I have issues with anyone who tries to claim that science is unworkable - creationists who deny evidence for past history, yet are happy to benefit from the products of the methodology that they otherwise deny.
Just so that we are clear on this, I am in favour of teaching children about different beliefs. I am not in favour of indoctrinating them in any particular belief, including my own: these issues should be presented as beliefs, not as fact.
You can, I think, have a quiet and steady protagonist and not run the risk of terminal dullness as long as exciting things happen to them and around them, and crime is the ideal genre for making this come about.
Only in the English countryside could violent death remain something that is 'cosy.'
Because contemporary paganism is essentially so new, its underlying ethical structure is not particularly sophisticated.
Authors as diverse as Rudyard Kipling, E. Nesbit, and J. R. R. Tolkien have shaped modern paganism as greatly as any theological underpinnings.
Contemporary paganism gives me a subjective lens through which the world in which I live can be interpreted on an aesthetic and an ethical basis. I'm interested in narrative, myth, and story, in folklore and the way we connect to the turning of the seasons and the natural world.
For me, spiritual practice is a lot closer to art than science.