Pierced by a Sword by Bud Macfarlane Jr.

What has been the reaction to your novels? How have your novels touched readers? It's the most gritty and gripping writing I've ever done. There is a lot of suffering and a lot of death in the story. The story itself is about what happens to two Catholic families when a computer problem wipes out the world's infrastructure. There is also a strong theme of God the Father's desire to make his children fertile, physically and spiritually, against all reason and odds. The theme was simple: Perseverance is what saves souls. He was carrying a cross or a plow (it gets fuzzy here), but he wasn't Christ. House of Gold started with the image of a man falling and getting back up, falling down and getting back up, time and again.

You've just published your third novel, House of Gold. Fallen-away Catholics are open to reading novels, even if they won't crack open a nonfiction religious book or listen to a Catholic audiotape. The most satisfying part is how effective novels turned out to be for evangelizing. It was the first kind of work that ever “wore out my brain.” My friends and family think it's ironic how the seemingly endless stream of so-called dead-end jobs I had after college turned out to be such great training for making up stories. I've been an executive, a teacher, a cook, a salesman, even a UPS driver. I was surprised how easily it came to me. It was also my wife's idea to see if we could give them away the same way we gave away audiotapes. My friends loved those first few chapters, and so we decided to go for it. I wrote the first chapters that afternoon and evening, almost as a joke. You've got to make sure most of your protagonists are fallen-away Catholics, because that's what most Catholics are nowadays.”Īfter I got off the phone, I told my wife that my friend was lost. In my hubris, I gave him writing advice for an hour. A friend of mine was writing a novel and called me for advice on Marian apparitions, the end times, that kind of thing. MacFarlane: The first novel started on a dare from my wife. He spoke recently with Register correspondent Tim Drake.ĭrake: Tell us how your first novel, Pierced by a Sword, was written? More than 500,000 copies of his three novels are in print: Pierced by a Sword, Conceived Without Sin, and House of Gold.

He is founder and director of the Mary Foundation, which sends Catholic audiotapes throughout the country, and Internet sites, specializing in interactive communications, chat rooms and e-mail discussion groups.

Pierced by a Sword by Bud Macfarlane Jr.