by
Bryan Taylor
When you think about fun, what is the first word that comes into your mind? Is it nuns? No? Most likely you never met the nuns in my novel, or you had to put up with nuns as teachers for twelve years in Catholic School, or both. As one person who read my novel put it, I never knew any nuns like that. To which I replied, what is it about the word fiction that you don’t understand?
Though I have written a book about three former nuns who do things most nuns would never think about doing, it isn’t from experience. I have never been a nun, since I am a man, and I have no background as a Catholic. My dad was a minister, and both my parents’ dads were ministers of the hellfire and brimstone Jesus-died-for-your-sins variety, which probably explains more than never having attended Catholic School. So as you can see, when I took that writing class and the teacher told me to write about what I knew, I didn’t listen to a word the teacher said.
