Not long ago,
we talked about church libraries and how these resources can help Christians
find the best books, including if not now, then in the future,
Christian made fantastical fiction, what then about public libraries?
How can Christians best discern and enjoy this resource? Today?
We are speaking with a public library director who also happens to be a prolific
Christian novelist of sci-fi fantasy steam, punk, paranormal suspense,
and beyond Steve Raza.
And he is the first Steve for our new saga of epic episodes
that we are assembling for September here on fantastical truth.
Welcome a new to fantastical truth. The podcast from Laura haven.com.
Here we explore fantastical stories for God's glory and apply their meanings to
the real world. Jesus calls us to serve I'm me, Steven Burnett.
I publish Laura Haven. I'm also the co-author of the pop culture parents.
And I'm Zachary Russell and no offense to our guest today.
But my favorite librarian will always be Conan the librarian from the
1980s. We are Al Yankovic movie UHF,
but this is episode 128.
How can Christian fans engage their local libraries? And yes,
we'll be joined by librarian and author. Steve Raza.
This episode is part one of our Steve saga,
a new epic trilogy for the month of September. Today,
we have the first Steve and in our next episode,
we will have an additional Steve. And then for the trilogy ender,
we will have a finale, Steve, and then who knows the franchise,
maybe ripe for expansion with even more. Steve's beyond that.
We'll have to see if we can get even more sequels, maybe a reboot or two, uh,
out of this franchise. We're looking forward to taking a behind the scenes,
look in, uh, Christian publishing, where these stories come from,
how they get shared.
And that's what Steve Raza who makes many of these stories himself will be
sharing today at the public library level.
Boy, that would be funny if like we,
we put this filter on the show that from now on your name must be Steve to join
first name, last name, last name Stevenson, Steve. You know,
obviously you're Steven, which yeah, I didn't even think about you as Steve.
Did anyone ever call you Steve Steven.
Every once in a while? And it may come up as we go forward into this series. Uh,
whereas another, uh,
cinematic universe of stories has a lot of Chrises among the cast.
It just seems that, uh,
Christian publishing for some reason has a lot of Steve's, but I will note too,
that in the Marvel universe, a surprising amount of superheroes have the name,
Steve, Steve Rogers, Steven strange even moon night,
I think has the name Steven. So, uh,
obviously there's just something about the name, uh,
Steven or Steve that makes you into a hero. Speaking of which, uh,
speaking of Christian publishing,
let's go real quick to our cover sponsor for this episode. Once again,
it is enclave publishing, uh, that is our cover sponsor here,
focusing on the novel flight by Kristin young,
which is coming out on September the 13th.
Here's the cover description on the cusp of graduation.
Cadence is finally feeling in control.
She's about to become one of the prestigious elites working in the hall of love.
Plus she can take her place as a full member of the underground sirens who meets
secretly in love city.
She will finally be able to use her memory skills for good,
instead of reporting people as a watcher,
but a dangerous trap is set throwing cadence into unwelcome and unfamiliar
territory.
Someone in the collective remembers things that could very well get her killed.
The muse is by her side after all,
but will she be protected when someone powerful wants her dead enclave
publishing presents flight by Kristin young,
the third book and the collective underground series it's available September
13, wherever books are sold.
It's also available in audio book format from Oasis audio.
You can get the links to Amazon and Christian book.com to purchase flight,
as well as the audible link for the upcoming audio book flight by Kristen young,
get those links in our show notes for this episode 128,
or be going to Laura haven.com/podcast sponsors.
So I suddenly hear some triumphant sounding March music composed by, uh,
the late Jerry Goldsmith and, uh, warp engines in the distance, uh,
blinking into that little shine of light into the distant blackness of space.
Let's see who's arriving via Starship
Library, director and novelist.
Steve Raza has just arrived via Federation Starship traveling at just over warp
five, Steve Raza, doesn't slay monsters,
but he defeats ward count goals and Vanquis overdue books.
He's the author of many novels of science fiction and fantasy,
including the award winning tales, broken site,
mercury on guard and mercury at risk when he's not writing,
he is running a library in Wyoming.
Find his stories@steveraza.com and finds Steve Raza himself in the studio.
Steve, thanks for joining us to be our first Steve of the Steve.
Saga. Thanks for having us Steven or having me here with you guys, I should say.
Yeah, it's great to see you Zach. So, uh, so tell us, Steve,
how did you discover biblical truth and fantastical stories? So how,
how did you,
and which came first and when did you accept Aslan as your personal
lion and savior? As we like to say.
wait, that's a really loaded question. Um, well, you know,
I had always been sci-fi space, opera, nerd geek,
whatever you wanna call it, uh, you know,
grew up watching next generation had watched some of the original star Trek,
loved star wars.
So I can fan about both of those equally and share the joy,
but really the tie between the faith part didn't come.
I was working on some ideas when I kind of came back to the
Christian faith,
I guess you could say when I was in college and most people have stories about
people losing their faith in college and mine was the opposite. Okay.
For that because.
I was a that's reconstruction. There you go. Reconstruction. That's how you do.
There you go.
Yes. It was a, um,
a journey from getting done with Vatican two
Catholicism that I grew up in as, you know,
slightly better than C E during those days, and then not much of anything.
And then getting into the more evangelical side of things later,
eventually becoming a Lutheran, but that's a long story.
You swam the tiger back the opposite direction. Very much a contrary.
I appreciate.
It. Right. I tend to do that. Um, but one of the things that really got to me,
the two biggest influences, I would say, especially on my space,
upper writing were Timothy Z's air to the empire trilogy from
the secular side of things. And from the Christian side of things,
Chris Wally's lamb among stars. Oh.
Yes, really. That's my absolute.
Really, really that's the one where I went, wow,
you can actually do this and make it, make it.
Goods an end times perspective. It's not often seen in, uh,
Christian futuristic fiction. Uh, Zachs often referenced this underappreciated,
lesser known series as being a rare example of post-millennial, uh,
prophecy type, uh, type series.
Yeah. And it's, you know, it's not the, you know,
eschatology I particularly hold to,
but that's what I love about it is that it's so different and it's so like
imaginative and it's just this whole other universe,
basically that it's fun to consider.
And the other one I almost forgot about and I'm kicking myself,
I'm almost forgetting about is Kathy tire's Firebird series.
Those two were the biggest influences on leaning me toward that, uh,
biblical truth in a fantastical story world. Yeah. Um, again,
they both take these suppositions of, you know, what,
if something different happened with the faith that we all kind of take for
granted and, and then just run with it and create these two really amazing, uh,
story universes.
Yeah. Okay. So now as it Trek,
I'm sure you've got your top 10 or top two or three, uh,
star Trek, NextGen episodes. And I I've got mine, but what, what,
what are yours?
Well, definitely. Best of both worlds.
Yeah. I knew who.
Say that back to back. Yeah. I mean it's yes. You kind of have to .
Yeah.
It's it's one of the articles of the creed of the next generation is.
Part, one was the first star Trek TNG episode.
I remember actually seeing, oh, so what a high point. That's.
Cool. Jump into, go.
Discover the series. Yes.
Uh, let me think. What are some other ones I really liked? Um,
I can't remember the name of the two parter, but I always got a kick.
It wasn't the best episode,
but I always got a kick out of the one where Picard was pretending he was a monk
among a bunch of space pirates. I can't remember.
It was the one that had to do with like some sort of Vulcan sci ancient Vulcan
sci weapon that would like use your own fear and anger to kill you if somebody's
AP you with it or something like that. Oh, okay.
It was a really kind fun and different gait back set of episode gambit.
Is that what it was called? Okay.
Yeah. I'm just looking at memory alpha dot. Yeah. Cause I'm,
I'm not much of a Trek nerd .
It was something about like Picard had a, uh,
archeologist friend who died or something I think,
and he kind of picked up the mystery, but I liked it because, you know,
we'd had multiple seasons of Picard's Dixon hill on the hos solving mysteries
there. And this was like,
he finally got to apply it to real world and you could just kinda see,
he was like, yay. And he was undercover.
And he's got that, uh, you know, archeologist Ben. Okay.
Now this is interesting. I just, uh, this is a real deep nerd dive here,
but I just pulled this up on memory alpha and the teleplay was by Nan Shankar,
who was the show runner for the expanse series. Oh.
Oh.
That's why that finished on Amazon.
So that's really interesting to see that he got started with this. You know,
I don't remember this episode. I'm gonna have to go back and watch this now. Um,
I.
Had just binge watched some next generation this summer and earlier this year,
I think, and picked up on it again. I was like, oh yeah, I remember that one.
And the other one of course, that I really like is,
must be chain of command again,
it's one of those ones where they'll like doing their black ops mission and
Angelos in charge at the enterprise and things. I just thought it was really, I,
I like some of these character deep dive type of things.
So this whole thing with Riker is used to Picard's commander.
Now he's got this other dude in charge of records. Like how do I,
how do I Riker with yeah. With this guy around this?
Yeah, yeah.
You're gonna have to get in the chair the front way, this time suck.
You're just gonna have to do it.
Theo is the, was the.
Temporary's become a meme now he tells bad.
Jokes. There's a, there's a whole Twitter channel. I follow called,
like JCO star Trek or something. And it's just like,
I see a few of us like random, like insane kinda thing. It's the, he.
Might've said it sounds like a goofy name.
That's why it took off and became a meme, I guess.
And it's just like outta the rest, everybody at the clip was like, what?
, I've seen a few of those. They're pretty good. But I think those,
you know,
it's funny that I think those are the ones I remember the most are the two part
ones, just because maybe it's just because it's an extended story.
They pack a whole lot more in,
but I think those three are really my top ones that I can remember going. Wow.
Those are cool. And I wanna see it again.
Nice.
So those stories plus the books that you read and we'll, we'll get to, uh,
more of your stories in the Raza verse, which is my name for it.
I don't think it's your name. I don't think it's website. I'm good,
but I'm just gonna call it that. Yeah, it's all, it's all connected folks.
It's all part of the Steve Roza multiverse. Uh, but it's not only star Trek,
but stories like the Timothy Zo novels, uh, the Kathy tires books as well, uh,
that helped, uh, push you down this path. And by the way,
now that we're into the Steve saga, uh, Steve one here is just accidentally, uh,
planted an Easter egg for the origin story of Kathy tire's books, uh,
that we get to in our next episode, uh,
that'll be episode two of the Steve saga. So stay tuned, uh,
definitely pay more of your theater dollars for this ever expanding franchise.
In addition to making books, you are also helping to loan books. Uh,
you are the director of the public library there in Wyoming, uh,
which leads us to, uh, chapter one here.
Why do public libraries still matter in an internet age? Uh,
we want to talk about, uh, the public library as an idea,
as a resource that Christians can still enjoy. Uh,
despite some controversies going on, uh,
I view the public library is still an instrument of God's common grace.
What's your take on that, especially when, well,
I can just stay at home and order all my books from Amazon,
or maybe pirate books or get 'em for free,
or why do we still need public libraries?
Part of it is that sometimes you have people like me who as much as I think
eBooks are a good thing, and it's really handy that people can read them.
I just can't read eBooks. It's a weird, weird thing. It's not,
it's not that they're not good because the same story to me,
I can read it in paperback and love it, but I try to read it in the ebook form.
I just can't,
I don't know if it's a concentration thing or what it is because I could read
blogs and shorter things all day. Just something about the way I'm wired.
I it's gotta be a paperback for me and it's not even like a philosophical
difference type of thing. It's just a, yeah. Something about I start doing,
I'm like, ah, I can't pay attention or I get,
I don't know if I get distracted or what,
but when it's a book I can really hunker down and dive into it.
So I think there's still a lot of people who are like that.
Another thing to consider too,
is that as good as eBooks are there really isn't it
really, from what I can tell hasn't supplanted children's books,
because with a lot of children's books, especially for early elementary age,
you know, they're those big wide format,
but thin ones where you pop 'em open and there's just gorgeous artwork and stuff
like that. Um, and good stories though, too, of course, but it's, you,
you can't really replicate that big open and on your lap with your kid format,
when it's on a device that tends to be the small,
unless you have a tablet that's like, you know, 15 inches wider.
or, or it's the, your 20, 35 and that eBooks have gone holographic,
but there the even then that would not be tangible.
Like you've got this hologram technology, uh, it,
it's not something you can touch.
It's not an object that takes up space that literally feels weighty and it adds
importance and significance to, uh, the joy of reading.
Right. And I think that's part of it for a lot of people too. And so, you know,
just, just anecdotally from our own experience at our small library in Buffalo,
Wyoming, up in the Northeast part of the state,
we have seen more of a shift to ebook and a decline in
regular book reading.
But the biggest decline really has been in non-fiction versus fiction.
Like our fiction stats for physical books are fairly steady.
They're not really spiking and they're not dropping either,
but non-fiction has been on a kind of steady decline, at least for us.
Interesting. Uh,
and it's not too surprising when we start looking into what kind of books you're
talking about, because really people are still reading biographies, history,
politics, things like that, books,
they aren't reading and used to read a lot of our craft books, cookbooks,
even self-help to some extent, those, I.
Feel like those are all things you can get on the.
Internet. Exactly. Exactly. Now you can get a biography on the internet,
but it's way it's still it's close enough.
I feel like to fiction in the storytelling sense
than something like that and how to book would be, if that makes sense.
It's more like the, the biographies and other things like,
and historical books have really leaned into telling it more like a narrative
story than a textbook mm-hmm , uh, to explain a little bit, uh,
Nathaniel Philbrick, if you've never read any of his history stuff,
I highly recommend his books. Um,
he's got some really good ones that I've used for inspiration on various things,
but again, it's, so we've seen that kind of shift. You know, we have seen,
especially in the past couple years with COVID more of a lean toward eBooks,
it's become a much bigger part of our circulation locally.
And part of that is just because, um,
about half of that circulation has been in audio. You know,
the audio explosion has really been something we've noticed too.
So I feel like it's,
I feel like it's one of those things where it's becoming a mix, you know,
eBooks have supplanted part of physical reading habits,
but not replaced all of it. And they probably won't replace all of it.
I think it'll just become another thing that libraries off or,
and it may vary where you are and what part of the country you live in and what
audience there is as to how much of it.
But I don't think it's gonna be at ever replace it kind of thing.
Yeah. That doesn't surprise me. That eBooks are, you know,
you find that a challenge. I I've read a lot of studies about this, that,
you know, with the physical book, you have a 3d sense of space, you know,
front to back top to bottom. And you can actually remember like your,
your brain can remember where in the book in like a 3d coordinate,
you read something, whereas with an ebook it's just a,
it's a flat 2d experience.
And so there's no sense of like where in the book was that thing.
And we actually remember things much more easily inaccurately from physical
books than with eBooks. And, you know,
I say this as someone who has hundreds of Kindle books , uh, and I,
and I love, I love having Kindles and that Kindle was the first, uh,
device like electronic device. I let my own kids have, cause I'm like, well,
all you can do is read a book on it. So that's fine by me. There you go.
But you know, it's, uh, it's funny to think now about,
we we've re reference this a couple times before there was this, uh,
viral commercial in the 1990s by at and T.
And it was kind of like predicting the technologies of the future.
And one of them it predicted was eBooks, but they didn't predict tablets.
They predicted like books that you download to a computer and not a personal
computer at home, but a computer in the library.
So it was really interesting how they, they couldn't imagine,
not only could they not imagine mobile devices,
they couldn't imagine people not going to libraries. And I always,
I look back on that now and I'm like, it's easy to kinda laugh at it,
but I'm like, no, I really like that. I, I like that.
Even 30 years ago people said, Hey,
the library is still gonna be part of our modern world.
And they were actually correct about that. I mean, my,
my wife takes our kids all the time to the library because of those children's
books that you'd mentioned. And because, you know,
a lot of times the children's books are really short. Sure. So it's like, why,
why would we, you know, buy 20 of these little, you know,
magic Treehouse books and we can just rent or sorry,
check out all of these books.
Well, and that's the other thing too, about the library aspect, like, you know,
even with the physical books and your access to the, the return on investment,
which is a goofy term, but yeah,
it makes sense compared to usually what your tax dollars are for supporting a
library is really, really good. I mean, in our, in our county where, you know,
in a lot of other counties where the library doesn't get a lot of tax money, uh,
I mean, you know, my property tax bill just came the other day.
And I think my share of the property tax bill for the library is like 17 bucks.
Hmm. For the year it's like, okay,
I go do one checkout and I've gotten my return on investment . So,
I mean, you know, think about people who check out,
even if you just check out a book a month,
12 books a year times the cost of whatever that would cost in an ebook and
whatever. I mean, you're probably earning some of that,
a good chunk of that back. Uh, and then, you know, of course, like you said,
families who get multiple children's books each time they come,
you're definitely getting a good deal on that.
Maybe that could become the new slogan of public libraries,
the library you're already paying for it.
That's something that our libraries have always pushed. Um, but you know,
the other thing too, is that, you know,
even on the book and circulation side of things,
I think one thing that people don't often think about, and I,
I know that other libraries have done a good job of pushing it, but, you know,
there's all these other things. And I don't mean extra programs,
but I mean like other services that libraries reside like in our small town,
if you need technical help with something that you can't figure out to do,
you've got either a computer shop with the owner and one employee who probably
wants you to pay for it,
or you can swing by the library and see if we can scan something and email it
for you.
Or if we can help you figure out how to get this form printed and downloaded.
Cause the rest of local government is not going to do that. It's just not their,
what they're supposed to do. Really.
So a lot of the visitors we get for help with other things,
even if they're not reading something, it's,
I've gotta scan and fax this document to get it signed for a real estate
thing. Or my bank needs this or the health insurance has to have this stuff.
So that's what we spend a lot of time doing too.
I must confess Steve.
I have not been to the public library in our area for quite some time,
but that's mainly a job hazard for me, uh, publishing Laura haven.com.
We get plenty of books. ,
we've had some physical copies mailed here and there,
but mostly just to simplify the review, uh, process, we do end up getting,
uh, those digital books. Oh yeah.
And I have often wondered a little behind the scenes here,
but I've often wondered does the act of reading them digitally cuz we want to
get them to the reviewer. Who's most likely to enjoy the book,
does this in some way, risk affecting the review because as Zach was mentioning,
it's an electronic copy. Uh, it doesn't take physical space. Uh,
you don't have these really abstract 3d coordinates in your head about where
exactly on the page, uh, you get to the Misty mountains, you know, there's,
there's almost a mimicry of 3d space, at least for a story. Uh,
and I, I don't think that for our review team members, um,
that's maybe me overthinking it. I doubt that they do.
But I have noticed though, like I, I can go between eBooks and physical books,
but I prefer the fiction in physical form. If I can get it.
I think that this does enhance the experience.
I think for a narrative similar to a biographies as y'all were mentioning,
I think the narrative does lend itself better to, uh, an object in 3d space.
Whereas I do a lot better if I'm reading eBooks,
I do a lot better if it's a nonfiction,
because now we're talking about theology or philosophy or something like that.
Like that to me, uh, takes a different side of the brain.
It's a different way of thinking than you would if you were going, uh,
from a point a to point B a narrative.
So that may be at least for some of us out there.
I'm guessing that that may be the difference.
But I do remember though going to the public library before eBooks, uh,
before a whole lot of internet and everything, that is how I discovered, uh,
the, uh, humor writer, Dave Barry, uh,
my library would just have several of his books.
I would just cycle through them. Uh, they also had Calvin and Hobbs books.
So before we bought our own, we could enjoy some of those at the library.
I also later in life, uh,
when I wasn't sure if I wanted to buy Harry Potter books, cuz you know,
they might still be evil after all. It was kind of taken a chance here.
You could get them from the public library. And when book seven came out,
I got in line to uh, read book seven.
I think I was the 37th place in line or something like that.
But I must have ordered 37 books, uh, because I got to mine pretty quickly.
And then we were talking earlier about star Trek.
That's how I got through a lot of these star Trek seasons. Oh nice. For the,
the streaming. I didn't wanna pirate it,
but you could go to your library and you could get the DVD copies, uh,
from deep space, nine seasons, one through seven. So that's how I first got to,
uh, to enjoy that series. And it just,
it just illustrates that although there may be controversies and you know,
the idea of libraries may get in the news, uh,
for different reasons that are controversial.
We'll talk about that in a little bit. Uh,
this is still a great tool that Christian families,
readers fans of any kind can enjoy, uh,
in order to engage with these stories as part of your community, uh,
rather than just as an individual and of course save some money doing it.
Cuz as you said, you're already paying for it. Yeah.
Exactly. One other thought about nonfiction books. So, uh, I saw this, uh,
this post the other day that went viral and I'm sure this guy got all this hate
mail. He's like, Hey pro tip. If there's a nonfiction book, you wanna buy,
just go to YouTube and type in the author's name and the title of their book.
And they've probably given a speech that like,
they've probably given a talk. That's the, you know,
the top points of their book book in 30 minutes or less and Hey,
you got that for free. There we go. I saved you a book purchase. I mean,
I'm like, okay. I wonder if that actually works. But if it does that,
that's either a brilliant life hack or that's uh, that's something,
but it won't.
Work for me. None of my speed just for my book or on YouTube,
you might get 'em at a homeschool conference here and there,
but not on the YouTubes.
Far as I know.
Well I.
Have to be a big author.
Yeah.
I don't really have a preferred format for nonfiction, but I,
my main thing is I like to take notes.
Like I'd like to take notes in the book with a pin,
which is a big no-no for libraries and yeah, we F all that can tell us your.
We frow on that.
I'm sure you've got some stories there.
somebody using a, uh, a burrito as a bookmark, that type of thing. Yeah.
Don't least we.
Have to ask. I remember that one. I've never, never seen the burrito one,
but you know, we there's a story. I always tell there's a,
there was a comic series cartoon called UNSF and it was a librarian and a
cartoon artist who were buddies and they wrote it and it's like most people who
would check it out or read it,
wouldn't really get the humor unless you've worked in a library. Oh,
it's for libraries. It's so spot on. It's so hysterical. But anyway,
they came to a conference of ours here in Wyoming back in like 2010,
I think is where I first met them and heard of them and bought their stuff.
They're like, okay,
we asked this question at every conference we go to for libraries in every
state,
what is the weirdest thing you've ever found as a bookmark and people would
throw up their hands and they're like, okay, now here's our question.
How many of you have found a strip of bacon as a bookmark and in the
back of the room, couple of the librarians from a bigger library,
their hands shot up and he go and they started laughing and we're laughing and
they go, every state we go to every library conference, including Hawaii,
somebody says they found bacon as a bookmark.
.
Regular, all Turkey.
And we're just like, we're like, wow,
what a way to ruin books and also waste bacon.
Right? Yeah. How, how would you leave that bacon uneaten? Like I hope.
That it's, but we've found, so we've found, uh,
the one that recurs the most that's odd is people will take out books about,
you know, scavenging scrounging for different kinds of mushrooms in the wild.
And we'll get the books back and there'll be mushrooms as bookmarks.
Oh, Ooh.
Which usually is okay, because they're really dried out.
And so they don't stain the pages. so, and yeah, so that's okay.
That's the funny one there every once in a while, let's see.
I used to occasionally get CD books in the big heavy cases. They'd come back.
You'd pop it open. There'd be unused cigarette in there. Oh,
like oddly specific. I know. I dunno why. I mean,
it's not like you're gonna save your place in there. That's very strange.
So that's the weird ones there.
The least favorite one that we have at our library is toilet paper.
Uh, so then, you know, it's.
Like, we know where you were. Yeah.
Yeah. That's there was a whole Seinfeld episode about that. And I remember.
Yeah, we don't, we don't like that one. That's the one where we start making,
like, you know,
if you walk by the front desk and you hear a library and making a fake vomit
noise, that's why we're doing it. And we're probably,
we're probably mocking you too more than likely.
We are just gonna throw that out there.
Let's break for a moment and go to our second sponsor for this episode. Uh,
this is a newcomer to fantastical truth, author candy, J Wyatt,
who has written a novel that she describes as et meets how to train your dragon.
Here's the covered description.
Harley will do anything to keep his new pal safe,
but a hungry dragon needs to eat.
And the government is hot on their tail Harley me's scene,
et and knows what the government will do to mythical creatures.
There's no way he's about to let his newfound friend fall in the hands of an NSA
agent. When the dragon starts setting fires and eating livestock,
or the choice may be taken from him,
STIA is only interested in filling her tummy and spending time with Harley and
his friends after all.
They're the ones who woke her and called her from her egg.
When the agent tries to capture her,
she's confined to the farm where she's safe, but without sufficient food,
she'll do anything to protect herself and Harley,
even if it means she'll go hungry on unexpected.
Adventure is the fun first book in the middle grade fantasy myth coast
adventures trilogy. If you like clean entertainment,
full of adventure and mischief, then you will love candy.
J Wyatt's unique trilogy,
et meets how to train your dragon in an unexpected adventure.
The audio book is narrated by award-winning narrator, Dave Cruz.
You can get that and the book and more information in our show notes for this
episode one eight,
or go to Laura haven.com/podcast sponsors.
Well, I love that there is a fandom for librarians, this UNS, shelved comics.
It's like the Dilbert of like it.
Is really is. And see,
I really associated with it because I am still the only
male employee in our library system in this comic Dewey.
You know, of course, it's little on the nose there,
but Dewey is the male librarian.
He's the only guy who works in the library except for the library of mascot who
never takes off his costume. We don't have one of those but that's he's.
Yeah. but anyway, he's and he's like the star wars fan.
There's a great strip in there that I keep threatening my coworker, my staff,
now that I'm gonna do someday, if we don't have enough people on,
he had skipped out on a staff meeting required one by being
sick at home. Well,
the joke turned out to be that everyone who came there had a meal together and
they all got food boys. So the next day he shows up and he's the only one there,
cause everybody's out with food poisoning. And normally in that situation,
you would just close the library and put a sign up and say, sorry,
health emergency, you know, thing like that. But this being a comic,
they played it as he had to run the library all day by himself.
So he goes out the front door where all the people are waiting and says,
thank you for the way. You know, we've had a, a bit of an emergency.
We're gonna do our best to serve today. But before anyone comes in,
I just want ask this question,
who was the captain of the Firefly class serenity?
And this guy in the back goes Malcolm Reynolds. And he's like,
you're the first one, the,
of the strip asking scifi fandom questions to determine
who the next person to use the library was.
And he was taking them one at a time . And so the boss is the next day,
the boss doesn't know any of this. And she's like, oh,
it's really great that you did this. And he's like, well, you know,
it was rough, but we made it work. He's like, I she's like,
I really appreciate it. But then she's reading the comment card and she's like,
why does this one say, well, worth the weight? He's like, oh,
I gotta go check the.
.
Just so, so I keep threatening. I gonna do that someday. I'd be like,
you have to answer next generation questions before you cover the door.
We'd have like three people.
We're gonna have to link to this in the show notes. That's a fantastic, uh,
yeah. Fandom like within a fandom.
There it is really.
So we've already set up chapter two of this discussion. Uh, Steve,
you've been talking about the general benefits of the public library and some of
the insanity that you've found at your public library,
helping direct your public library. How do you personally,
Steve help share great books at the library you direct,
and I guess we'll start with how you got into this field in the first place
because you and I both been in the past in local journalism mm-hmm
uh, but you moved from that into, uh, being a,
an employee at the public library and now director there in the Buffalo Wyoming.
Yep.
So I got fired and that's the,
that's the short version yeah. And went, hunting,
went hunting for a job and you know, the jobs at the time were like,
you could go work in the oil field to make a lot of money or you could work in
fast food or grocery store and make not very much money. And both,
those were kind of terrible and both.
Breezy too.
I fell in. Yeah. Right. I fell into this, um,
small mom and pop print store print shop where I learned like some of the old
offset press mechanical, electrical presses and stuff like that,
but also did stuff with, uh, InDesign and Corll draw and that kind of thing.
And that was for like a few months, but at the same time, a, uh,
part-time position opened up at the library and I'd volunteered at a small
community library back in Maine when I was still newspaper reporting. Um,
so I had a little bit of that and I was like, that would be kind of interesting.
It'd be fun. I mean, it's not gonna pay a real well,
but it could be a good end to get started on stuff.
Little did I know 15 years, 14 years later, whatever it's been. Um,
so I went and did the interview and at some point,
either right before the interview or after the director came back and said,
oh yeah, by the way,
this is now a full-time position with benefits and everything like that.
I'm like, well, super, um,
and the journalism thing actually helped because they saw that,
knew that about me, just from my brief stint at the paper here in town.
And they were like, well, uh,
we had a newsletter years ago and we dropped it because the newspaper used to
have a column where they'd have like library news. But then of course,
as the newspaper got smaller and squeezed more things out,
that was one of the first things to go. So they were going well,
we'd really like you to restart our newsletter. And so sure.
I don't know anything about that, but I'll try it. Why not? Um,
which is usually what I wind up doing with everything. So that's, that's how I,
how I write too. Um,
so I got into that and eventually that part of the career became doing the
technical services aspect,
which is actually processing and linking the books to get them into the
electronic system so they can be checked out by everybody. Um,
and then a few years ago,
my boss was ready to retire and she encouraged me to apply for her job.
So I did. And I got it.
So now fantastic. How long you been doing that now? Public library director.
Three years as of July 1st, so three years in change.
Okay. Okay. And what exactly does that job entail?
Like you've already mentioned, uh, finding, uh, you know,
pieces of toilet paper in the CD or the cigarette, the butts of the CDs,
but like, what are some of the benefits of, of, of the job?
Like what do you get to do sharing stories with readers? Well.
Yeah, as the, you know, as the director,
one of my primary roles is to oversee the book selection for the library,
what books we actually wind up ordering and paying for.
And also if books are donated, deciding whether we're gonna put those in or not,
um,
I give a lot of freedom to just because we've done this in the past and we've
come to trust their judgment. You know, our different children,
we have a teen librarian and a children's librarian and they select their books
and order 'em. So I don't vet every single one,
but I know enough of their judgment and we have enough conversations that I'm
confident in what they select for us to have in the library,
myself and my assistant director,
who has been our longtime front desk circulation person. We do the bulk of,
we do all of the ordering for adults, uh,
fiction and nonfiction there.
So really part of the job is I get these book catalogs and review catalogs,
and I read through 'em and find cool books that I wanna put in, um,
keeping in mind, primarily, not just what I wanna see,
but I know this author gets a lot of readers. I need to get the next book.
Um,
whether it's a popular series or whether it's somebody who releases a standalone
once every two or three years, but every time they do,
there's a big draw of readers. I'm like, okay,
I know I gotta get that one because the last time we did,
we had X amount of people who read it. Um,
so that's a good in heavy influence on things. Um, and again,
like I said, when people donate books, then my job is to just kind of see, okay,
first of all,
is the physical condition good enough to have here in the building is especially
if it's an older book or used one and then, okay,
is this gonna check out? You know, if I look at it and it's like, eh,
we don't hardly ever get anybody checking out this kind of book,
I'll probably just put it in the book sale,
but if it's on a topic or if it's by an author or similar to
an author that we've had a lot of popularity with, for example, if it's a,
like certain kind of cozy mystery or whatever, and it's like, oh,
we've had a lot of those checking out lately. This is a different author.
We don't have, let's give it a try. So we'll put it in, just see.
And some of it is really experimentation.
I don't think a lot of people realize that like sometimes when librarians pick
books, especially if it's a new book by an unknown author,
we're really just gambling.
Cause like we have no idea whether our local readers are gonna like it or not,
but we do have the experience again, of similar books.
So that's all we can really base it on. I mean, we can go on reviews somewhat,
but sometimes, you know,
a book is well reviewed and we put on the shelf and it just sits there other
times a book hardly has any reviews and we put it on there and it starts flying
off the shelf. So it's some of it you think,
you know how you're figuring it out and other times you're just like, uh,
I dunno, you know? Yeah. So, uh, that's, that's the highlight of that? I mean,
I also do budgeting stuff and general payroll,
um, some light janitorial work cause it's small library,
changing light bulbs, unclog and toilets, things like that, you know? Yep.
Getting bandaids for people who injure themselves, usually kids.
Paper cut, uh, emergencies. Yeah.
not too many of those.
.
Fortunately.
So you're kind of the curator then is what it sounds like. How do you handle,
um, when requests come in for new books that maybe you've never heard of,
is there like a threshold of certain number of requests or frequency of
someone requesting things? Like how do you kind of screen that?
So we don't have any sort of written threshold.
We have guidance in our policies for, um,
collection management,
which is several pages long and has all sorts of criteria.
But in terms of books, when somebody says, I'd like to have this book to read,
the first thing we try to do is we have an inner library loan system with all
the rest of the libraries in Wyoming.
So we can request it and have them read it.
Especially if it's something like really niche,
like a non-fiction book on some obscure topic, we're probably not gonna buy it.
Unless again, we know that other people have been reading similar topics and go,
ah, such and such might be, you know,
we're small enough that we can come up with like five names and be like, oh,
this guy and her and this other kid, they might like this book.
So we should get it. Um, with fiction though,
I I'm pretty, I dunno if libertarian is the right word for it.
Maybe pretty libertarian about books when people request. And if somebody says,
I wanna read this book, can you please buy it for your collection?
And it's newer. That means if it's newer,
it's harder for us to borrow it from another library.
Because with the inner library loan system,
they usually informally restricted to when it's three,
four months old or so they won't send it to you because they're leaving it for
their local area, their county to have it first. Um,
so a lot of times when it is a new book, I'll just be like, you know what,
to me, that's at least one guaranteed circulation.
And most times it is in a similar genre to something I know somebody else is
reading anyway. So I figure it's worth the gamble to buy it, put it in.
And I know at least one person's gonna check it out.
So then that might go to somebody else, checking it out as well.
So I'm usually willing to make that bet. But in terms of,
you know,
we don't have a limit on we'll only take X amount of suggestions or donations
this year. Sometimes we just won't because of money reasons.
And again, others,
it might just be that it might be too obscure of a book and we don't think
anybody else is gonna check it out. So it's kind of a judgment call that way.
It's, it's pretty fluid is the best way to describe it.
Steve,
I think it's helpful to remember that there are human beings who want to serve
their audiences working in the public library system.
And I think that that's important mainly because, uh,
as you may have known at least among some news outlets and pun trees,
there's been some negative press given to particular libraries.
And I think that that gets turned wrongfully.
So into this view of the public libraries altogether are
bad, or, you know,
you gotta keep your kids out of there and find the Christian alternative or
something.
And there may be some like larger libraries or libraries in particular regions
of the country where they may have a particular event that you don't wanna take
your kids to, and that maybe doesn't belong in the library,
but that's no tarnish of the entire concept of library or every single
library.
And that's why I appreciate the balance of recognizing that there is still
common grace in this idea, that reading is still good.
That community reading is still good. And that there are folks like yourself,
uh, your employees,
and many other libraries where the folks are just really genuinely trying to
serve the community. Uh, my wife grew up in a small town where she was,
you know, oldest child of a homeschool family.
And the public library was where they got their books.
They would just all go in there. They would walk out with stacks of books,
the librarians love them and lay, they loved them back. And I think to this day,
there's a public library out there in west Texas with a reading room named after
my wife's dad, uh,
nice who died tragically in the late nineties and was a beloved member of the
community. And you, you find just this,
this common space that to me represents what we are supposed to do as human
beings created by God, a few episodes ago,
Zach and I were talking about the movie theaters and the common grace and the
idea of showing up in a public space to enjoy visual storytelling together.
Well, the library is just the book version of that. Yeah,
it's even better if you're reading books together, you know, even, uh, finding,
you know,
little relics left over by the previous reader as a little bit of a human
connection there, you know, there is cause human beings,
can you be kind of gross and weird and just so long as you're not, you know,
putting pollution in the book or marking up the margins or anything like that,
uh, then you still know, Hey, this book was enjoyed by someone else. Uh,
I'm reading what someone else has read.
Like there's a fandom out there even if I've not met them. Uh,
but then there's also other ways that libraries promote this kind of community
reading. Uh, how does that work, uh, at the Buffalo library where you are.
Well, you know,
we try to put out different kinds of books on display, of course. And you know,
this is where a lot of libraries have run into some troubles because the books
they select put on display, basically, no matter what the topic is,
somebody else doesn't like it without getting too specific on things.
And we all know where that is, but it's,
I think people sometimes mistake the idea that because libraries
are putting out books on display means it's not necessarily that we like them.
Like we really try hard to divest our personal
opinions on books from the books that we have,
or the books that we put out on display. For example, you know,
we've gotta display out this week that my assistant director did.
That's all on things that are related to, because it's labor day weekend,
we put out books that are related to like the labor movement in general over the
years. And so we probably got like, you know, 16,
20 books that are out on this table with some American flag decorations and
things like that, you know, to draw people's attention to it. And.
Just the union story and all that. And union.
Story, the history of it, you know,
maybe some fiction books that revolve around unions and things that happen with
'em, things like that.
But it's not like we're passing a judgment call when we put that out in
particular on, we think unions are good, bad, and different, whatever.
It's like, this is what we have about 'em here. It is read it. If you want to,
you're not obligated to read it. If you don't like it,
you can kind of roll your eyes and keep moving on. Um,
so we're always trying to emphasize that we've got our books out there
for the public to read,
and we're trying to provide things for all segments of the
population to read,
because we don't know how many people in our community who have,
you know, like what percentage or of what mindset or things like that.
You really have no idea,
no matter what voting roles tell you and things like that.
And it's not our job to try to figure that out.
Our job is mostly to get the books that we think people are gonna like to read.
They check 'em out and read them. They hopefully bring 'em back to us.
That's the part we always have to work on so, yeah,
it's really this shared kind of community sense of we're we're in the community
and we're part of it.
And we're trying to get you what you want to read so that you can have this
experience of coming in and finding the thing you're looking for without,
and in most cases, you know,
emphasizing a little bit that you wouldn't have to go to the extra expense of
buying all these books you wanna read. That's something, we,
we talk about a lot too with the public.
It occurs to me that, uh, Christian, if you're trying to, uh,
read up on the opposition of public library would be the best place.
If they already have the book to, uh, read the book,
to know what's in it to understand what someone else who's different from,
you believes without actually paying for the book. So boycotters,
here's your chance.
Right? Use the.
Public.
Use the public library boycots come on.
Yes, exactly. Now you're not paying the author. Uh,
you've not given them the clicks. Uh, you've not, uh, given them the extra,
the extra, there you go.
Yeah. It's a good idea because there's,
there's a number of books that have been popular the last few years that I just
have no interest in reading. And yet, uh, I mean,
I've read tons of book reviews about some of these books.
I'm not gonna go into all that, but, but then I thought, well, at some point,
maybe I actually should read the book just to kind of hear the,
the author in his own voice or her own voice, uh, make whatever point it is.
But yes, I, I don't want to own these books. I,
I don't even wanna Kindle own the books, but, uh,
but it would be nice to, um, yeah,
actually get a copy and a library's a good way,
but I've even thought about this for, uh, a bunch of, no, there's, uh,
a number of novels that I have, like on my, you know,
Amazon wishlist where I'm like, okay,
I don't know if I'm actually gonna like this book.
I don't know if I wanna spend 10 or $20 on it.
I probably should put this on my library, you know, checklist or wishlist,
because, uh, if this book is kind of a let down, if it bombs, like,
I, I just don't want it taking up space on my shelf. I usually,
for the most part, I reserve bookshelf space for books.
I know I want to keep, or that I know I'm gonna want to read,
you know, multiple times or that yeah, I'm gonna want my kids to read. Or,
and so I, I think that's very much a good use for the library.
Speaking of science fiction,
let's jump over to our third sponsor for this episode. Uh,
bit of a robotic sponsor here. It is the novel lost bits,
just out this summer from prolific sci-fi author, Carrie NES,
friend of the podcast and our next sponsor. Here's the back cover description.
The last thing, K 4 0 4 remembers as a happy home with the human child,
L whose care is his primary purpose.
So when he wakes up in a landfill of toss away technology,
his only thought is to reunite with his family.
This world is not his own though. It's a wasteland of Des buildings,
flying metal discs and monstrosities that keep themselves active by stealing
another bot's power. How did the world get this way?
And why was he discarded hampered by imperfect memory and obsolete body and
limited battery life 4 0 4 sets out to find his home joined by other castaways.
He faces off against scavengers and monsters only to encounter greater threats,
pursued outsmarted, and manipulated on every side,
4 0 4 teeters on the brink of annihilation. His only choice of survival,
those bits of himself, the connections he hasn't lost,
we reviewed lost bits.
And we said that it boldly leads fans out of dead wastelands,
exploring the nature of humankind through the lenses of a human creation.
That's an excerpt from our fuller lo Haven review will put those links in the
show notes as well as purchase links for lost bits,
which I understand is also coming out in audiobook pretty soon.
Just go to the show notes for episode 128 or go to the top of
thePage@laurahaven.com slash podcast sponsors.
So here's a question though that I, I,
it might be going through our listeners mine right now.
You mentioned kind of different books that get promoted or kind of spotlighted
during different seasons of the year. Um,
is there ever a chance for like Christian books, whether fiction or nonfiction,
you know, depending on the season, uh, to get the spotlight?
Well, I think it really depends on the library.
And so here's the thing, when it come,
we've come up with guess a little bit ourselves, because, you know,
as a library in a conservative state, in a rural area,
we've had complaints about some of the books and the thing we always lean on is,
you know,
it's a bit ironic because some of the argument comes from the it's
less of the, I don't want my kid to read this, or it's the,
I don't want anyone to read this. Yes. And so it's like, okay, well, look,
you know, I can commiserate from a personal
position as to how you're feeling about that. But I, again,
when it comes to reading books, I'm pretty libertarian.
And I think anybody should be able to read any book they want to.
And so when you come to a library, a library position like that,
when we have people who are complaining about,
I don't think you should have a book with X kind of thing, and it it's too bad,
you don't have more books that have say a Christian perspective like that.
My response always then is I try to put some in there,
but also I don't know about all of 'em. So I need you to suggest them to me.
And this is something we try to build too, with the community of,
I understand you don't like this particular kind of book, probably it's not for,
you might be for somebody else, but if you have a book that you like,
that is from a Christian perspective,
I would like to know about it so that I can put it in because I'm hearing from
them that they know people who would wanna read it. And for me,
just from a cold, hard facts, point of view,
that's more circulation numbers for my library.
So the trick is that we try
not to do displays necessarily of specific
ideological or religious or spiritual events.
So for example, it's kind of hard for me to do a display and say like,
these are the clean reads necessarily.
Now we make up lists for parents and kids and say,
if you're a kid and your family has a set of values where you want to avoid
some of the things that are showing up, especially in teen books lately,
here's some suggested areas. We can look, come ask us.
We've got some really good suggested ones for you,
but I can't really set aside an area that's like just the clean reads versus
the not clean reads. Mm-hmm um, now as for setting up displays,
you know, I've never actually thought about that before,
because most of our displays tend to be pretty. What's the word agnostic,
I guess you could say, like the only real display, uh,
I think that has any, uh,
real specific political or cultural bent that we
do is we'd usually do a display during black history month.
That's the only one I can think of the rest of them are pretty, you know,
like at Christmas time we have Christmas books out at Thanksgiving,
we have Thanksgiving books out labor day, you know,
we did the labor day display. Yeah. Um,
a few weeks ago when we had our primaries,
we did a display about elections and like anything about elections,
even like bare bones, kind of didactic history books to, uh,
fictional, uh, movies that involve elections and things like that. So,
so I hope that answers your question a little bit. It's not like we can't do it,
but like with most everything else in life,
when you bring religion and faith into it, it gets a lot messier.
Oh.
Sure. And I'm of the I'm of the opinion that libraries should try to be as
agnostic as they possibly can. Mm-hmm now, again,
having a display that's like, you know,
talking about elections because elections are important and vital to the running
of the country. That's something you could take a stand on and, you know,
put it out there like that.
I also think some of it has to be reading your audience a little bit because
while I won't avoid a book because of content, I might not get it.
If I don't think anybody's gonna read it.
Mm.
Yeah. And that's, again, part of our judgment call process of, you know,
if I've heard a lot of people in the community grumbling,
and let's say we have a book with a similar topic that never gets checked out,
and then that author writes a new book. That's raised some controversy.
I'm probably not gonna get it just because the other book hasn't checked out.
I mean, it's not, I really try to be as just cold,
hard factual as I can yeah. About that stuff.
So it's not seen as taking sides one way or the other.
Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm, I'm totally with you here about there.
There's a vast difference between,
I don't want to see here or read this to no one should be able to say or
write this, you know, topic. I don't agree with that ideology or that,
that mindset either because it can always be used against you.
It's like creating a monster and then losing control of it.
And then it turning on you and devouring you. I think that's just never a good,
you know, mindset to have. But at the same time, I, I think what distresses,
a lot of Christians now is like, when I go, and this is more a bookstore thing,
but like there, there's a very popular bookstore in town where, um,
during June it, the entire front of the store was pride month Uhhuh.
Um, during October, the entire front of the store was witchcraft.
And not like cutey little Halloween stories, but it's like,
here is how does summon demons like how two books? And it's just like the.
Thing they said Harry Potter was.
Yeah.
Actually, right. Actually this is the actual yeah. Uhhuh. Well, then.
That is that's religious. That is literally an endorsement of a,
of AISM of religion. Right. Right.
Now, see if that was me and it, we,
we were working in a library and it wasn't me in charge and we had to display up
about witchcraft. I'd be all like, well, you've got one religion up.
Let's have let's them all. Yeah. Let's have a display like Catholicism,
let's have one on Evangel evangelical crazy.
Easter and Christmas.
Yeah.
, it's gonna be, it's gonna be nuts. So that's why, again,
that's one of the reasons that we don't do that because then you just open up
this whole box full of everything.
You'd have to display to treat it as fairly as you could.
Yeah.
Well, you mentioned too, Steve, the practical considerations behind this.
I mean, you're not just there. I mean, I'm sure that, uh,
even in a larger city or a, you know, more liberal area or whatever, I mean,
there's lots of practical considerations. There is this book, uh, circulating,
you know, what's our budget, uh, what are the needs of the community,
which books are getting borrowed and which are not what's, uh,
gathering cobwebs on the shelf. I mean,
I'm sure that among some librarians as anywhere,
there's some ideological crusading going on and certainly the worst cases of
those, uh, tend to rise to the top and then they get in the news.
But I think it helps Christians to steal man this whole scenario and understand,
uh, the best points there,
which are the ones you're articulating is that there are practical
considerations here. Right. And among those is the, uh, you know,
the snowball effect of, well, if we put together,
try to put together a list or a display of clean reads,
someone's still going to object to that. And.
And by the same token, can somebody come up to me and be like, okay,
you've got clean reads. Why do you not have a list of dirty reads, dirty.
Reads? Yes.
so, I mean, it sounds funny. Yeah. But you could to,
I could totally see it happening and then I'd be like, okay,
well I guess I gotta do some.
Dirty reads, realistic books.
Basically war.
And some six. Yeah.
Man. It's not the young people who are reading 50 shades of gray. No,
just gonna throw that out there.
That's uh, we ought have a whole episode sometime. Like how,
how did you deal with that whole thing and what what's going on with that now?
That would be interesting.
Okay. Well, I mean, just as a quick side note, when 50 shades of Greg came out,
we just treated it. I, I wasn't in charge at the time, but the,
my director just treated as another book, just, you know,
just went out in the normal bookshelf with all the rest of the books and
everybody knew what it was. And it's like,
but that's kind of how a lot of it gets treated. Yeah.
Really is. You try to, I mean,
I know that the content of books is changing a lot over the past,
especially the past 10, 20 years. But the problem for libraries,
I think has been,
what role do we play in determining what content other people get to see? Right.
Because in the past it wasn't a problem because the publishers were,
and I hate to use the word, but the publishers were really self censoring,
themselves, self censoring, the publishers aren't, they're kind of,
it's like every, anything can go now.
So the question then is how the library fits into that. It's like, yeah,
you don't like that. This book has this stuff in it, but we didn't write it.
We didn't publish it.
We're providing the access in case somebody wants to read it.
Cause they might like the author,
or maybe it's a popular publisher or something like that.
The fact that the content has changed and be kind of dialed up.
That's a thing it's like, well,
how much of that is the library's responsibility to police?
And most libraries are gonna come back with a, it's not our job to police it.
Right. It's a right.
It's out there and we're the content provider to use a more modern yeah.
Term. Well, and, and there's a difference between a library making, uh,
a library, providing access to these books that are controversial or,
or whatever, versus a library that is outwardly promoting them, you know,
and making it on in, in the spotlight like this bookstore I went to.
But I think that the challenge here for Christians is that we have to,
the only way to defeat bad ideas is with better ideas. Yeah. The,
the only way to displace bad stories is with better stories.
And so it's really a call for Christians and,
and others to step up and say, you know what?
I can't stop people reading this book.
I'm gonna write a book or promote a book that is sort of the counter to this
and, and maybe a, a direct counter or like more of a subtle counter.
And I, I think that this is, uh, a lot more work.
It's a lot harder and I, I think that's why the temptation is, oh,
I just wanna get rid of that book. And you know,
it it's just not ever gonna happen. I think,
especially as we said at the beginning,
we're in the internet age where people don't even have to go to the library.
Exactly.
It's not like the library is the only place people are going to access books
that we don't, uh,
prefer books that we don't like books that we wish no one would write or read,
but we, you know, we have to sort of step up and, and create the culture that,
that we wanna see take shape.
Yeah. I think it goes back to actually the theme of our last episode here on
fantastical truth, 127,
about a code of honor for Christian groups that you'd need to follow the code of
honor in the space that you're in,
not necessarily the space that you wish it would be. Uh,
and that's why I think it is so necessary for Christians, Christian fans,
especially to pray for Christians who are working in the public library, uh,
trying to reflect common grace there, if not the specific grace of the gospel,
you're still reflecting the common grace of, you know, curating books,
finding the best ones, uh, running a budget, uh, all of those sorts of things,
managing employees, scrubbing the toilets every once in a while,
pulling the toilet paper out of they return books.
All of that stuff is part of the calling. Uh,
if you're looking for more specific Christian books or what you'd call clean
reads, I prefer the term wholesome, uh,
because it's more substantive than absence of content. Uh,
if you're looking for those,
then the location for that a to be the church library,
if you can get one. Yeah. Uh, we talked about that in episode 117 about,
uh, people, individuals, uh,
needing to build a fantastic lending library and possibly, uh,
going to your church and being able to do that, to serve your faith community.
So there's a specific need there. Uh, the code of honor, as it were,
is a little bit different for a public library, but Zach, you mentioned, uh,
the need for more new stories, uh, to help, uh, show, uh,
more biblical truth or clean reads or whatever you believe in the market,
because this really starts with reader demand. Uh,
you can't just go to the library and, you know,
make all the demands of them maybe necessarily once in a while.
But if the readers want it, it's gonna be an uphill struggle for you.
But that leads us then to chapter three of our discussion, Steve,
about your stories that you've been making for quite some time now,
dozens of titles, and you can see every last one of them in our link,
in the show notes, what leads you,
Steve Raza to create so many fantastical story worlds, uh,
starting with the face of the deep series way back in the two thousands I've
moving on from that universe to many, many others.
Uh, you know, my brain just won't shut up.
in fact, uh, Steve Raza, we've been watching him.
He has actually finished a new novel while we were recording. Uh,
he just started it from the very beginning and I think he's writing me up a blog
now.
maybe a short story, but, uh, no, really. Um,
yeah, it's just this, I, I don't even know how to describe it.
My brain just constantly churning on these different things I wanna play with.
I mean, like there are literally, you know,
I've got notes written down on my bolts and board and stuff.
They're literally like six or eight more books just sitting there
that I would hope to eventually do, but I'm probably not gonna do anytime soon,
maybe more. And it's like, you know,
sometimes things are just snippets of ideas and others are a little more fully
formed when they appear in my brain. But, um, yeah,
I don't know. It's kind of hard to, it's hard to explain. I mean,
I I've joked with some people that yes, I understand writer's block,
but I don't understand idea block cuz I can, I can get stuck writing something.
Absolutely. But when it comes to coming up with another idea, it's not, it's,
it's just a weird, weird thing. It's it's really full up here. It's really full.
Well, somehow Steve,
we've managed to be booth neighbors of the last several real makers conferences,
right. Uh, even in Atlantic city, uh, just a month or so ago,
but I'm sped on your brother and I see you like writing on stuff,
using your word processor, Uhhuh, like in the middle of crowded rooms.
I don't know how you do that. Cause I,
I need a special sacred space with my music in my headphones.
Like I need that in order to try to write a novel,
but you just seemed always to have, uh,
have certain sectors of your brain, uh,
devoted to that task space. And, um, I'm an admiration of that.
And it's resulted in not just the face of the deep series, which is your,
which your sci-fi series. Uh, but you've also got, uh,
some paranormal investigators going on.
Now you got some steampunk fantasy going on, uh, vent, chin, mercury, hail, uh,
the mercury on or in, or, you know, mercury preposition,
something is the title structure there? Yes. Is that seven or eight books now?
That's kinda, it's serious.
It's four novels and three novels.
Okay. Okay. So yeah, so you can get that.
And what is that about if you can just give a quicker pitch? Yeah.
Mercury is like just this mish mash.
I think Zach was asking me what kind of inspired mercury at the beginning there,
and really, you know,
it's this bizarre combo in my head of reading things like the Harry
Dresden series and monster hunter international that I mentioned by, you know,
Jim butcher and Larry KARE, respectively,
but also watching things like the XFiles and of course,
agents of shield and the Marvel universe that I'm constantly consuming.
All of that mish mashed up is kind of what informs me when I'm doing
this series. I mean, it is frankly,
especially agents of shield because the whole way of how you fit this stuff
around a real world or whatever is always intriguing to me. Um,
and you know, it's, it's been a really fun series because it's,
it's only most of it,
vast majority is only first person only from his perspective.
So it's all just like you're in the character's head all the time. And really,
I mean,
I'm just pulling a lot of things about my own bearing levels of sarcasm
thing and injected into this guy, uh, you know,
our respective love of pizza and things like that, but yeah, that's,
that's kind of how it got formulated. And so you've, you've got this guy,
this young guy who basically is working for this secretive
foundation that by day does all sorts of good things in the community,
but by night has him on staff to go slay these monsters that show up.
And the whole gist of the series is that as things pick up and accelerate and
these, uh, dimensional riffs or whatever, becoming more and more, uh,
frequent and dangerous, he's kind of transitioning from,
he sort of goofs off most of the time, but he takes it somewhat seriously to,
he's getting more and more responsibility,
more and more things it's getting to borrow, uh, back to the future.
It's getting heavy and you know,
he's gotta take more responsibility for himself than for other people then for
like the organization itself. And yeah, it's a lot more on his plate.
He's just gotta step up to, uh, prevent various world disasters.
But I also, like,
I love things where you get the chance to show super powered individuals doing
things that are just kind of goofing off with their powers.
Like I was not above him using his weapon, the P artist, Dave,
to heat up a slice of pizza when it was too cold and you know,
other characters who are the serious characters are appalled that he's like,
whatever.
That's a, that absolutely would happen.
Yeah. It would happen. That's what I like about doing it.
Well, going back in time, he started off with the face of the deep series. Yeah.
Uh, which is of a genre. That to me still seems increasingly rare.
Now we were talking earlier about star Trek, which is atheist in space. Uh,
some people would say that star wars is, uh, kind of Buddhist in space. Yeah.
Sort of.
Little bit. Yeah. Now Carrie needs our friend Carrie needs, uh, for a while he,
he been having some Muslims in space and then of course,
Amish vampires and zombies and wear wolves in space, Uhhuh ,
but you've written one of the few stories that is Christians in space,
which is the face of the deep series.
And I personally resonate so hard with that because I love me some stories about
Christians in space and perhaps someday will find out more about that.
But I enjoyed those books because you've got this far future. I mean, it's,
it's hundreds or thousands of years in the future where knowledge of the Bible
has just been kind of lost. And then you have one young man, uh,
Baden who in the words of at least one version of the back cover picked up the
wrong book and that launches this whole space adventure. It was an initial, uh,
really a two part novel, uh, from the predecessor of enclave publishing, uh,
which is the previously known as marcher Lord press. Uh,
how did that story come about? Like what inspired that,
where you write a type of book that I just don't see that often.
You know, I really do think it was a mix of, like I said,
coming outta college and reading, uh, the Tim these on books,
which is where I discovered those.
And then sometime right at the end of college,
or right when I got out was when Kathy tire's books came out.
And as I started working on an idea for a space opera series,
I had been reading Chris Wally's lamb among the earth.
So as I had done that,
I'd known I wanted to do something Christian related because I'd actually
written a novel while I was in college.
And then self-published it right after college. It's not very good,
but it was okay. I mean, it's okay. You know, it's not terrible,
but it's not great either is like, all right.
But that was really my first experiment with do it because I wanted to do
something Christian related like that. And then as I was doing that,
I kind of stumbled onto these other two. I was like, wait a minute.
This could actually be maybe legit. It really do.
So I spent several years working on that series and kind of putting these themes
into there. Um, and you know,
it was funny because it was a really slow going thing because I had been working
in the journalism field. And so I was constantly constantly writing, writing,
writing everything,
and then I got home and you don't wanna write for the rest of day.
Cause that's what I just did all day work. I don't wanna do. Yeah.
I'm sure you could commiserate with that. But I,
so I had probably about the first third of what would eventually become those
two books done when I lost my job then within nine months of that
is when I finished the rest. So just virtue of,
I was no longer doing that. It was just this kind of freedom of, you know,
it was very clearly God being like, okay,
now that you're done complaining and whining about the fact that you lost your
job, here's what you need to do with that. I'm like, oh, he's like Uhhuh.
Let's see. So, and then, um, you know,
I tried the traditional route of sending it out to some agents and some
publishers, but I was really new.
I'd done like no research at all on the proper way to do it other than reading a
few books. And, uh, some of which at our library, ,
I kind of stumbled upon marcher Lord press and had
submitted it. I got to note back, actually,
not too far off this time of the year. I think it was like July.
I was on vacation actually in New Jersey ocean city, same place.
I was going to this year before real makers and got the note back from the
publisher saying, Hey, we'd like to publish this book years, but it's too long.
So we're cut it in half and have it books and me not knowing anything. I'm like,
well, I didn't realize that people didn't like cliff hangers. I, you know,
rookie mistake. But all I heard was instead of one book,
you'll have two I'm like, okay, sure. yeah. So.
So they, they do gotten ahead of the game of a splitting of the book into yeah.
Two parts in order to maximize. Yeah.
And so then from there, you know, I did, I did the broken site,
which was a follow up to that. And then after that, you know,
with different various things that happened, I started just kind of going, well,
maybe I can write some other things that aren't base opera.
Maybe I should try some other things. So then I did the, uh, the SAR brothers,
the steam punk, couple of books there. Um,
I tried my hand at fantasy and I have to give credit to carry needs for
encouraging me to do first person writing because I never would've done it.
If he hadn't pushed me to do that. He's like, your writing's really good.
You should do first person. Yeah. You.
Really likes the first.
Person. He does. He's really good at it. And uh,
so a lot of kudos to him for encouraging me to do that because that really
impacted, obviously impacted my writing going forward from there. Uh,
and so then from there,
it just kind of spiraled because I would just kept kind of trying new things and
people would ask me if I was interested in writing new things and my default
reaction was okay,
so it's like those stereotypical movies or TV shows you see where the character
who never says yes to things starts saying yes to everything. ,
that's how I wound up.
It's so Jim Kerry movie.
I yeah. Yes. Oh yes, man. There you go.
The best maybe.
Our best role model. Yeah. Right.
Well, I love the first book of the face of the deep series. Um, you know, it's,
it's sort of like Fahrenheit 4 51 in space with the.
Whole, that's.
A good way to put it kinda a whole space opera, military sci-fi intergalactic,
uh, conflict happening. So, um,
that was fun and I I've recommended it to a lot of people, um,
because it's sort of like, Hey,
did you know that there are Christian sci-fi books out there? And that, uh,
that, that take both of those words seriously. And, and so ,
it, it's a great book. I totally recommend it.
Thanks. And they sell really well at the homeschool conferences too. Uh,
Steve and I have been at, uh,
some of those events and folks will enjoy them a lot, you know, especially,
I mean, it's a very homeschool, friendly premise. It's,
it's somebody finds a lost copy of the Bible in space.
And also there's a lot of spaceships and wars and lasers and Mexico and things.
Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's definitely something that is a, it is a,
is a good solid pitch there. Uh, it, it's also, I would say, uh,
interestingly Steve, on your website,
and if people go to that link of the show notes, they'll see in your repertoire,
uh, you've grouped the books that you've written under PG stories. Yep.
As well as PG 13 stories, which I say found interesting. And.
That leads me that's because I learned about audience.
.
Yes. Well, this.
Is just part to find your way along, you know, you're, you're,
you're out in space, you know, you're hauling cargo around. And then, uh,
every once in a while, it's just difficult to, uh,
get a hold of a lost book and some lost information like that. But, uh,
somehow you've managed to pull it off anyway.
And so you've got PG stories and you also got what you've labeled is PG 13,
which includes the deception fleet series where you actually have a co-author
and I'm less familiar with that, I must say.
But it's one of those instances where somebody else comes along,
who's got like this whole sci-fi universe,
like military sci-fi they've put together a, what is that series about?
So a guy named Daniel Gibbs, he wrote a series called I,
I think it's called echoes of war. I hope I'm not,
that's either the name of the first book or the name of the series, I forget.
But basically he's written what he calls the, um, Tarn diaspora books,
which is basically like the best summary of it is that it's like base
Christians and Judeo-Christian faith versus space
communists. That's the best way I can put it summary. It's a really big,
huge I'm there, I'm there huge expansive world. So you have the,
you have the Terre coalition,
which is basically the Terre coalition is an Alliance of Christian
Jewish and Muslim faiths in this one
coalition of planets or whatever. Uh, pretty tightly tied together.
It's not like a loosey goosey Alliance. And then you have the league of soul,
which is basically like hardcore communist socialist,
whatever took over the rest of that area space.
And they've been at war for a while.
Do you have different things going on like that?
So he has this seven book series, which explores the war itself. Um,
he also has a side series that he had co-authored with somebody else that is
kind of like, uh, it goes alongside that series.
And it's about this group of independent systems who aren't ruled by anybody
and either of those two big nations and how they figure into the war and help
out and things like that. Um,
he had actually put out a request a couple years ago
about, Hey, look, I'm looking to expand this.
I'm looking for another co-author so we can write some more. And me of course,
being like, yeah, sure. I don't have anything else to do.
I guess was was like, there's the eyeroll insert there. Um,
I kind of talked to him. I like, well,
cuz I had written a co-written a book before,
but this co-writing was very different.
It's more of once we get the first book planned out and done together, I mean,
I basically just wrote the whole thing and he signed off on it.
Now the first book was a lot of heavy, you know,
I'd send him chapters and chunks of it and he would say, no, don't do that. Yes,
do this. No, that's not how I like character react. Yes, that's correct.
That's how that character react, et cetera, et cetera,
getting the technical terms. Right. Um, getting more of the military,
uh, protocol. Right. Which I'm happy to say.
I didn't completely goof up in the face of the deep,
but I still didn't get exactly right. Either because he corrected a bunch.
It which always learning deception fleet is like a,
it's basically like Tom Clancy's op center to it.
If anybody's familiar with that series,
you've got a small team of military and civilian spies
or agents doing these top secret missions while
you're also seeing like a bit of the politics behind the scene with the
president and his cabinet.
And you're also seeing the other military aspects like their stealth ships and
the missions they run and the main ship, the, uh,
CSV Oxford, which is like the spy base ship. Um,
kind of like the disguise ships,
the us military used for signal interception and things like that. Um,
and so it all kind of fits together into this covert action, um,
spy, world political intrigue thing. So it's like a cold war that's going on.
There's not a, the war is over the treaty sign. The enemy's defeated,
but there's still a lot of sneaky stuff going on around there.
And so really the deception fleet series follows this team of five operatives
and their interactions with each other. And you know,
there's different threads like the main character and his conflict with his
family, especially with his parents and you know,
running their family homestead back on the planet when he's always off and away.
Uh, the female spy, who's one of his good friends. Um,
there's this whole thread about, this is one thing I did differently,
the thread of their friendship, like their friend, their pals. And so, you know,
it feels like there might be some hints that there's, you know,
the stereotypical developing into romance,
but I'll leave it UN spoiled as to how that all shakes out with his personal
relationships and things. So I tried to play things a little differently. Um,
yeah, so it's just a different story world,
but the reason I have it under the PG 13 thing is Dan is very much of the
opinion of on the one hand.
He doesn't wanna shove a lot of gratuitous things in just for gratuitous sake.
But on the other hand, as somebody who's dealt with the military a lot,
he knows that the military in general, lots of people swear a lot.
So we didn't do that with these,
but it's not completely stripped out either. So that's why I say PG 13.
There is,
I mean really the biggest difference between that and my other books is there is
some of that profanity in there, but it's really based on the situation.
So if it's a really intense battle and things are going on and people are dying,
you might see some of those. If it's a Strat,
if it's a strategy session between several people,
you're probably gonna see hardly nothing.
And it really varies throughout the series.
So that's why I have that caveat on there.
That, that brings us back to the beginning. Now,
should there be rating systems in libraries for library books?
yeah. Maybe that's a whole other episode.
I, I just wanna know what it's like for Steve being a library director.
And then also knowing that he's writing some of the books that you may be
borrowing from your local library. I mean, you get,
you've got a double life there, but it's just completely out in the open,
like Ironman.
Yeah. Right. Basically like here's my address. No, it's pretty fun. Uh,
you know, sometimes people just commit. It'll be like,
I haven't read in your books yet. What should I start with? And then I'm like,
oh gee, wow. Uh.
Well it depends on your personality. Right.
So do I have, I mean, you've heard me talk to people at real baker. So I'm like,
well, what do you wanna read? What do you like to read? Do you like space opera?
If you don't like space opera, don't look at these books.
If you like smart mouth monster fighting guys, look at these books down here,
that kind of thing. And if you like.
Monotheist versus communist, go look at me inside it's space.
Yeah. It's like, do you like, and then I go, well now I go like, okay,
do you like your space opera? More like star wars or like star Trek?
And they're like, oh, kinda like, you know, I like battle star galactic.
It's like, okay, well you want deceptive fleet then it's like, oh,
but I really like lighthearted star wars. Like, okay,
you want the face of the deep? It's kinda fun like that. But I mean, yeah.
I do have some interaction with people when they come in. Sometimes,
sometimes they're just finding out that I have books other times they're like,
Hey, you know, I've never read your stuff before.
What would you recommend for way to read?
So it is really kind of bizarre because I'll be talking about other authors and
then I'll be talking about me and kind of have to remember not to refer to me
and the third person ,
don't don't wanna get that Seinfeld level of weirdness going on.
well,
I know that one of my wife's favorite books of yours is for us humans.
Oh yeah. That's one of my.
Uh, enclave. So also plan an Easter for, uh, our next guest here. Uh,
the Steve saga, uh, I wanna, I want a quick pitch of, for us humans,
cuz you've got humans and aliens and a little, uh,
Christian philosophy and stuff going on there. And I wish to stress that in,
by my definition, Steve, everything you write is Christian fiction,
whether or not it would be labeled that way because you are the Christian hidden
in plain sight. Even if the characters are not, uh,
acting or professing in that way. But for us, humans goes a little bit, uh,
as he said, it gets a little heavier, get goes a little deeper,
but also has this, uh, kind of whimsical story of aliens living among well,
us humans.
Yeah. So with, for us humans,
it's an alternate version of our timeline.
The biggest difference being in 2001, roughly, uh,
the aliens showed up and instead of the normal conquest thing,
they kind of were like, look, I played a little bit off of, uh,
Hitchhiker's guy to the galaxy instead of blowing up earth to build a highway
they're they show up and are like, look,
your system is at a really sweet spot to build our corridors that we use our
portals that we use for, uh, warp driver, whatever. And they're like, I mean,
we'll just kind of absorb you as like this kind of second rate protector into
our empire. We don't really care what you're doing here, but you know,
we got some rules and we'll pay you too.
It's just kind our leasing fee or whatever.
So it's like more of a cause I thought about it.
I'm like all these alien invasion stories,
the aliens show up and wanna destroy wreck things even while they supposedly
want our real estate. And I'm like, well maybe the aliens just are, you know,
more practical and are willing to pay for things cause and humans of
course are like, Hey money. That's great.
And so that was really the end joke there for that one.
So the story itself takes place probably about,
I think it's like 15 years later, the aliens have been there for a while.
So it's all just normal. Nobody thinks it's weird.
And I think one of the first scenes I have is while the main character who is an
art recovery specialist who hunts down stolen paintings and sculptures and
things like that and gets him back, um,
he pulls up to a place and he grumbling because there's the handicap parking
access spot,
but right next to it's two or three spots where only the aliens can park.
Cause they're social hierarchy a little bit up above the humans now it's like,
Ugh, great. Those guys. Um, you know,
just cuz humans like to complain about things too.
I see this happening a little intersectionality with, uh, with aliens there.
Wow.
So it's, it's funny because you know, we have,
it really turns into this buddy cop thing at its heart. That's what it is.
You know, you've got the hero who is a,
this undercover art recovery specialist and you've got an alien who does a
similar kind of job for the alien empire and they have to team up to get back
this sculpture that's of huge cultural significance to one of the races that is
like the big cheese at the top of the, um, alien empire there.
And this leads of course,
to the weirdness part of it and the philosophical part of it,
which is that the human is best described as a backlit Christian who's just down
on himself.
And the alien is really intrigued by all this Jesus stuff and wants to know
more, which of course the human doesn't wanna talk about at all.
And so that's where most of your conflict is. Mm. Um,
and I did mess with a lot of, I put a couple things in there about like,
you know, trying to hypothesize on the impact of that on Christianity.
And I went pretty hard on it in terms of, I was of the opinion,
maybe cynically that you would see a lot of people drop their faith,
like a hot potato. And on the one hand I may have been wrong about that.
But on the other hand,
I have practical experience and personal experience with people literally
leaving a church because they didn't like things like banner decorations or the
pastor's attitude when he preaches. So to my mind, I was like,
if people have left churches because of what we consider little stinky,
things like that,
how much more would some people who maybe were a lot weaker in their faith might
freak out and abandon things if they couldn't explain how
sentient alien governments that are now at the top of the food chain
impact what they, what they view as correct Christianity.
So yeah, that's where it gets heavy on that aspect.
I always say this, but I,
I think it's now is the time for the church to really develop, uh,
that the Protestant church,
cuz I think the Catholic church is a little bit ahead of us here. I think the,
the evangelical church really needs to develop a robust theology of,
of aliens, of all kinds of other weird possibilities.
And even just what does it mean if humans travel the solar system and, and yeah.
Create colonies on the moon or Mars or whatever,
like how is that going to affect our views on things? Because I think we,
we hold a lot of things, just sort of, uh,
we have a lot of unspoken expectations of what's going to happen in the future.
And so let's just put those expectations on the page and analyze them because,
uh, apparently there were people, uh,
back in the 1950s and 1960s that thought, uh,
humans would never go to the moon before, you know, Jesus return.
And so,
and now we're at the place where humans might go to Mars and live there and then
have children there. Um, and so what's gonna happen, you know, what,
what what's gonna happen to the church's view of that. So I,
I think we should all just talk very openly about.
It and stories are a fantastic way to help us do that. We do however,
need to keep at least in some way, I mean keep discerning for sure.
Obviously stay grounded in a Christian worldview,
but whether you're finding these stories at a public library or at a,
a bookstore at the homeschool conference or just online,
maybe it's Steve raza.com uh,
keep an open mind about some of these issues like work through them,
whether they're PG or PG 13 or whatever. And I think, uh,
the public library and sharing stories amongst ourselves are both great ways to
do that as we draw to a close here, uh,
you can find out more information about Steve, of course, it's Steve za.com.
That's Steve R Z a S a uh,
any other ways that folks can follow your work on the social media, Steve,
including, uh, whatever projects you have coming up next.
That's really the biggest one right there. I will share stuff on that.
If you go there, I have a newsletter that I put out once every, you know, three,
four weeks or so ish when I've got new projects and things coming up and
information. So you can sign up for the newsletter on there as well.
All right. So Steve roza.com all links in the show notes. Steve,
thank you for being our fantastical first guest for the Steve saga.
Uh, we wish you well. And, uh,
now I suppose you can just tap your calm badge and bean back up to the ship and
warp on outta here.
Sounds good. Thank you guys. All.
Right. Bon.
Voyage got speed brother.
Well, to you, our listener, we would love to hear your library story.
What's a great moment. You've had it. Your local lending library.
What are some treasures you've found? What are some, uh,
interesting situations you've been in,
what's been your favorite bookmark to use or find in a book? Uh,
send us your note to podcast Laura haven.com or comment on social
media or in our Guild.
Speaking of which we've got a great comment from Abigail who shared some
encouragement about our previous episode 1 27, about the code of honor,
and Abigail says, quote, good episode, going over the code of honor.
It was both helpful and insightful, not groundbreaking perhaps,
but interesting to go over why things are done, how they are around here.
Lots of good thoughts about how to read and discuss courteously as fans
input. Well, thank you, Abigail. And I'm glad that was helpful to you.
I think that going over stuff that isn't groundbreaking is one of the most
important things we can do, uh,
to make sure that we add on to the existing foundation. Uh, in that case,
we're not trying to build something new or we're trying to strengthen the
foundation for what's already been built. Uh,
the ground that's already been broken. Uh, that's important to prevent drift,
uh, continuing the foundation metaphor.
I think you can actually go to the famous parable by Jesus Christ himself who
urged people to build on the solid rock and not shifting sand.
It may be easier to break ground in shifting sand,
but it takes a lot of work to build on the solid rock.
So we're just trying to follow the example of Christ there and the example of
any, a biblical organization or especially a local church, uh,
that tries to ground its foundations for belief and practice, uh,
in the word of God. So appreciate that very much. Abigail, meanwhile,
at Laura Haven that we continue to try to build on the foundation for the Guild.
That is our discord server invitation only,
but it's free to subscribe@laurahaven.com and then we send you that invitation
to a long expected party this week.
We're going on an adventure in the Lou Haven Guild by reading J R Tolkin classic
fantasy. The Hobbit that actually should have started on labor day,
Lord willing. Uh, we're going to catch up with Mr. Billbo Bains,
who lives in a hole in the ground,
and then is visited by a wizard who invites him on an adventure,
which Billbo does not want to have.
Thank you very much good morning until all the dwarfs show up and
start eating all of boats, food,
and threatening to break the dishes and take him on an adventure to recover,
lost gold lost in the mountain, guarded by a dragon. It's a great story.
If you have not read it in a while, or especially if you've never read it,
you will want to join this. Quest led by Elijah David,
get that link in our show notes for our Hobbit book quest and the Lord Haven
Guild. Also last week on Friday, we had an advance review of the change.
That's the, uh,
final book on the chase runner series from mountain book fire by Bradley Kathy.
We have now reviewed every volume in that series.
We got a big fan on our Laura Haven review team. That's a good place to be, uh,
especially for this series, uh, which, uh, she has really enjoyed.
So go check out that review again, links to the show notes.
We've got more reviews coming up and of course,
more episodes in the Steve saga next on fantastical truth.
The Steve saga continues.
We're gonna go from spaceship superheroes and a little steampunk to a spy
thriller. Well, okay. Maybe not a spy thriller,
but we will have a certain secret agent man arriving in the studio.
He's the one who's helped put together a lot of your favorite books in both
fantastical fiction, as well as nonfiction.
He leads his own literary agency, not so secret agency there.
And he is also the publisher of enclave publishing.
Steve lobby will be our next guest en fantastical truth.
Meanwhile, whether you enjoy the public library,
whether you haven't been there in a while, maybe you have, as Zach said,
lots of great memories of finding great books there just as I have.
I think that it's appropriate to thank God for this resource,
even in a world that has been corrupted by sin,
where there may be issues with the library where you live.
We can appreciate faithful Christians who find great stories in the library or
create great stories on their own.
As a Steve Raza has done that's something for which we can.
Thank God as we continue to seek and find his fantastical truth.