Bud McFarlane, Jr., Bud Jr. was born on October 1, 1962 in Montclair, New Jersey. After following in his father's footsteps at Catholic grade school, attended Verona High School in New Jersey. In 1980 he matriculated to the University of Notre Dame and it was in his senior year that he struck up a friendship with a fellow Catholic, a young sophomore lass attending the South Bend campus - Christine TePas. She was very active in pro-life efforts and the two worked on various projects in 1983. As Bud recalls, "it was just a friendship, nothing romantic." They both made their Consecration to Immaculate Mary on December 8, 1983, starting a Militia Immaculata group at Notre Dame. He graduated with a bachelor's in History the following spring in 1984 and returned home to begin his career as a mechanical engineer. He attributes any success in his Catholicism and participation in the New Evangelization to growing up in a large, loving, creative and fun Catholic family, to his total consecration to Immaculate Mary while a student at Notre Dame and to adapting the principles of his hero Saint Maximilian Kolbe.

Young Bud had been a "jack of all trades" working such various jobs as teacher to UPS driver, from short order cook to sales, from pizza delivery driver to national marketing director, but not a master of none until God deigned him to be. When that happened, he became a master of evangelization tools for Holy Mother Church. In the fall of 1994 a fellow Knight of the Immaculata, who Bud Jr. had been in school with at South Bend, called him and was grilling Bud on the chronology of events in Church history for a novel he was working on. Bud gave him ideas and told him how the characters needed to be flesh-and-blood people, fallen-away Catholics who are struggling and how they find their Faith again. But his buddy's goals were vague and he didn't really have his heart in it. When Bud hung up his wife, Bai, asked him if his friend was going to write it and Bud, off the cuff, blurted, "Naw, he's lost, he doesn't have a clue what he's doing and I doubt he'll ever do it." That's when Bai challenged her husband with, "Why not give it a shot yourself." It was early on a Sunday afternoon and so Bud started to write an outline and create some characters, "just killing time on a Sunday" is how Bud explained it. He had always been a wiz at marketing and a gifted writer. "Putting words on paper came easily," Bud asserted, "but I never had a desire to be a novelist." But God did.

One thing led to another and on December 8, 1994, the occasion of their third wedding anniversary and ten year renewal of their consecration, his wife read the manuscript and was thrilled. She encouraged him to send it to friends for their take on it and he was more than willing to be a "guinea pig writer." They loved it and the reality of it grew through the power of prayer and countless letters to nuns and priests throughout Cleveland and New Jersey all praying for its success. Within a short amount of time they had received $35,000. in unsolicited donations, enough to publish the book and St. Jude Media was born in 1994. "We established St. Jude Media because there were so few publishing houses for Catholic fiction around and we thought we could produce other titles and authors as well, " Bud relates. Little did he know at the time that St. Jude's Media would become the largest publisher of Catholic fiction in the United States. His first book, Pierced by a Sword was published in 1995 with 300,000 printed since. Two years later Conceived Without Sin was released with 115,000 printed so far and this past June readers were rewarded with the third in the series House of Gold, 85,000 in the first printing. Bud Jr. was recognized as one of the CPA Best New Authors in 1996. It is Bud's hopes that he can write one new novel a year and if that is the case, readers are in for a treat plus many, many souls will be prompted to return to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith which his novels show so clearly as the answer. These novels and the tapes of his father have become tremendous evangelizing tools whose results can only be truly tallied in Heaven.

From www.dailycatholic.org

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