James Casper
James Casper was born and grew up in southern Minnesota. Apart from living in various Minnesota locales, he has resided in Boston, St. Louis, eastern Tennessee, and London, England. He and his wife of twenty-four years have traveled extensively. Rome is one of their favorite places. He is happiest walking from lock to lock along the Thames in England. His first novel is Everywhere in Chains. You can find more of his writing at his website, FarHavenPress.com.
Ignatius
Novels by
author
Posts from this author at the Novel Thoughts blog.
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Chesterton Versus 007
May 6, 2019 1:28 pm Leave a Comment
Many writers find a successful formula and keep repeating it. In that sense, if you have read one Ian Fleming spy novel, you have read them all. Much the same is true of Chesterton’s Father Brown stories and his essays featuring the missed adventure in everyday life. Once you… Read more »
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Writing When There Is No Answer
October 26, 2018 5:05 pm 1 Comment
For a year or more when I was a schoolboy, I sent my stories to a nun in a strict religious order. I did not know that she would receive them only after a mother superior examined the contents for signs of wanderlust and wavering. The nun had been my… Read more »
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This Book Is Burning
October 5, 2018 5:10 pm 1 Comment
In the current not-so-civil war between conservative and liberal Catholicism, there will be no winners. Like World War One, it is a gruesome conflict of carnage and attrition. Casualties mount all around, and also in a middle ground staked out by novels like Everywhere in Chains. In the middle ground,… Read more »
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Novels Like a Ship in a Bottle
May 8, 2018 1:49 pm Leave a Comment
One of these days the person standing in front of you at the convenience store, at Starbucks, at the post office, or just about anywhere two or more are gathered will tell you he has just finished writing a novel. Hearing this, a woman standing behind you will reveal that… Read more »
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Is Realistic Catholic Fiction a Unicorn?
December 15, 2017 9:42 am 2 Comments
The accusation of blasphemy, at times directed at Christ, recorded in the Gospels, has long been directed at writers of Catholic fiction attempting to be realistic. Christ was a realist about his times and the world in which he mingled. He could also at times seem idealistic, e.g. in The… Read more »
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Blackrobes on the Quad
July 1, 2016 1:23 pm 1 Comment
“Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” — Stephen Daedalus, A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man by James Joyce Chance readers of my contributions to… Read more »
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Soup Bones and Novels
February 3, 2016 4:48 pm 1 Comment
Old Mother Hubbard Went to the cupboard To get her poor dog a bone; But when she came there The cupboard was bare, And so the poor dog had none. —Mother Goose When we sold our Minnesota home and moved to England, I was working on a revision of a… Read more »
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The Catholic Novelist As Peddler in Bleak Midwinter
January 27, 2016 1:35 pm Leave a Comment
A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter. —T. S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi Outside the church after Mass, beyond perfunctory handshakes, breaths… Read more »
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Sincerity in a Nuns’ Cemetery
August 21, 2015 1:19 pm 2 Comments
The Vale of Rest, a painting by John Everett Millais, 1858-59 No quality in art and fiction writing is more elusive and perplexing than sincerity. No cemetery is quieter than one where nuns lie buried. No school memories are richer or more compelling than those the Sisters left for… Read more »
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Graham Greene’s Cobbled Road from St. Mary’s
July 28, 2015 3:48 pm 3 Comments
Graham Greene, often mentioned in these pages, had a troubled and chaotic relationship with the Catholic faith to which he converted the year before his marriage, so much so that his motives for conversion have even been questioned. At the same time, more than any writer of his day, he… Read more »