"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."
—Muriel Rukeyser
____________________________

Guest Post: Can We Grow Our Spirits As Fast As Our Tech?

by Bob Rivenbark 


Get The Cloud: A Speculative Fiction Novel On Amazon Today!


We’re plunging into a future of stupendous technological wonders. AI. VR. Bioengineering. Can we manage these breakthroughs wisely—or will they destroy us?

After Europe rediscovered classical Greek philosophy through medieval Arabic translations, it sparked the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Industrial Revolution. Stupendous achievements. But at what cost?

As literacy, technology, and science expanded, so did the human ego. Eventually, many felt the ego had replaced God.

But humanity can’t live without worship. The result: disastrous social and political revolutions: fascism, communism, Nazism—regimes worshipping strongmen such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.

Those who don’t worship charismatics tyrants can worship science and technology instead. Science and technology answer the deep human yearning to know “How can we do it?” But they can’t answer, “Why should we do it? And what will it mean if we do?”

Robert Rivenbark’s speculative fiction novel THE CLOUD dramatizes the horrors we may face if we can’t reconnect with our spiritual roots. We’re becoming a race of technocratic supermen with the maturity of infants. Can we save ourselves in time? 

Visit www.thecloudnovel.com to learn more.





Dennis Palumbo - How Therapists Are Depicted In Film & Television

 




On The Stuph File Program radio show, Dennis Palumbo, one of my favorite mystery writers, is also a psychotherapist. He talks about how his profession is depicted in film & television. 

He wrote an essay for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine about this topic entitled "Your Shrinks Might Need To Be Shrunk". He was also the Consulting Producer on the recent Hulu series, "The Patient", which is about a therapist held hostage by a serial killer hoping to be cured of his homicidal tendencies. His thriller series contains six Dr. Daniel Rinaldi novels, with the latest one being "Panic Attack."

FREE This Week From Story Merchant Books: Until Death Do Us Apart by Cade North


Until Death Do Us Apart

By Cade North



A natural disaster, naked fortune telling, a romantic catastrophe, supervillains, and poop on slides--just another week in the life of Sloane Noah. Despite always wanting a boring life, this single parent and hapless college professor finds she’s a lightning rod for the shocking and comically bizarre.

Based on a true story, this darkly hilarious book chronicles one woman’s tale about learning resilience from misfortune and strength from pain. Nature’s splintered wreckage, laughter, and the carcass of love prove to be the key ingredients for becoming her own hero. This dynamic story will resonate with anyone who’s ever fumbled through life’s absurdities and, somehow, still managed to stumble into a bright, new day.


Cade North

As Dr. Cade North carved out a career in academia and successfully raised two children on her own, North survived her own long history of romantic mishaps as well. While living a life packed with unplanned comedy and adventure, Cade developed the ability to turn personal calamities into hilarious tales.

Originally from Richmond, Indiana, North lived in numerous places across the U.S. and traveled throughout the world while getting her education and earlier work experience. Coming full circle, now Cade lives back in Indiana and works as college professor.




CAPESTER A Hero Bureau Thriller' by Peter G. Bielagus Book Trailer

 






The Hero Registration Bureau never had to worry about unlicensed heroes–Rogues–and neither did disgraced NYPD detective, Stan Magreen.

But when a seven-and-a-half-foot armored Rogue begins a nationwide killing spree, Magreen is coaxed into the case; not just because he's a good detective...

But because he was the first Rogue.

It's 2025 and the United States Federal Government has passed The Vigilante Act, allowing private citizens to operate as for-profit crime fighters. Within weeks America is under "Cape Craze."

Under the jurisdiction of the Hero Registration Bureau (HRB), Registered "Heroes" are popping up in major cities, hitting the streets, solving crimes, raiding warehouses all while grabbing the action on video. The video is then edited, sold and the profits - from toys, to video games, to tv shows - flood in.

These celebrity heroes have followed the law until the giant Rogue, Lahmi, begins a campaign of terror against the criminal underworld, threatening the entire Vigilante Movement.

As the FBI and the HRB scour the country in search of Lahmi, others join in, including the brilliant criminologist turned vigilante journalist, Maria Gomez. Magreen and Gomez meet in Boston for the final showdown with Lahmi, where Magreen wonders if his past has finally caught up with him.

Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis on the Role of Literature in Formation

Pope Francis, in his letter on the role of literature in formation dated August 4th, extols the value of reading novels and poetry as an indispensable tool for the personal and spiritual growth of every Christian, including the missionaries of the Congregation of the Mission founded by St. Vincent de Paul.

Letter from the Holy Father Francis on the role of literature in formation 2

Literature is not just a means of entertainment but a vehicle for exploring and understanding the depths of the human soul, fostering a fruitful dialogue with contemporary culture, and enhancing the empathetic and pastoral capacity of ecclesial workers. Pope Francis calls for a radical shift in the formation of priests, valuing literature as an essential component of their educational journey:
“With this writing, I wish to propose a radical shift concerning the great attention that, in the context of the formation of candidates for the priesthood, must be paid to literature.”

Summary and Commentary of the Chapters

Pope Francis begins by emphasizing how the reading of novels and poetry is crucial in the personal maturation journey of every Christian, including priests and pastoral agents. He notes that finding a good book can offer relief during moments of solitude and difficulty, opening new inner spaces and preventing entrenchment in obsessive ideas. In an era dominated by digital media, this practice retains its irreplaceable value.

The Pope reflects on the active role of the reader in enjoying a literary work. Unlike audiovisual media, reading stimulates the imagination and creativity, allowing the reader to rewrite and expand the text with their personal experience. This process enriches both the reader and the work itself, creating a unique and personal synthesis with each new reading.
Pope Francis criticizes the scant attention paid to literature in the training paths of future priests. He argues that neglecting literature leads to intellectual and spiritual impoverishment, depriving seminarians of privileged access to the heart of human culture. He thus proposes a radical change that integrates literature as an essential part of priestly formation.

The Holy Father highlights how literature allows for an authentic dialogue with contemporary culture. Quoting the Second Vatican Council, the Pope states that literature expresses the human condition, illustrating its joys and sufferings. Ignoring literature means losing the opportunity to understand and interact with various cultures and their deepest expressions. Sharing his experience as a literature teacher, Pope Francis recounts how he encouraged his students to read authors they were interested in, then guided them towards a broader passion for literature. This method has shown that approaching literature through what one loves can lead to a deeper and more lasting discovery of the love of reading.

Faith and culture

For a believer, literature becomes an indispensable means of entering into dialogue with the lives of people and the culture of their time. The Pope reiterates that literature, by expressing real life events, allows one to speak to the hearts of men and grasp the presence of the Spirit in human events.
“Contact with different literary and grammatical styles will always allow for deepening the polyphony of Revelation without reducing or impoverishing it to one’s historical requirements or mental structures.”

Never a Christ without flesh

Pope Francis draws attention to the current religious context, characterized by a return to the sacred and a spiritual quest that can be ambiguous. He emphasizes the importance of not offering a “Christ without flesh” but of proclaiming an incarnate Jesus Christ, made human and historical. This is essential to adequately respond to people’s thirst for God. According to the Pope, literature helps future priests develop a sensitivity to the full humanity of the Lord Jesus, allowing them to proclaim the Gospel in a way that truly touches the concrete lives of people.
“an assiduous frequentation of literature can make future priests and all pastoral agents even more sensitive to the full humanity of the Lord Jesus, in which His divinity is fully poured out, and to proclaim the Gospel.”

A great good

In this chapter, Pope Francis illustrates the multiple practical benefits of reading. Reading improves vocabulary, stimulates imagination and creativity, helps to express oneself better, improves concentration, and reduces stress and anxiety. Moreover, reading prepares people to understand and face various life situations. Quoting famous authors, the Pope highlights how reading allows one to live intense and diversified experiences in a short time, broadening our understanding of the world and of ourselves.
“In reading, we dive into the characters, the concerns, the dramas, the dangers, the fears of the people who have ultimately overcome the challenges of life.”

Listening to someone’s voice

Pope Francis cites Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, highlighting the importance of direct contact with literature and “listening to someone’s voice.” Reading sensitizes one to the mystery of others and helps to touch their hearts. This process is essential for believers and particularly for priests whose task is to touch the hearts of contemporary human beings. Literature and poetry, with their ability to move, offer an unparalleled contribution to this effort.
“Here is a definition of literature that I like very much: listening to someone’s voice. And do not forget how dangerous it is to stop listening to the voice of the other who calls out to us!”

A sort of gym of discernment

Literature is described as a “gym of discernment” that refines the inner and outer scrutiny capacities of future priests. By reading, seminarians learn to navigate between salvation and perdition, living the act of reading as a process of discernment. Literature stimulates the reader to explore their own inner truths, offering a safe space to confront anxieties and spiritual crises. This exercise is compared to the Ignatian experience of “desolation,” where inner turmoil can lead to greater awareness and growth.

“The act of reading is then like an act of “discernment,” thanks to which the reader is personally involved as a “subject” of reading and at the same time as an “object” of what he reads.”

Attention and digestion

According to Pope Francis, reading is like a “telescope” that focuses on the complexity of human experience. Literature helps to slow down, contemplate, and listen, counterbalancing the tendency towards efficiency and superficiality. The reading process is compared to “digestion,” an action that allows one to assimilate and interpret life in depth. This hospitable approach to reality fosters a more complete and sensitive understanding of people and situations.
“literature helps us to say our presence in the world, to “digest” and assimilate it, capturing what goes beyond the surface of life; it serves, therefore, to interpret life, discerning its fundamental meanings and tensions.”

Seeing through the eyes of others

By reading, one acquires the ability to “see through the eyes of others,” expanding our humanity and developing empathy. Literature allows us to identify with the experiences of others, fostering solidarity, compassion, and mercy. This process makes us more sensitive to the sufferings and joys of others and helps us better understand their lives and desires. Reading thus becomes an experience of personal growth and human sharing.
“When one reads a story, thanks to the author’s vision, everyone imagines in their own way the tears of an abandoned girl, the elderly woman covering her sleeping grandson’s body, the passion of a small entrepreneur trying to move forward despite difficulties, the humiliation of one who feels criticized by everyone, the boy who dreams as the only way out of the pain of a miserable and violent life.”

The spiritual power of literature

Pope Francis concludes by highlighting the crucial role of literature in the education of the heart and mind of future priests. Literature frees language from static conventions, allowing for greater spiritual openness. Furthermore, it recalls the primary task entrusted by God to man: to “name” beings and things, giving them meaning and creating communion. This affinity between priest and poet manifests in a ministry of listening and compassion, where the literary word becomes a vehicle for the divine Word.
“The spiritual power of literature finally recalls the primary task entrusted by God to man: the task of “naming” beings and things (cf. Gn 2:19-20). The mission of guardian of creation assigned by God to Adam passes first and foremost through the recognition of the reality and meaning of the existence of other beings. The priest is also invested with this original task of “naming,” of giving meaning, of becoming an instrument of communion between creation and the Word made flesh and of its power to illuminate every aspect of the human condition.”

Literature as an access route to the mysteries of man

The Pope concludes by affirming that literature uncovers the abysses of the human soul and helps pastors engage in fruitful dialogue with contemporary culture. Literature is an “access route” that makes future priests more sensitive to the full humanity of the Lord Jesus, promoting a proclamation of the Gospel that authentically resonates in the hearts of people.
Pope Francis’s letter is an invitation to rediscover the spiritual power of literature in priestly formation. For the missionaries of the Congregation of the Mission, this means embracing reading as a tool for personal and pastoral growth, to better understand and accompany humanity in its search for meaning and redemption. Literature thus becomes an indispensable traveling companion for every missionary, capable of enriching their vocation and service. Especially for confreres engaged in Vocational Pastoral Ministry, literature can be the means to help in discerning those young people who wish to approach the Vincentian charism to clothe themselves in Christ and to serve the poor in the best possible way!


Girolamo Grammatico
Communication Office

Story Merchant E-Book Deals: Capesters A hero Bureau Thriller by Peter G. Bielagus Free September30 - October 4!


Capesters: A Hero Bureau Thriller
by Peter G. Bielagus


It's 2025 and the United States Federal Government has passed The Vigilante Act, allowing private citizens to operate as for-profit crime fighters. Under the jurisdiction of the Hero Registration Bureau (HRB), Registered "Heroes" are popping up in major cities, hitting the streets, solving crimes, raiding warehouses all while grabbing the action on video. When a seven-and-a-half-foot armored Rogue begins a nationwide killing spree, disgraced NYPD detective Stan Magreen is coaxed into the case; not just because he's a good detective but because he was the first Rogie.

You can now LISTEN to Leo Daughtry's Talmadge Farm on Audio!

 It's 1957, and tobacco is king. Wealthy landowner Gordon Talmadge enjoys the lavish lifestyle he inherited but doesn't like getting his hands dirty; he leaves that to the two sharecroppers - one white, one Black - who farm his tobacco but have bigger dreams for their own children. While Gordon takes no interest in the lives of his tenant farmers, a brutal attack between his son and the sharecropper children sets off a chain of events that leaves no one unscathed.⁠



 

Michael A. Simpson's Sons of My Fathers Five Star Review!

Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books! Review




AVAILABLE ON AMAZON


Synopsis:

Sons of My Fathers, based on the true story of author Michael A. Simpson’s family, is a multi-generational journey that intertwines two dramatic stories set one hundred years apart—the heroic saga of 19-year-old Ulysses Simpson who, when "hell comes to Georgia," joins his father on a course of revenge, a path that will forever change the destiny of their clan. And the true tale of another young Simpson man six generations later who, despite his moral reservations, enlists in the U.S. Army, following in the footsteps of his father who was a WWII Marine Corps combat veteran and one of the legendary fighting force's elite instructors during the Korean War. 

When Ron volunteers as a "walking dead"—the term for those who fly unarmed medevac helicopters during combat because of their high mortality rate—but is instead assigned to fly a Huey gunship, he fights a personal war with himself over whether to keep a century-old family oath. As his brother Michael comes of age and experiences his first love, Ron's fateful decision forces him to confront his family's past and risk sacrificing his own future, an act that ultimately sets a landmark precedent for "soldiers of conscience" who would follow him in military service. 

Deeply personal and compellingly written by the younger brother in this story, the book is uniquely set against America's involvement in two great civil wars—our country's own conflict in the 1860s and Vietnam in the late 1960s. It is an evocative journey into the author's family history and the universal themes central to it—the bonds of family and star-crossed love, duty versus faith, the true nature of patriotism and conscience in war, and the turbulent end of innocence. Rich in emotional textures, Sons of My Fathers is a transformative and timeless coming-of-age narrative.


Other than his mother’s lullabies, the whistle of the Dixie Flyer was the earliest sound Michael Simpson could remember hearing.

Since the time of Baylis Simpson and the Confederacy, the locomotive’s melancholy cry had announced its passage through Forest Park, a quiet Georgia town of hard work and modest dreams snuggled on Atlanta’s southern doorstep. The rail line pierced through the heart of this blue-collar community, running parallel to Main for several blocks before bending south, just before the street emptied out onto Jonesboro Road in front of the Fort Gillem Army base. The road was the same one that Rhett Butler and Scarlet O’Hara used for their imaginary escape from Atlanta. The fictional Tara plantation was said to have been located just a short stride down its blacktop.

Every night of Michael’s young life, the Flyer’s whistle beckoned him, filling his imagination with a long-vanquished landscape of graceful mansions and stately plantations, of hoop-skirted ladies who thought about things tomorrow and men who frankly didn’t give a damn.



5 out of 5 (exceptional)

Independent Reviewer for Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!

I'm not usually a 5 star reviewer but.....

Two stories that reverberate the lessons of life through time. A story of love, hate, war and peace. There are real life lessons to be learnt by people everywhere in the pages of this book. 

I laughed and cried reading this. It's such a brutally honest book, with some shocking events in the chapters. It was a book I devoured, wanting to hear about the characters and how things panned out.

I loved how determined Baylis was. Also Ron who followed his convictions and saw through the consequences of these, even at a loss to himself. 

I haven't read a book like this in a long time that deals with real events, feelings and people, comparing different eras, but showing so starkly how humanity seems to make errors and repeat them. 

Absolutely awesome read. Thank you Michael A Simpson! 

* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book, and my comments here are my honest opinion. *


Michael A. Simpson is a writer, director and producer of award-winning documentaries and feature films (whose credits include the Oscar-winning “Crazy Heart,” “Hysteria,” and “Kidnapping Mr. Heineken”). He continues his older brother Ron's tradition of questioning authority and speaking out against social and political injustice, as his friends, both real and virtual, will attest. He grew up in dark rooms watching flickering images on a screen, is a connoisseur of raisin oatmeal cookies, a walking storehouse of music knowledge and trivia, finds reasons to get his passport inked whenever possible, and remains a “rebel without a pause.” "Sons of My Fathers," based on his family's history, is his first book.


ROBERT RIVENBARK INTERVIEW WITH THE HAMMER

Check out Robert Rivenbark's interview with Brian The Hammer Jackson, host of Hammer Blog Talk Radio Podcast!


Robert's prize-winning novel THE CLOUD. THE CLOUD was honored as one of the 20 best books of 2023 by Bookworm Reviews, and it's currently in development as a feature film with manager/producer Ken Atchity, CEO of Atchity Productions and Story Merchant books.

Robert is is launching a crowdfunding campaign to raise the budget to shoot a three-minute film trailer with an A-list actor attached to trailer and feature film. Stay tuned for future broadcasts to learn how you can participate and become a producer on the project.



When Everyone's A Virtual Reality Slave, Who Can Free The Human Soul?



Get The Cloud: A Speculative Fiction Novel On Amazon Today!