A gentle kiss on the lips of the Inquisitor

Note: This article was published on my new Substack newsletter this morning. All articles are still open to everyone, so please hop over there and check out what I'm doing. If you like what you see, feel free to subscribe to stay up-to-date with my new stuff, or take out a paid subscription to keep …

Time to reevaluate the prominence trauma has in our stories

There’s an excellent article on the prevalence of the trauma plot in contemporary literature in the January 3-10 issue of The New Yorker, which grabbed my attention for two reasons: first, as a writer wanting to understand more about the craft (and which types of stories are currently popular and why) but secondly, as someone …

When God took Job’s teeth: Tommy Tiernan tells a Bible story

No one — NO ONE — tells Bible stories like Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan. That he tells Bible stories at all says something. Something about his Catholic upbringing, perhaps, and definitely something about where his faith is now. As he said in a recent interview on Irish television, ‘It feels to me that we're born with an …

Rachel Held Evans: A voice crying in my wilderness

As Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, "in an age of information overload ... the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned them dry as dust ... Rachel Held Evans, Searching For SundayFor …

New fiction: The Block Splitter

'Tell us the one about the kangaroo again,' said Brodie, warming his damp socks by the fire. His feet were still inside them. The end of his big toe poked out the top of one of them. He didn’t care. 'Not 'til you take your fuck'n feet away from them flames,' said Grundy. 'You'll burn …

Just Do It: A faith, hope, love reading of Abraham’s call narrative

I was charged by a game studio with taking my ideas of faith, hope and love and demonstrating them as a hermeneutical framework, or a way of reading a biblical text in order to apply it to the here and now. We began, as you do, with the Abraham call narrative. The following was the …

Good Friday: A face-off with anxiety at the edge of the ocean

Today, I walked alone to the edge of the ocean, to confront my cross. It's Good Friday, after all, it's what you do. But my cross isn't in the church. It's there on the beach, in the shadows of the cliffs, right on the line where the surf comes to the end of itself and …

Wolfie: A random chapter from my novel, Children of the Wildood

‘Wolfie fancies you,’ Manboy said. He said it during English, with Rigby, the lower school head. Rigby was reading us Rogue Male. He stopped reading when he heard Manboy talking. Rigby didn’t say anything, he just stopped reading and looked at me and Manboy. Then he started again. In the story, some guy on the …

Losing my religion: Why I am NOT a Christian writer

The first time I was told I wasn't a Christian because of something I'd written was after the publication of my first book, This Little Piggy Stayed Home: Barlow, Chambers and the Mafia. As the title suggests, it was about the Mafia, which I'd been investigating for my employer, The West Australian Newspaper, for more …