MadMania

Faith, Books, and Stuff

Category: writing

Krampus comes back from college for Christmas

“Ma, I’m home!” “I’m in the kitchen, Krampus! Come give your mom a hug.” “Maaaaa!” “You know the rules, Krampus–no hugs, no dinner.” Krampus lumbered into the kitchen, dumped his bags on the floor, and limply hugged his mother. “Hey, ma, I brought a friend home from college. This is Nick. Nick, this is my ma, […]

One More Ride: Chapter 5: Food

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Norville tore into his pizza not quite savagely. People always told him growing up that eventually his metabolism would slow, that his freakish ability to consume and process copious amounts of food without weight gain would ebb, that his days of eating whatever he wanted without consequence […]

One More Ride: Chapter 4: Heat

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Warm air gushed from the vents with the power of one of those annoying hand dryers they put in truckstop bathrooms. Norville had ridden in several Jeeps before; rattly angular things full of crevices for wind to blow through, designed by men who either did not know or did […]

VBS Development Diary #11: Act 3

This week marked 4 months since we started working on this year’s VBS. Typically at the 4 month mark we are getting ready to perform, but we haven’t even created any props, sets, or costumes, and haven’t rehearsed a line. In fact, the performers don’t even have the script yet. The reason is this: despite […]

Yes, literally

A couple of years ago a guy who worked for me had a toe thumb. I mean, he literally had a toe for a thumb–his big toe, to be specific. He had gotten his hand caught in a wood chipper and had lost parts of most of his fingers and his entire thumb. Doctors removed one […]

VBS 2013 Development Diary: #10: Gospel vs. Blues

Both gospel and blues are musical traditions rooted in the American South, both are based in tragedy, pain, and misery. But the difference between gospel and blues is that the gospel offers hope. The very nature of the blues is that there is no hope. Your heart is broke, you’re probably going to die from […]