I recently announced that Evangellyfish was coming soon. Also coming soon will be an explanation of exactly how and in what form it will be coming soon. In short, prior to publication (which will be soon) there will be more teasers, explanations, and glimpses of the characters. Do books have trailers? If so, there will be trailers.
What I thought I would do here in this post is provide a short selection of phrases from publishers who liked the manuscript, but who, for various reasons, thought that it did not fit their publishing guidelines. We got a lot of “this book is really funny,” followed by, “no, we really better not.”
“hilarious, and marvelously written . . .”
“powerful and compelling . . .”
“I did think the writing was punchy and fun, though, and I could see a spirited, smaller house taking a careful look . . .”
“a very funny take on evangelical bureaucracy. The rampant hypocrisy of the megachurch’s leadership definitely strikes a chord with current events . . .”
“sensationalistic . . .”
“entertaining . . .”
“a good writer, and I appreciate the humor and awareness these pages exhibit . . .”
“Thank you for sending us Doug’s latest work. He’s his usual creative, imaginative, and entertaining self . . .”
“As sharp as this book looks, it’s not something . . .”
But in addition to these very courteous rejection letters, we also got a couple of blurbs from Christianity Today. So here they are:
“Before I dipped into this novel, I was told it was a satire. What satire? I was a pastor for 10 years, and reading this made me squirm. Wilson grasps the untold ambiguities that contemporary pastors experience. This is realistic fiction. No, make that just realistic.” — Mark Galli, Senior Managing Editor, Christianity Today
“I have no desire to read yet another Elmer Gantry knockoff about a sex-obsessed preacher and his congregation of hypocrites. Fortunately, Evangellyfish isn’t one more on the pile. Doug Wilson isn’t writing about ‘those crazy Christians,’ he’s writing about us crazy Christians. When you start this short novel, you’ll want to believe it describes that big church across town. By the time you finish, you’ll remember that it describes the bigger church you’re a part of, that scandalous body that God keeps calling his. Wilson understands better than most that ‘judgment must begin at the house of God,’ and that God still dwells there despite the most squalid conditions.” — Ted Olsen, Managing Editor, News & Online Journalism, Christianity Today
Although to follow up on the first of these very kind comments, this is as good a place as any to insist that all the characters in Evangellyfish are fictional, and I made them all up out of my own head. Any resemblance to any real people, living or dead, is their own darn fault. If they quit acting like that the resemblance would cease and we wouldn’t have to worry about it.
Here is the cover again, only smaller.