In honor of nobody’s favorite week of the year, my book’s on sale all week!
These prices will hold until July 27th, so step lively!
Reviewer Christine Emba says in First Things:
What especially recommends The Sinner’s Guide to a broader audience is Fisher’s ability to use NFP as a starting point to engage with the larger and more universal questions facing anyone attempting to live out a Christian life day to day. What is prudence? How does one persevere in adversity? What does charity actually look like in relationships, and in daily life? As Fisher asks, “Does God just hate women, or what?” The question “Is it the right time to conceive” gives way to a plainspoken yet illuminating discourse on the phrase “God’s will.” A chapter entitled “Groping Toward Chastity” helps define the oft-misunderstood word in terms relevant to any reader—single or married.
Read the rest of “Marriage with Benefits” here. This review makes me realize how desperately I was longing for someone to describe it as “this slim volume.” I feel so happy.
You can order SGNFP in paperback directly from Our Sunday Visitor or from Amazon. Also available: the ebook for Kindle or Nook, and the audiobook, read croakily by yours twooly. And looky, it has 230 reviews, with an average of 4.9 out of five stars!
You never know what the morning will bring. I just got into a weird little skirmish with a fellow who believes that there is only one kind of generosity, and that is having as many babies as possible. (He can correct me if I’m misrepresenting his point of view.)
It began when someone wrote a nice review of The Sinner’s Guide to NFP, and this fellow — not having read the book, of course — said:
Yeah, I played the grandmultipara pregnancy card. So sue me.
It didn’t stop Mr. NFP Denier, anyway. He let me know that his wife is expecting theireleventh baby (eleven being a higher number than ten, you’ll note), and that his family was fruitful and multiplied just like God commanded, and they were therefore obeying the doctrine of the Church in what was obviously the only possible way, unlike people who use NFP, who are clearly disobeying the doctrine of the Church.
I said that generosity sometimes looks different from having another baby. Generosity can even look like deciding not to have another baby right now, even if you really, really want to. It depends on your circumstances. It’s different for different people, according to what God is asking of their specific lives. The Church teaches that we can use our hearts and our brains while prayerfully discerning intensely individual questions like family size. It’s not a numbers game, where God judges our holiness by using His fingers and toes to tally up our family size.
But maybe my reader-who-doesn’t-need-to-read-my-stupid-book is onto something, with his accusation of relativism. It occurs to me that the scourge of relativism is nothing new. One very early example of a selfish woman trying to excuse her own flaws and call them virtues? Check out this chick:
And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, 2 and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. 3 So she said, “Truly I say to you, I, a poor widow, have put in more than all; 4 for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God,[a] but I out of my poverty put in all the livelihood that I had.”
See there? Relativism! The nerve of that lady, thinking that the gift of her dumb little pennies made her even more generous than the big bucks those other guys were pouring into the chest! If there’s one thing that Jesus tries to pound into our heads over the course of the Gospel, it’s that holiness is a numbers game, period.
Pff, relativists. I suppose they think they’ll somehow find their way into heaven anyway.
Well, you never know. I’ve heard God is fairly generous, too.
I know, I already said it, but I wasn’t sure of the time. Now I am! I really enjoyed this interview. Al Kresta is a funny guy, and very smart. You can listen live here.
Because all of a sudden, it’s in stock!!!!!!!!!!!!
Buy The Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning straight from the publisher, Our Sunday Visitor
or from Amazon. I just happened to go the page and realized it was in stock! It says there are only 19 copies left!
If you were darling enough to pre-order my book a month ago, it should be winging its way to you very soon!
Good heavens!
JoAnna Wahlund asked some killer questions. Here’s how the interview ends:
Are you and your family being pursued by albino monk assassins dispatched by the “NFP-Is-A-Heresy” Cabal?
Yeah, but I reminded them that self flagellation and the wearing of the cilice barely registers as suffering when you compare it with trying to figure out a postpartum chart. Ba bing!
So much fun. Click here to read the rest.
Great interview with Bonnie Engstrom of Ignitum Today is up today. An excerpt:
You talk a lot about how you and Damien have grown and overcome a lot of the struggles you had early on in your marriage. Was here a specific turning point for you? A moment where you said, “Aha! So this is what God wants me to do/say/understand!” If so, when was that moment, and what precipitated it?
No one specific moment, no. There were several “believe so that you may understand” moments, though — when we just decided we were going to grit our teeth and do our best to live with impossible situations . . . and then they cleared up in unexpected ways. It was a lot easier to see God’s gentleness and mercy after we had decided to bow to His law.
We also constantly work on making the shift from “my needs vs. your needs” to “what’s best for our marriage and family?”
I think that even when people do have startling, revolutionary epiphanies in their lives, they usually still have to follow up with a long, gradual process of putting that epiphany into practice.
Two quick things!
One, I just got through doing a live hour with the guys at Archangel Radio.
Honestly, I was a little nervous about doing an entire hour about my book, but it was actually wonderful to relax and have some space to really talk about things — about, for instance, how lucky I am to have a big family, but how foolish it is to think you know the state of someone’s soul based on their family size. These guys are a hoot,
and they asked really good questions.
If you missed it, they post the live hour segments on YouTube; my segment should be up at the end of the day.
****
Two, the intrepid Jennifer Fitz of Riparians at the Gate is giving away a copy of my book, which you obviously already own, but, as Jennifer says, “You’re allowed to enter and win for a friend instead. See? Thanksgiving present. Perfect.”
Okay, maybe, “intrepid” is not the right descriptor. Here is #4 of her “Seven Quick Takes” book giveaway post:
4. Here’s the scoop on the book, and why you need to reform your ways if you didn’t answer #2, 3, 3.5, or 3.75 correctly:
(A) You know how you hate NFP? You use it and all, or you would, but it’s maybe not the rapturous experience that you always dreamt of, when you first read the words “cervical mucus”? This book is about that. NFP Frustration.
(B) The book doesn’t talk about cervical mucus. It doesn’t have 10 Ways to Get a Better Temp Rise, Faster! Now! A Full 4/10ths of a Degree or Your Money Back!!
Most books are better if they don’t include that. –> Except if you’re trying to learn NFP. In which case the amusing way in which this contest is being run will help you with that.
(C) Every stupid thing about NFP ever. said. by some idiot who clearly has a Josephite marriage and prefers it that way (did Joseph? I’m skeptical.), REFUTED! Blammo! In YOUR PLACE crazy people. Done.
(D) Except charitably.
(E) Downright Theology of the Body, if you must know. Only, it’s not, “I drank the TOTB water, and now I drool unicorns and rainbows.” It’s more like: “Hey! TOTB Water! You can brew beer with that!”
(F) It’s a short book.
(G) There were points where I did not laugh out loud. I laughed so hard sound would not come out of my body. I would have rolled on the floor laughing, except that I was laughing too hard to fall out of my chair. I’m sure it was weird looking. There are certain chapters you might not want to read in public.
(H) We aren’t doing the whole alphabet.
(I) But I thought up another thing: This book is the perfect marriage book. So if you know somebody who’s married, or who is thinking of getting married, this would be a great gift. I’ve been married 47.5% of my life. I know what it takes. Simcha’s nailed it. On the head.
(J) It’s pronounced “Sim-ka”. Like the “ch” sound in “School”. Because Simka’s so chool.
(K) Yeah, I was saying it wrong too.
(L) I didn’t ask how to pronounce “Fisher”. We’re all just winging it on that one.
I die.
So there are — I was going to say three ways to enter, but there are actually three ways to enter just on her personal blog alone. You can also enter at Amazing Catechists, and she also talks a little bit on Patheos about how she read my book despite having just finished a 3.5 month-long exhaustive course on Catholic sex ed.
Thanks, Jennifer, for these great posts! Oh, and “Fisher” is pronounced “Potrzebie.” Hope that helps.
Brandon Vogt has delivered approximately eleventy million tons of helpful advice about writing and marketing, and he graciously put together this post about my book as part of his series of interviews with illustrious people, plus me.
In the interview, he gives me the chance to swat down a few myths about NFP, and to talk about why, if NFP is so effective, so many Catholic families have 15-passenger vans in their driveways. Check it out! Great questions.
And okay, color me easy to impress, but I just about died when I saw this graphic he cooked up:
Soon! Soon, I tell you! Any day now, the print book will be available for pre-order. In the mean time, I’m still all
I got interviewed by Brandon Vogt!!!! (Yeah, he made that graphic, too.)
As I announced last week, I’m holding a contest as a little thank-you to folks who have bought my e-book, The Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning, which is still holding steady as the #1 bestseller on Amazon in Catholicism for Kindle books and books in general, and which has over fifty five-star reviews, from men, women, single people, people who have passed childbearing age, NFP instructors, a monsignor, two of my sisters, and the pope*, so you know it has to be good.
*Nah.
Here’s how you enter:
1. Buy and read the book. Come on, it’s only $4.99, and it’s short.
2. Leave an honest review on Amazon, and email a screenshot of your review to simchafisher [at] gmail [dot] com. Please put “MY AMAZON REVIEW” in the subject line. (Note: you can leave an Amazon review even if you bought the book through Barnes and Noble or Smashwords)
3. That’s it. You’re entered. People who’ve already written reviews, are of course, welcome to enter.
Easy peasy, right? And now for the prizes. THE! PRIZES!!!!
These babies:
Yep, be the first on your block to own a matched set of SGNFP pint glasses. I was going to include a couple of nips to christen the glasses with, but it turns out it’s illegal to ship alcohol unless you are a distributor or something. So I will just have to pack up the glasses very carefully and hope to heck that nothing alcoholic happens to fall into the box.
I will, however, intentionally include one of these splendid little wooden boxes filled an assortment of ten exquisite handmade bonbons from Burdick Chocolate of Walpole, NH:
Folks, if you can’t make a nice evening out of that, even my book won’t be able to help you, and it’s a damn good book.
Your choice of five luxurious handmade soaps from Roots Soap Co.
I have been using these soaps since I met their maker, Anna Cools, last month, and they are lovely — very light and smooth, fragrant but not overpowering, and luminously beautiful to boot. Anna says:
My base recipe consists simply of rainwater, lye, coconut oil, tallow, and olive oil. Once the oils and lye have saponified, I add a combination of pure essential oils, natural clays and organic botanicals, fine oils for extra moisturizing, and organic local herbs, flowers, spices and roots that are healing or beneficial to the skin. All of my ingredients are chosen with beauty, quality and benefit in mind for each body that will enjoy them. Each batch of soap that I weigh, stir, pour, cut and form with my hands is created with pride, love, many years experience and a rich history. I hope that each person who uses my products are touched by what is behind them.
My book doesn’t specifically cover the use of soap, and yet I can’t help but feel that the combination of “clean, yet exhilarating” is somehow apropos.
Third prize is a set of steak knives.
ABC. Always Be Charting! You chart or you hit the bricks.
Either way, enter in the contest! I will close the contest at noon (Eastern time) on Friday, October 25th, and will try to announce the winners by 5 PM.
Good luck!
SIMCHA FISHER 
