Transcript of CS#118: Regina Doman Catholic Teen Fiction

Transcript of Interview with Regina Doman about Catholic Teen Fiction. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Regina Doman Books
John Paul II High books at The Catholic Company.

http://search.catholiccompany.com/search?w=regina+doman
http://search.catholiccompany.com/search?w=%22Christian+M.+Frank

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Chris Cash: This is the Catholic Spotlight, the show where we talk about what is new, cool and exciting in the Catholic marketplace. I am your host Chris Cash, Director of ecommerce from catholiccompany.com your source for all your Catholic needs. And today, in the spotlight, we have Regina Doman, author of many, many different things. But today we are going to talk mainly about the teen novel series that she is both writing and as well as some of the stuff that she is acting as chief editor for Sophia Press. Welcome Regina.
Regina Doman: Hey, thank you.
Chris Cash: So, Regina, would you like to share anything about yourself before we start and talking about the books?
Regina Doman: Oh, well, gosh. Well, I don’t know … I was raised Catholic. I have been Catholic all my life. It’s been a wonderful way to be raised, I’ll say that. So basically my journey has kind of been just growing in my Catholic faith. I kind of always say I was- my life has sort of jumped from one Catholic fishbowl to another because I was raised in a different little Catholic communities and I went to Franciscan University of Steubenville for college and then I did an internship at- actually, my first job was at Catholic United for the Faith in New York City. Then now I actually am living just outside of Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. So, yeah, it has been great just to be living among the devout Catholics all my life long. That’s- I don’t know, it’s probably one of the reasons why I end up writing the sort of stories that I write.
Chris Cash: What is it that makes your stories Catholic, I guess?
Regina Doman: Yeah, it’s kind of a funny thing because originally like for these books, I had a hard time selling them, because … you know, the books that I write and the books that now I edit for Sophia Institute Press like they’re not like your typical secular novel, but at the other hand, they’re not like your typical Christian fiction novel ‘cause, I don’t know, some of the readers are probably familiar with Christian fiction published by Christians Booksellers Association, various press and publishers. My books, the books that I write and the books that I edit are different from that, because- basically, the way I always describe my books is I say, well, my books have Catholic characters and they have Catholic themes. But I don’t really write my books to evangelize people. I write books to tell a good story and I encourage my authors to do that as well. It is my belief that if you are a Catholic and you are writing a story, it’s going to end up being Catholic just from the fact of who you are, if you’re writing in a true way. So, yeah. I always say, with Protestants, I think when they write their fiction there is always- they’re kind of always put this burden on themselves to evangelize people and I say, you know as Catholics we really don’t have to do that. It’s enough for us to just tell a good story because that’d entice people’s imagination with power just as much.
Chris Cash: Yeah, they probably would consider it a Christian novel if it didn’t smack you over the head and say, convert, convert, join us.
Regina Doman: Yeah, exactly. I just kind of think, we really- I actually just gave a talk at the Catholic marketing network’s Catholic writers conference and I try to point out to people that if you are a Catholic novelist, I said, you were not to be a teacher. You’re not there, I said, you can’t be a teacher. There’s lots of people who need to be taught. If you’re a teacher, I say go out there and write books. Write non-fiction, you will probably make money. I said that if you’re a novelist you’re also not there to preach. I said, if you have a heart to preach, be a preacher. There’s a great need for preachers out there. If you write books about- if you preach and you write books, you will probably make money. I said, but if you are a novelist, a Catholic novelist, what you are is you’re an entertainer. You’re there to help people have a good time. It’s like, you’re like this guy with a guitar on the street corner kind of singing, hey I got a great song, come please, listen to me. It’s like you’re in a very humble position. You’re not trying to endow your audience with wisdom and knowledge. You’re trying to entertain them, trying to take them out of their busy frantic lives and give them a chance to relax. I said, it’s really a wonderful vocation. It’s a very humbling vocation. I said, ironically, in order to become great Catholic novelist, we have to take ourselves much less seriously and we have to take our art, our craft much, much more seriously, because in America there is an awful lot of good entertainment out there. I mean, America has produced some of the best movies and novels in the world right now. I mean, some of them are- junk off or junk we don’t want to expose our kids to. But the fact is in terms of storytelling, there is a very high degree of entertainment value out there. Basically, it’s like that’s we have to compete with. In order to do that, that just means we have to be as Catholics, we have to be very, very good. Yeah, that’s why I strive for myself and that’s what I strive for in the novelists that I work with, that I publish for Sophia Institute Press.
Chris Cash: You’re also- a theme that I heard you mentioned over and over in there was, and you might make some money doing this. My experience with Catholic authors is that very few of them ever make any significant money, if even any money at all.
Regina Doman: Oh yeah. No, no, no. I mean, I was just kind of- when I’m saying that I’m referencing the fact that most Catholic books are sold, like the top sellers are non-fiction. Primarily, the Catholic market that’s what we have. We have non-fiction books and some of the more successful authors, the ones who do make money, they’re writing non-fiction. But I don’t know of any Catholic novelist writing for the Catholic Press who is making anything near worth what they actually produce. Like I said, I say to people, look if you want to be a novelist, you have to do it for the love, not for the money. There’s not money in it, at least not right now.
Chris Cash: That personally, as a book lover and a book seller, I think it’s both a shame that we don’t see more opportunity to make a just living as a Catholic novelist ‘cause that just discourages people from even getting into that field.
Regina Doman: Well, it’s true, but you know what, I think the past is going to change. I think a lot of that has to do with the buying habits of Catholics. That’s really what it comes down to is that when Catholics go to entertainment, they go to blockbuster. They don’t go to their Catholic bookstore for entertainment. But, if Catholic publishers start producing good entertainment, I think Catholics are going to notice it. I think it’s going to take some effort and I think it’s going to take some time, but I think that there’s enough Catholics out there who are serious about their faith and who are serious enough about their entertainment. You’ve had the experience where you’re watching a TV show and it’s really great and then some joke about the Pope comes on, or then some totally sexualized scene that’s totally gratuitous come on and all of a sudden it’s not entertainment anymore. It’s a source of temptation. It’s a source of frustration. That’s not fun anymore. That’s one of the reasons why Catholics do partake of so much Christian entertainment simply because it is safe. It doesn’t contain that same type of cheese grating type of- blows to our Catholic faith that we don’t want to be experiencing while we’re trying to recreate. I think that there’s enough- the non-Catholics out there who are looking for that kind of entertainment are growing. I think that eventually if Catholic publishers publish it, I think Catholics are going to start buying it. It’s exciting moment to be in as a Catholic author. I always said, I don’t this stops us from selling to the secular world. I am in touch with a number of Catholic novelists who just write for the secular world, and I say, that’s great. That’s where we ought to be eventually, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong for writing for a specifically Catholic market which is what, at least right now, what I call if you’re called to do.
Chris Cash: The Death of the Pope by Piers Paul Reid did take some significant waves as a Catholic novel…
Regina Doman: Yeah, totally.
Chris Cash: As a Catholic suspense novel. If you want more information on that, look back in our show archives. I did an interview with him a few months ago.
Regina Doman: Yeah. I think they sold, I don’t know, like 17,000 right out the door. I mean, that’s remarkable.
Chris Cash: Huge numbers for a Catholic marketplace.
Regina Doman: Totally.
Chris Cash: It’s like a Scott Hahn book.
Regina Doman: Yeah, exactly, which is wonderful. I always say, as a Catholic, other Catholic novelists, I said, this is good news for me. Like, we have no competitors at this stage in the game. Everybody who is reading Catholic fiction, everybody who is writing it is doing us all a favor because we’re trying to change the buying habits of Catholics. God bless, what’s his name again? Piers? I can’t pronounce…
Chris Cash: Piers Paul Reid I believe is…
Regina Doman: That’s right. Piers Paul Reid – I want to say the other way around. Yeah, God bless and more power to him. I hope he writes more books.
Chris Cash: Well, he’s written several. This was his first foray into the Catholic specific book, but he’s quite an accomplished storyteller from many other books that he has written. It’s good crossing over.
Regina Doman: As a Catholic editor, I’m actually seeing that. In fact, when Sophia Press started their new fiction line, Chisel and Cross Books and the Imagio lines, we kind of put out the word that we’re going to do Catholic fiction. We expect that we are going to get amateurs. That was kind of what we are prepared to do, but instead we found that there are good Catholic, good novelists out there who have been published in the secular; who have published in the Christian fiction world; who have written Catholic books and they are looking to sell to a Catholic audience. Actually, the first two books I have done was Sophia Press one is by a former Christian author. I mean, of course he’s still Christian. He’s Catholic. John Des Jarlais—he had written some award-winning books in the Christian market. He became Catholic; wrote a Catholic novel and had nobody to sell it to. Fortunately, as God’s timing would have it. We were advertising for fiction at the same time. We just published his new novel called Bleeder, about the death of a Catholic stigmatic priest. That’s a fun mystery that he wrote and I’m hoping that you readers will pick that up and take a look at that one. The second novelist we found was Claudia Cangilla McAdam whose book is coming out hot off the press at Sophia Press, Awakening. She published- has over several novels in the secular steer and again wrote a Catholic novel about the time of Christ; could not find anyone to publish it and send it to us. I have been seeing this pattern happen again and again. It’s actually kind of exciting.
Chris Cash: Maybe, we’ll have a chance to have some of those on our show sometime soon here as well. That would be fun.
Regina Doman: Oh yeah. I would definitely encourage it. I think your readers would enjoy that.
Chris Cash: Let’s talk a little about your work right now. First off, why don’t we talk for a few minutes before the break here about the fairytale novel series.
Regina Doman: Gosh, yeah. This is how I first got started in the Catholic fiction world myself. Oh my gosh, it’s nearly 10 or 12 years ago. I published my first novel with Bethlehem Books, subsidiary of Ignatius Press, The Shadow of the Bear, and it was the twelfth book I have written. I took a fairytale, Snow White and Rose Red, which is a fairly obscure fairytale. Most people have never heard do it, I always say, ‘cause Disney has not made a movie of it, so no one has ever heard of it. But I took the fairytale and put it into a modern setting and I retold the story in New York City with Catholic characters and I centered it around the murder of a Catholic priest in this case. A young man who was trying to find out … basically he was trying to solve this unsolved murder, and so that now became The Shadow of the Bear. Bethlehem Books published it. I was so thrilled. It was such a break for me that they took it because once I wrote it, I was just like, you know what, no one is going to publish it. It’s too Catholic for the secular people and it’s also too Catholic for the Christian fiction industry. It’s funny ‘cause I’ve actually had secular agents look at my books and they were like, wow, they’re really great but we have no idea who would buy them. I’m like, you know, yeah, I mean my sales are going up. I have thousand of readers and they love my books but yet they’re not- right now they’re not large enough to constitute any establish marketing demographic. Yeah, the Shadow of the Bear, a wonderful Christmas present if you’re looking for a Christmas present for your teen or pre-teen. It’s teenage fiction. It’s got a little bit of the edginess in there, a little bit of the violence, a little bit of the dark issues but generally speaking that’s the one that would I say is outstandingly friendly. It was actually done at the audio drama on Catholic radio. It’s still playing as an audio drama. Actually, that just won an award, The Cashier, the Sonic Society, secular radio society. Sonic Society gave it the best audio drama of 2009 award which was quite a surprise for us. That was the first book.
Chris Cash: The audio drama is available on CD if you’re looking for it.
Regina Doman: Yeah. It sure is. Just go to fairytalenovels.com, follow the links and you can get yourself the audio drama on your iPod or iTunes.
Chris Cash: And then you’ve continued that- your other books, is that kind of a continuation of the same story?
Regina Doman: Yeah. It is. A couple of years after Shadow of the Bear, I did Black as Night which is based on Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. A much more familiar fairytale, so I have to come up with a very unusual way of telling the story. In that story, that seven friars who work with the homeless in New York City and one day they find this girl on their doorstep who has white skin and black hair and there’s this rich lady in Manhattan who is trying to kill her. It’s a suspense, romance, adventure. I have to say it’s a very good book. It’s one of those ones that we don’t, of the four fairytale novels, it is not the top seller but I have some people who just write to me and say that is their favorite one. They all deal with the same characters. Shadow of the Bear introduces these four Catholic characters—two brothers and two sisters. The first three novels are kind of a trilogy about their adventures. Basically, that trilogy ends with Waking Rose which is one of our top sellers and that’s based on Sleeping Beauty. It deals with good contemporary issues, like we touch on euthanasia, we touched on abortion, we touched on homosexuality, all these things. Whenever I do something like that, I’ll just say a word about how I handle touch teens. Whenever I handle touch teens such as date rape or homosexuality, I try to do so ambiguously. The reason I do that is so that younger readers who have not been exposed to those things will not necessarily know what I’m talking about, but older readers who do know what I’m talking about will get the message. I tested this very carefully. When I wrote a book I usually give to several parents and have them read it with their kids and figure out if I need to be more subtle, if I need to be more open. I just found, it was recommended to me a home school mom and an author who basically said, she said, that’s the way that the great novels of old dealt with these tough subjects, is they didn’t do it in your face so that you know it was being talked about. They did it subtly but it was still there. That’s kind of always the approach I’ve taken with my novels. Yeah, even though we touched on some tough stuff and I do recommend the older novels, Waking Rose and Midnight Dancers, I do recommend those for older teens, or I just say to parents, just read them with your kids and then you know what to explain what not to explain. You can even skip things if you want to. Generally speaking, I am trying to write a novel that will give kids the tools to deal with those difficult things that are out there without necessarily exposing them to things that they’re not ready to handle. I’m all about equipping kids to handle the difficult things that our world throws at them, not basically that’s why I do it. I don’t do it to be gratuitous. I don’t do it to be scary or edgy or any of those things. I’m all about giving kids hope.
Chris Cash: What would the youngest age you’d recommend be for these novels?
Regina Doman: With parental guidance, well, realistic to say, my husband has read Shadow of the Bear and Black as Night to our eight year olds. He has read them. We have allowed our kids to read them like maybe wonder about 12, but really they are teen novels. Basically I wrote them to teenagers. I mean, if you are absolutely desperate to find reading material for your 10 year old and you have kind of a mature 10 year old, I’d take a look at my novels but really they are for teenagers. That is the age what they were written for. I think that teens will benefit more from them. I always say, if you want to know the recommended age on the book, it says like 13. For Waking Rose and Midnight Dancers I will say 16. And there’s not much out there for those age groups. Unlike that I’m writing to an age group that isn’t very well served by the rest, especially the culture.
Chris Cash: If someone picks up one of these novels out of order, are they going to be confused or is it going to be alright to pick up one of the middle ones?
Regina Doman: It’ll be fine. When I go to conferences and sell them which I always want to get a chance to talk to the parents. By the way, I have to say a lot of parents read these books for themselves. Funny at the last conference, I had this huge man come over, you know this big dad. He was like seven foot-something tall and really broad shoulders and he was like, I love your books, I was up till three in the morning reading Black as Night, I couldn’t put it down, which was wonderful. So occasionally I hear from the dads who have read it too. Black as Night does seem to be a favorite with the dads, by the way. But yeah, you could do in order—Shadow of the Bear, Black as Night, Waking Rose and Midnight Dancers—or you could start with Midnight Dancers which is the start of a new series, or you could take them out of order. The only one I wouldn’t suggest reading first is Waking Rose simply because it is really the climax of a trilogy and I think you’d benefit more when you read them in order but Shadow of the Bear and Black as Night as almost a little interchangeable.
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Chris Cash: We’re back on the Catholic Spotlight with Regina Doman talking about her teen fiction books. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about with regard to the fairytale novels?
Regina Doman: Well, the one thing I have presented is I don’t like- well, I don’t necessarily like to do, like counter-marketing; marketing against anything. I did have a couple moms come up at the last conference this summer and tell me that the fairytale novels and my books *** [0:21:16] said they are- the phrase I kept on hearing was they are the antidote to Twilight. So I don’t know if I just want to be known as the antidote to Twilight, the vampire novels, but if you have a girl who has read the Twilight novels and want something else to read, you could consider and try my books. But basically yeah, that was what more than a couple of moms told me this summer.
Chris Cash: I’ve also heard some people say things about you being an alternative to Harry Potter. However, I know you’re also a fairly decent Harry Potter fan, correct?
Regina Doman: Oh yes. Basically with Harry Potter, I arranged my mind on that over a long period of time. It has to do with the fact that I am a young adult author and I’m constantly looking at the literature that’s available out there. I take these things much more seriously than other people. I’m actually kind of fairly anti-Twilight but after a long journey I’ve come around to be pro-Harry Potter. For anybody who is interested in that issue, I would suggest picking up one of the books of John Granger; home school dad, eastern orthodox Christian, wonderful man, has a great analysis of the Harry Potter novels from a Christian perspective; not just from a Christian perspective but he believes that there is a medieval allegory based on alchemy. I have to say, I think he’s pretty convincing. What convinced me was when he was predicting things that were going to happen in book six before book six was released.
Chris Cash: Also you can check out one of our old episodes on Spotlight where we interviewed Nancy Carpentier Brown and she goes into a lot of depth into why she sees Harry Potter is a Christian allegory as well. Moving on, we want to talk briefly about John Paul II High, the new book Trespass Against Us is just recently out. Can you tell us about this series and how it came about?
Regina Doman: Yeah. This is actually kind of a fun series that I started, basically we have for three or four years now with Sophia Institute Press. I had about four ago I was approached by a Catholic apostolate who knew that I did teen fiction and they said, ‘hey we want you to come up with a book of short stories that will reach young people with the Catholic truth. Do you think you can develop can project for us?’ By this time I had written quite a bit of teen fiction. I said, well, you know, you really can’t reach teens with short moralistic stories like [A Sap 0:23:52] Table. I said, that’s just not really where they’re at. I said, however, if you had a longer narrative, you could definitely do Catholic issues in a really powerful way. I said, so let me think about that, and then actually I had to hang up the phone because we had to go pray our family rosary. After we had prayed our daily family rosary, I finally got this idea and I called the apostolate back and put together a proposal, faxed it to them that night for what became the John Paul II High series. Amazingly, at that time I was in touch with a couple of young and quite talented authors from graduates of Christendom and graduates of Franciscan University and I had just said to my husband, you know one of these kids could write a novel if somebody gave them the chance. They are that talented. Basically, what I came up with in the proposal is I said, I will be like the head. I will put together a team of authors and we will come up with a plot and I will edit them. I said to the apostolate, and you could publish, and basically each book could deal with several different issues, hot moral issues from a Catholic perspective. It could be an awful lot of fun. I said it should be set in a small Catholic school with different problems besetting the school with different conflicts among the characters and stuff like that. I kind of had sketched out what the series was going to become. I gave it to the apostolate and they said, this is kind of a little bit more than we want to do. We just want to do one book. We don’t want to do a whole series. So they were like thanks but no thanks. I was like, okay. I happen to be talking to Sophia Press because they were publishing my book Angel in the Waters at the time. I mentioned it to John Barger and he said, oh can I see the proposal, and I said sure. So I faxed it to him and basically within 24 hours he called back and said we’ll do it. That was actually a very exciting weekend. I called all the authors that I knew. We came over in my living room. We started a meeting that began at nine in the morning and ended up like 7:00 at night. We created the plots right there. It has always been a joint effort right from the beginning. We do switch authors. We have roughly about 10 people on the team. Some have married, some have moved on, moved out of the area and stuff like that. I had about four writers who are working on writing the books for me and they all write under the name of Christian Frank which is an anagram of Christendom College and Franciscan University since they wanted to pay homage to their alma matters. Basically, the reason that we switched authors is in the grand tradition of young adult section like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, you basically switch authors so that you can write more books faster because it takes me- I mean, each of my fairytale novels took me about 5 to 10 years to write. I mean that’s a long time if you’re doing a series. That is why that a lot of the most popular series including The Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley High, things like that, they do use multiple authors who all write under the same name simply so the publishers can get the books out faster. I think that anybody who is familiar with Nancy Drew should know that using multiple authors doesn’t mean a drop in quality. Multiple authors all writing together can produce really quality works. I mean, that’s how comic books are produced. They all have different writers creating the same characters. Yes, we have our school, little John Paul II High which is a- in our novel it’s a small startup school run by a bunch of Catholic parents. In the first couple books, there’s only seven kids in the entire school. Basically, it’s parked right near a large, massive public high school. At the beginning of the first book there is a shooting at the public high school. A set of parents from that school panicked. They pulled their daughter out of public school and they put her into tiny John Paul II High. They are like Christmas and Easter Catholics, totally un-churched. Their daughter knows nothing about the Catholic faith and all of a sudden she’s thrust into this super Catholic environment from her perspective, and the fun all starts there especially because the shooter from the public school is still on the loose, and as of book two, he is still on a loose.
Chris Cash: We are running short on time. So if you want to know more about John Paul II High, you’re going to have to pick those books up. They are high entertaining. They’ve been getting very good reviews in our reviewer program. They are very quick reads as well especially for adults. Anything else you want to share before we have to run?
Regina Doman: Sure. Well, there is more to come. Please pray for me, pray for John Paul II High and we’re working on book three and four right now. Actually this month, I have another young adult section coming up from Sophia Press—Awakening by Claudia Cangilla McAdam that I mentioned. It’s about a young girl named Ronny who wakes up suddenly at the time of Christ, in fact on the eve of Christ’s crucifixion and she realizes that she is the only who knows that Christ is about to be crucified and she has a chance to stop it and her big question is, but should she. So very entertaining read. You’ll learn a lot about the holy land. You’ll learn a lot about Jesus Christ’s crucifixion. You’ll learn a lot about Catholic theology and all the while having a lot of fun with an adventure packed book. I highly recommend Awakening by Claudia Cangilla McAdam and you can find that at Sophia Institute Press at sophiainstitute.com at there is more to come. As I was telling you Chris, last night I was up till four in the morning working on another book by a Christendom graduate about a Catholic girl who finds a ghost in her Catholic school auditorium and that book Auditorium I am hoping to get out in 2010. So there’s more to come.
Chris Cash: Well, that sounds like there’s lots of exciting things on the way. Hopefully, we’ll have a chance to talk to some of these other authors about some of these exciting things. Wouldn’t it be fun to have a good portion of your John Paul II team to come do one of our shows someday?
Regina Doman: Oh, they would love it. They would totally love it. If you can conference them in, they would probably have a blast.
Chris Cash: I can.
Regina Doman: That would be awesome.
Chris Cash: It has been great talking with you and we wish you all the best. Everybody out there, go pick up a copy of these stuffs. It’s really great and you certainly want to encourage this kind of Catholic fiction to continue to be produced because it is very important for these authors to be able to make at least a humble living to be able to continue their work. Thank you very much.
Regina Doman: You’re welcome. It’s very important for our Catholic youths to just grow in their Catholic identity. That’s what I do and it’s something I feel that- ironically, we all need a little entertainment and our entertainment is very important and recreating in recreating us.
Chris Cash: Absolutely. None of this stuff would be worth buying if it wasn’t worth buying. Check it out. God bless, have a great day guys.

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Transcript of Interview with Regina Doman about Catholic Teen Fiction. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Regina Doman Books
John Paul II High books at The Catholic Company.

http://search.catholiccompany.com/search?w=regina+doman
http://search.catholiccompany.com/search?w=%22Christian+M.+Frank