About Me

La Mouette was not built to lie peacefully in port.
- Daphne du Maurier, Frenchman’s Creek 

Catholic. Writer. Daydreamer. Geek.

I am Alex Ray, and I write young adult fantasy novels, which means I have the incredible gift of daydreaming for a living.

I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, a lifelong Catholic. I spent my early years as most people of my generation do, at school and a myriad of extracurricular activities. I graduated with a degree in History from the University of Texas in Austin in 2011. Those years of "higher education" meant very little. The real story began after. Long after, by my reckoning, but in reality not that long.

In October 2017, the centennial celebration of the Fatima Apparitions, His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke hosted a nationwide tour with the pilgrim statue of Our Lady of Fatima. While in Dallas, as he said mass and the statue of the Blessed Virgin gazed upon us, I went to confession and confessed the mortal sins that I had hidden - even from myself - for years. That is when my life changed.

Within the month, I fell ill enough to want to stay home from Church one Sunday. I felt guilty for missing Mass, so while my family went I decided to spend the time reading some sort of religious book. I will forever call it a miracle - I was drawn toward a book that my Aunt/Godmother gave to me some five years before that I had never bothered to open. Through the Eyes of Jesus, by C. Alan Ames. Within the first five pages of this beautiful, incredible, divinely revealed book, I WAS A DIFFERENT PERSON. My mother can attest to this. She saw the change in me immediately.

Until that moment, reading about Jesus interacting with his apostles on a day to day basis, it occurred to me that I had NEVER felt true charity in my heart. Doing for others had been something that I was told to do, but never truly wanted to do. But I remember with perfect clarity that moment when I realized that I was a horrible, self-focused person (not to put too fine a point on it), and it was only when I made this admission that I could then admit that I desperately needed The Divine Physician, Jesus Christ, for healing and restoration.

And being the ever-loving God that He Is, He filled me with HIS LOVE and the spirit of charity that my soul had been thirsting for.

Almost over night, prayer became an intrinsic part of me. Naturally, I had prayed all my life, but since that moment, it felt more urgent. It felt necessary, rather than optional. Since then I have dedicated myself to prayer, study, and the Eucharistic Christ. The journey is far from over, and as J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, in the words of Bilbo Baggins, "But the time has come. I am being swept off my feet at last." And then he sang:

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say. 

Now we come to the point of this blog. The road spent in prayer and contemplation is leading me here, to share all of my thoughts and inspirations regarding Our Lord. As Catholics, we are called to evangelization, leading others to Christ. Writing is my way of attempting to do that. In my books, I try to delve into concepts in a way that is exciting and emotional and frankly more palatable. But this blog is where I want to be perfectly clear - I work for God.

You may be curious about the title: Seagulls and Semantics.

I will start with the Semantics part. As a writer, words are important to me, as they are to Christ, the Word of God. But words have a way of changing and morphing and losing and gaining meaning, sometimes for the better, but often not. Part of my mission, both as a novelist and a philosopher, is to wade through the muck that our evolving language and perception of meaning has created and to find the Truth.

As for Seagulls, that is more of a personal image. I think it started after reading Daphne du Maurier's Frenchman's Creek, in which the pirate ship was named La Mouette and represented freedom. The quote at the top of this page became this sort of mantra for me. In a future blog post I can go more into that (it does need explaining). The point is I have been obsessed with seagulls ever since. And more recently, I have come to see seagulls as a representation of myself and all the rest of us, drawn to the sea, constantly seeking Christ in the great abyss, led by the light of Our Lady, Star of the Sea.

So, on that note...

Our Lady Star of the Sea, Pray for us.