During my 40 days off social media, I read four books, two fiction and two non-fiction.

The two non-fiction, The Dogma of Hell and Purgatory, were written by Father F.X. Shouppe, a Jesuit priest who lived in the late 1800s. Both books were sobering, but hopeful. Through bible passages and visions/experiences of Saints, the books not only show what is believed to occur in these two locations, but how they can be avoided.

As a fiction writer, it is these deep subject matters with many layers and eternal consequences that provide fertile soil from which powerful story ideas can grow.