The Goal of Enlightenment

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

~ Stephen King

Sixteen years ago, in 2006, I decided to write a book. I’d never written one, but it had been #1 on my bucket list for as long as I could remember.   I sat down with my legal table and note cards and got to work.

This book, which I eventually titled Unholy Scandal, is finally finished.  For sixteen years this was my cycle:  work on it a little, begin to feel overwhelmed, and put it aside.    I eventually wrote and published my fist book, When He Was Anna: A Mom’s Journey Into the Transgender World (2020), and a children’s book series, Totally Tessa, which has yet to be published.  It’s coming .

March 1, 2022 is the big day.  Unholy Scandal will be out there for the world to read.  It’s a work of fiction, but I’m guessing it will strike a nerve with some people.  It certainly struck many nerves with me as I spent a decade and a half trying to write it. 

I hope that you’ll read it, and when you do I hope that you’ll smile sometimes and shake your head in frustration at other times.  I hope that, in some small way, you’ll feel a sense of enlightenment after you’ve finished reading it. 

Here’s a small excerpt of Unholy Scandal:

I passed through the crowd feeling almost anonymous in my street clothes, missing the comfort of the black shirt and white collar that I had worn as a priest for almost forty years. The black-and-white clerical garb had once commanded respect. Lately, it had become a symbol of suspicion, and I wondered what people thought of me when I wore it outside of the parish walls. It occurred to me then that it no longer mattered what I wore, or what the judge thought of me. I had stood in that same courtroom just three months earlier and made my plea. Today was nothing more than a formality, the sentencing phase of this nasty legal trauma that had consumed my life, and the lives of so many St. Edward parishioners, for far too long. The judge had already made his decision. I had a pretty good idea of what that decision would be, but there were no guarantees. With any luck, I would be spared jail time; Bob felt certain that I would be released after sentencing. It almost didn’t matter anymore; it just needed to end.