Is The devil as Exciting as People Think?

and here's the other interview that is mentioned in the above video:

Added 5/29/25 - an excellent homily by Fr. Reehil:

Book 22 progress

Now that the grad party has been over for a while, as of two days after my last writing update, I've been making decent progress again on Book 22. Currently, I have just under 23K words, so around halfway done. Based on my last update, I've added around 7K words in twelve days, so between 500-1000 words/day. Aside from writing, a lot of what I've done was resolving the details of the plot. I had to figure out the exact premise of the threat in this before I could really go on.

I also think I have a title for it and started work today to try to find an appropriate cover, although that's not going so well. I am leaning towards a title of LIGHT AND SHADOWS.

As a summary (not the official description), a lot of pieces are coming together in this with the Paxons and the forces preparing to attack the Issan installations. Nya is nearly done with her mission, but a report has reached her of a possible treasure of the angels and they investigate. What they find is a grim mystery, and the Paxons want to share in whatever is found. Tensions mount when L'Ni leads the expedition in a joint venture with the Paxons and members begin to experience hallucinations and lose contact with their ships. When members of the team begin to lose their minds, L'Ni must work quickly to learn whatever killed those on the world before history is repeated and the treasure of the angels is lost.

This is just a preliminary summary of what I have planned for this book. The story is one of an insidious psychosis that builds from a seemingly innocuous start into something terrifying. In a way, this one will be a psychological thriller with a bit of horror premise. It's one more plot variation in this series. No two books are alike, which is what has kept me going. Trying new types of stories within the canon of this universe I've created has been an interesting challenge that has been especially satisfying for me. (The most recent release, ALL THE KING'S MEN, was a medieval fantasy type plot, for example.)

I need to figure out the cover yet for this, but for now, you have an idea of the plot I'm working on.

Thanks for reading!

doing something right...

Two for two. That's a pretty amazing statement as a mom.

Two kids. Two Valedictorians. (Although one of many in each of their respective classes, anyone with a 4.0+ GPA.)

The youngest graduates tomorrow. Technically, she's already done. She's also 2/3 done with an associates degree from the local college, because of her many dual-credit courses during high school, and she has a free year coming up thanks to scholarships. She'll be completing her associates degree in the next year. After that, she'll go on to her bachelor's degree, which is a 2-3 year remaining educational journey. Kids have so many opportunities these days that my generation and those before me didn't have.

When hubby and I were dating, my youngest sister, knowing my school record (honor roll but not valedictorian, back when there was only one per class), blessed us by saying, "You two are going to have smart kids!" How very prescient of her, over twenty-four years ago.

A week ago, we held the grad party in our garage. Tomorrow, all three public high schools in town have graduation.

So, I had been pretty busy getting things together while trying to write over this past month, and the prep work also stole some of my attention from writing. Some of the stuff (buying decorations, designing the banner, designing announcements and then sending them out) had been done for a while, but the stress of the week or two before the grad party was wearing on me. I'm used to organizing events, but this was my own child, so I didn't want to forget anything, despite the simplicity of it.

After tomorrow, it's all done.

But aside from the proud mom moment, I want to say that it's not natural intelligence that is the reason for such achievements. It came down to hard work and dedication by each of my kids. I wasn't a perfect A student when I was in high school, but I wanted to be; I had to work for it, and I made sure my kids knew how to work hard and have the self-discipline to do well. You can have all the intelligence in the world, but if you don't have the discipline to do the work required, it all means nothing. Sacrifice and hard work contribute as much as intelligence and can even make up for a lack in that area.

You have to do some work that you may not like in order to succeed in life. We taught our kids that lesson when they were young, starting with assigning chores to earn privileges and rewards. That carried over throughout their young lives at home and in school and hopefully will continue into adulthood. It was the best thing we could have done for our kids. We know what we did right, the same things many parents do right for their kids.

I wish the best for all graduates...

ID 370078026 | Congratulations © Natalia Sintsova | Dreamstime.com

When Hollywood celebrities consecrate their albums to Satan. Catholic priest explains

The Last Rodeo | Neal McDonough | Official Trailer | Angel Studios

Angel Studios is off and running with some good entertainment. This movie releases this weekend and I'd like to see it. I trust that I wouldn't have to worry about vulgarity and indecency. Not only did I grow up with rodeo (farm girl) but the premise of this story (fiction, not based on real life) is solid and very possible. And I like Neal McDonough, as a man of faith and as an actor (Captain America, Arrow (CW series), Yellowstone, and other credits).

Zachary King’s Daughter disobeys...gets visited by Demon

(Note: This is just one piece of the full conversation. So far, they have been posted in pieces by topic, but this is probably the most interesting to anyone interested not just in faith and religion but even in research for urban fantasy.)

A simple prayer... a little story

While working on some tedious tasks at the day job, I regularly listen to YouTube videos.

However, the ads on the app have been filthy and disgusting. I didn't know what to do (I have custom ads off--I loathe tracking and don't trust this company). They've only been showing me sexual images (massively immodest images of women and drugs for men--you get the idea).

This morning, I got fed up while scrolling content and seeing these ads in my feed, which has become mostly Catholic videos. In that moment of annoyance, I silently prayed to not see the sexual ads, a prayer to banish the demons of lust and sexual perversion (as suggested by exorcists).

I should have done that sooner.

Voila!

No more sexually perverse ads. Suddenly it was all real estate and household products. I didn't change any setting. (edit: I forgot to mention that one of the ads changed right in front of me on the screen. How's that for amazing?!)

All glory to God! He made everything and controls everything. He can do whatever He wants. When we seek to grow in the virtues and avoid sin and vice, He loves that from us because it is how we show we love Him.

(According to exorcists, we have authority over our belongings, so demons have to listen (they are literally lawyers from hell!); however, if one is in a state of mortal sin, the demons have ownership over the soul, so such prayers may not be effective in ridding demons of lust, greed, gluttony, envy, etc. After the initial baptism, detaching of demons and forgiveness of mortal sins only comes from the confessional, which reconciles one with God through the priest in persona Christi. It is the hardest, most humiliating sacrament to present yourself before Christ in the earthly presence of the priest with true contrition, but such a great cleansing of the soul! Once we're out of mortal sin, all those demons are detached from us and we then have full authority to banish them from ourselves and our belongings.)

Every morning, I pray the little prayer suggested by Fr. Dan Reehil, which he learned from another priest, and it's the neatest thing, producing incidents like this. It's the Permission Prayer and is simply this:

Lord, I give you permission today to use me in any way you desire, and I ask you to give me the grace to see your hand in action so I can give you all the glory.

God did. I saw it. I shared it. I give God glory for these amazing graces and demonstrations of His power (like the previous story about spiritual warfare and the cell phone in the confessional), which leave me in awe and wonder. It doesn't happen every day, but it has been happening a LOT since I started offering that little prayer every morning.

Incredible stuff!

God bless!

-----------------------

5/20/25 Edit: adding these to emphasize the point on confession:

When the time is right...

Book 22 had some delays from me stumbling to figure out some pieces of the plot, but that has been a good thing. As I'm trying to finish the reveals of some details I want in the series before the big finale, it's getting a bit more complicated to work those into the plots I wanted to use. I no longer get to make up new stuff to set as cannon as I did early in the series; although I had some established cannon from the previous series of the Starfire Angels universe, that was fairly easy to remember. In this case, it's a new setting and situation, so I was having fun discovering new worldbuilding (cultures, technologies, economic systems, etc.) and now have to worry about not breaking cannon. So, more complicated. It's not the end of the world, though.

Reading through the series has been helping (and I found a few things that required corrections). Generally, however, my system of writing two books ahead of what will be published has been a great system for avoiding issues.

Still, I occasionally deal with writer's block, which really just means the subconscious is aware of a problem that the conscious mind hasn't yet identified. Something wasn't working in this, but I didn't have the plot fully outlined. I knew what I wanted to reveal in Book 22 and a general situation idea, but wasn't sure how that was going to happen. So, writer's block set in. I wasn't totally not writing, but it was slow, and had me tweaking what I had written, until things started to take shape. The last few days, the writing has been taking off again as ideas have been coming. The big issues was that I had to let go of thinking things had to be one way in order to let them go the way they needed to go.

Writer's block isn't bad if you give yourself time to analyze the situation in the story and see it from a new angle. My stumbling around a bit on this gave the right idea a chance to come out when the time was right. Instead of forcing a square peg in a round hole, the square peg gets reshaped to fit into the round hole.

The word count on Book 22 is at 16K, or a bit over a third of my final goal. I'm behind where I'd like to be, but I won't force the word count on a bad idea.

Thanks for reading and for your patience!

Who is Pope Leo XIV? Will Things Be Different? Explaining the Faith with Fr. Chris Alar

Spiritual warfare is real

Spiritual warfare comes in different forms and comes and goes to different degrees, but for me recently, it took an interesting twist. But I'm not afraid. In fact, I'm glad it happened. Keep reading to learn why...

Let me go back and start with a little explanation... Right after Divine Mercy Sunday the spiritual attacks hit at their worst and continued so that I questioned if it would ever quit.

I had a difficult week battling this latest round. It shortened my temper, caused massive depression, and battered my resistance. It was so bad at times that I would completely surrender to God and find some relief just when I thought I would completely succumb. It's an amazing feeling when God does that. Jesus gives us a respite from the burden, but I was also offering up the suffering as my cross.

God never gives us more than we can handle. It's how we handle things that matter. Lean on Him. When you really can't take the beating any more, give the suffering completely to Jesus. It is incredible to have that faith--He always gives more back to us when we completely trust in Him.

But this attack continued after I'd had some temporary relief. The demons kept trying to make me hate God and give up prayer and going to mass to receive the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. It was so hard to fight that discouragement they dumped on me.

Then I had the thought to pray the St. Michael* chaplet. I barely started the chaplet and the burden lifted. I finished the full chaplet feeling peace again.

The next day, I had a slip of the tongue that sent me to confession. I also had a couple of little defects, or maybe venial sins at the worst, that I mentioned but had accredited those to the spiritual attack I had been dealing with. No sooner did I say this than my phone rang in the confessional.

It's not supposed to do that. It has never done that. Since I bought my iPhone 16 Pro six months earlier, I set Do Not Disturb to automatically come on at the locations of the churches I attend. It's always worked. In fact, even tonight, the setting was confirmed to be working--I had a call during mass and the phone never rang, just like normal on the DND setting.

Back to the confesion... Puzzled and embarrassed in the confessional, I said to the priest, "I'm sorry. It's supposed to be off." (I meant DND but was too flustered to think clearly and thought only that the ringer should have been off while I was there.) I said this while hurrying to hit the down volume button to silence the phone, but it took more than once. (I found out why later.) I barely looked at the phone. I wanted to finish so others could take advantage of the half hour that's available for weekday confessions at that church. I finished and received what I needed from the priest, thanked him, and left. I checked my phone outside the confessional, and it was on Do Not Disturb, which comes on as far out as the parking lot as soon as I leave my vehicle to walk across the lot (even the far end of the lot) to the church (switching from "Driving", which doesn't allow text or call notifications, to regular DND, which does the same thing when not driving). It has a wide radius.

Later that evening, when I was home after mass, I looked more closely at my phone and realized I had the confirmation that I was right about the spiritual attacks. That's no coincidence, and it tells me why my first press of the volume button didn't immediately stop the ringing. There were two back-to-back calls from the same number with 666 as the prefix and I had to turn off the phone twice, so it wasn't a case of the setting of allowing repeat calls when both calls rang my phone. No other spammer has ever done that to me.

No call should have rung my phone at the church. On top of that, add the particular number while I was at the church, of all places, and, most notably, in the confessional AND that it happened as I mentioned feeling that I had been under spiritual attack... Yeah, no. To all the Catholic haters out there, even you have to admit that's suspicious. iPhones don't fail like that.

God can do anything, and this was actually a grace of confirming that what I experienced was true. Demons can affect electronics. Exorcists tell stories of things like this happening. In fact, the producers or directors (I can't remember their role) of Nefarious, had an exorcist perform a location exorcism and blessing before their equipment would work right during filming. Exorcists I listen to have told stories about vulgar texts or calls after sessions, usually from a triple six number.

So, now I have my own story to tell. I'm not afraid. In fact, I'm grateful, because I have evidence and experience and because these struggles strengthen my faith and my prayer life. I'm also grateful, because spiritual attacks are a way of testing us to help us grow in faith and devotion to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As some of my favorite online priests have said, if you're not being tested, that's not necessarily a good thing. Our faith stagnates if it's never tested. Like muscles, it needs resistance to strengthen. I'm grateful God gives me these, so I can grow stronger in my faith.

ps--I blocked the number before taking a screenshot. (A free phone lookup tracked the number to a real person, but I suspect a spammer spoofed it like all the other spam calls I get regularly. Still, the timing is uncanny, as is the fact that it went through when it should not have. There are no coincidences. It is divine providence that things like this happen. God uses whatever He wants to deliver his messages.)

God bless!

------------------

* Note that St. Michael was the archangel tasked by God with sending Satan into hell. The chaplet of St. Michael invokes the nine choirs of angels to help us. St. Michael is one of our greatest allies in heaven.

Edited to add this video:

More tension... never let a plot sputter

A good start to the story always has strong tension.

I would define tension in a story as words or actions that create an expectation that something will happen. It produces in the audience the need to know what comes next. It comes in different levels with multiple issues throughout a book.

This past week, book 22's opening was holding me up from writing past a certain point because it needed more tension. I had some tension in the story that started great but quickly faded so it wasn't enough for my expectations.

This is why in some of the books of Forgotten Worlds I start at a pre-climactic point and then go back (or back and forth) in the timeline to (usually a slow point) where the decision was made to start the characters down the path that led to that point, then the story reaches that opening scene and continues into the climax and denouement. In those cases, such story structures create two questions--how did this happen and how will the characters resolve it? This creates a strong tension immediately where it wouldn't have existed in a linear timeline. This can be confusing for the reader, but if done right works very well (such as adding a time stamp at each new scene or break so the audience knows where in the story the scene takes place).

This technique is a bit different than simple flashbacks. It incorporates flashbacks heavily but focuses on an earlier timeline to bring the story from a quiet beginning into the conflict of the present timeline. It is a true in media res start to a story; but to understand the progress, the audience needs to know the backstory to that point too and gets it in pieces as flashbacks at key points in the present timeline. I've liked it in many SF shows and sought to use it in writing some of these books. I don't like to use it all the time, or it loses its luster and becomes a crutch instead of a novelty; but I have used it in a handful of the books. (I'm expecting that Book 21 is the last book in this series to use that structure, and that one is all over the place, because it uses scenes from previous books in the series amid the structure of flashbacks explaining how L'Ni designed his plan.)

Most of the Forgotten Worlds stories have linear, normal flowing plots that open at the true beginning with some degree of flashbacks that aren't directly in the timeline of that particular story plot or other sequences (from the Starfire memories, a different type of flashback). In these stories, I need more standard writing techniques. That means a way to get reader's attention. Not every story needs to begin with a big conflict or risk of death. That gets to be too cliche. My goal is to keep the series moving while having some fun with the characters in any way I can but to introduce tension as early as I can.

By this point in the series, the readers know my style and the characters and series plot. I decided I could let my hair down a bit with the opening of Book 22... or it seems that way. I had some fun with the conflict that comes into play and the setup for the story. It creates tension, just not the life or death type that I have in many of the book openings. I hate slow stories, but other pieces of the lives of the character than fighting the bad guys all the time have developed.

The problem I had with the first few chapters was that the tension wasn't adequate for my tastes. It sputtered out. The rule I discovered in reading SF thriller books was to never let the reader completely rest on the down beats of the action. There must always be an unanswered question such as "Will it work?", "How will the characters resolve this?", "What did they mean by that?", and/or "Did that really happen?!" Always keep something unanswered and layer those so the reader is always hanging until the end.

In the opening of Book 22, events are misleadingly normal. However, by this point readers can expect in the series that what seems like a normal event won't stay that way for long. The interactions of the characters are fun and, as I mentioned in the last writing post, opened a big door for character development. But when that sputtered a bit, I felt it. It nagged at me.

This past week, I found an answer. I started rewriting a couple of scenes to bring in more conflict to increase the tension but then realized how much I would lose of the good stuff I wanted to keep. So, I moved the new conflict to a different point and added a bit to the older scene, all to increase the opening tension until I get into the big stuff, which is the only way to describe it without giving anything away. Now I feel like I have something to move the story forward again; the writing block is resolved. (This happens frequently while writing and at different stages of every book, but this time, it inspired an explanation using this particular point as an example of resolving the issue.)

Through all the writing and rewriting and organizing, the word count didn't increase as much as I would have liked, but after all of that, Book 22 is at about 11K words, or about a quarter done. I don't have a title for this one yet and probably won't until it's done. I'm waiting to see how the main theme plays out. Every book in the series gives me a few surprises.

Thanks for reading!