This is not about magic in books versus real religion.  That’s what this post was about.

This is about magic in books versus Christianity in books.

Here’s the thing — Christianity doesn’t like magic. That’s the party line. But magic also doesn’t exist. (Though I’ve said I might believe in ghosts if people weren’t always wrong about them.)

So when I find a fantasy that includes a Christian official as a one-dimensional badguy, I get a little disgruntled. Even if a second religious official is sympathetic to magical powers or beings, it’s usually an all-encompassing acceptance, which is stupid and any sensible Christian would agree. Just because a religious official doesn’t want to burn someone for witchcraft when they show magical powers does not mean he or she will be entirely comfortable or even accepting of the situation. In fact, I’m pretty sure it would freak them out. These are humans you’re designing, not puppets, and something like fantasy meeting traditional Catholicism (which is the most common choice) would very easily cause conflicting feelings in a religious character who isn’t a monster.

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A few months back, we got a new kitten.

Like anything new brought into my home, I wanted to make sure she was nice and clean. With dishes, I do this so I can eat off of them without worrying, but with a kitten it’s more of a “I want to rub my face in her fur without imagining her sleeping in or near her shelter litter box.”

I had to wait until I was sure she’d healed from spaying, as her stitches were water-soluble, and while I waited I looked around for some cat shampoo that wasn’t flea and tick.

I couldn’t find any at our grocery store or home improvement store (both of which had pet aisles). I’m sure we could have hunted up a pet store or ordered some online, but I only wanted to give her one bath, so I decided to look up whether or not it’s okay to bathe your cat with human shampoo.

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There are search engines and browsers, but they are not the same thing.

The browser is the program you open (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome) to browse the web in.  It has a bar toward the top with “http://” starting out a string of text, usually with .com or .php at the end.  You can set your home page (what pops up when you open your browser) through the “tools” or “options” menu.

A search engine is a website (Google, Yahoo, AOL, Bing, Ask).  You can browse to it and use it to search the web, but it is not a “browser.”

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I should have mentioned this to my brother.

I went to church with him last week (it’s an hour drive and I have trouble getting up early, so I rarely go) and got to listen to a pleasant elderly man tell me how I should write about his life because he’s been so many places and done so much stuff.

I smiled and nodded, but it was pretty painful.  And awkward.  Ohmygoodness, the awkward.

People think, and it’s really not their fault because they aren’t writers and don’t get it, but they think that just because you can write that you can write anything.  That just because you’re interested in writing, you don’t discriminate in what you write.

This is a false assumption.

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I need to get more queries out.  I know this.

I’m being lazy.

It’s not that I’m discouraged, it’s just that I have a very very long list of agents and it’s a daunting chore.  And, yeah, it’s definitely a chore to get this stuff out.  I just need to find time, energy, and willpower.  Willpower most of all.

Alex agreed to nag me to get more done this weekend.  Wasn’t that nice of him?