Endorsements for Darlington Woods

Here's several endorsements that have come in for Darlington Woods so far. Remember, it releases May 4, 2010 but more information will be coming on how to win a pre-release copy. Stay tuned!

Oh yeah, before I post the endorsements, for anyone living in the Philly area, I'll be doing a multi-author booksigning this Saturday from 1:00-3:00 at The Vine Christian Shoppe in Springfield, PA, right outside Philly. Stop by and see me (us) and get some signed copies of books. They make great Christmas gifts.

Now, for the endorsements:

Dellosso establishes himself as a frontrunner in Christian horror. His books delve into the darkness of evil, yet come out blazing with the light of God's power and forgiveness. Darlington Woods is fast-paced, creepy, and sure to spur readers toward a deeper walk with Christ. I'm a certified Mike Dellosso fan!
--Eric Wilson, NY Times bestselling author of Fireproof and Haunt of Jackals

Dellosso skillfully blends suspense, symbolism, and the supernatural into a compelling thriller in the vein of Dekker and Peretti. Gray isn’t a color in Dellosso’s moral palette, and Darlington Woods makes that clear. This is a powerful story you’ll be thinking about long after closing the book
—C. J. Darlington, Cofounder of TitleTrakk.com and Author of Thicker Than Blood

Taut, tense, and frightening. A high-speed ride that will keep you guessing until the end.
—Tosca Lee, Author of Demon: A Memoir

Mike Dellosso’s brilliant light shines into the dark places of the human heart and illuminates our most terrible fears. Don’t look away, because the only way out of Darlington Woods is through it, and it’s a journey you’ll want to take.
—Erin Healy, Best-selling Author of Never Let You Go, Kiss, and Burn

Once again Mike Dellosso manages to shine the light of God’s grace into the darkest crevices of the human condition with amazing clarity. Just when I thought Mike had bested himself in Scream, he brings us face-to-face with monsters so vivid they can only be real. Darlington Woods is his best yet, though I am sure he has even darker corners yet to explore.
—Tim George, FictionAddict.com

Dellosso never disappoints, and Darlington Woods is no exception. With spine-tingling suspense and Dellosso’s trademark spiritual message that lingers long after the last page, Darlington Woods joins The Hunted and Scream as must-read chillers.
—Susan Sleeman, TheSuspenseZone.com

5-4-10!!

Misconceptions About the Writing Life

The author part of me always gets asked some wild questions and runs into some wacky assumptions about authors. I thought I'd highlight a few and "set the record straight," at least from my perspective and experience.

Misconception #1: If you're an author you must be famous or some kind of celebrity.

The record: I'm an author and I'm not famous nor am I a celebrity. While in line at the grocery store, I've never seen my face on STAR magazine next to Angelina's or Brad's (and believe me, I check). I've never been stalked, never had to fight off obnoxious reporters or photographers, and quite frankly live my life in relative anonymity. And I like it that way. But it would be nice to just once have someone say to me, "Hey, aren't you . . .?" I have been mistook for Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and, in my younger days, Michael J. Fox. Hey, that's good enough.

Misconception #2: If you're an author you must write full time.

The record: Very few (VERY few) authors can afford to write full time. And the majority of them are folks whose spouse has a "real" job. Writing books is a tough business to be in and just is not lucrative at all. It's good for pocket change and grocery money. People act shocked when they realize I have a real job AND write, as if the real job isn't necessary. Folks, if my family of five lived off what I've made so far off my books, we'd be squatting in some shanty in the Ozarks . . . or living quite comfortably off government hand-outs (ahem). Hmmm.

Misconception #3: If you're an author you must be rich.

The record: I think I just answered this. I'm always amazed at how skewed people's understanding of writing is. They hear names like Rowling and King and Patterson and Evanovich and how they're selling millions and living the good life and just assume all authors enjoy the same luxury. It's a shame, but America just isn't that literate.

Misconception #4: There's no way I have time to hold down a full time job AND write AND be involved in church AND spend time with my family.

The record: It's amazing how much time there is in a day if you use it wisely. Time management is one of the things that comes naturally to me. I don't squander a lot to time. I have time to write and do writerly things (in the early morning when every one else is sleeping), time to do my job, time to spend with the family, time to do church stuff, and time to just chill. There's 24 hours in a day. I sleep about seven of those, work nine (counting travel to and from) . . . that leaves me eight. Eight hours! That's a lot of time in a day. I can get A LOT done in eight hours.

Stay tuned for more misconceptions coming soon . . .

Screams, the song

A friend of mine passed along a song he wrote that was inspired by my novel, SCREAM. Way to go, Brian!

Screams by Brian Desautels

V. 1
Your life seems,
Like it has, no pur-pose;
You don’t,
Know what,
You’re sup-posed to do;
So man-y, id-eas,
Goin’ thru your mind;
Then one call; it chan-ges,
Changes it all for you….

Chorus 1

Make your hair stand on end;
[Screams]
“Did you hear it?’
“Am I dreamin’?”
You ask the caller who’s
Your friend.
They tell you,
They heard it, and
They’re afraid to go to bed;
(and) you say, “It’s nothing,
just interference,”
But you don’t know what lies ahead;
[Screams]
You hang up and learn la-ter,
That your friend is now dead.
[Screams]

V. 2
You don’t know,
What’s happened to your friend;
He was not,
A Christian;
Thoughts racing, why him?
He was too young to die;
Your phone rings,
Pick it up,
It’s hap-pen-ing again!

Chorus 2
[Screams]
Make your heart stop and feel cold as stone;
[Screams]
“Did you hear it?’
“Am I dreamin’?”
You ask your neighbor who’s on the phone.
[Screams]
They tell you,
They heard it, and
They’re afraid to go be alone;
(and) you say, “It’s nothing,
just interference,”
But you don’t know what lies ahead;
[Screams]
You hang up and learn la-ter,
That your neigh-bor is now dead.
[Screams]

V. 3
You now know
Your life has, great purpose;
You don’t want, any-more,
Unbelievers to die;
Without having a personal
Relationship with Christ;
Your phone rings, a-gain;
So share now,
The Good News of Jesus Christ my friend…

Chorus 3
[Screams]
Keep the Armor (of God),
on all the time;
[Screams]
“I heard it?’
“I’m not dreamin’?”
You keep the caller on the line.
[Screams]
They tell you,
They heard it, and
They’re afraid to die;
(and) you say, “Call u-pon, the Lord and receive eternal life.”
[Screams]
You hang up and learn la-ter,
That the cal-ler did indeed die;
But that’s ok, they had a,
Personal relationship with Christ!
[Screams]
copyright, Brian Desautels, 2009
All rights reserved

Job Never Had a Chance

Here's something I was thinking about in regards to spiritual warfare and how much God allows. The story of Job is a perfect example of God allowing Satan to engage in warfare with a believer . . . and Satan needing God's permission before lifting a finger.

As we read the book of Job we find ourselves pulling for this poor man, hoping with all hope that he doesn't give in to the depression and angst and total upheaval of his life and curse God. We want so badly for him to emerge victorious and prove Satan wrong. Then we put ourselves in Job's shoes when trials hit us. We tell ourselves that if Job can do it, so can we. We assure ourselves that God is in control and if we stand firm enough and keep our eyes fixed enough on God, the trial will pass and we will arise from the ashes of our life victorious.

Now consider this. Do you think for one minute that Job ever had a chance at failure? No way. This is a no-brainer but remember God is sovereign. He knows the ending even before the beginning begins. He knew before Satan even entered his domain that Job was going to remain faithful. Think about it, there was no way God was going to allow Job to fail and give Satan an opportunity to stick his crooked little finger in God's holy face and say, "See, I told you so!" No. Way. The battle never was Job's. It was God's from the beginning.

I know this plays all kinds of games with the whole sovereignty of God/free will of man thing (another topic for another time) but all I know is that God was the one who pointed Job out to Satan, not the other way around. And something strong tells me there was no way God would have done that if there was any chance Job would fail and curse Him.

God knows what's best. He knows how it ends. Never, ever, doubt that.

Writing and Spiritual Warfare . . . My Conclusion

First of all, I want to thank everyone who commented on my last post, whether here on Blogger or on Facebook or via email. I appreciated all your insightful words more than you know.

The past couple days I've been thinking A LOT and praying A LOT about this topic of writing and spiritual warfare and here is my conclusion to the matter (as it applies in my situation).

One, a little self-examination was in order first. Am I writing the stories God wants me to write? Am I spreading the message God wants me to share? I honestly feel like the answer to both is "yes." I can't tell you how many emails I've received from readers thanking me for the books I've written and the themes of the stories, how their life has been touched or eyes have been opened, how they've been encouraged or uplifted. I can't ignore that kind of response.

Two, if I truly feel I'm folloing God's leading with my writing then if (IF) my family is being attacked spiritually because of it, it can only be for righteousness' sake and it can only be because God is allowing it. So, if (IF) that is the case, we have a decision to make, stay on course doing what God wants me to do and stand firm against the attacks of the evil one, or stop doing what I'm doing out of fear. Um, for me, that's a no-brainer.

Three, notice the capital "if" in the previous point? That was done to make a point. Often, we'll never know what's behind our suffering. One woman reminded me of Deut. 29:29 where it says the secret things belong the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and our families forever. We can speculate and hypothesize and whatever else, but we'll never know the source of most of our suffering (although we do know the source of all suffering is sin . . . we live in a fallen world!) I think we has humans want, maybe need, something to point the finger at when trials hit. Something to which we can say, "There, that's the cause of our problem." And Satan and his minions are an easy target, a convenient scapegoat. "It must be the devil." Look, I'm not one to find a demon lurking around every corner or give Satan credit too quickly. Sometimes, suffering happens just because it happens, because way back when we invited sin into the world and now we have to live with the consequences.

Four, okay, so where do we go from here? Well, as I see it, we believers have two main responsibilities, obey God and be faithful to Him. We are to be obedient to God's calling and will for our lives and we are to remain faithful to Him no matter what happens and what life throws at us. Everything else is just details and more times than not, details we have no business worrying about.

I've always been one to focus on what we know, those things revealed. I'm not into getting involved in deep theological debates about things we'll never really know this side of heaven. What is our responsibility in the here and now? So for me, I'm choosing to focus on obeying God and his calling on my life and remaining faithful to him. Whatever the source of suffering is (unless it's due to some unconfessed sin in my life, in which case I need to deal with it) I choose to leave that in God's hands as one of those secret things that belong to him.

Again, thank you for all your comments (and please keep them coming). You have no idea how much they helped.

Spiritual Battles and Writing

This morning I'm thinking about something that's got my mind in a knot. I'd like your opinion.

If you read this blog regularly or follow me on Facebook or have read one or both of my books you know I write supernatural suspense. That means suspense that deals with the spiritual realm. And if you've read my books you know I always portray good over evil and that my stories have a significant and positive spiritual message to them. My question is: In dealing with the subject matter I do, am I tinkering with something I ought not be tinkering with?

The reason I ask: I emailed a friend (a missionary) an update on our family. He knows about my cancer and Caroline's arthritis. He wrote back that in mentioning our trials to a friend she suggested maybe we were "willingly placing [ourselves] into a sphere for increased spiritual warfare challenges" because of the subject matter of my books. Now, my friend bookended that with "but greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world."

Obviously, that got me thinking. I'm not one to give a lot of credit to Satan or his minions, and I always thought our trials were simply part of living in a fallen world, but . . .

I know my books are impacting people for good. I've got a ton of emails from readers thanking me for the message in my books and telling me how that message has positively impacted them. But, well, it got me thinking.

I know this is heavy stuff, but any thoughts?

Crooked Guns . . . a Caroline Update

I feel like this blog has an identity problem. On the one hand, I know some of you read it for the writing side of things, the interesting conversations, the updates, the writing tips, etc. On the other hand, I know some of you read it as a way of keeping tabs on my health and, now, Caroline's health. So I waver back and forth between posts on writing and posts on health and the associated blessings and struggles. For now, until I come up with something better, I'll stick with both and continue this split personality thing.

Many of you have been thinking about and praying for my youngest daughter, Caroline. She's seven and was recently diagnosed with juvenile arthritis (the pediatric rheumatologist thinks it's psoriatic arthritis). She's been on the milder medication now for four weeks and, honestly, we haven't seen any change for the better. If anything, her symptoms have worsened. Granted, the medication dosage was ramped up and this week is her first week at full dosage so we'll give it more time.

For a little background, her symptoms started in her left hand, ring finger. From there it progressed to both hands and then to her wrists. Now, she experiences pain and stiffness in her hands, wrists, ankles, knees, sternum, and sometimes low back.

Like with any arthritis, the symptoms are erratic, good days and bad days, more stiff and sore in the morning or after vigorous activity. She is seeing an occupational therapist for her hands and the report there is that things are improving, goals are being met. Good stuff. But overall we're seeing symptoms showing up in more joints. Not good.

Can I ask you to please pray for Caroline? It tears at a daddy's heart (and her mommy's too!) to see our baby girl hurting like she does. To her credit, Caroline's faith is unwavering. She is just as happy-go-lucky as she ever was, smiles and laughs just as much and is just as goofy.

For trick or treat (here in Hanover, PA they do t 0r t the Tuesday before Halloween (weird)) she dressed up as a cowgirl. She tried making a gun with her fingers but because of the arthritis her fingers don't straighten all the way. Caroline said to Jen, "Mommy, I wish I didn't have this arthritis. My guns are crooked!"

Creating a Mood

Being a published author I occasionally get novice writers asking me to read some of their work and comment on it. Sometimes I do (if I feel I have time), sometimes I decline. As you can imagine, I've read all kinds of writing. Some very, very good and I wonder, Why hasn't this person landed a contract yet? and some . . . well, some that needs a lot of work.

One of the common threads I notice in those that need a lot of work is lack of mood. This is something I've learned through the writing of my three books thus far: Creating a mood for the reader is pivotal.

Every story should have a mood that it creates, whether it be suspense or horror or warm comfort or sweet love. Think about books you've read that have really captured you. Didn't they create a mood in you.

Here's some I think of: Stephen King's stories carry a mood of creepiness (by the way, I think King is the master of this mood thing. He could write about a little girl playing dollies in the back yard and it would feel creepy); W. Dale Cramer and his southern fiction creates a mood of down home comfort and simple living; Nicholas Sparks' stories create that mood of sweet, innocent love.

See what I mean? Mood is everything.

As a writer there are various techniques used to create that mood. Some include:

1) Word choice. Carefully chosen words that give the piece a desired feeling.
2) The colors chosen for a setting. This doesn't follow any hard and fast rule but color does create mood so they might want to be used appropriately.
3) Sentence structure. Shorter sentences create that feeling of movement and suspense. Longer sentences slow things down and warm the reader a bit.
4) Paragraph structure. Same as above.
5) Appropriate metaphors and similes. This is a tough one and takes a lot of the pondering to get that right feeling out of mets and sims.
6) Dialogue of characters. Both what they say and how they say it.

Get the drift? Mood is something chosen by the author before the writing has begun. When you read a story and feel a certain way, that feeling, that mood was created intentionally.

Here's what I suggest, the next time you read a novel, pay close attention to how you feel reading the story, what mood is created, then look for how that author encouraged that mood through his/her writing.

My Achey Breaky Bowels

It's no secret I have bowel issues. Things happen when you have part of your colon removed and your small intestine cut in half and sewed back together again. Not exactly what God intended to happen. The body does it's job and forms adhesions to hold everything in place again but those adhesions can then wreak havoc on the functioning of the bowel.

My problem now is with the small intestine. For those who don't know what a "small bowel obstruction" is, let me explain it how the surgeon explained it to me. You know how when you turn on your garden hose sometimes there's a kink in it and won't let the water out? That's an obstruction. Except with the small intestine that kink is caused by adhesions, or scar tissue. The intestine kinks and nothing is getting through. This can be very painful because the body is pretty insistent about stuff getting through and won't take no for an answer.

So back to the garden hose analogy. If you turn the water off, the hose slowly unkinks, ever notice that? The way they treat an obstruction is the same way. Turn the water off. A nasogastric tube is placed to pump the stomach of its contents and the order is given for no food or fluid (by mouth) until things unkink. As the bowel rests it slowly unkinks.

That's it in a nutshell, in layman's terms.

The treatment is tricky. One way to treat it is just to keep doing what we're doing, let things rest and the intestine will unkink itself. Another way to treat it is with surgery. Go in and clean out the adhesions. Problem is, as my surgeon put it, you're solving a problem caused by surgery . . . by doing another surgery. Doesn't always have the desired outcomes.

So here's the plan for me. We're gonna wait and see what happens. This may never happen again or it may happen again next month. My surgeon said if it keeps happening regularly (that is, two or so times a year) then we'll talk about surgery. He isn't excited about the surgery because you can only do so much laproscopically. Because the small intestine is so convoluted the only way to get all the adhesions is to open me up and disect the small intestine out taking it inch by inch and removing the adhesions. He says it's no big deal as far as surgeries go . . . but it sounds like a big deal to me!!

I'm not excited about waiting and seeing what happens. That tube up your nose is like something the Nazis would have devised as a method of torture. Something truly to be feared.

Oh, I know God is in control but (and I hope this doesn't sound blasphemous) knowing that doesn't help much when that tube is so far up your nose you're gagging on it and all the while the nurse is telling you so swallow it. I just want all this cancer stuff behind me . . . go away and leave me alone. But it doesn't seem like that's going to happen soon . . . if ever.

Living on the "Edge"

Let's talk about "edgy fiction."

First, by "edgy" I'm assuming most people mean pushing the envelope on what's politically correct within the CBA. That is, the standard m.o. of the CBA has been no sex, no swearing (even euphamisms are frowned upon), and watch the violence and gore very closely. It has also been taboo to have unmarried folk jumping in bed with each other, homosexual characters portrayed in a positive light, and other no-no subjects in the spotlight. Therefore, "edgy" fiction is fiction that pushes that envelope, that stretches what is acceptable in the CBA and sees how much it can get away with.

Now, because of the horror aspect of my novels, many would consider my writing to be "edgy."

I don't. And here's why.

One, because I loathe that whole edgy thing. This notion of seeing how much we can get away with in the CBA and not get our hands slapped is juvenile and silly . . . in my opinion. How low have we stooped in Christian fiction when we purposefully feel we have to prove something to . . . who? . . . by seeing how far we can inch our toe over that line of what is acceptable.

Two, because I'm not into being "cool." And that's what this edgy thing feels like. How cool are we that we can slip in a swear word or get some extra gore in there without an editor cutting it. Man, when we can do that, we've arrived as writers . . . Cool! Of course, I'm being facetious.

Three, because I think good writing is more than making your bad guy call some woman a bad word and more than describing in detail how the villain dismembers some guy with a surgical saw.

And four, because this whole edgy thing smacks of those shock jocks on the radio whose whole persona is seeing how much they can get away with and not get fined. I want to be more than that as a writer.

Some say they have to push the envelope in order to write what is real. People do swear, violence does happen, unmarried folk do hop in the sack with each other. Of course all that is true. But writing is not merely describing activity. It's so much more than that. It's establishing a mood, setting a scene, creating a world, and taking the reader on a journey. And (surprise, surprise) all that can be accomplished through good writing, not just "real" writing. Good writing can take the reader into the mind of the villain and show her his anger or hatred or whatever so much better than a clumsily placed swear word.

Okay, I need to wrap this post up. Look, call me whatever kind of writer you want--a good one, a lousy one, a thoughtful one, a wannabe one--but please oh please don't call me an edgy one. I'm not into pushing any envelopes. I just want to write the story in my head and on my heart to the best of my ability.

What do you think of all this "edgy" stuff. Is it good for Christian fiction?