I’ve been lucky to meet some great writers in my life. And some of those writers have been instrumental in my development as a writer. One such person has a book that makes my Fan Friday this week.

Back in the summer of 2004, I applied to McNeese State University’s MFA program (Lake Charles, LA). It was on a whim, totally out of the blue. I submitted 25 pages of a story I was working on (that, consequently, I never finished!), and a few weeks later, Neil Connelly, the fiction professor at MSU, called me. He and I sat on the phone for a few hours talking about writing and goals. At the end of the conversation, Neil said, “Shon, we want you.” And I tell you, I was so thrumming off the highs of the talk that I blurted, “And I want to be wanted.”

That began my three years at MSU, three vigorous years of training and talks by a soft-spoken, intelligent, creative, hilarious, caring professor with the knack of telling a damn fine story.

[Neil's website]

I was a fan of Neil’s earlier works, St. Michael’s Scales and Buddy Cooper Finds a Way, but his most-recent work, The Miracle Stealer, was a book that really moved me and made me think, I’m glad I fine-tuned my writing under Neil.

[click cover to purchase]

About The Miracle Stealer:

There was a time when Anderson Grant believed. She never doubted the goodness of the people at her church. She trusted both her parents. And she felt unshakeable faith in a kind and all-powerful God.

But then a freak accident nearly killed Daniel, her three-year-old brother. After his rescue, strange rumors about Daniel began spreading around town. The faithful claimed he could intercede with Jesus, cleanse a soul, heal the sick, even raise the dead.

The media trumpeted Daniel as a Miracle Boy, and the number of those believing in him swelled. They descended on Anderson’s small town, along with a horribly scarred preacher and a deranged stalker. Now Anderson is certain of only one thing: she has to stop this.

With the help of her once-and-maybe-future boyfriend Jeff, she dreams up a dangerous scheme that will forever cast doubt on Daniel’s so-called divine gifts. If it works.

But as the plan comes together, the true believers grow more bold, the psycho stalker draws near, and the disfigured preacher challenges

Anderson’s resolve. She finds herself wrestling with her own beliefs in God and her brother, and she’s left wondering if what she really needs to save Daniel might just be a miracle of her own.

One thing that I enjoyed about The Miracle Stealer, and really all of Neil’s work is the quietness of the writing. No matter what befalls characters, the stories do not become full of melodrama and sentimentality. With The Miracle Stealer in particular, there is escalating drama and action that could easily, in a less talented writer’s hands, become just about the drama and action and not about the underlying themes and issues that are at the heart of the story. Another thing that endears me to the novel is its main character, particularly the fact that a man wrote it. Now, yes, I know that there are men who tackle female main characters, so it’s not like the wheel was inventing in this novel, but there is a delicacy, a realness, a truth to who this young female is based on her surroundings and life that draws you in and believe her. When you look back at that cover and see Neil’s name, you might be likely to go, “Wow, a guy wrote this.”