Catholic Christian Romance Fiction

[marilyngregoire]

Good Day! I’m new to your forum and have an odd question. I’m trying to find a Catholic publisher who’s interested in publishing CATHOLIC Christian Romance fiction. Are any of you familiar with such a firm? My stories deal with faith, trust, truth, forgiveness in general but especially about sexual abuse and how these facets relate when the Spirit is allowed to help. Do you know of any publishers who print Catholic romance fiction?

 

[empther]

Tuscany Press publishes Catholic fiction:
tuscanypress.com/index.php

They started out two years ago. They haven’t published more than a few books so far and it’s hard to say what kind of stories they like. Their descriptions of what they’re looking for is pretty generic. “Great Catholic fiction”, they say. Well, what’s that?

 

[edwest2]

Great anything fiction is just a story that makes you want to turn the pages. As I’ve told a few beginning writers: Go to a bookstore. Pick up any fiction title that interests you and start reading. If you find you can’t read another word by page 6, it goes back on the shelf.

However, if you suddenly find yourself on page 20 and want to keep reading, then that’s a professional/great book. I use it as a rule when I get a new manuscript. Example: I get 300 pages. Trust me, If it’s not worth reading by page 10, it’s not going to get better by page 200. That doesn’t mean beginning authors should give up. It means they should find out why the fiction they like works.

catholicwritersguild.com/

There are formulas that work. There are approaches that work. There are good books to help.

Peace,
Ed

 

[bluerose]

Here is a list of Catholic publishers that deal with fiction. My own publisher, Oak Tree Press, is listed as not being specifically Catholic but does publish Christian fiction and is not opposed to Catholic fiction.

catholic-fiction.com/catholic-publishers/

Please be aware that some of them are vanity or subsidy publishers (that is, you have to pay to have your book published; OTP is not one of them) but there are a few that do not charge for their services.

Also, be aware that some have strict guidelines about what subject matter they will handle. You’ll need to do quite a bit of research and maybe send some queries to find out what each one is looking for.

empther posted a link to Tuscany Press’ website. They have resources for writers along with their definition of Catholic fiction.

Good luck!

 

[empther]

Great anything fiction is just a story that makes you want to turn the pages. As I’ve told a few beginning writers: Go to a bookstore. Pick up any fiction title that interests you and start reading.** If you find you can’t read another word by page 6,** it goes back on the shelf.

Hmmm. Page 6, hunh?
Here’s page 1 of a story called Empress Theresa :

I’m Theresa, the only child of Edward and Elizabeth Sullivan, and I hope it’s not bragging to say I was cute as heck at age ten. Everybody in the family said so. I was the princess in the Sullivan clan of Framingham, Massachusetts because besides being cute I was a whiz in school and had a good disposition. All the relatives expected great things from me.

Nobody could have dreamed of what I would do a few years later, and nobody would have believed it if they’d been told, but when this story began I was a little girl who didn’t have much of a clue about anything. My job as a kid was to figure out what the heck was going on and what to do about it. It’s not easy when you’re young and everything is brand new.

My father once served a tour in the Navy. He said I had to be the captain of my ship but sometimes the seas would be rough. I had to learn all I could about the world. I wondered why should I be worrying about it in the fourth grade?

In high school they assigned books for us to read, classic books about kids, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and To Kill a Mockingbird. They had amusing stories of the kids’s little adventures. Tom Sawyer outwitted everybody around him. Huck Finn went down the river meeting colorful characters. The little girl Scout in Mockingbird had fistfights with boys and explored the neighborhood with her brother and friend Dill. But the real story was about nine year Scout’s reactions to events, and what the reader hoped would be her resistance to prejudicial influences in her Southern town. Her black cook and housekeeper Calpurnia brought Scout to the black church one day and that was interesting. She watched the trial of an unfortunate black man whose defense attorney was her father.

I’d like to have cute childhood stories to tell you, but Framingham was not that kind of town. The quirky neighborhoods and colorful characters were long gone. Framingham was a modern American small city like any other. But I have a story to tell. It’s a little bigger, that’s all. Tom, Huck and Scout dealt with simple issues confined to their little worlds. I outdid all three of them on a global scale.
2

My story began quietly with no hint of what was coming.

Nothing has happened yet but we already know a lot of things:

1. The main character has identified herself
2. She is cute and smart
3. She has a good disposition,
4. She lives in a town where you wouldn’t expect to find anybody important. Theresa is nobody.
5. She tells the story from retrospect, thus she will only tell us what’s important.
6. She will do remarkable things that people couldn’t have dreamed of and wouldn’t believe if told, yet she appears to be an ordinary girl. What will make her an ‘empress’?
7. In many stories the main character is only a witness of events, or can’t do anything much about events and can only survive, or is a victim of events like a pawn on the chessboard of life. Theresa says she will DO remarkable things.
8. She brings up the idea of the need to learn all you can. Twice. Apparently she will be challenged. This idea must be very important to the story. Things will get very complicated. This is not Dick and Jane in the sandbox.
9. She seems to have good family support, but she says very little about her parents. Apparently they will not have much influence to the story. It’s all about Theresa.
10. Her discussion of Tom, Huck and Scout seems to promise that her story will be at the time she is young, but her stage will be the whole world, not just her neighborhood and town.
11. From 10 it follows that she will be a young person acting in the adult world. Buy not like Scout watching things going on around her. Theresa will make things happen!
12. 11 is confirmed by her comments that she has been taught to avoid the mistakes of adolescence, drugs, bad boyfriends and things of that nature. Her problems will come from the outside world.
13. She says, “I wondered why should I be worrying about it in the fourth grade?” which hints that she will have to start worrying sooner than she thinks. And in fact, the action begins in the next two paragraphs after the above quote, and ten year old Theresa will have to make an important decision which will affect her life and the lives of everybody else in the world.

All right. Would you read on,
***to page two where the action begins? ***:bigyikes:

 

[dixieagle]

Tuscany Press publishes Catholic fiction:
tuscanypress.com/index.php

They started out two years ago. They haven’t published more than a few books so far and it’s hard to say what kind of stories they like. Their descriptions of what they’re looking for is pretty generic. “Great Catholic fiction”, they say. Well, what’s that?

One of their authors is a friend of ours, and a brilliant, talented man. The founder of Tuscany Press was in town here recently at the author’s home, and we met him.

This is Tuscany’s definition of what they are seeking: “Books featuring stories of human frailties, beauty, grace, love, redemption, hope courage, and - the presence of God.”

To the OP: nothing ventured, nothing gained. I would follow that link to their website and see if your work seems to conform to what they publish. There is a lot of excellent and helpful info on the site; they have a very detailed and precise “development plan” and work closely with authors.

God bless!

 

[empther]

dixieagle,

Your signature…

“A Boston College Eagle in the DEEP south”

Interesting. Theresa goes to BC for one year ( before all hell breaks loose )

Father Donoughty testifies to the Senate Armed Services committee:

......  “Our records show you managed to be assigned to her parish church for those eight years.  It is the norm for priests to be reassigned every two or three years.  Was this a coincidence?”

… “It was arranged by Cardinal Rook. The Holy Father was interested in her case and wanted me to stay close to her. It was the Holy Father who arranged her full scholarship at Boston College. Theresa couldn’t turn that down.”

......  “He wanted her to go to BC because it’s rigidly Catholic?”

… “It isn’t rigidly Catholic. One third of its students are non-Catholics from all over the world. If you want to operate a large, diverse university you can’t do it with a heavy hand. It was important for Theresa to get a truly worldly educational experience. She might have had some role in dealing with the alien in the name of humanity. She had to have wisdom.”

 

[dixieagle]

dixieagle,

Your signature…

Interesting. Theresa goes to BC for one year ( before all hell breaks loose )

Father Donoughty testifies to the Senate Armed Services committee:

Yes, the DH and I graduated from BC a long time ago.

BTW, only 4% of the student body is international, and at about 9100 undergrads (another 5000 grad students) I don’t know that I would classify BC as a “large, diverse university.” It’s not really the sort of place one would get a “truly worldly educational experience”, unless your character stayed long enough to do a semester abroad.

 

[empther]

It’s not really the sort of place one would get a “truly worldly educational experience”

By worldly, I meant cultural experience, not geographical experience.

For example:
The late Jerry Falwell’s* Liberty University*. Falwell used to brag there was no Playboy Magazine on campus, all the teachers and coaches were born again Christians, the kids all attended Sunday services and many went to a Wednesday prayer service, etc etc etc etc.

I wonder how prepared these kids are to live in the real world when they graduate?
This is what I meant by a truly worldly educational experience. What are real people in the real world like? Probably not all born again Christians.

 

[3DOCTORS]

It may be a small niche market at this time. I have a draft of a Catholic romance novel in progress and I’ve wondered the same question. The Christian presses that are run by Evangelical or mainstream Protestants may or may not be interested in the Catholicism, and the romance publishers may be put off by the religious aspects. Catholic publishers may be struggling to publish a few non-genre titles.

So I think investigating a legitimate self-publishing route might be the best. E-publishing might be a good way to get started.

Are you involved with National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo? There are Catholic writers over there, plus a lot of good writing advice. November is the most active month. PM me if you’re interested in links to those groups. The main site is www.nanowrimo.org.

Plug: My group Catholics Who Write Lounge group on CAF - forums.catholic-questions.org/group.php?groupid=747 Come join us! :grouphug:

 

[bluerose]

Good Day! I’m new to your forum and have an odd question. I’m trying to find a Catholic publisher who’s interested in publishing CATHOLIC Christian Romance fiction. Are any of you familiar with such a firm? My stories deal with faith, trust, truth, forgiveness in general but especially about sexual abuse and how these facets relate when the Spirit is allowed to help. Do you know of any publishers who print Catholic romance fiction?

Just a thought, since you said you write “romance fiction”… perhaps you’re not thinking of what is known as “category” romances (think Harlequin, which does have a “clean” line of romance novels), but most publishers, when the word “romance” is mentioned, do not think of stories involving sexual abuse, at least not explicitly (in other words, there may be a vague reference to it in the past, but nothing detailed or graphic). I’m not sure myself what you mean by romance fiction, but it is a genre that has varying degrees of explicitness and many sub-genres.

As I said before, you may need to contact individual publishing houses to see what their guidelines are about subject matter. Of course, the main thing is to write the book and then see about getting it published. Unless you’re an established author, you need a product (a finished manuscript), not just an idea, to find a publisher (a friend of mine sold a book proposal based on an idea–it wasn’t even on paper–but then she’s published over 30 books!)

Also, be prepared to accept the fact that a lot of publishers may ask you to make changes to the manuscript. If you are not willing to make changes of any kind, then you may have to go the self-publishing route which will require a lot of promotional work on your part.

Once again, good luck!

 

[dixieagle]

By worldly, I meant cultural experience, not geographical experience.

For example:
The late Jerry Falwell’s* Liberty University*. Falwell used to brag there was no Playboy Magazine on campus, all the teachers and coaches were born again Christians, the kids all attended Sunday services and many went to a Wednesday prayer service, etc etc etc etc.

I wonder how prepared these kids are to live in the real world when they graduate?
This is what I meant by a truly worldly educational experience. What are real people in the real world like? Probably not all born again Christians.

I imagine those students will likely associate mainly with others like themselves - fundamentalist Christians.

I understand what you are trying to get at, but perhaps BC is not the best example; in fact, it has often been criticized as having too homogenous a student body. Perhaps Georgetown would be a better example of what you seem to be describing, as it provides a more diverse student body.

And it would likely take the Pope to pull enough strings to get your heroine a “full scholarship to Boston College”, as even the Presidential Scholars receive only full tuition scholarships and parents are responsible for room and board; if there is demonstrated need, financial aid is arranged.

 

[empther]

I understand what you are trying to get at, but perhaps BC is not the best example; in fact, it has often been criticized as having too homogenous a student body. Perhaps Georgetown would be a better example of what you seem to be describing, as it provides a more diverse student body.

Georgetown is right in the middle of DC. I wouldn’t want to go there. Also, Georgetown allows more liberal activities, such as pro-choice and gay pride demonstrations, more than BC or some other Catholic schools. That’s a little too diverse for me.

Granted, the large “Catholic schools” can be more accurately described as schools that have a lot of Catholics on campus. In the 1970s, BC, Georgetown and other large Catholic colleges realized they could no longer maintain the schools by Catholic religious orders alone. The places had become too expensive. They had to let in secular outsiders who had the political connections and financial resources to keep things going. Some control was lost.

And it would likely take the Pope to pull enough strings to get your heroine a “full scholarship to Boston College”, as even the Presidential Scholars receive only full tuition scholarships and parents are responsible for room and board; if there is demonstrated need, financial aid is arranged.

Interesting that when the story ends, Theresa is on her way to being
the world’s first multi-trillionaire
making her richer than entire countries… :bigyikes: :extrahappy: :whacky:
She has a monopoly on the world’s oil supply.
( When it’s time to leave England and go back to the US, husband Steve gives the butler of the house where they stayed five million dollars in cash. Steve tells the butler, “Don’t refuse to take it. It’s nothing to Theresa. She wouldn’t pick it up off the ground.” )

 

[RPRPsych]

Interesting thread. There’s plenty of Christian “inspirational romance” out there, most of which is explicitly Protestant, but Catholic romance is a new one. (Of course, I shouldn’t be saying that, having written a close approximation to one myself, but then…)

 

[bluerose]

Just FYI… Catholic Writers Guild has a facebook page. To join, you must be a dues-paying member of CWG and request to join the page.

We’ve been sharing encouragement, ideas for markets and submissions, prayers, and information on writing in general and writing for publication. It’s a lot more immediate than the CWG forum. So I’m putting this out there for anyone who might be interested in joining the CWG or are already members. Consider this an additional membership benefit!

From their page:

This is a closed group for dues-paying members of the Catholic Writers Guild only. Share your news, ask for help, get to know fellow Guildies. Please keep all posts in accordance with the Magesterium and focused on writing, faith, prayer needs, and some personal stuff as you wish. No political posts, please. As we grow, we’ll dedicate some time each day to different topics and ways we can help each other. So join in and have fun!

 

[3DOCTORS]

BlueRose, thanks for posting the info on the Catholic Writers Guild. I’ll be investigating that one more!

marilyngregoire - I’m wondering if your story, given the includion of the abuse theme, is one that goes deeper than a standard romance genre work? It might be a story of redemption and overcoming trials primarily, with a romance subplot. Or am I way off?

 

[Gigglin4God]

Hmmm. Page 6, hunh?
Here’s page 1 of a story called Empress Theresa :

Nothing has happened yet but we already know a lot of things:

1. The main character has identified herself
2. She is cute and smart
3. She has a good disposition,
4. She lives in a town where you wouldn’t expect to find anybody important. Theresa is nobody.
5. She tells the story from retrospect, thus she will only tell us what’s important.
6. She will do remarkable things that people couldn’t have dreamed of and wouldn’t believe if told, yet she appears to be an ordinary girl. What will make her an ‘empress’?
7. In many stories the main character is only a witness of events, or can’t do anything much about events and can only survive, or is a victim of events like a pawn on the chessboard of life. Theresa says she will DO remarkable things.
8. She brings up the idea of the need to learn all you can. Twice. Apparently she will be challenged. This idea must be very important to the story. Things will get very complicated. This is not Dick and Jane in the sandbox.
9. She seems to have good family support, but she says very little about her parents. Apparently they will not have much influence to the story. It’s all about Theresa.
10. Her discussion of Tom, Huck and Scout seems to promise that her story will be at the time she is young, but her stage will be the whole world, not just her neighborhood and town.
11. From 10 it follows that she will be a young person acting in the adult world. Buy not like Scout watching things going on around her. Theresa will make things happen!
12. 11 is confirmed by her comments that she has been taught to avoid the mistakes of adolescence, drugs, bad boyfriends and things of that nature. Her problems will come from the outside world.
13. She says, “I wondered why should I be worrying about it in the fourth grade?” which hints that she will have to start worrying sooner than she thinks. And in fact, the action begins in the next two paragraphs after the above quote, and ten year old Theresa will have to make an important decision which will affect her life and the lives of everybody else in the world.

All right. Would you read on,
***to page two where the action begins? ***:bigyikes:

I don’t know about publishing companies, but just letting you know, I’d read your books.

 

[empther]

I don’t know about publishing companies, but just letting you know, I’d read your books.

( Gigglin4God’s post 17 was quoting from my post 5 )

Thanks, Gigglin.

ET is on Amazon’s KINDLE now,

but in three months or so I hope to have printed copies available on Amazon’s CREATESPACE.

It’s mostly action, political and natural events, not bombs and mayhem, but once in a while Theresa gets philosophic.
A lawyer from a New York law firm sues Theresa for making the price of gold suddenly collapse ruining many investors’ fortunes. Theresa “grounds” the lawyer, that is, no vehicle the lawyer gets into will move:

… She returned to her house to ponder the idea.
… The media discussed this development all day. A lawyer said, “Theresa Hartley is committing a felony. Restricting someone’s movements without due process is kidnapping. She could get twenty-five years.”
… Another lawyer on the panel replied, “What evidence do we have against her?”
… “What do you mean what evidence? We all know it’s her.”
… “Of course, but there’s not a shred of evidence. You can’t go into criminal court without evidence. Anyway, who the hell is going to arrest her?”
… So! I could do anything I wanted to anybody and nobody would dare do anything about it! I kind of liked that.
… This was the first time I had done anything to influence somebody’s activity. Some people said this was a sign that I had a bad streak in me and I would eventually tell everybody what to do. Oh really? When had I told anybody what to do? I couldn’t even lead by example because nobody could do what I did. **The most I could do was give an example of the right attitude to have about life, God, and myself. **

So you can have an attitude about yourself? :bigyikes:
Well, yes, you can respect yourself to make the most of yourself.
Theresa does this throughout the book.

 

[Viki63]

To the OP,
take a look at Smashwords for publishing your own books.
There is no cost involved, although it does involve some learning.
You will need to do your own marketing, but you will not need an agent or a publisher. 90% of self published books are worthless, (maybe 80%?) but there are contests to help separate the wheat from the chaff.
I’m reading a self published book now, A Light in the Cane Fields, which is superb, and probably will be picked up by a publisher.