United Authors Association Conference Oct 24th!

By John Brown | October 11, 2015 - 3:54 pm |October 11, 2015 News - updates on books, events, appearances, etc.

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The United Authors Association is holding a fiction writing conference October 24th in Springville, Utah, and it’s free to the public!

The conference schedule has some great presentation topics on it by authors who are delighting a lot of readers as well as an editor, agent, and a magician.

I’m going to be presenting on the fundamental core of story–“Scene and Sequel”–expect we’ll be replacing those two terms right off that bat. Hope to see you there.

Good Stuff! 3 Books to Introduce You to the Middle East

By John Brown | October 5, 2015 - 9:42 am |October 5, 2015 John's Reviews - books, movies, whatever

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ISIS, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran.

What drives these groups?

What are they really about?

Why is there so much religious strife in the Middle East?

For that matter, what is Islam actually about? Is the religion really defined by these violent actors, or are they just the most visible because they’re what’s reported on in the media?

I set out to find the answers to these questions, and what I have found so far surprised me. If you are interested in understanding what’s going on in the Middle East today, you have to understand Islam. And it’s a fascinating story. There are a lot of books on the subject, but you don’t have to sift through all those I did. I want to share with you three slim books that I found to be the most clear and engaging introductions I’ve come across.

The first is Understanding Islam: An Introduction to the Muslim World by Thomas W. Lippman, an award-winning author and journalist who specializes in the Middle East and spent years living in Egypt, covering the events, and traveling from Tunisia to Pakistan. Again, this is a slim, easy-to-read volume, but it is packed with information. If you want to know the basic beliefs of Islam, who Muhammad was, what all this business about Sharia is, and who the major Islamic groups of the Middle East are today, this is the book to start with. One note, you want to make sure you get the third edition of this book.

The next book is by Bernard Lewis, a man internationally recognized as one of our century’s greatest historians of the Middle East. The book is called The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror. Again, another slim, engaging, but information-packed volume. In it, Lewis explains what it is in Islam that is breeding these extremist groups. And what is leading them to target America, which is especially interesting because for most of the 1900s the United States was seen as the good guy by the Islamic world. What changed? Read this book to find out.

The last book, a lively, engaging read, is called After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Sunni-Shia Split by Lesley Hazleton, another veteran Middle East journalist. When you finish this book, you will understand why Saudi Arabia supported ISIS before they so recently turned against it. You’ll understand why they recently joined Israel, of all nations, in condemning Iran’s nuclear program. You will also understand one main reason why the Iraqis can’t seem to get along. In this book, Hazelton goes back to the beginning of the religion and tells the story of the splitting of Islam–the split between the Shias and Sunnis. It’s as significant a split as that of the Protestants from the Catholics in the time of Luther. But unlike that split, which has lost almost all of its heat, the antagonism between Sunni and Shia still leads to war. You cannot understand the Middle East today without understanding this.

So there you have it. If you’ve been wanting to learn more about Islam and the Middle East, you’ll find these the perfect introduction. And if you’re religious at all, you’ll find much to ponder. There isn’t one god-fearing Christian, Jew, Hindu, or what have you who doesn’t think that submitting our will to God’s won’t help us build a better families, communities, nations–a better world. Would it surprise to you to know that Muslims believe the same thing? That Islam means “to submit” to God?

There are of course many differences between Islam and my own Christian beliefs, but there are also many striking similarities. And the experience I kept having reading these books was seeing over and over again echoes of my own faith and the history of Christianity. There are cautions, to be sure, but also things worthy of emulation. If nothing else, it felt like it did when I learned Dutch. Yes, it was all foreign, but I saw the ties and the differences and, surprisingly, understood my language better than I ever had before.

Now there are three other equally fascinating books I want recommend that focus on Al Qaeda, fighting terrorism, and Saudi Arabia, but I’ll save those for another time. Go treat yourself and read these fine introductions.

Good Stuff! 4 Delightful Movies

By John Brown | September 7, 2015 - 9:26 am |September 7, 2015 John's Reviews - books, movies, whatever

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If you’ve been looking for some good movies to watch, I have four here that I think you’ll enjoy.

The first is for fans of Downtown Abbey and Pride and Prejudice. It’s a four-episode, BBC TV miniseries called Wives and Daughters, and is based on the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, who was a popular English novelist in the mid-1800s. Gaskell is the one who also brought us the delightful Cranford and North and South, which all my daughters love.

Wives and Daughters is about Molly Gibson, the daughter of a country doctor, who suddenly has to deal with a new stepmother and a stepsister who becomes Molly’s good friend but brings a lot of baggage with her, mostly concerning men. It’s also about a man whom Molly falls in love with, but who only thinks of her as a sister.

But it’s about even more than that. It’s about the enjoyable relationship Molly has with her father and the local Squire and his family, and the issues the Squire has with his own sons. It’s also about how the women in the town and the local gentry deal with Molly.

Gaskell has a knack for showing both the good and bad about people and still making you love them. She also writes a fabulous ending. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the ending, for me, was just brilliant in so many ways. If you enjoy period romances, you’re going to love this.

The next movie is called The Hundred Foot Journey and is a humorous story about a contemporary Indian family down on its luck. The father leads them to England, but things don’t work out. So he takes them on a trip through France looking for the place to set up their restaurant. Except it’s a bit of a hare-brained idea because France doesn’t do Indian food.

The family’s vehicle breaks down outside a little town, and the father decides this is the place where they will try to build their life again. The problem is the spot he’s chosen is right across the street, the titular hundred feet, from a posh French restaurant. And the battle between the two restaurant owners begins.

You’ll laugh and fall in love with the characters in this story. And when it’s over, you’ll immediately want to go out and get some Indian food. It’s a great film.

Another wonderful fish-out-of-water story is The Good Lie, which is about three of The Lost Boys of Sudan, refugees who are resettled in America.

In 1983-2005 there was a civil war in Sudan, which lies on the southern border of Egypt. During the war, government troops and rebels of the south systematically attacked villages in southern Sudan, killing 2.5 million and displacing a million others. The Lost Boys and The Lost Girls were children who escaped the attacks and traveled by foot in search of safe refuge. For many that was over 1,000 miles across three countries to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. Over half died along their epic journey, due to starvation, dehydration, sickness and disease and attack by wild animals and enemy soldiers.

In 2001, as part of a program established by the United States Government and the United Nations, approximately 3,800 Lost Boys were given the chance to leave the camps and resettle in the United States. This film is inspired by their experience. In fact, a few of the actors are actually some of those who were resettled.

The beginning of the film is about their journey. The rest is about what happens when they come to America. There are many poignant moments in this film, but there is also a good dose of humor and goodness. It’s a wonderful film to watch with the family.

My last, but certainly not least, recommendation is McFarland, USA, made by Disney and starring Kevin Costner. My family and I simply loved this movie. We loved it so much some of us ended up watching it three times because we couldn’t coordinate our schedules and so watched it again with the family members who weren’t there the first time.

It’s based, with a little literary license, on a true story about Jim White, a teacher who re-starts a cross country running program in 1980 in McFarland, a small agricultural town at the south end of California’s Central Valley. It’s another fish-out-of-water film with this White coach being introduced to Hispanic culture.

Now I know what you’re thinking—oh, jeez, another sports film. And, yes, it has many of the same story beats that you find in many sports stories. But this one seemed to make them all fresh again. All I can say is that we loved it. In fact, immediately after the third viewing, two of my daughters were so juiced about running, they went out on a run of their own.

If you like sports at all, you’ll like this one. But even if you don’t love sports, you’ll like it because it’s not really about sports. It’s about the human spirit and seeing value in the things everyone else overlooks.