developed the so-called ABC Theory: Abstinence–Be Faithful–Condom, where the condom is understood only as a last resort, when the other two points fail to work. This means that the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality .... the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also a part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man’s being.

Short version: sex is important, has an effect on a person, and is also for the purpose of expressing love.  Throw in a condom, and you just make it another way to drug yourself into a stupor.

The part where the NYTimes gets confused is probably in the following section:

There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.

When asked if "the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?"  Pope Benedict XVI answered that "She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality."

Short version: If it's someone infected with AIDS, yes, the Church would rather that they NOT KILL PEOPLE by infecting them further.

Basically, it's like robbing a bank -- if you rob a bank, the Church would rather have someone use an empty gun; it'll lessen the risk of someone getting their head blown off.

So, despite news reports, the Catholic Church's position hasn't changed.

With luck, we can all move on to something important now.