Chris McClelland, multiple award-winning short story writer and novelist, also sometime writing coach

Chris McClelland's World War Two Romance, IN LOVE AND WAR named a #2 Best Selling YA military fiction e book by Amazon! Star-crossed lovers Inga and Mack must endure a host of sacrifices to survive and finally be re-united by the end of World War II. The story of two families from two different sides of the war and the hellish suffering they endure. Chris McClelland’s most popular and highly acclaimed book so far.

Out in early 2025: Excerpt from the family saga CONTRITION originally named Bronze Medal for Fiction by the Veteran’s Administration nationwide contest. CONTRITION, a family Mormon saga spanning the 20th Century, follows the life of veteran Hyrum Fratelli and his children as they endure the toughest century known to America and to man.

Chris McClelland is known as a creator of compelling historical fiction and poetry that has won many awards. Find out why McClelland’s stories have become so popular with readers in recent years.

Florida Literary Arts Alliance, Short Fiction Award

National Veterans' Contest, Bronze Award for Fiction

I am mainly a fiction writer, whose topics include, being human, competitive swimming, aviation, and domestic relationships.

Critically Acclaimed:

Enid Shomer, on awarding the FLAA award:  "Chris McClelland's fiction is oftentimes sad but hopeful"

Conor Hilton, critic for Association of Mormon Letters, reviewing Under Old Glory (Young Adult):  Under Old Glory is at its best when it allows for quite complex and nuanced emotions to shine through...to the novella's credit, the questions that plague Hyrum are not dismissed out of hand, but are presented as legitimate questions to have and to ponder"

Joe David Bellamy, Editors' Book Award Winner, on McClelland's short fiction: the journey is always insightful, surprising, and deeply felt, and the reader always knows he is in good hands with Chris McClelland

EM, Amazon reader, on Swimming Among the Olympians:  meaningful glimpse into people's lives, I enjoyed this book very much.  Heartfelt.

Evan Lavender Smith, award-winning author of Avatar and From Old Notebooks:  His stories are inflected with a tender and compassionate sensibility.  Readers looking for fiction's quieter, subtler pleasures would do well to look here.

Books currently available:

McClelland's debut novel, on romance and aviation during wartime: In Love and War

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Audible version

Click to purchase Audible version or hear sample

McClelland's Young Adult World War I novella about two brothers, one an aviator, one a trench warrior (YA)

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Audible version

Click to purchase Audible version or hear sample

McClelland's swimming related story collection: Swimming with the Olympians

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McClelland's second, more compact, story collection:  Physician, Heal Thyself

Click to purchase

Audible version 

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 Review of Physican, Heal Thyself  by AML critic Andrew Hamilton

 https://www.associationmormonletters.org/reviews/older-reviews/mcclelland-physician-heal-thyself-a-compact-collection-of-contemporary-stories-reviewed-by-andrew-hamilton/

Click to read the fantasy series I am writing under the pen name Christopher Regis

For more information about my ongoing projects and newly released books, please contact me at provocanyonreview@gmail.com

 

New Blog #1, Sept. 25, 2020, New Blog on Blogger, Selected Blogs from Old Site!

 

Welcome to my new blog!   I am populating it with select entries from my old blog, to 

give you a feel of what I have been doing the last two years.   At the present time I 

have three books for sale: In Love and War, a novel; and Swimming Among the 

Olympians, a short collection of fiction with a memoir included.  I also have a novella, 

Under Old Glory.

I would also like to direct you to the “About Me” section, if you are looking for my 

Editorial Services.

I look forward to fun blogging adventures in the future!

 

Blog #27: July 3, Comments and Suggestions

First off, Happy Independence Day to all you Americans out there.  Our country is going through a hard time with COVID and the social unrest, but those of you who do pray or believe in a higher power, please send out good vibes for the good old US of A.

I have had moderate success in selling hard copies of the new book, SWIMMING AMONG THE OLYMPIANS, and am not going to be able to give away any more copies for a while, of that book or my other two.  I wish Amazon would let me do that, because my main goal here has always been to gain readers and get reader feedback.   Sales are nice, but not the main thing with me.   So if you are reading this and have read one of my books, but have not yet commented, either on Amazon, Goodreads, or on this website in the comments section, please do.  One of the greatest rewards of writing is finding out how your writing affects people.  Even constructive criticism is welcome, provided you are specific and accurate about your suggestions.

Until next time,

Chris

 

Blog #22, historical fiction break, short stories and swimming

Long time, no blog.  I have been busy with many things since December, not to mention dealing with the COVID 19, and I haven’t had much to say that might be interesting to you.   I have taken a break from writing historical fiction for the time being to work on a collection of short stories with the theme of competitive swimming.   I was a member, albeit briefly and as a walk-on, of the famed University of Florida swim team.   I was given the choice of the coach recommending me to swim with the University of Tennessee, or continuing to train with his AAU team and see if I progressed enough to be put back on the UF travel team.   I chose to, after a short training time, to give up on competitive swimming completely.

I write about many other things in this collection, mostly centered around various types of trauma and PTSD.  I also write about facing mortality.   But mostly I am interested in average people in unusual circumstances.   Be ready in the coming months for this collection (SWIMMER, TAKE YOUR MARKS) to be released by Provo Canyon Press.   I may blog more before then, but regardless, I will definitely blog when it comes out, making free copies of my new collection known.

 

Blog #19, November 20, 2019 In Love and War the Novel as a Movie

I have not blogged recently because I have set aside all my writing projects to focus on adapting my debut novel into a screenplay.  It is going well, and I find it a lot easier than writing an original novel.  The novel In Love and War got rave reviews from reviewers like Kirkus Reviews and Coffee Break Books, and got many good reader responses on Good Reads and Amazon.   The story, as some of the reviewers have pointed out, translates very well into the film medium due to the visual nature of the writing.  The imagery of the story, particularly the visual imagery, is vivid and is good for a screenwriter to adapt to the screen.

Capturing the look and tone of the 1940s and World War II is, so far, going smoothly.  Also, capturing the language and popular slang of the era helps the authenticity.  I have learned much from the screenwriter Joe McBride and his book Writing In Pictures, especially about how to take prose and turn it into a dramatic script.  It seems the screenwriting business is even more competitive than the publishing business, but I am hoping my story fares better as a screenplay than as a book.

 

Blog #18, September 29, 2019

The air is getting more chilly in Orem, Utah, and I have just received the latest Smithsonian magazine in the mail.   Some interesting essays always seem to be in every issue.   The one last month was on the marine biologist Ed Ricketts and his voyages with John Steinbeck.   These were historic in nature and ground-breaking for the field of biology.   Another publication that never fails to inform and transfix is American Heritage.  Both of these publications are key for a historical novelist, to keep the past alive in one’s own mind if nothing else, and to educate oneself in a broad way about the history of this country.

I am keeping busy with the new novel, tentatively titled A Contrite Spirit, the title of which I found in the scriptures of the LDS church.   The main characters are LDS (Mormon) and the tale traces the battlefield horrors of the First World War and one man’s efforts to heal them, with the help of his wife and his brother.

Also of note in this blog, I am currently reading my good friend John Bennion’s second Rachel novel, Ezekiel’s Third Wife.   It is an interesting story that is teaching me a lot about the Old West and life in the Utah Territory before polygamy was outlawed and Utah became a state.  The characters are likable, if a little rough around the edges.

 

Blog #17 How to Write Historical Fiction

Writing historical fiction, particularly historical novels, means research.  A lot of it.  Before and during writing In Love and War involved a massive amount of research.   Much digging into the Air War effort in World War II.   Small town life in central Florida during the 1940s.  The US 3rd Army fighting in Italy, where David fought and was captured.  So many history books were consulted.  Not to mention institutions like the Seminole County Historical Museum, the Orange County Historical Museum, the 8th Air Force Museum in Savannah, GA.

This research gives a depth and veracity to the work that could otherwise not be found.  And with research comes a gripping story about interesting people.  Not just a good story, or a mildly interesting one, but a compelling one that forces the readers to turn pages.

 

Blog 12, July 2019 Questions of Faith and the History of Human Struggle

As a historical novelist, I find myself constantly evolving my views on the past, particularly the past of this country.  In addition to this, I find myself more and more lately infusing my faith in God with my understanding of history and particularly war and what makes us human.   Most of my adult life, I believed that besides the obvious exceptions like Hitler and Stalin, there really were no evil people in the world.   9-11 changed all that.   The evil I saw on that day was palpable and widespread, but so was human nobility.  I shielded myself up until then.  And the existence of human evil demands a response, when the evil spreads, as it so often does.

But I didn’t think war was inevitable even then.  It wasn’t until I read the poetry of, and went to readings of, Brian Turner’s poetry about Iraq that I realized that members of my own generation not only thought of war as a permanent state of the human condition, but I realized how fortunate I had been, post-Vietnam, to have grown up in a time of relative peace and stability in the US.   War, I realized, as I began working on IN LOVE AND WAR, is always with us in some form, and what Mack and Inga endured just brought home to me the innocence of so many of the youth inevitably involved in warfare.

Now I have written a novella, also about love and war, that I am in the process of expanding into a full length novel.   I am exploring my own faith in this work, trying to make sense of war and death.   War, in its basics, never changes; the names and dates may change, the machinery and weaponry may advance, the politics behind it may take on different hues, but war itself never changes.   It’s the failure of man to see others as his brothers and sisters.

 

Blog 11, June 16, 2019 Historical Novels vs. Contemporary Novels

One of my favorite authors is EL Doctorow, a writer I actually got to meet in the early 90s.   He was a kind and gracious man, and a heck of a writer.  He made me feel like I was experiencing things in other time periods, yet his stories had such a contemporary feel that he is often classified as a “Revisionist” writer of history.   I don’t buy that based on the novels of his I’ve read.  If he’s “revisionist” it’s his own vision of things, not trying to define the past in reaction to it.

Well, my church book club is going to be discussing my novel, IN LOVE AND WAR next week, and I am really curious to hear their reactions.   This fact has also shown a slight bump in sales, which is nice.   But the main thing is to answer questions about the book, the characters, etc.   I have never done this before so I am looking forward to it.

Since I did a giveaway earlier in the month for the novella, I’ve been moving more of those too!  I do like it when people like or comment on my blogs and I am curious what you think of this one.   Some people have already told me about their reading the novella UNDER OLD GLORY and the comments are very positive, but the readers were all left wanting more.   If that’s the case as time goes on, perhaps I’ll consider writing a sequel.

Happy Reading!

Chris

 

Blog #7, April, 2019

There are a lot of things going on this month:  I have decided that the novel I am working on is really a novella. It has been a true pleasure to work on this book and as an intellectual as well as heart-felt exercise it has taught me many lessons about myself and the world.   It’s funny how you as a fiction writer end up learning so much from your characters.   Writing this book, my characters surprised me many times.   Times that I thought hope was lost, and they come through.   The resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity.   A pretty amazing experience.

This book, entitled, “Under Old Glory: A Novella of War, Love, and Faith,” will reflect much of the research I have been doing lately on World War I, and the Latter Day Saints’ involvement in it.   It seems odd to have a war book also be a spiritual book, but even in my first novel, there were elements of the spiritual in it.  It just seems that now the spiritual questions come more easily to the surface with the character of Hyrum Fratelli.  He, even more than Mack McInnis in the novel, is a highly sensitive, introspective character, given to meditations about life, spirituality, and God.   This novella is certainly not for everyone, but if you are curious about war and its effects on the spirit, it may be a good read for you.

 

As always,

 

Chris

 

Blog #6, March, 2019

Welcome to March, and the cusp of Spring.   In our part of the country (Utah) the snow starts to melt and the temps begin to get much warmer.  Well, I have been keeping busy within the last month, doing more research for my WW I novel, getting in touch with Ed Lengel, the author of NEVER IN FINER COMPANY, a vivid history book about the Lost Battalion in WW I.   It is written in the tradition of David McCullough and Stephen Ambrose, historians who are also master storytellers, and spinners of authentic narratives.  Lengel is like that.   And an interesting author.

I am also branching out to seek more places to review my WW II novel, and to find more places to advertise as well.   Meanwhile, I continue to write the novel about WW I and a lot more of my time is spent working on short stories so that I may be able to expose my writing to more people.   It is amazing to be writing short literary fiction again after all these years of novel writing, and I am thoroughly enjoying the sharp focus of the shorter form, the challenge of drawing vivid, bold descriptions of characters in a relatively short space, and to explore the kinds of elements of fiction: theme, character, symbol, setting, and imagery, the elements that drew me to writing fiction in the first place, all those years ago.

I enjoy history, and sometimes think I missed my calling as an undergrad.  Instead of studying literature, perhaps I should have studied more history.  I doubt I’ll ever make a formal study of it now, but I really enjoy learning more about cultures and time periods other than my own.

To those of you of Irish descent, happy St. Paddy’s day this month, and look forward to warmer weather ahead.

 

As always,
Chris

 

Blog #3, January, 2019

Happy New Year!  We once again begin the cycle of resolutions, made, broken, and fulfilled.  We enter yet another year, hoping for better times ahead.  Here, in Orem, UT, it is snowing, with large half foot deep patches on our lawn, a white wonder land of snow.   We stay inside, Erin and I, most of the time, and keep warm.  I continue to read about World War I, and to work on the historical novel.   I am also now working on short fiction a lot more, submitting again to magazines, and hoping for more publication success in the new year.   Most of my short fiction pieces are your typical contemporary pieces, domestic in nature, that explore the human heart and all its variants.   The trick here is to avoid telling stories too closely resembling my own life and the lives of those around me.  That is nonfiction and not a good way to protect your loved ones from unintentional harm.  Better to make it up, whole cloth.  As the editor and author Tom Jenks once said, “Only God creates from a vacuum.”

I am currently making a study of NEVER IN FINER COMPANY, by Edward Lengel, a four part history of the Lost Battalion of the 77th Division during WW I, where we follow Major Whittlesley, Captain George McMurtry, Sergeant York, and the reporter Damon Runyon as they experience the Battle of the Argonne Forest.  So far it is absorbing, fascinating, and I haven’t even gotten to the parts where they go overseas and fight.   It helps bring many things to light that will help me flesh out the novel, especially the character of Hyrum.

 

Blog #2, December, 2018

The writing of the World War I novel continues apace, and I continue to work on shorter projects as well.  Christmas this year promises to be a good one, with plenty of books to be read, especially history books related to American history and WW I.   I am still studying WHISPERS IN THE WIND, the gripping story of the “Lost Battalion” of the 77th Division from New York.   One of the characters in my book finds himself in the lost battalion and will fight hard to survive.   With the writing, I discover how the story turns out.   I’ve found that the more pre-planned fiction is, the more stilted and overthought it becomes.   I find it’s better to let the story flow naturally, from the characters’ inner natures.  I have studied many writers over the years, and have studied with some of them at conferences and workshops, and have found this to be the most successful approach to creating a historical novel that is as engaging as it is realistic.

The books I am reading right now include a suggestion by my brother Dennis, The River of Doubt, about Theodore Roosevelt’s ill-fated expedition into the Amazon River after his failed re-election bid of 1912.  I am also reading Founding Brothers, a book about the founding of the United States, with character sketches of each of the key founding fathers.  I am reading this at the recommendation of my reading group.  I am now at the beginning of this one, which explains the structure of our government and how it came to be through the Constitutional Convention.   As I dig deeper into this text, I look forward to the treasures that await.  The final book is another for research on the WW I novel, another lost battalion one, this one focusing on the battalion’s commander, Maj. Charles Whittlesley, among others, called No Finer Company.  I’ll be doing research from this source after Christmas.

For those of you in colder climates, keep warm and for all have yourself a happy holiday, merry and bright!  I’ll be in touch with you in the New Year.

 

Chris

 

Blog#1, November 9th, 2018

After a hiatus of over a year for a family medical emergency, Erin and I decided to re-vamp the website and start with a new series of blogs.  These blogs will differ significantly from previous ones in that they will focus much more on history, aviation, and other topics that fascinate me without being so narrowly focused on the writing process.  Perhaps I assumed, wrongly, that most visitors to the site would consider themselves writers primarily, instead of readers just looking for an interesting topic.   Not that I would totally cut out writing about technique and writing advice, rather it would not make up the preponderance of the blogs.

I have many projects that I am concurrently working on, all but one take place in time periods other than our own.   It is keeping me really busy and my main focus right now is:

Under the Red, White, and Blue—is the story of two Latter Day Saint brothers who leave Utah to enlist in the Army during WW I.   One fights in the trenches as an enlisted man, one is an aviator who is related to Brigham Fratelli from IN LOVE AND WAR.  Hyrum, the enlisted man, is wounded in a trench attack and befriends a war widow while recuperating in London.  It still has a ways to go.

Part of my research for Under the Red…  includes studying a book called WHISPERS IN THE WIND, a compilation of journal entries from a US Army sergeant mixed with bits of a memoir by a former captain in the same regiment.   There is an immediacy in this source material that makes for great reading.   I think you can still find it on Amazon, under the name of the editor Douglas R. Eisenstein.

In addition to the above-mentioned projects that are the book-length ones and are in various stages of development, I still have a number of short stories out to magazines and have lately been composing hymn lyrics intended for consideration by the LDS (Mormon) Church.   I’ve also been working on essays where the main focus is on thoughts of spirituality and my conversion to the LDS faith.

I am really excited to be reaching out again to my readers, the number of which continues to grow.   As you will see in this updated website, since last year the Amazon reviews now number five, all excellent except for one very good.   And you will find the very positive Kirkus Reviews book review of IN LOVE AND WAR.   I hope everyone enjoys the cooler weather, and is looking forward to Thanksgiving with family and friends.   We in my family have much to be grateful for.   Have a Happy Thanksgiving and be sure to comment on this blog if you like.