REGINA DOMAN

My parents reverted to their Catholic faith through the charismatic renewal, so I was raised charismatic.

Catholic fiction of the type we're publishing is stories that we know faithful Catholics will enjoy - stories they can escape with, laugh at, cry with; stories that will enrich their lives.

For years, we in publishing have been hearing from Catholic readers that they really yearn for Catholic fiction.

Our culture places a very high value on storytelling, and the more that Catholic writers are able to master that craft, the more they can speak to the culture, the more powerful their stories will be.

I went to work for Catholics United for the Faith, and I basically found myself in the midst of the traditionalist branch of the Catholic revival. There is an intellectual rigor that is very much valued there and that I was in awe of.

In order to make characters real - no matter what the character is doing - you have to see yourself as capable of having done that.

I always knew I was going to grow up to be a storyteller; that's one of the earliest things I remember about myself. There was never a question of me not writing.

Personally, I am thrilled that I can now let my characters clasp a rosary, mention confession or invoke the intercession of a saint without it being edited out of my story.

Some of them are okay, but the popular girls like to pick on my sister, and almost all the guys are gross. I don't know why guys are like that. Do you?

I won't get killed,' Rose protested. Is that a promise?' Fish asked dryly, stirring his tea. 'If you break your word, I'll never believe you again.' Rose shook her head at him. 'How can you even taste your tea if you put that much sugar in it?' Don't change the subject. I don't want to be responsible for depriving the world of Rose Brier. Under no circumstances are you allowed to help us do anything more dangerous than...change the oil in my car.

There's something strange about you-" she started to say. Oh, well, thanks!" he chuckled, his brown eyes twinkling at her.

She remembered that once, when she was a little girl, she had seen a pretty young woman with golden hair down to her knees in a long flowered dress, and had said to her, without thinking, "Are you a princess?" The girl had laughed very kindly at her and asked her what her name was. Blanche remembered going away from her, led by her mother's hand, thinking to herself that the girl really was a princess, but in disguise. And she had resolved that someday, she would dress as though she were a princess in disguise.

Can you imagine anything more tragic?' Rose asked. 'To be born a princess --native and to the manor born-- and then to forget who you are and settle for being something horrible like an--an accountant!

Evil isn't beautiful on its own. You know?' 'Well, good people are sometimes ugly-' Blanche said at last. 'I don't know about that. Not really,' Bear shook his head. 'If the good's there, and you look for it, you'll see it in some way.' 'I think Bear is right,' Rose said decidedly. 'Fairy tales teach you that. No one who's really good ever stays ugly. It's always a disguise.

How do you say 'bring me sausage and eggs or I'll slit your throat' in Italian?" "Look it up in the phrase book.

The boys at school are so degenerate that it makes one feel pessimistic about the future of the male gender in general.

Bear heard Rose in the background saying, 'Why thank you, Mr. Fish.' 'Good redhead. Helpful redhead,' Fish returned.

Blanche, prosaic in a pale yellow sweater and blue jeans, was wondering again if anything mattered—-life, faith--specifically, finishing homework assignments.

Some scars never heal. And he sounds like he has a lot of them.' 'But Christ had scars too, even on His risen Body. Wounds in this life become glory in the next.

Try to be a whole person.Not just a night person, or a day person. Be the kind of person who can live in both.

You're drinking in the joy of life,' Bear told her when she tried to explain why she was laughing. 'There's so much opportunity for drinking deeply of it, and we very rarely do it. When you do, it makes you feel alive all over.

There was a silence. Then Paul looked at Alex. 'She knows Chesterton.' 'She lives,' said Alex.

One of my heroes, G.K. Chesterton, said, "The old fairy tales endure forever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal." Discovering that the modern world can still contain the wonder and strangeness of a fairy tale is part of what my novels are about.

Every once in a while you just have to decide to do something very crazy and very right--just to dare yourself to live. I don't mean doing something stupid and destructive--just something fun and good and beautiful.

The sense of danger made her lift up her head higher. There were battles coming. But life was meant to be a battle, wasn't it? There was nothing to fear.