At Royal Arch Lake, Yosemite

The novel I've finished is ORDINARY TIME . . .

Rev. Mark Hart visits friend Grandy Brighton. Brighton shares that his grandson is suspected of arson. This is the second time the teen’s been accused, but now a homeless man nicknamed Burrito has been hurt. The grandfather hopes Hart will help find the grandson innocent. Then Brighton, battling cancer, asks a second favor. He wants Hart to help him “bet on Jesus,” the older man’s preferred phrase for assisted suicide. Following another fire, the still-hospitalized Burrito (the first fire’s only witness) is murdered. Arson and homicide. Will Hart discover who’s framing the teen before Brighton makes his bet? All this unfolds in Ordinary Time, the church season after Easter. This year it’s anything but ordinary.

A mainstream mystery, ORDINARY TIME (106,000 words) could share a shelf with Julia Spencer-Fleming’s Clare Fergusson or Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware: amateurs with access. Mark Hart easily visits jails, hospitals and homes. Less easy is dealing with a past mistake—false accusations about a girl’s death that wrecked his career and marriage—and risking a new start.

Each week at www.larrypatten.com I write “faithful and foolish” reflections on the encounters between the Holy and human. This week (February 7, 2012) included:

Dementia has transfigured my father.

Unlike Jesus’ transfiguration, there is no mountaintop or disciples or mysterious appearances of Moses and Elijah.

Perhaps it’s self-serving to suggest there’s anything similar about the changes to my 95-year old father (and to my family because of his illness) with Jesus’ transformative moment in the Gospel stories.

I’m fine with self-serving. Let me manipulate the Gospel for the sake of my own sanity. Let me rationalize the dull thrum of my father’s anguished decline by claiming parallels in the good news of Jesus Christ. As my father nears death, I’ll embrace any insights or interpretations that may add clarity to this unsettling last chapter of his life...

A COMPANION FOR THE JOURNEY: 41 Reflections (mostly) On the Lord's Prayer. Available as a KINDLE book on Amazon or on Barnes and Noble's NOOK. A steal at $3.99. Now in paperback on Amazon for $8.99. Which is not a steal, but darn cheap. If you go to my website (www.larrypatten.com) you can a find a link for your purchasing pleasures . . . you'll have money drained from your account while I become one-sold-book happier. Win-win!

I'm ordained, which in the "biz" means I can marry, bury and baptize.

Novels I’m working on:

LONGEST NIGHT – is nearly finished and a follow-up to ORDINARY TIME. Rev. Mark Hart prepares to marry two lesbians. The same-gender couple plans their wedding during Christmas—the “happiest time of the year”—while a killer stalks one of them. On the surface, the attacks against them seem hate crimes. But Hart learns that all hate crimes are personal, especially when helping two women he admires puts his own daughter’s life at risk.

CHRISTMAS JOE – a first draft of this stand-alone “coming of age” story is finished. Twenty-one year old James March cares for his mother as she dies. After Mary March’s death, James discovers she has a bank account in a town where they once lived. He journeys there on Christmas Eve to claim the money. During that day, and into the night, James uncovers his mother’s past, the relationships she once influenced and will seek the man his mother called “Christmas Joe,” who may be his father. Throughout the evening he’ll learn that everything about “Christmas” is true, even the parts that aren’t.