Nouvelle loi en France

Un message pro-vie pour nos confrêres francophones qui ne peuvent plus exprimer ces messages de vie sur les sites francais à cause d'une nouvelle loi:

Je vous en prie, aujourd'hui choisissez ma vie!

Review: Angels and Saints: A Biblical Guide to Friendship with God's Holy Ones

Angels and Saints: A Biblical Guide to Friendship with God's Holy Ones by Scott Hahn
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Like many of Scott Hahn's books, this one, too reads like a convert's guide for other converts to the Catholic Church. This book happens to focus on the Magisterium's historical teaching on angels and saints. As a cradle Catholic I wasn't particularly enlightened nor enthused by the odd choice of saints that make up the better part of this small book.

The Catholic Church has been around for over 2000 years, and we probably celebrate a dozen or so saints every day of the year so, other than out of some personal attraction to one saint or another, it seems difficult to understand Hahn's featuring of these saints.

Still, if you know nothing about the Catholic Church's position on saints and angels (and you actually want to learn what the Church teaches) this is probably not a bad place to start your research.

View all my reviews

I'm pleased to announce the Fine Form Press release of my new commercial fiction novel - after 10 years of re-writes...

Love and Death by JT Therrien

I truly enjoyed enjoyed working on this story. Love and Death is a study in contrasts. There's Jane Crispin, an older woman, spa owner and new-ager, who does something foolish after learning that she has a terminal disease: she steps out of her van one morning and kisses the handsome, younger construction worker holding a yield sign. What harm can that impulsive act do, right?

When Chase tracks her down and shows up at the spa the next day, Jane begins to realize that The Kiss started something she might not live long enough to finish!

I hope you enjoy reading this novel. It is one of my oldest and most cherished love stories. It has some wickedly entertaining characters and the setting is Seal Beach, California. Keep a tissue or two by your side, my editor advises. She's right. It's a bit of tear-jerker.

Love and Death is available (or will soon be) from all e-book retailers, including: Amazon,Smashwords, B & N, itunes or your favorite e-book retailer. My middle grade children's fiction is also available in print on CreateSpace.com and at Amazon.

For those who want to try before buying, I currently have four short works available for free atall retailers except Amazon (they won't let me...)

Thank you for taking the time to read this post and for reading my fiction. I'm grateful for any comments and reviews!

~ JT Therrien~

Psalm 52 and the American Election

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, I make no claim to the ownership of this image. 

I don't have a dog in the fight that is the upcoming U.S. presidential election, Deo Gratias, but this psalm expresses my opinion:

Psalm 52
Against a calumniator
If anyone would boast, let him boast in the Lord (1 Corinthians 1:31).
Why do you boast of your wickedness,
you champion of evil,
planning ruin all day long,
your tongue like a sharpened razor,
you master of deceit?

You love evil more than good,
lies more than truth.
You love the destructive word,
you tongue of deceit.

For this God will destroy you
and remove you for ever.
He will snatch you from your tent and uproot you
from the land of the living.

The just shall see and fear.
They shall laugh and say:
“So this is the man who refused
to take God as a stronghold,
but trusted in the greatness of his wealth
and grew powerful by his crimes.”

But I am like a growing olive tree
in the house of God.
I trust in the goodness of God
for ever and ever.

I will thank you for evermore;
for this is your doing.
I will proclaim that your name is good,
in the presence of your friends.

Praying for my American friends and neighbors. May their choice for a political leader bring them, and all of us in North America, closer to God.

~JT~

Rest in Peace, Fr. Hamel

Père Jacques Hamel, martyred by Daesh on July 26, 2016

Father Jacques Hamel, 84, martyred by Daesh in Rouen France on July 26, 2016

while celebrating Holy Mass.

Requiescat in Pace.

Never Pass Up an Opportunity to Evangelize!

Even though it's the middle of summer: never pass up an opportunity to evangelize! ;-)

~JT~

Summer Reading

So, you finally finished Pope Francis' 250 page Apostolic Exhortation: Amoris Laetitia and you've been looking for something else to read. Possibly some Catholic-themed fiction?


I have just the thing(s).

Teresa's Garden by JT Therrien

FREE!
If you like a good bargain, there's Teresa's Garden, my free novella about a fictional encounter between a group of children and the famous Mother Teresa. This story is quite timely, since the Catholic Church will canonize her this fall. All ebook retailers except Amazon have it for free. Kindle readers can get a .mobi file from my Smashwords page.

Many of my other works, such as my newly-released novel Her Father's Sins, mention Catholicism or Catholic theology to some degree, but the following works are explicitly Catholic-themed:

• Teresa's Garden (Mother Teresa fictional short story - middle grade) - FREE
• Down By Contact (NFL football-themed romance novella)
• The Wedding Scheme (humor, contemporary romance novel)
• St. Nicholas (Middle grade Christmas-themed short story)
• Sprainter (young adult, dystopian, art-themed, sci-fi novella)

As you can see, there's quite a variety of genres and subject matter available. I know there's something there for everyone's tastes!

I hope readers will take advantage of the free deals (I currently have four free short stories/novellas). If you do, and you've enjoyed the story, please let others know by sharing a review. I thank you in advance for taking the time to help me promote my work.

My Summer So Far
I am currently finishing edits on yet another nine-years-in-the-making novel, which I hope Fine Form Press will release within a couple of months. I am also considering the next installment in my Shadow the black Lab series and I'm thinking about the fourth Dr. Farkas story in my paranormal romance series. I also have two young adult Catholic-themed novels planned for next year.

I also hope to have time this summer to read a few of the books on my ever-growing to-be-read list. There are new novels by Chris Bohjalian, Anita Shreve, Margret Atwood, Lawrence Hill and Julian Barnes, among others. So many others... :-)

That's it for me.
Have a safe, happy summer!

~~JT~~