Because all of a sudden, it’s in stock!!!!!!!!!!!!
Buy The Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning straight from the publisher, Our Sunday Visitor
or from Amazon. I just happened to go the page and realized it was in stock! It says there are only 19 copies left!
If you were darling enough to pre-order my book a month ago, it should be winging its way to you very soon!
Good heavens!
Planning to buy my book as a Christmas present, but disappointed the print version is only available for pre-order? Have I got the solution for you!
Click here: giftcertificatehighres*to download a pdf of the above certificate, which you can then print out, put in an envelope, put in the bottom of an enormous box, wrap it, give it to someone you love on Christmas morning, and then point and laugh at their crestfallen faces when they realize it’s just a piece of paper! Then tell them it’s marriage building.
P.S. You have to actually pre-order the book. Don’t forget, it’s also available as an ebook for Kindle or Nook, an as an audiobook! You can also pre-order directly from OSV.
And yes, I totally stole this pre-order certificate idea from the brilliant Jennifer Fulwiler, whose spiritual memoir is now available to pre-order
*No, I couldn’t figure out how to change the title without somehow wrecking the pdf. I’m a lover, not a pdf name changer.
Great interview questions from Keri Lenartowick; highly long-winded answers from yours truly. One reasonably sensible part: Kerri asks about teaching millennials about NFP. My answer:
I think that people of that age are in the habit of questioning reality. When something is presented as true, they just automatically question whether it’s ‘really really true,’ or just ‘fake-true,’ so I think it’s very important to be very clear with people that this is not a trick – this is not some kind of illusion that we are talking about.
… It’s one thing to be a sucker if you’re sitting in a movie theater and you got tricked into thinking that that guy’s guts are getting pulled out or King Kong really is on the Empire State building or whatever, and then you realize, ‘oh that’s not really true, ha ha I got fooled,’ but if you’re a few years into your marriage and you realize, wow I got fooled – that is a whole other thing, and that is a really serious disturbance, especially when it’s being done in the name of religion. When people are presenting something as God’s teaching and it turns out not to be true, that’s incredibly damaging.
I would rather err on the side of scaring people a little bit, as long as you also present the beauty of it. I think that’s extremely important to present it as something that is hard but beautiful – and I think people are going to be up to that challenge, but people are not – and rightly so – going to be up to the challenge of being lied to and getting over it, because that’s too painful and humiliating and damaging.
I also make a comparison between “prosperity Gospel” Christians and NFP cheerleaders who promise sunshine and lollipops as your just and guaranteed reward for foregoing contraception — but I fail to come up with a snappy name. Anybody?
It’s been released from the nebulous realm of “pre-order,” and now you can just plain order it:
from Audible.com, the full text of the Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning, read by me. The perfect gift for a really weird commute!
This was tons of fun to do, so I’m glad the’re rebroadcasting it. If you hear “Catholic radio” and think “borrrrrr-ing” then you need to listen to the live hour on WNGL. These guys are hilarious. There was shouting. Shouting about NFP.
The show I was on will air tomorrow, Tuesday, Dec. 10 from 7-8 a.m. CST and again at 9-10 p.m. CST. You can listen online here.
No paradoxes were created in the making of this interview, in which Jen Fulwiler of Conversion Diary speaks from the perspective of her past self. She introduces the interview this way:
Seven years ago, I found myself in a place of great upheaval. I was in the middle of a profound religious conversion and found myself in a no-man’s land, adrift from my old belief system, yet not fully integrated into my new one.
Now this is the part that makes me blush:
Around that time that I came across a small blog by this woman named Simcha. She was a brilliant, hilarious writer on par with the famous names of the secular world…yet she was religious, describing herself as a Hebrew Catholic since she comes from a family of Jewish coverts to Catholicism. Reading her blog never failed to brighten my day (usually by making me laugh until I gasped for air), and her writing transformed my view of everything from motherhood to what it means to have faith.
About once a week I would think, “This woman’s blog needs to be much, much bigger!” and “When is she going to write a book?!” Seven years later, I got my wish.
Tons of frank, funny (and really difficult!) questions from the point of view of someone who can’t imagine why you would go to all the trouble of charting and abstaining, especially when you might end up having — ugh — babies anyway. Check it out, if only to read the phrase “boinking machine” on a Catholic blog.
I was having lots of fun scrolling through this list of Worst Christian Book Covers of 2013. A couple of favorites:
and this:
and of course this, which should win all the prizes ever, for everything, but most of all for the most courageous use of “spray paint” tool in a professional setting:
“Most intelligently designed” indeed.
But then I got to #7 on the list of Worst Christian Book Covers of 2013, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but A COVER THAT LOOKS VERY, VERY FAMILIAR:
A sign your priest may be WAY too involved in your sex life.
#ConfessionalFetish(Submitted by Kimberly Roth)HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Oh man. I’m on a list, I’m on a list! Thanks, Kimberly Roth, whoever you are. I submit, for your discering eyes, the mockup for my next book, coming out some time in 2015:
UPDATE: The $50 prize is now gone!
*******************
I posted last week about Arista Pasta’s kickstarter. A lovely Catholic homeschooling family of seven (the co-founder, Benjamin Herreid, is the brother of John Herreid, who designed my book’s cover, and the other brother of Bill Herreid, who is married to my sister!) is selling delectable handmade pasta products made from local, sustainable ingredients at their farmer’s market.
They want very much to expand their production, become more self-reliant, and bring their exquisite food to a bigger audience. But there are only 12 days to go, and they have a long ways to go to meet their goal.
So of course you’d throw a few bucks their way, right?
NO? It’s okay, I understand. It sounds like a worthy cause, but you just don’t have the money to spare, unless you get something back for it.
Of course they offer some of their wonderful products and other gifts to thank donors — and they now offer to ship their amazing food. Last night, my husband and I feasted on their incredibly flavorful mushroom ravioli, which was bursting with juicy chunks of savory mushrooms and seasonings. I’m serious, the whole house was filled with a fragrance that would bring a tear to the eye of the most hardened ascetic. So with added shipping, now non-local donors can also enjoy their choice of extruded pasta or ravioli or homemade pestos.
Here’s my part:
I have three audiobooks of The Sinner’s Guide to NFP to give away.
Just donate $25 or more to Arista Pasta, and note on your Kickstarter donation form that you would like the audiobook. No raffle this time — just the first three donors of $25 or more get an audiobook (and, for extra shipping, Arista Pasta will also send you some of their lovely pasta products). The audiobook is going for $17.46 on Amazon before shipping, so this is a nice deal.
For a larger donation, I have something really magnificent: Catholicism: The New Evangelization by Fr. Robert Barron.
This is the four-disc set and the spiral bound study guide. Going on Amazon for $41.00. I only have one of these, so I will give it the first Kickstarter donor of $50 or more. Again, that is in addition to the Kickstarter thank-you gift. Remember to note that you want the DVD set when you donate.
So if you were thinking of maybe giving the audiobook or Fr. Barron’s DVDs as a Christmas gift, this is a great chance to get these items plus help out a lovely family business.
When these prizes are claimed, they are gone, so act fast! I expect the Fr. Barron DVD set to go like *that.* I will update this post at the top when the prizes start to be claimed.
Even if you have $5, please consider supporting Arista Pasta!
