my sister ginny

Since the publication of The World's First Ever Baptist Crime Novel, I have been receiving queries about my sister Ginny, the book's co-author. I'll give my view. Ginny can give hers on her blog and/or in comments here. I see Ginny as more of a frustrated saint and I'm more of a renegade mystic.

Ginny strongly believes in the orthodox Southern Baptist view. The Bible is the Word of God. Period. Jesus is God's Son sacrificed for the sins of our ancestors and our own. Period. Each of us is going to either Hell or Heaven when we die. Period. Which one depends on whether we have accepted Jesus into our lives. Period. And so on.

Ginny was thus more readily available to take the parts of Millie Huckleberry, Flo, Jeanine, and Janice with a little of Charley in the novel.

I strongly believe that all belief systems are to be held lightly since they tend to harden into cataracts of our spiritual eyes. In the above paragraph, I would put Commas where the Periods are. There is a whole lot more to say after each of those Periods.

I'm more of a Taoist Buddhist Jesusian Cosmic Mystic. As such, I more readily identified with and was easily able to write the parts of Luther Huckleberry, Charley (an earlier version of myself), Ted, Gregor, Little Jimmie Gallup, Viola Trumpett, Henry Wide Bear, and the Angels of Light and Fire.

We both did Thelma and Junior pretty well since we grew up with those characters in small town Georgia.

I was and am impressed with my sister's ability to "roll with the punches" as I continued, during our writing adventure, to step outside all orthodox lines. For example, at one point early in our writing, she said we needed a "real Christian" in the story. I must admit the lion in me licked his chops and said go ahead. Jeanine Bulloch was born and had to confront her arch-nemesis Ted (one of "those liberals" in the church). They each handled themselves well and came to a respectful truce.

I send blessings to my sister and hope I represented her adequately in this brief blurb.