John Herreid
John Herreid is catalog manager at Ignatius Press. In addition to catalogs and ads, he has also worked on the cover design for many Ignatius Press books and DVDs. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and four children.
Posts from this author at the Novel Thoughts blog.
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“Joy is the grace we say to God.”
July 3, 2014 4:27 pm 5 Comments
I recently read Ray Bradbury
’s beautiful book Dandelion Wine. It is incredibly evocative of what being a child is like. I found myself pausing repeatedly in my reading as Bradbury’s prose jostled memories of my own childhood: the first realization that, yes, I was a real person and really truly alive; walking in the moonlight during a warm night and suddenly going from comfort to fear; the first real awareness of mortality; the joy of being allowed to stay up late and share in the world of adults; the foods, activities, music that come with summer.Ray Bradbury uses the metaphor of dandelion wine to represent capturing summer in a bottle, one that can be opened and shared even in the dead of winter to awaken those remembrances of joy and warmth. Bradbury’s writing is itself a bottle of that wine—I’m not sure how he did it, but he captured magic with his words. He himself humbly described how he felt when reading his own work: “Every so often, late at night, I come downstairs, open one of my books, read a paragraph and say, My God. I sit there and cry because I feel that I’m not responsible for any of this. It’s from God. And I’m so grateful, so, so grateful.” Read more »
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Seeing the Hand of God
June 20, 2014 3:00 pm Leave a Comment
Novels often fall into the trap of offering easy redemption. The wayward soul sees the error of his ways, has a quasi-mystical experience, and sets off on the road to the straight and narrow. It’s what we want to happen—even if it sacrifices some of the reality of human behavior… Read more »
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The Poison of Cynicism
June 5, 2014 5:23 pm Leave a Comment
Lying there, for the few moments before Maes and the infirmarian raised him, he believed. Perhaps it was exhaustion that lowered the barriers pride and custom had long raised in him; perhaps the lucidity and intuitive accuracy of the vision he had beheld. He might never know, fully. But lying… Read more »
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If you don’t look for it, you won’t find it
May 23, 2014 1:02 pm 3 Comments
A while back I participated in a discussion about art. The person who started the discussion was lamenting that in our modern world, good meaningful art was no longer being created. Everything good was in the past and the current world of art was devoid of talent and worth. Someone… Read more »
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Looking for the City
May 16, 2014 10:22 am 3 Comments
“Let us pine for the City where we are citizens… By pining, we are already there; we have already cast our hope, like an anchor, on that coast. I sing of somewhere else, not of here; for I sing with my heart, not my flesh. The citizens of Babylon hear… Read more »
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Science Fiction and Political Polarization
May 8, 2014 7:13 pm 3 Comments
I hear about a science fiction novel from a friend. He says he thinks I’d like it; it’s along the same lines as another author I like, and involves a lot of very imaginative world building. So I go to the local sci-fi bookstore and pop in. They have a… Read more »
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Discomfort and Distraction
May 2, 2014 11:23 am 7 Comments
Last week I wrote a bit about the creative process and how you must persevere past the “gap” between what you desire to create and what you can create. I thought I’d follow up with a quick post on one of the biggest enemies of creativity: comfort. Man craves comfort,… Read more »
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Plateaus and Gaps
April 25, 2014 11:37 am 3 Comments
When I first started working in graphic design, there was one book in particular that I wanted to design a cover for: Manalive by G.K. Chesterton. I even created some mock covers that have thankfully vanished in the mists of time. I wasn’t ready at that time to design a… Read more »
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Enthusiasm Sells Books
April 14, 2014 12:23 pm 4 Comments
Working at a small publisher means wearing many hats. When asked by others what I do for a living I usually say, “I’m a graphic designer”. If I’m asked for a job description when filling out forms I usually put “catalog manager.” The reality is that I design book and… Read more »
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Creativity, Art, and the Symphony of Truth
April 4, 2014 6:42 pm 7 Comments
A few weeks ago, I took two of my children to the Legion of Honor museum here in San Francisco. My oldest, age six, is on the autism spectrum. We’d been to the museum before. Last time he had been so quickly overwhelmed that we had had to leave after… Read more »
