I was recently asked why, given my fascination with the Sino-Vatican situation, that I didn't write a non-fiction book on the subject. The years of research I put into The Secret Cardinal are worthy of a doctorate, and I am certain a straight biography of Cardinal Kung would make a very compelling read, but the real story has major problem for me: it's not over. I'm a purist and I like my stories with a beginning, middle and end. I like agon and catharsis. And I write fiction because it allows for poetic justice.

While the situation for people of faith in China is better now than during the Cultural Revolution, it is far from ideal. Even a biography of Cardinal Kung, which did have a happy ending after three decades in hell, would end on a sad note because the last Roman Catholic bishop of Shanghai was never able to return to his see and resume his pastoral duties. Kung's victory was personal, because he survived, but his flock continues to suffer. The Dalai Lama's life story may well have the same bittersweet ending on an exiled leader long separated from his people.

Unlike my first four thrillers, The Secret Cardinal confronts a great evil in the world: religious persecution in China. I am not the first author to employ fiction in this manner. Aesop wrote fables and Christ told parables as a means of personal instruction. George Orwell railed against totalitarianism in Animal Farm and 1984 and Upton Sinclair took on the meat packing industry in The Jungle.

Perhaps the most successful novel of this type was abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. When Abraham Lincoln met Stowe, he is reported to have said, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." The Secret Cardinal probably won't change the world, but I do hope it entertains and edifies those who read it. It is, after all, a tale of honor, loyalty and faith.

Labels: China, faith, fiction, Kilkenny, religious persecution, Vatican

One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is if and when one of my novels will be made into a movie. Like most authors, I shrug and reply, "God only knows."

I can say, with the publication of The Secret Cardinal, that I have earned my first credits as a screenwriting and executive producer for my involvement in the book trailer posted on the home pages of my web sites. Now, I have no plans to give up my day job and move to California to write screenplays and do lunch with industry movers and shakers. I did have a fascinating meeting with filmmaker George Lucas several years ago, but the subject was a non-fiction book and not bringing Nolan Kilkenny to the silver screen.

So, why haven't any of my novels been made into movies? Numbers.

Approximately a thousand new book titles are published every day, totaling over three hundred thousand new books on the market every year. Of these, roughly fifty thousand are novels, which are typically the kinds of books turned into movies.

The annual theatrical output for Hollywood runs under two hundred titles, and of those only a fraction are based on a novel by X. Only a handful of book titles are ever optioned by Hollywood, and even fewer of those are green lighted into production.

Only two of Clive Cussler's many amazing adventures have been made into movies, and at last count, Tom Clancy was up to four. Stephen King and Elmore Leonard have a decent book-to-movie ratio, though the quality of the transition has left much to be desired in many cases. J.K. Rowling will, in another few years, go seven-for-seven, when the last of her Harry Potter novels becomes another blockbuster, but she remains an amazing exception to the rule.

Writers know that getting published is a lot like winning the lottery. The odds on having your novel turned into a movie is akin to being struck by lighting while shooting a hole-in-one—not impossible, but a very rare feat.

Labels: China, george lucas, hollywood, movie, secret cardinal, Vatican

On June 30th, the Vatican posted an open letter from Pope Benedict XVI to all Catholics in China, patriotic and underground alike. The letter resulted from a January meeting between the pope and his best advisors on how best to deal with China. Rumors of the letter's imminent release circulated around every major day on the Church calendar for five months, but the pope took his time and the language of the final document is precise and clear.

The Vatican gave Beijing a copy of the pope’s letter several days before it was publicly posted, to provide the Chinese government time to form an appropriate response. In the West, the letter was widely praised as conciliatory and many had hoped Beijing would receive it in the spirit in which it was sent and open a formal dialog with the Holy See.

Beijing's response was to block domestic Internet access to the Vatican website, and to play Whack-a-mole with any other site that posted the pope's letter. Beijing offered no official reaction to the pope's letter, though a few high-ranking members of the patriotic church approved of the absence of anti-communist rhetoric present in previous Vatican pronouncements. Distribution of the pope's letter in China is a crime and several Catholic priests have reportedly been subjected to brainwashing and other forms of reeducation to show them the error of their ways.

While I don't expect The Secret Cardinal to win a rave review from the book critics at China's People's Daily, I am pretty sure it won't be decried as an evil document and my readers subjected to abuse far beyond that experienced by any Al Qeda detainee. Actually, I doubt very much my novel will ever legally see the light of day in China, and I expect my web sites will be blocked in China as soon as Beijing views the book trailer.

Labels: China, letter, persecution, pope, Vatican

The Washington Post ran a story by Rick Weiss earlier this month about various government agencies developing, and possibly deploying, robotic insects. A link to this story can be found in the NEWS section of this site, but in a nutshell the idea is to shrink the capabilities of a Predator drone down to the size of a flying insect. The photograph accompanying the article shows a robo-bug sitting atop a fingertip. The Fly Kilkenny used in Chifeng prison is precisely what Weiss described as the goal of those trying to fabricate such complex piece of engineering.

One of my children's favorite books is about a bumblebee named Buzzy who suddenly cannot fly after being told a bee's wing-to-body ratio make physically impossible to do so. Flight is the most difficult problem for such tiny machines because the dynamics at this scale really are different than for larger bodies like birds or aircraft. Insect wings are very different in shape and stroke than bird wings, like comparing helicopters to planes. Scientifically, we are dealing with the aerodynamics of a flapping airfoil.

I first came across MAVs (mirco-air vehicles) about five years ago while doing some research for Bird of Prey with the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan. The idea of releasing swarms of cheaply built insect spies immediately intrigued me and. Like a magpie, I stashed this bit of information away for what became The Secret Cardinal. If you watch the book trailer, you’ll see these grainy shots of Bishop Yin praying in his cell at Chifeng Prison. These are Fly-eye views as Kilkenny finally locates the bishop. I do not doubt that in a few years we will see images shot by the real thing.

Labels: bishop, Cardinal, China, micro air vehicle, prison

The Dalai Lama recently visited Washington, DC, where he met privately with the president and later received a Congressional Gold Medal for his work in the field of human rights. Beijing threw a tantrum that included strongly worded demands that the U.S. Government correct this grave error and cancel both the ceremony and the president's meeting with the exiled Tibetan leader. There were also reports that Chinese hackers attacked Internet search engines in the U.S., misdirecting requests for Google and Yahoo to the Baidu site instead.

The oft-cited reason for China's ire was our interference in their internal affairs. Near as I can tell, an act of Congress to honor someone is an internal affair of the United States, and China's demands constitute the same type of interference that they are decrying. Of course, China's 1951 invasion of Tibet had little on that nation’s internal affairs.

Pope Benedict and the Dalai Lama have much in common with regard to China. Beijing fears and despises both men because they speak for a persecuted segment of Chinese society and represent a moral authority that could challenge China's totalitarian regime. It is interesting to see a state with the largest standing military, in the midst of a military expansion since the U.S. entered World War II, terrified of two old men in command of nothing more that their personal bodyguards. But even Mao knew that people of faith believe in something greater that the state, and that is where the danger lies.

At the end of May, Pres. Bush held an off the books meeting the Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong in the White House residence. News of this meeting broke several weeks later, and Beijing said nothing to allow the story to die quietly. Zen may well be the most dangerous Roman Catholic in China because, as a cardinal, he is in a position to be elected pope. The combination of the Dalai Lama and a Chinese pope would likely be more than Beijing could handle.

Labels: Cardinal, China, Dalai Lama, gold medal, pope, Vatican