Christmas, Charis, Willows

And it's Christmas Eve day! 

Here's stellar Fra Angelico, dreaming the Madonna and naked infant Christ 

with embodied angels, Peter of Verona, Thomas Aquinas, Barnabas, Dominic. 

Detail, Fiesole altarpiece, 1422, Convent of San Dominico. 

Public domain CC wikipedia.

Some bits of news:

Short version, Englewood Review of Books

"Twelve Important Fiction Books of 2020" https://www.goodreads.com/.../156371.ERB_Twelve_Important...

and

Longer version of the Charis in the World of Wonders page... 

https://englewoodreview.org/twelve-important-fiction.../12/

"The Changes," "The Ruined Garden," and "Come to the Selvage of the Sea" kick off issue 19 Winter  2021 of Willows Wept: https://willowswept.com/ and https://www.magcloud.com/webviewer/1903662?__r=150177&s=w for the online version...  (And weirdly, the cover image by Troy Urquhart shows a Cherokee spot only a few miles from Cullowhee, NC, where I went to high school and still spend part of every year.)

Night, village, snow

Home Sweet Home

Santa's Cottage in tiny Farkle Park
next to the 1802 Tunnicliff Inn 

Kiosk in Farkle Park
with clever snow-shedding roof.

Baseball Hall of Fame

Ranking board at the Baseball Hall of Fame

Village Library

Main St. house

Clark Foundation offices,
Main Street by Cooper Park

 Night-walk pictures by Michael, my husband

Charis, Cáer, Ghosts

Gaudete Sunday, Rose Sunday... 

Our ramshackle 1808 federal getting duded up in Advent by my husband...

CHARIS IN THE WORLD OF WONDERS

Continuing to have Covid-era supply chain and other problems with indies and sometimes with Amazon and Ingram, so if you planned to read Charis in the World of Wonders, please don't let that dissuade you but support the book even if it takes a bit longer to arrive than you or I would like. I am, frankly, disheartened by my third (9-11, HarperCollins collapse, Covid19) intersection of a novel launch with a disaster. Who has that kind of mad luck? Me. Contemplating whether the universe wants me to stop writing novels...

It is on sale via Ignatius Press, and they have copies--I'd be even more worried about what the universe thinks if they vanished. All seems possible in 2020!

CÁER

Here's a poem of mine up at First Things this morning. It's about Cáer Ibormeith--Aengus fell in love with her in a dream, and that mythic love and hunt for the beloved  was the  inspiration for Yeats's great early lyric, "The Song of Wandering Aengus."

BEST BOOKS 2020

"The Best Books I Read in 2020." Charis in the World of Wonders makes an appearance, and I also have a note included. 

and GHOSTS

And I just realized that another of my "tinies" is up at The North American Anglican. An odd little thing but  mine own: "The Teeny Ghosts."

The header image at NAA is Franz Sedlacek's Blumen und Insekte...

What's-in-print list; Pushcart nom

What's available and where...

Charis in the World of Wonders: French flaps paperback from Ignatius, and of course it can be ordered directly from them. It keeps moving rapidly in and out of stock at Amazon, and the arrival dates keep changing. Indies may have best luck ordering directly via the publisher. Interior and exterior art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. 2020.

The Book of the Red King: Hardcover or paperback from Phoenicia; paperback in the usual places. Interior and exterior art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. 2019.

Thaliad: hardcover or paperback from Phoenicia, paperback in the usual places. Interior and exterior art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. 2012.

A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage: Mercer hardcover and paperback. 2012.

Maze of Blood: Mercer hardcover. Interior and exterior art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. 2015.

The Throne of Psyche: hardcover and paperback from Mercer. Cover image by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. 2011.

The Foliate Head: hardcover from Stanza Press (UK.) There are only a few copies left at Amazon and elsewhere. Interior and exterior art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. 2012.

Look at the top of this page for tabs to book pages
with review clips, illos, blurbs, jacket copy, and more.