The Call of the Creator: Fantasy Writing from a Christian Worldview

Having Standards vs. Being a Royal Pain

2012-01-26T21:18:00.002-05:00

One of my significant life lessons going on right now has to do with how to figuring out how to insist on high quality product without being the person people see emails from and say "Ugh, I can't deal with that right now." In terms of things I care about, "good enough" has never been an option for me. I'm not saying this to toot my own horn--trust me, it's more often a curse than a blessing.

The trouble with never being able to reach that point of "good enough," is that I constantly doubt. Every time I submit something, whether it's a drawing for a project, or an editing pass of a manuscript, or even put a meal on the table, I worry that I have not outdone myself enough for the creation to pass muster. After all, I could have done another layer of hard pencil tone over the grain of the drawing to make it just that much more satiny. I could have combed again for sentences that were less than artfully constructed. The enchiladas might have needed another dash of cumin or perhaps another few tablespoons of poblano.

The other trouble is that we live in a culture of "bare minimum for the sake of speed." You see it in businesses everywhere. The guy who works hard to get things absolutely right, but works slowly, is overlooked in favor of the guy who can do just enough to avoid having oversights link back to him, and his ability to both avoid blame and look productive get him ahead.

Luckily, it seems so far, that writing for a small press is a good fit for a chronic perfectionist like me. There's none of the sense of being swept along on the conveyor belt of the publishing machine when your work isn't wedged into a lineup of 25 books that need to release in the same quarter. Perhaps I will discover a different outlook by the time my novel releases, but for now, I have had no sense of being rushed by anyone but me. (And incidentally, I've been pretty pleased with my ability to forecast my self-imposed deadlines. There's something I don't have to harp on myself about!) After hearing horror stories from folks who have worked with big houses, how they have had to settle for books they felt needed more finessing, or covers that weren't quite on the mark, I am glad I am making my first foray into publishing with small presses.

What I'm also realizing, though, is that getting a book out on the market is much like what my former pastor used to say about getting a new car. He used to say, "Every new car needs one good dent." In the same way, I think every author needs to figure out how to take a deep breath and realize books launch with mistakes. It's inevitable, no matter how many excellent people go over my work, it will get printed with something missing, extra, or askew. And the sooner I can take a deep breath and realize my credibility as an artist will not crumble when the fans find those little errors, the closer to sane I will be.

"Sane" being relative, of course. After all, I am a writer.

The First Mile Marker in the Marathon

2012-01-16T16:12:00.000-05:00

Much to my surprise, I hit the editing deadline I had hoped to conquer this month. Last night, with enough time to sit down afterward and pop in Russel Crowe's Robin Hood for an hour or so, I applied the final line edit to my novel. (And for the sake of calling it something and not just 'my novel,' let's go with Curse Bearer for now. It may prove to be a working title like Sword of the Patron did, but it's closer to pleasing my publisher as titles go, I think.)

Anyway, this first pass of publisher-requested edits has been a lesson in what makes a person an author instead of a hobbyist. Editing is hard work. It has its fun points, as you see the exfoliation of all the padding, redundancy, and just plain author self-indulgence, but there are also points where its a war. Self-doubt, vision, publisher expectations, artistic debates, and just plain fatigue all face off in a new Battle of the Five Armies. It's no wonder I'm relieved to get to the first milestone of having applied this round of edits.

It would be silly and naive of me to think the finish line is in sight, however. Though I can smile and indulge in a few well-earned squares of chocolate, there's so much more to do that I had best only focus ont he next immediate step, lest I paralyze myself with overthinking the rest of the race.

But run on I shall. Reading the entire manuscript through for idiocy that made it onto the page as I revamped presents itself as the next step.

All this in the midst of helping wrap up the final details on the art in Port Yonder Press's The Book of Silvari, as well as poise the print edition of The Windrider Saga for launch in just a few weeks. Yes, it's as crazy as it sounds. But if I have to pick, I'll take a full plate over an empty one.

Plaster Dust

2012-01-09T21:34:00.000-05:00

Have you ever worked at any length with plaster of Paris? We did a unit about molding and casting in my three dimensional design class my freshman year of college, which involved the use of quite a bit of plaster. I thoroughly enjoyed the plaster lathing and later, the casting process, but the one thing I did not entirely love about plaster is the way it sucks the moisture from human skin like some kind of alien species. My hands were a cracked ruin while I worked in plaster. But the final products of the labor were always gratifying.

Why in the world am I telling you this? All for the sake of what has probably already become a bloated metaphor, but if you've been reading my blog posts for any amount of time, you're likely used to that from me. Anyway, I must admit, I am in a spiritual state right now that is as dry as a box of powdered plaster--so spiritually dry that I fear my parched state could be leeching the life-giving moisture from anything that comes in contact with me. And how did I get this way? By a systematic neglect of Bible study.

When I say Bible study, I don't mean a neglect of going someplace were people meet and discuss homework passages from a LifeWay workbook. What I mean is disciplined, regular study of the scriptures for its own sake, not because somebody might notice I don't have my blanks filled in. I have lately only touched base with my Bible in passing glances, and it shows.

When I think about how neglectful I've been of study, I constantly remember a story I heard at a writer's conference a few years back. The speaker at the conference talked about the home churches meeting in rural China, where they may only have a single page of the Bible, a page that they pass from family to family, and when it's your family's turn to have the page, how everyone cherishes it, pores over it, and memorizes it, squeezing every ounce of wisdom they can from the words. We have enough Bibles around our house to distinguish between the "cheap paperbacks" that we don't even really worry about if our kids leave them somewhere, and the better, leather-bound versions we don't let them take places, mostly because we don't want to have to shell out the $70 to replace them. And yet, with a Bible within fifteen paces of any place I could be in my house, or if some bizarre set of circumstances emerged that every one of those Bibles simultaneously got left on a shelf outside a Sunday school classroom, within a ten minute drive to purchase a new one, I don't pick one up with regularity. It's worse than a shame. I am ashamed.

My solution to my neglect of reading has been to listen to an audio version of the "Bible in a year" that I can flip on when I get in my car in the morning. I'm surprised how well this has gone for me for the few days that I've been trying it, because I am not really an auditory learner. But still, even familiar passages are presenting new nuggets that I've somehow missed in many readings of the same text.

And so, it's my hope, just like the way plaster does when you add water, that the application of more scripture to my daily routine will create a reaction that warms. In this case, warms my spirit, my interactions with others, and stokes to flame a consuming hunger for the Word of God--something that has been absent from my life for longer than I care to admit. And just like that liquid plaster, made useful by the introduction of water, I pray that I will become more useful, more mold-able, and eventually spiritually solid. May my commitment to keeping scripture in my daily life take what could be just dry dust and make it something capable of comprising a masterpiece.

Three Things (Fantasy) Readers Want

2011-12-29T15:33:00.000-05:00

It has been such an encouragement to me how many of you have really gotten some nugget of useful wisdom out of the One-Star Review series I've been posting here--I really appreciate the feedback and encouragement. As I troll more one-star diatribes for cohesive nuggets to post about, I thought I'd take a little detour to talk about what those who posted positive reviews state they want, at least in general terms, from their fantasy reading. After all, of the "big titles" I've been studying, the boo-hiss reviews represent less than 5% of the feedback on any of these books, so it seems prudent to at least touch on what most people are saying.

So here we go. If reviews are to be believed, fantasy readers want...

To visit your world

Fantasy readers generally revel in the opportunity to traverse the map of another land, if the tale you are telling allows for such things. Where the mountains are, how the weather changes from place to place, what rivers must be forded and how difficult that is--all of this information helps readers feel like they are "really there" and oriented in a fantasy world. If the landscape is especially unusual (for example, the Shattered Plains in Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings or the moon Pandora from James Cameron's Avatar) readers want as much detail as it takes to help them see the wonder. Granted, that <5% of readers did frown at the detailing of the world being overly detailed, but those folks tended to seem like they were just in the wrong place overall by reading fantasy. Sure, a lot of thriller readers couldn't care less the color of the veining on the poisonous balepetal plant, but fantasy readers in general, grin when you tell them.

To have a sense of a deeper history

Note that I said "a sense," which does not mean a huge dissertation, or heavens no, a ginormous prologue that dumps all that info into our unwilling laps. One of the major elements of The Lord of the Rings that helps it ensare readers generation after generation is the way Tolkien includes references to Middle Earth's history that are just that, references. None of his characters feel it necessary to explain what they're hinting at, just like if you were writing a contemporary earth-setting novel, you wouldn't feel compelled to explain what you meant if you referred to World War II or the Beatles. Your characters would talk about such things and they would know the cultural context. In the same way, Tolkien's characters talked about goblin wars or the lay of Beren and Luthien and at most, hinted at the full tales. And it works. (It helps for us uber-geeks that there are commentaries, notes, and appendices for us to go find out the full sweep of what these things are all about if we want to.) But for those who don't, the cultural references work to create a sense of water that runs deep with history and lore.

To feel smarter than your average bear

If there's any readership that doesn't mind technically specific vocabulary, archaic usage, and concepts that make them go "Oooh, I need to Google that," it's speculative fiction readers. Many of the folks who read fantasy are happy to spend time with their like-minded buddies discussing the differences between a glaive-guisarm and a bardiche, and most of them would prefer you call those weapons what they are in fantasy, rather than you just say polearm. Reviewer complaints have included griping about authors whose worlds lack color because every castle guard carries a spear, or because the writer decided "people only read modern dialect nowadays." (I find homeschooled fantasy readers become especially irked about the language issue.) Granted, your novel shouldn't read like middle English, because that would be overkill. And if you're going to write in a "high" style, you better be sure you are second only to Shakespeare in your mastery of it, because it will show if you try and you're not. (Trust me on this.)

Whether we admit it or not, we spec-fic readers are a strange breed, generally more willing to figure something out we don't get on the first pass, and even more willing than average to accept things that we won't understand because the author made it up and no amount of Googling will offer more information.

I could continue to add bullet points to this list, but that may have to wait for another day. To conclude, however, I am deeply grateful for the people who take the time to post detailed reviews of books on-line. If we can't talk to readers one-on-one about our own work, it seems to me there's still a trove of information out there to tap for wisdom.

One Star Reviews #4: Grammatical Snobbery

2011-12-27T13:12:00.000-05:00

There are none so righteous as the newly converted...

I thought C.S. Lewis had said this, but as I dug around, I was hard pressed to locate an attribution for the quote. But it certainly holds true no matter who the quote belongs to. For those who are freshly educated in the use of language, the brand of righteousness these folks exhibit is irksome to fiction writers.

While not as pervasive as the one-star reasons I've talked about in the first three posts in this series, a refrain I am finding in one-star reviews (and also two-star, incidentally) is grammarphilia. People who stand on the premise that impeccable grammar is far more important than style. Fragments give these people heart palpitations. Prepositions at the ends of sentences are like scarlet letters of the literary world. No self-respecting paragraph would ever have just one sentence.

Now, I am completely on the grammarphiles' side in their assertions that writers should know how to make their nouns and verbs agree, that they shouldn't use words whose definitions they don't exactly know (think "inconceivable" from The Princess Bride) and they certainly need to comb their work for wonky syntax. But militant adherence to the rules of academic writing doesn't necessarily serve best in the realm of fiction. With the emphasis on voice in fiction, it's a necessity that authors have leave to play a little bit with accepted grammar rules. If the message beneath the words becomes horribly garbled due to excessive liberty with grammar, then of course the author has gone too far.

But the one-star reviewer/grammar officer doesn't see the artistry in tweaking, in starting a sentence with the occasional conjunction, in pouring words into a mold that maximizes their impact, even if it doesn't adhere to collegiate grammar specifications. It's these types of reviewers that I can't help but wonder if they just have nothing else to do than read books and become incensed over non-traditional sentence structure. Never mind the fact that the fragment or word order actually serves a specific artistic purpose (if you simmer down long enough to analyze it.)

I would ignore this type of one-star review if it didn't bleed over into another area the grammar-police also seem to partner with their hatred of loose sentence structure, and that's an intolerance for a partial reveal of information. As I came across multiple one-star reviews spurred by linguistic frustration, many of these reviews morphed into complaints about questions authors planted that did not generate immediate answers. (Now, hearkening back to #3 of this series, it is a legitimate gripe if the author never bothers to tie up anything, but just wanders around for hundreds of pages.) But I think the narrow view of grammar is logically tied into the reader frustration with "hooks" or "plants," as I've heard them called. People who think in a rigidly linear fashion have little tolerance for unexplained actions, titles, or remarks, and it seems few of these types of readers are willing to stick with a book if they have to wait too long to find out what the author was alluding to.

The take-away I get from this is that if I'm going to plant a question in my work, I need to make sure I reassure my reader that I haven't forgotten about it. An occasional hint that I will get back to that--eventually--goes a long way in reader retention. And if I'm going to ignore formality in grammatical structure, I had better do it less than I have in this blog post if I don't want the Champions of Grammar to wage war on me.

One-Star Reviews #3: Keep it Relevant

2011-12-22T12:51:00.002-05:00

The third prevalent complaint I found in one-star reviews applies most specifically to writers who are forging into subsequent books in a series, and the word of warning one-star reviewers send your way is this: don't ramble. No matter how fascinating you might think the minutia of your world may be, if it doesn't serve to advance the plot in some meaningful way, don't include it.

To be fair, for every one-star review that complains about self-indulgent world building detail, there are ten reviews that rave about the depth of the story teller's world. The majority of loyal fantasy fans eat world details like Edmund Pevensie shovels Turkish Delight, but my study of one-star reviews shows there is a significant percentage of those who don't. As with many things in life, it seems to me moderation is the key.

More specifically, the incensed reviewers became weary when a promising first (or even second or third) book in a series led them into a tome of rambling nothing. World information, disjointed exploits, and story padding that make a laborious 900 page book out of what could have been a really good 500 page story bring one-star reviewers' blood to a boil. And given the price of a big publishing house hardback novel that has as many pages as all three Lord of the Rings books combined, readers want every word on those expensive pages to pack a punch--and I think they deserve that. Prior success is no reason for editors to let authors get sloppy.

Another refrain I found in these one-star reviews that decried irrelevant detail was an across-the-board complaint about overly-detailed sex scenes in fantasy books that did nothing to develop anyone's character (for better or worse) and felt more like voyeuristic indulgence of the author's weird thought life than anything that should populate the pages of a book. Just by reading the way the reviewers framed these comments, it's obvious they aren't moral ultra-conservatives. They might not even object to the concept of casual sex in the real world. They just don't want to see geeky fantasies lived out for pages and pages for no reason. It's not just us prudish Christians who'd rather not hear detailed language about body parts and their interaction. I find it a relief to know there are readers across the spectrum with a sense of decency, and they're not afraid to speak up about it.

I'll be the first to admit that finding the exact level of world exposition that pleases both those who geek out over it and those who demand continual story momentum is a huge challenge for those of us who have built worlds and mentally live in them. That's why I think it's very valuable to come out of fantasy land every now and again, take a look around at how people are reacting to the unveiling of that world, and adjust accordingly.

One Star Reviews #2: Papa Don't Preach

2011-12-19T12:38:00.000-05:00

As I continue my quest to squeeze as much wisdom as possible out of one-star reviews of generally respected fantasy books, I came across an issue that a commenter on the last post about this topic touched upon: visible religious content in the narrative. More specifically, overt parallels to Christianity seem to have a distinct talent for drawing the ire of the one-star reviewer.

Some of these reviewers have railed against feeling as though books have snuck up on them under the guise of fantasy stories and then somewhere in the middle, pulled a "bait and switch." Some have even suggested that if authors intend to have Christian content in their stories, that they should preface the book with a warning. Something like a allergen label, I guess:

Processed in a facility that may leave trace amounts of stuff that sounds and feels like the Bible.

Or perhaps:

Caution: Contains characters that bear an undeniable resemblance to Jesus or other biblical figures

Few reviewers have any problem with a religious system in fantasy. In fact, many of them applaud the depth of world-building it takes to give characters an intricate and fully-realized belief system. But if that belief system comes across in a way where the reader begins to feel the author is trying to tell him what he should believe in real life, well, look out. Those one star reviews will come hurtling in like flaming balls of catapult shot. And if that belief system reminds people of Christ, that only compounds the intensity with which people react. If there's anything reliably divisive in this world, its Christianity.

Honestly, I can't entirely blame the one-star reviewers for getting ticked off when a fantasy book suddenly starts to sound like an over-preached sermon. Themes are wonderful. Deeper meaning is what makes a good book great. But when it comes to religious content, the old mantra--know thy audience--becomes imperative.

If I'm writing for Christians, they are going to be much more willing to read an object lesson in my work and see what they can take away from that. We're used to that method of operations, since most of us engage in that exercise at least once a week if not daily. But if I think I'm writing for a crossover audience, they will drop me like cast iron that's been sitting over the fire if I start to let my characters become mouthpieces of specifically biblical teaching. This is entirely my opinion formed from observation, but I believe we all have an inner eye that recognizes our Maker, even if we are choosing to ignore him in our daily living. For those who do not have an active faith they are pursuing and an understanding of God's loving, relational nature, the detection of that God can be unsettling, to say the least.

Now then, that doesn't account for the books that are out there that, to the Body's shame, preach in the negative sense of the word, casting a reproachful, down-the-nose glance at the reader who does not align to the worldview of the story. I don't contest the single-star reward such writing earns.

The conclusion I come to is this: we need to handle all content that parallels a Christian worldview with a deft and winsome hand. It's so easy to fall into "tract mode" when we are in the territory as something as important to us as our belief systems. I sincerely believe it is far better to write a story that helps to raise excellent questions than one that tries to have all the answers.

Reviewer Warnings to Writers #1: Skip the Head Dipping

2011-12-14T21:51:00.001-05:00

Over the past few weeks, I've been grabbing a little time here and there to make a study of one-star reviews of fantasy books on Amazon. The content of such reviews has been sometimes funny, but more often very telling. A detailed picture of "what not to do" as an author. Now, granted, I tend to skip over the one-star reviews where the reviewer makes an idiot of him- or herself by spouting vitriol, or spelling every third word wrong, or using syntax that requires the reader to employ a combination of creativity and mind-altering substances to make sense of the reviewer's point.

Anyway, once the chaff blows yonder, what's left is a specific list of what makes readers so mad they feel they have to stand in front of the book in question and wave their arms wildly, saying "Turn back! Turn back! Don't suffer like I did."

One of the biggest reader offenders I'm running into is what I'll call "head dipping." What I mean by that is a story that interrupts itself continually to give us the point of view character's internal monologue. It seems a lot of writers not only head dip too often, but the feelings they are talking about in their characters are whiny, insecure, pathetic, and annoying. It's true we all feel like that when we're confronted with overwhelming circumstances, but it seems the bulk of fantasy readers don't want to hear about it. They want the story to forge onward. They want to see the character's conflicts, they want to hear the dialogue that reveals little snippets of the characters' inner distress, but more than one visit in a very great while to any remotely emo passages, and you readers will let the world know--loud and clear--that they think it stinks.

While frequent passages of musing may work literary wonders in "serious" forms of prose, it appears to me fantasy is surely not one of them--from a reader perspective. Since most of us who write genre fiction are indeed writing for readers, I believe we would do well to heed the issues that inspire one-star reviews. As I turn up more recurring themes in these boo-hiss reviews, I'll be back to share what those are. And as always, I invite your commentary on what you think about the observations I bring up here.

Happy reading and writing, friends!

The Do's and Don'ts of Critiquing

2011-12-12T18:59:00.001-05:00

Whether your a writer or a reader who knows writers, chances are, you've been asked for your opinion on somebody's story in progress. Talk about a ticklish position to be in, depending on who the asker happens to be. As I've spent time experiencing all levels of experience, from online forums where people have never critiqued anything before, to professional workshops under the guidance of multipublished authors, a list of things we "critters" should do (and a bigger list of those we should not) keep piling up in my mind. I figured, rather than let those take up space in my already cluttered brain, I ought to spill them here and hope they help someone else in their intent to give a good critique.

Here are my general thoughts and observations in the realm of critiquing:

#1-Be realistic about what kind of feedback you can provide--and how quickly.
If you are no grammarian but you know your way around a story, critique what you're good at. It's infinitely more useful to the person you're critiquing if you work in the realm of your strengths with confidence and leave the areas you're not sure about to those that are. What you also need to know is what kind of time you have to offer to critiquing. By the nature of the business, writers are very often on deadlines, whether it's for a contest, a mentoring program, or a publication date. It becomes very stressful for the writer if he or she is waiting on a critique that doesn't come. Better to say you can't help than to keep the writer waiting. (I stand guilty of the above offense!)

#2-Provide at least a few points of positive feedback, no matter how rough the rest of the piece may be.
Pop psych tells us that it takes a fistful of praises to offset one admonishment, but in the world of writing, it's not exactly practical to try to outweigh the corrections in that kind of proportion. As a matter of fact, it would be annoying. But on the flip side, a critique with only "fix this" and "I didn't get/like that" will leave the writer feeling pretty deflated.

And tied into this: if the piece you have agreed to critique is a horrible mess, do both yourself and the writer a favor and don't line-by-line critique it. Instead, you might want to give some general feedback about what problems are pervasive in the piece, highlighting a few examples in the first page or so, and suggesting the writer take some time to address those issues. A draft highlighted, commented upon, and rearranged so that more is flagged as wrong than right is more than most melancholy-type writers can take without inspiring a major bout of depression or desire to throw things.

#3-Use your most professional tone possible.
I don't care if you are very familiar with the person you are critiquing--the number of efforts to be cute or funny on paper that have gone awry are too numerous to count. Unless you are providing a critique to your absolute writing soul mate who will understand every inflection you write as if you said it to him over a cup of coffee, err on the side of formality. Otherwise, you risk sounding like you are patting the writer on the head like he is a four-year-old, or else you are being snarky. Either could make writers bang their keyboards and growl indiscernible epithets.

#4 Critique stuff you generally like.
It's hard to read good, polished writing you don't entirely care for, and let's face it, most of us don't bother to keep reading stuff we don't like. Critiquing, in general, is a volunteer activity that is hard enough for most writers to ask of others due to how time consuming it is by nature--no need to suffer through a critique of a genre that isn't really your thing or a story whose characters you hate. You won't provide a very helpful critique anyway, unless you are a paragon of altruism and objectivity. I know I should never try to critique romance or women's fiction, because I absolutely don't get the genres. Working tropes in those genres give me an upset stomach--and that's my problem, not the writers' and the genres'. I simply should not critique them because I will complain about stuff readers of those types of work love and expect.

There are more guidelines out there, I'm sure. As a matter of fact, you may be reading this and saying, "You didn't mention..." I invite you to do so in the comments area below!

Happy reading, writing, and generally helping.

How a Baby Carrot Can Offer Wisdom

2011-11-30T16:36:00.001-05:00

Today was one of those days where I had to pick and choose what got done, and the list was short. Way too short.

The weirdest thing that struck me in my "get the kids to school, get a few things thrown together at home, get clean so I don't offend my coworkers, and get out the door" frenzy had to do with baby carrots, of all things. There was a time, not very long ago, where I would never have considered putting a baby carrot into stew. Especially if I had old fashioned, peel 'em and cut 'em up carrots in the crisper. But life right now has begun to necessitate the need to cut a few corners, and the corner I cut today was to NOT cut the carrots.

Now this may seem like undue rumination on something completely inconsequential. But the deeper story at work here is that with every task I must do differently now that I am out of the house for ten hours a day, the more it makes me take careful stock of what's important and what's not. Yes, whole, large carrots are nurtitionally superior to baby carrots (so I'm told), but does that really matter when I'm going to steep them in a crock pot for 10 hours? Will my children feel neglected because I didn't cut the carrots into little coins? Part of me gasped in horror that I simply poured 2/3 of a bag of the little orange buggers on top of stew meat this morning. But the part of me that's thinking back on that now is laughing a little bit at how dramatic that felt at the time. Hey, at least I didn't use canned mushrooms. (We have to keep some sense of priorities here.)

It's no secret that my plate is heaped high right now, and my greatest fear has to do with the relationships I have in this world withering because I have so little time to commit to connecting. My seven year old makes no secret of the fact that he is not on board with the idea of only seeing me for about a half hour at bedtime, for about for forty five minutes in the mornings the he doesn't have children's choir before school. (The other kids are in the same boat, but because they don't share my middle child's choleric personality, they haven't said anything.) Additionally, I often feel my connection to the stay-at-home and homeschooling moms I once joined on playdates and field trips stretched thin to the point of breakage. I don't want to lose those relationships, but we tend to hang with those we have most in common with, right?

So, carrots are small potatoes in terms of changing MO's. Friendships, parental connection, and running my household? A much bigger deal. I continually pray the Lord will reveal to me how I can possibly give the appropriate level of attention to it all. Oh--and there's those little things called BOOKS I should either be marketing or editing to release.

I keep reminding myself there are lessons to learn--even from accepting baby carrots in the stew instead of chunks I peeled and sliced myself. Working full-time while I have small children was never the path I anticipated, but it certainly has been full of obvious lessons. (Lessons in areas of my life I have otherwise been neglecting--namely, assertiveness, follow-through, and diligence.) Every time life sets me across the anvil, sure, I wriggle in the tongs and try to escape the inevitable hammer, but the fact is, without the tempering, what good am I? I don't want to be a strip of polished steel that looks smooth and ready, but once employed, shatters into shards. Even though sometimes I feel like life is trying to dash me to bits, deep down, I know everything I feel is pulling me too much is really just stretching me enough to grow.

So maybe those baby carrots are a little light in the vitamin department. They made up for it in provoking reflection. :)

Checking Off All the Boxes

2011-11-26T11:37:00.001-05:00

The last quarter of 2011 has involved a pretty hefty pile of writing-related stuff, including:
Getting the first two Windrider books up and running
Looking ahead to the tasks involved in creating the print compilation
Designing or at least having my fingers on the situation with my cover art

And now...delving into potentially massive edits for Sword of the Patron.

As I've been doing all this, there are a couple of things that industry professionals have said that continue to ring in my ears. One is something Dr. Ted Baehr said. The gist of it was, "It's just as much work to go small as it is to go big." I'm finding that to be resoundingly true. While the places I may be able to focus my efforts and have influence may be different with a small publisher than a large house, there is no easy, sit-back-and-watch-it-happen route to getting books on the market. And once those books are out there, the task of finding new people to buy them is staggeringly hard. What the long term benefits of going small vs. holding out to go big are going to be, it's way to early to say.

The other words that are ringing even louder in my ears, especially as I look at the underlying structure of Sword of the Patron, are the items I learned from David (Wolverton) Farland in the week long workshop I took with him. I have a checklist on my wall of things I specifically took away from that experience, which stare at me in red ink every time I sit down to work. The checklist goes like this (and these items are not in priority order, just so you know)

Setting: Is my setting vivid--either wondrous or resonant? What specific ways am I creating spectacle in terms of setting?

Theme: does every scene serve to expound upon either primary or secondary themes?

Hooks: Am I raising questions at key points in the scene?

Stakes: Am I making things matter? Are the circumstances difficult enough?

Conflicts: Does every scene serve to either deepen or broaden the conflict?

Hierarchy of Beats: Am I writing to my audience with the emotional beats of my scenes in mind?
Now, this one, I admit, requires a little explanation. Because I am writing fantasy for an older teen to adult audience, and because my primary reader will likely be female since I am a female writer with a female protagonist the hierarchy of beats I've decided I need in my work is all follows (and these are in priority order):
Wonder
Adventure
Romance
Horror
Humor

If I am not hitting one or more of these beats in a scene, generally, the scene is dead weight, and it needs to be trimmed or cut. The trick is hitting all the beats in the correct proportion without bloating the story just to get the beats in.

As I look into potentially deep cuts to SotP, I keep finding I'm either narrowing the conflict instead of deepening it, or else I'm eliminating something in the top three beats in the hierarchy. The book feels like a stack of fruit in the produce section, and I'm trying to pull out 30% of the stock in the bottom quarter of the pile, and praying the rest of the display doesn't come rolling out at me in a avalanche of embarrassing disaster.

Now, admittedly, there are about 3,000 words that can go without question. I had a sense they would be on the cutting room floor even when I was selling the book at a conference back in August, so I had already severed emotional ties to the content. I wanted to retain the character in question to use in a later book so that I wouldn't have to create a new character for a coming scenario, but if I'm being truthful, that's one apple I can pull from the rows at no risk.

But the other 7,000 words--those are proving their elimination diffuses the danger. That much I can see despite my myopic author's view of the story.

I had really hoped that having the manuscript out of my hands and head for about three months would bring me back to it with a professional detachment that would make it easy for me to carve it up now that the time has come. But in some ways, it's become harder now. As I look at each passage and recall the sweat and tears involved in crafting it, I feel like I'm throwing away a long friendship. Yet at the same time, I know we as writers need to step back and take an impassive look at things, through the lens of our editors' input, and make the hard cuts.

I haven't gotten to the right answer here yet. And that's probably why this blog post sounds like I'm thinking out loud more than a cohesive commentary. I'll likely be posting occasional updates to the editing journey, and I hope they will be a help to my writer friends who read this, and at least an interesting peek at the process for the non-writers.

For now, it's time to get back to analysis of this ol' work in progress.

Off Without a Hitch

2011-11-22T08:43:00.001-05:00

Well friends, the day is here...the day the Windrider Saga continues, with Book 2: A Greater Strength available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords. I am so humbled by the flurry of interest and support that so many of you have shown as the ebooks have gone live. If you are interested in purchasing but haven't yet had the chance, here are links to the book in its various locations for your convenience.

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Annnnnd Smashwords

I hope you enjoy, and if you do, please tell a friend. Thank you for your continued support of new authors and small publishing!

A Greater Strength Cover Goes Public

2011-11-20T12:45:00.001-05:00

The cover for The Windrider Saga, Book 2: A Greater Strength is officially done, and I am very proud of the awesome team who put it together. Thanks to Morgan and Ken Knott (photographers), Jon Mills (graphic design, photo manipulation) and Christina Hess (consultation) for helping me make my little map into something so much more.

November 22nd is fast approaching, and I'm thrilled to announce the coming release of the second tale in the Windrider Saga. A Greater Strength continues the story begun in Book I: Divine Summons.

Loner though he may be, Captain Vinyanel Ecleriast knows hecannot hope to accomplish his newest mission on his own. He and hiscomrades have managed to avert the disaster of their king’s abduction, but allis not well in the elven capital of Delsinon. Six precious Talismans of Passageslip farther from the elves’ grasp with each moment they contemplate asolution. Vinyanel’s superiors send him to reclaim what enemies have stolen.

He assembles an unlikely squadron and leads them from theback of his silver dragon mount and friend, Majestrin. Their guide: a rogue whoonce attempted Vinyanel’s assassination. A stealthy marksman, a bookish warriorwho fights with grace, and a prophetess for wise (though sometimes annoying) spiritualguidance fill out the ranks.

The journey to the far reaches of the continent confrontsVinyanel with temptation, betrayal, and his own frailties, and all thesethreaten to unravel the mission. Acting as a vessel of justice is easy--but mercy?That requires a far greater strength.

I hope you will join the ranks of those who have already enjoyed Divine Summons and pick up your e-copy of A Greater Strength on Tuesday, the 22nd. If you haven't read Book I yet, it will remain at the promotional price of just 99 cents for a limited time.

I sincerely thank all of you for your continued support of family-friendly fantasy fiction.

Completely a Non Fantasy, Non Writing Post

2011-11-18T17:25:00.001-05:00

My life involves about a hour and a half of driving per weekday now that I am employed outside my home, which gives me a lot of time to mull things over. This has been great for my writing in some ways, because it forces me to brainstorm before I sit down to type, since my typing time is so limited. But sometimes, the ideas aren't flowing, and my brain wanders to other pursuits.

For those who know me from my youth, it will come as no surprise to hear that I have a lingering obsession with music education--marching band at the high school level in particular. I know that is a weird thing to care about at all in my late thirties, but for some reason, the formative things that happened during my marching band years have stuck with me. These years were the focus of some of my thoughts as I drove this morning.

A big factor in my nostalgia for that time of my life is an individual by the name of Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser. (Dr. Tim to those who know him from his leadership seminars.) I couldn't help but check recently what Dr. Tim was up to, besides writing band method books that I sell on a regular basis at my day job.

I was a little surprised to see how few band leadership seminars Dr. Tim is doing of late, but if I'm being realistic, I realize it's not reasonable for him to be charging around like he did 20 years ago. He admittedly was on the road 50 weeks of the year at that time--and he's certainly earned the right to slow down after all this time. That right coupled with the untimely passing of a major band leadership icon, George M Parks (who often partnered with Dr. Tim in teaching Band Leadership Training and Drum Major Academy) justified to me Dr. Tim's more limited schedule of student leadership seminars. But that got me to thinking. Who will carry on teaching students how to lead when Tim decides it's time to hang up the ol' mace?

The disturbing reality is the answer is maybe no one.

A large number of the friends and family I have in music education whether directly or in a supporting industry, sing the same mournful refrain. Kids aren't interested in leadership, and teachers are too busy just trying to keep their programs alive in the face of budget cuts, apathy, and student overcommitment to myriad activities to promote anyone going the next step from participant to leader. I believe this is a picture of our society as a whole. We lack deeply informed individuals who want to lead out of an altruistic desire to better the world. Certainly those people exist, but I don't think we've done a very good job in building many more of them in the generation to come. And I believe their numbers are too few to stand against the tide of selfishness so prevalent in western society.

And thus, people like Dr. Tim have fewer sold-out students to teach. And the world eventually ends up with fewer advocates for long standing icons like the Philadelphia Orchestra, which has gone bankrupt in recent months.

So to avoid the risk of ranting without posing any productive thoughts on the matter, what do I think we should be doing about the lack of students who desire training in leadership?

First, I think adults have a responsibility to demand dedication to a very few or even a single pursuit in their children. Breadth is not proving itself better than depth. Music education is great for this, because it requires consistent practice, even when it's hard, even when it's not fun. The fun comes later when you have gained a mastery of your skills and can share music with the world.

Second, I think students have a responsibility to stand up and show others that leadership is a great thing. That standing out from the crowd is a tenet of success. The small percentage of kids who still want to lead because something in their innate wiring prevents them from doing anything else need to do everything they can to spread that spark to their peers. Force the lowest common denominator higher in your areas of influence, and the effect will ripple outward.

Maybe Dr. Tim won't teach huge packs of crazed drum majors all over the country again, but I sincerely believe if we are to have a hope of pulling our fraying society back together at all, we need to relearn a love of and respect for the skills of leadership. Aside from encouraging my own little brood in that direction, I don't know what else the Lord will call me to do to that end, but my unshakable passion for leadership in the arts is keeping my ears open for whatever marching orders emerge.

Lead on, friends, and equip others when you can.

2011-11-14T22:07:00.001-05:00

Hey Friends...

I am certainly behind on getting this link out to you, but editing, cover design, a full time job and a family will do that to you, I guess. But I wanted to offer a huge thank you to Heather for her balanced and succinct assessment of the first book in my Windrider series. Go read her thoughts at the link below, and do let Heather know you dropped in. Thanks a million!

H.A. Titus's feedback on Divine Summons

Holidays in Fantasyland

2011-11-10T09:38:00.000-05:00

We're closing in on what I call the "legitimate" holiday season. (I summarily reject the notion that "the holidays" start with Halloween.) The impending arrival of Thanksgiving and Christmas has me thinking a little bit about the calendar in the other world I occupy--the one I write in.

I will admit, the calendar of my world is an area I have neglected pretty fully. I have a general sense that there is a Yule Feast in the winter, a day of celebration that is especially enjoyed by the forest gnome population, that Midsummer's Day is significant in celebrating blessings and abundance, and there was once this dwarvish holiday/event invented in my world charmingly dubbed the "Boulderkegger." That one is a long story, and I didn't actually make it up, but the genius of it seemed too good to pass up. Well, good if you can overlook the way it doesn't exactly exemplify the virtue of temperance.

But besides that, I have to admit I haven't put a lot of thought into feast days and celebrations, and I need to get to it, because every layer I add to my world makes it more believable and more captivating. But it's not as though I can just make a a handful of holidays and call it good. After all, if we have things like Boxing Day and Thanksgiving and Rosh Hashana and Valentines Day in this world, my imagined places and cultures will need to have observances that are particular to their cultures and spiritual inclinations, which then means I have a minimum of 12 different cultures to deal with--handling only one continent. And as always, I buy into my habit of letting the projection of the overwhelming size of the job prevent me from just starting the dang thing, one element at a time!

So that leaves me to pose a question to you, dear readers: which holidays in this world do you enjoy the most, and what about them resonates with you? By mixing, grafting, tweaking, and tranforming what already exists, hopefully I can come up with a holidays and observances element to my world that is both fresh and nostalgic at the same time.

Who I Am vs Who I Am

2011-11-07T09:12:00.000-05:00

My facebook status last night posed the question: do you ever feel like a racehorse who's hitched to a plow? Life is like that in many ways for me right now, and it's easy to look at the analogy with a negative, pop-culture-influenced cast. American culture tells us we need to "be who we are inside" and that anything less than that is a horrifying sin to be burned at the stake. If your an artist, make art, if you're an executive, lead, if you're a nurturer, care for someone.

Now, this all sounds quite good on the surface, and it makes my analogy of hitching a racehorse to a plow repugnant to those who ascribe to the "be who you are" mantra. Racehorses were made to be sleek. To run. To dazzle. As for plow horses--well, the only people who notice them are folks who have been suburbanites so long that when you drive by an old draft horse actually doing what it was bred to be good at, it's very novel. To put the glamorous racehorse in the place of the old plodder would seem a darn shame.

But then, when you really think about it, which horse is doing something more useful? The racer or the tiller? Perhaps there's some wisdom in hitching our racehorse, dreaming selves to the singletree of some honest farm equipment and just getting business done. I have always been a dreamer to a fault, and when you reap whimsy, you sow--well, nothing.

I'm in a bit of a plow horse phase of my life, and for this thoroughbred, that's a little tough to swallow sometimes. But I know for sure that the Lord did not place me in this spot by accident, or to annoy me, or because he doesn't care about my dreams. More than likely, he knows my achieving my dreams will be much harder than I've ever guessed, and that I need to build up the muscle to shoulder what's ahead.

So my plan is to lean into the old collar and till the patch of rocky soil I'm on right now. It occurs to me that there's a reason God didn't give plow horses the gift of speech. If talking made them anything like us, imagine the complaining! I'm striving for dutiful tenacity, and if I can do that well, I know I can look forward to a surprising crop in a few seasons.

Friends Don't Let Friends Have Bad Cover Art

2011-11-03T15:30:00.001-04:00

In this publishing revolution we're all encountering, I am excited about a lot of things--mainly, the ability of authors who would may never see print due to the fact that they write in too tight a niche to be considered a good risk for a big publisher to now get their work into the marketplace. Whether it's better to go micro-publisher or to self publish in this instance still remains to be seen, but I think over the next few years, we're going to see some interesting statistics emerge about sales connected to both.


This is a work in progress to become part of a book cover

What I'm not so excited about in the self and micro publishing realms is hokey/cheesy/hackish cover art. Now, not all self or micro published books suffer this malady, but so many do that it's painful. What's even more painful is when an author posts this cover art in the world of social media, and so many of the author's friends say "How exciting! Hooray! Very cool," when they should be saying, "Your title is too small. Your stock art is dated. The photoshopping of this cover is really crusty."

It may sound mean to say such things when the author is excited just to HAVE a cover for his or her first book, but honesty is a new author's best friend. When there's still time to go in and make the art awesome, please, for the love of all that's good, tell your friends if their cover art needs something. That includes me. I don't want to have anything out there with anything less than a flawless cover, because in the world of fantasy, folks are drawn to epic, incredible images. And hokeyness reeks like roadkill in the summer.

I'll admit, I stand guilty of just keeping my mouth shut when cover art is abysmal, and this is my resolution to follow my own advice. If I want to keep publishing with small publishers, it's my job, and yours too, to make those small publishers look just as legit, if not moreso, than the big houses.

Kat Heckenbach: Author, Mom, Educator, Artist (not necessarily in that order)

2011-10-31T07:00:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite people in speculative fiction circles is author Kat Heckenbach. I got to know Kat a little better while we were both contributors over at The New Authors Fellowship, from which we have both recently graduated due to our publication contracts. Kat has always been a huge supporter of my writing and art, so I wanted to take some time to introduce her to you, the CotC community. I hope you enjoy her little visit with us, and if you do, be sure to check out her debut novel: Finding Angel.

So relax and enjoy this little interview with Kat...

Me: To break the ice a little here, why don’t you introduce yourself? I’m sure readers would be interested to hear what you consider significant enough about yourself to mention after the words, “Hi, I’m Kat Heckenbach and…” (Just imagine we’re all sitting around someone’s living room at the beginning of meeting with a brand new small group or something.)

Kat: Hi, I’m Kat Heckenbach and I really stink at introducing myself :P. Okay, okay. I’m a homeschooling mom (2 kids), artist (mostly pencil drawing), writer (weird stuff), fantasy and sci-fi lover (just look at my bookshelf and DVD case), Harry Potter obsessed (yes, I have a wand), Trekkie (my dog is named Dax), and Dr. Whovian (yes, I own a sonic screwdriver).

Me: So, writing and homeschooling…how is that treating you?

Kat: I honestly have no idea how I could write if I wasn’t homeschooling. Seems like homeschooling would leave me less time to write—with all that preparation and such—but I truly need the flexibility. And a benefit I didn’t see coming is how it cements in my kids’ heads that writing means something to me. They see me working at it. It’s part of our day, and they get just as excited about my writing as I do.

Me: Your portfolio of artwork seems to favor insects. Beetles mostly. What can you tell us about the source of your interest in the six legged creatures of the world?

Kat: I have no idea why I am so fascinated with beetles. They just seem to always draw my attention when I am at museums. The incredible variety, the iridescent colors. Some of them look like they are made out of metal! I’ve only recently gotten into drawing them, though. I guess the variety of species, shapes, patterns, etc., lends itself to creativity.

Me: If you had the power to will one change on the publishing world, what would it be?

Kat: Oh, wow. Good question! And if you had asked me a couple of years ago I probably would have griped about trying to get someone to read my actual manuscript without it being rejected based on a query letter. Now, though, I’ve got some experience working with a small press and have seen more from the “other side.” I think at this point it would be to make bookstores more open to putting books from small presses on the shelves.

Me: What have some of the highlights been of having Finding Angel on the market and available to readers?

Kat: Getting reviews from people who are reading it as an actual book, not a manuscript in progress. That’s been cool. It really is different when someone I don’t know personally loves what I’m writing. And having friends and family see that what I’m doing is “real.” Not just a dream, but an actual accomplishment.

Me: Being a published author, a mom, a full-time educator (and whatever other super identities I don’t even know you have) must force you to leave some things undone. If you have to let something slide to the bottom of the to-do list, what is most likely to end up there and why?

Kat: Cooking. Always cooking. I’d never cook if it was up to me!

Me: Who is your greatest supporter as you pursue the life of an author?

Kat: That’s actually a hard one. I have a very supportive family. My mom, my dad, my husband, my kids, my brother, my in-laws—they are all supportive. I think I am most grateful, though, of my husband’s support. He watches the kids so I can go to writers meetings and such. And even though he’s not much of a fiction reader, so he really doesn’t quite “get” why I’m doing all this, he’s backed me 100%.

Me: Tell us about your relationship with your publisher Splashdown. Any surprises as you’ve worked with them?

Kat: The whole experience has been one surprise after another! I had no idea what to expect from working with a small publisher. But it’s been awesome. Grace Bridges is wonderful, and the whole group of authors work really well together as a team. We brainstorm back cover blurbs and such for each other, and everyone is respectful of each other’s suggestions. I will admit, I love the creative pow-wows Grace and I have when it comes to cover art. We seem to totally connect most of the time and it’s ridiculously fun. Those moments of, “What if we….?” followed by, “Oh, yes, that’s brilliant!” happen a lot—in both directions. There have been far too many for me to doubt I’m in the right place.

Me: What other projects do you have in the works right now, whether in an active phase or on the back burner?

Kat: I’m working on three projects right now. A novella—ghost story—that will be part of a multi-author anthology, a paranormal thriller with a (gasp!) romance-ish angle, and of course the sequel to Finding Angel. The ghost story has a deadline (that is creeping up far too quickly), but bets are on as to which of the other two I finish first…

Me: Where can we read stuff you’ve written? How about see stuff you’ve drawn?

Kat: The easiest place to find all the links to my short stories is my website, http://www.katheckenbach.com/. There are links to online stories, as well as links to Amazon for the print anthologies that contain my stories.

My artwork is kind of spread out. I’ve got drawings on the covers of several Splashdown books, including Finding Angel J. The others are Caprice Hokstad’s The Duke’s Handmaid (the key) and Nor Iron Bars a Cage (the shackles), and the upcoming covers of Fred Warren’s The Muse and The Seer (the sword on both). For my beetle art, the best place is my Zazzle store at http://www.zazzle.com/kat713. Other work can be found posted on my website, or in the photos section of my Facebook author page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kat-Heckenbach-Author-and-Artist/125084577483

Thanks a million for sharing your world with us, Kat! I pray the Lord will bless your work and use it to form great relationships with people you never imagined you'd touch. And thanks to you, readers, for visiting. If you or someone you know is looking for a great read for a younger reader (or a young-at-heart reader) don't miss Finding Angel.

A Thanks to Kat Heckenbach and a Promotion

2011-10-28T15:35:00.002-04:00

An Interview with a Fellow Author

In case you don't spend time around my facebook page, here is a link to my latest author interview. I wanted to specifically thank Kat Heckenbach, author of Finding Angel, for her great questions and willingness to host me. I hope you enjoy the interview, and that you'll stop back this coming Sunday for an interview I did with Kat.

Thanks for all your support in this first week of The Windrider's availability to the public.

Also, comment if you're interested: I am willing to create three original sketches of Vinyanel or scenes from Divine Summons for three lucky people who contact me and post an Amazon review of the book. The first three I hear from are the lucky bunch. :)

My First Interview

2011-10-25T15:23:00.001-04:00

Interview with Bryan Thomas Schmidt

As a part of the book release extravaganza, Diminsihed Media author Bryan Thomas Schmidt was kind enough to offer me an interview and post it today. I hope you'll drop in, comment, and ask questions if Bryan didn't ask something you want to know!

Thanks for your continued encouragement.

The Link List

2011-10-24T15:40:00.002-04:00

Huzzah! What a surprise that my first publication went "live" on B&N and Amazon a day early. How often does that happen?

Well, if you are in the mood just to smile with me and see the book actually for sale on the internet (or maybe you even want to pull out a dollar and get a copy of your own) you can do so here:

The Windrider 1, Divine Summons for Kindle

Get it here on Nook!

Thanks, all of you, who have been such a great support...and thanks in advance to all of you who purchase a copy and support small publishing!

Sincerely,
Becky

The Unveiling

2011-10-23T14:20:00.000-04:00

With the release of my debut ebook, The Windrider: Book 1, Divine Summons looming on the horizon, it is with great pleasure I unveil to you, my most stalwart friends, the cover art for first of an intended series.

Illustrator Christina Hess created the illustration for this cover, and I could not be more thrilled with her execution of the concept. I am deeply thankful for her willingness to help me establish a top-notch brand for my fantasy writing.

There's not much else to say, since I think the image speaks for itself. If you want to take a look at some of Christina's other beautiful artwork, visit her site at http://www.christinahess.com/

And just as a reminder, the tale of Captain Vinyanel Ecleriast's exploits will be available for Kindle, Nook, and at Smashwords this coming Tuesday, October 25th. The book will start out at the bargain price of just 99 cents, but that price won't last forever. Links forthcoming...

Your support of independent artists and small publishing is invaluable!

2011-10-15T20:08:00.002-04:00


Unicorn drawing for "Wish Wary"

Attention fantasy and science fiction fans. Good news! Digital Dragon Magazine is now back up and kickin' after a little hiatus this summer. As the story goes, apparently there were some technical implosions assaulting the powers that be over there, but now those are rectified, and the magazine is live once more.

Of course, the timing is especially advantageous to me, since I have a story and an interview in this new issue, mostly owing to DDM's parent company (Diminished Media Group's) intent to release the first of two ebook compilations of my Windrider serial fiction in just 10 short days!

This image you see here is the artwork I provided to DDM "in the raw," before they added the finishing touches in order to use it as the issue's cover. I think it turned out pretty snazzy, if I may say so myself.

So, if you have a chance, please stop by Digital Dragon and show your appreciation for the work they are doing over there. The more folks support their endeavors, the better a foothold they can get in the market, and the more authors like me will have a chance at their work seeing publication. Sounds good to me. :)

Confessions of a Blog Slacker

2011-10-14T15:37:00.001-04:00

Yes, I have to admit...I have been sorely neglectful of this blog space. My number of posts as of late ( plus my statistics) bear testimony to that fact. As much as I wish I could say that's because I've been lounging under an umbrella somewhere sunny while I gorged myself on bon bons, that's not the case. It has more to do with the collision of my new job, the beginning of the school year, the push to finish the second Windrider book, and all those other "life things" that come up. Thankfully, I can say that all of the above appear to be going or have gone quite well.

The reality of just how close my work "going public" is has suddenly become more sobering today, as I got my edited version of The Windrider, Divine Summons, back from the realm of edits today. The heat is on for me to check it over for any last jots or tittles out of place before it gets formatted for Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords. While I'm excited about the release that's looming, there's also that whispering sense of. "Oh, shoot. Now people have plenty of opportunity to say my stuff stinks!"

But that's what I signed up for with this author gig, right? After all, there are people out there who say Hemingway, Tolstoy, and Dickens stink. If I could even stink as much as Dan Brown, I think I'd have no room for complaint. ;)

I just ask you bear with me for another couple of weeks while I'm still an active member over at New Author's Fellowship. After that, this will be my main arena for touching base with those faithful who drop by, so you'll see the activity pick up here again. Dare I promise? I probably should, since the very act will pressure me into keeping my word.

In the meantime, keep your eyes open for more specifics (like links) about where you'll be able to get your own e-copy of the Windrider Saga. I'm looking forward to seeing how it all comes together, and saying a little prayer nobody tears it apart if it doesn't deserve it. (And by the way, if you want to provide an objective review, let me know. I need some advance readers to have comments ready as close to the release date as possible!)

2011-09-25T14:54:00.000-04:00

Sunday, September 25th, 2011-More Details

About a week ago, when I gave you the lay of the land on my publishing exploits, I promised I would give you more details as I have them, so I'm now making good on that promise.

Windrider News:
The Windrider, book 1, Divine Summons, is set to release on October 25th from Diminished Media Group, the folks who bring you Digital Dragon Magazine and A Flame in the Dark. A cover I know is going to be incredible is in process right now, and we are working out the details for bi-weekly podcasts of an audio version of the story as well. The next four weeks are going to careen by faster than I can even imagine, but I'm looking forward to having a great launch.

On November 22, book 2 of the series, A Greater Strength, will also be available in eformats, so if you read book one and have a hankering for more Vinyanel, Veranna, and even some new faces, that set of stories will be available to you right on the heels of book one.

If you know folks who are fans of clean fantasy fiction, please be sure to tell them about these novellas that will be available very soon. I will post links to where they are available to purchase the minute they go live.

Sword of the Patron progess...

I would like to formally announce that the publisher that has taken on Danae and her adventures is Other Sheep, the speculative fiction imprint of Written World Communications. In true small world fashion, I learned this week that my editor will be someone who, not very long ago, I worked with in an ACFW critique group, author and editor Andrea Graham. Andrea is already very well acquainted with Sword of the Patron, and is now combing through the book in order to get it tidy and tight for publication.

As is often the case with manuscripts, there is a very good chance we will be seeking out a new title for the story, so if you later see discussions of Sword of the Patron vanish in favor of talk about a novel of another name, not to worry. The story behind the final title will remain.

The book currently known as Sword of the Patron will release in the first quarter of 2012, although an exact date is yet to be determined. All we know is what better time of year to curl up with a good epic tale than when you can stoke a roaring fire in the fireplace and sip a hot cocoa while you journey to another world with alchemist's daughter Danae, the enigmatic knight Praesidio, the healer elf Culduin, and a cast of other friends and foils.

Now for the fun part. I'm hoping to put together a very cool launch party to go along with the release of this book, and if I have my 'druthers, it will be at the lovely Stokesay Castle in Reading, PA. I want this to be an awesome night attended by everyone who can possibly make it out to support the book, so I'll be sure to get you hard dates for such an event as soon as we have locked down the final location and date.

Keep coming back here, to my facebook page, and to the New Authors Fellowship to gather details on the coming releases.

Speaking of NAF, if you haven't dropped by over there for my Sunday post and would like to, here's a link to that little ditty. I promise, it's shorter than this post.

The New Authors Sunday 9-25 post

Thanks for your continued readership, and I look forward to having published products to share with you and your friends.

2011-09-18T20:20:00.001-04:00

Publishing Updates...a Lot Going on 'Round These Parts

New Authors Fellowship post for Sunday, September 18th

Hello Fantasy fans. Once again, I'm just calling your attention to my activity over on New Authors Fellowship in the time I still remain on the "unpublished" side of the fence over there. Amazingly, it's not going to be long before I no longer wear that mantle.

While I'm here, I'll give you the update on where things stand with my work that's inching toward release.

Diminished Media Group has had the first compilation of Windrider stories in their hands for a about a month now, making final tweaks to make then clean and shiny for release during October in ebook formats. We're also in the process of securing a top-notch illustrator for the cover, and I couldn't be more excited about her potential work for this set of stories. When that's all finalized, I'll let you know who this amazing artist is, and maybe even give you a sneak peak at what the concept behind the cover is, if she'll let me. The tentative subtitle for that season is Divine Summons.

The Sword of the Patron contract has been returned to the publisher in question there, and once I've got a green light, I'll spill on who the great folks are who are going to put that book through the rigors of editing so it's ready for market. No release date is yet generated for that one, but you can bet I'll let you know what I find out that information.

I'm nearly done editing the second season of The Windrider, provided I don't pull a classic "me" and decide to entirely rewrite episodes 10 and 11 of that book. There's something slightly off in that section, and I'm hoping one of my patented bathtub strokes of genius will tidy that little issue up very soon. Then that one will be off to Diminished Media. I'm calling that book The Windrider, book II, A Greater Strength. We'll see if the folks over at Diminished let me keep that title, or if we cook up something more awesome.

So that's the publishing update from over here. And just for a little head's up, I will probably use my full name, Rebecca Minor, or even Rebecca P Minor on these books, so I'll be dual branding my names onto internet stuff regarding my work from here. Thanks for following!

Come here, go there

2011-09-04T18:12:00.000-04:00

For those of you who follow my blog both here and over at The New Authors Fellowship, your time of dual destinations will soon be coming to a close. When I joined into the group of fine bloggers over at NAF, the agreed upon length of posting was to be six months, after which my status as an unpublished author would be reevaluated, and then we would decide if I'd stay on as a featured author. Well, as I've mentioned in earlier post, I won't be an unpublished author anymore, come mid October. And thus, my regular contributions to NAF will come to a close.

Enter the resumed use of this blog, which has been admittedly cobwebby for the past six months. As much as I thought I might be able to maintain posting in two places at once, life has taught me otherwise. My sincere hope is that I will be able to maintain regular posting here, as well as do the needed edits on my work that's headed toward publication.

As I forge onward here, I'd love to know what you as readers would love to see more commentary upon? Are there topics you'd like to see me research, interview others on, or simply ruminate upon? Would you like to see fiction here? Now's your chance to tell me what brings you back to a blog, and I'll do my best to deliver.

For now, however, most of my thoughts will be cropping up at NAF. This week's post discusses my use of my commute for the sake of beefing up my prayer life. I hope you'll drop by and be blessed.

New Authors Fellowship=Captive Audience

And later this fall, keep an eye trained here at CotC, so you can hear the latest news, release dates, and discussion of The Windrider, volumes one and two, as well as Sword of the Patron, whose release date is TBA.

Wrist Slap Well Deserved

2011-08-21T22:43:00.000-04:00

I'm holding out my figurative hand and waiting for you to go ahead and let me have it. Go ahead, smack my wrist as hard as I deserve for NOT updating you on how my conference went a good week and a half ago now.

If it's any consolation, it went so well I haven't had a moment to breathe, let alone type much more than status updates about the whole thing. But for those of you who are wondering, I'll try to give the brief version of what went on back in Philly.

I was shocked to go "4 for 4" in my appointments. (Before I explain, let me say, I love the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers Conference for the fact that they give you FOUR appointments with agents, editors, mentors, and the like.) My appointments were with 3 editors and an agent, and lo and behold, all of them asked for my full manuscript. I was flying high.

When my last class ended on Saturday, I had to head home without attending the last general session due to other obligations on my calendar. So what a surprise to learn the next morning, via facebook no less, that one of the editors from my appointments announced she wanted to offer me a contract on the spot, right there at the conference. Shame on me for not being there, but thankfully, this editor must be an understanding soul, because she still contacted me a little later to share her intentions with me, personally and specifically.

And now that puts me in the position to consider my first contract for a novel-length work. Hard to believe, but awesome and true. As if it wasn't exciting enough to have my Windrider saga hitting the world of ebook and print with Diminished Media Group this fall. To add to it a possible deal for Sword of the Patron is just staggering. Talk about a flood of payoff for nearly four years of hard work.

The story of Sword of the Patron's journey is just beginning to unfold. I'm still in the process right now of reviewing details and seeking the advice of those more experienced. But things are in motion in so many ways. I'm holding on for dear life sometimes, but as things careen onward, I'll be sure to fill you in on how they pan out. I hope you'll join me on the adventure.

Conference time again

2011-08-11T06:38:00.000-04:00

I'm a conference junkie...I know I've said that before, but it bears repeating because it's still true. (And may I note, it is a bad addiction to have for someone who is not yet actually earning any royalties from my writing. All outgo, no income...)

But anyway, despite the wisdom of spending more money on writing education, here I am at the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers Conference, and I'm confident it will be a great weekend. The conference, while on the small side (150 attendees or something like that) is full of great enthusiasm from all directions and spiritual vibrancy.

Of course, it's tricky, as I'm pitching a book that isn't overtly Christian in nature. I mean, it's fantasy after all, and enough folks still think that is synonymous with Satanism 101. But honestly, I have more prospects here of agents and editors to meet with than I would at a bigger, more expensive conference. So I'll practice my pitch and peddle my wares and see if I can't get a nibble. A full-on bite would be great, but I'm not going to set the bar too high here.

It's exciting, nerve wracking, exhausting, but sure to be filled with more information than my poor little brain can hold onto over three days. But I wouldn't miss it.

I'll try to keep you posted on how the adventure goes. I'm starting a screenwriting class for my Continuing Education track here today, and I know that's going to awesome.

Stay tuned!

Let the Herald Trumpets Resound

2011-08-07T07:00:00.002-04:00

OK, so maybe that's a little melodramatic, in a RenFaire kind of way.

But seriously, there have been some big developments in my writing life over the past few weeks, developments it's been killing me to keep my lip buttoned about. You may have seen this announcement in some of my other haunts, but if not, I'll post it here for your information.

Attention fantasy readers! I am pleased to officially announce that I have signed a publishing contract with Diminished Media Group, a new small press run by the fine folks who already bring speculative fiction audiences Digital Dragon magazine and A Flame in the Dark.

Through this contract, Diminished Media intends to publish my serial fiction The Windrider. Some of you may have read the first season of this tale, which ran in Digital Dragon from July of 2009 to August of 2010. Diminished Media’s publications will include an ebook version of not only this first set of thirteen stories, revised for publication, but a second ebook of the serial’s continuation, part of which ran at my blog at the end of 2010. For those want to have all the stories on paper, a print compilation of both seasons will also release from DMG.

When will all these stories be available? The release schedule is set for this fall—roughly mid October for the first book, late November for the second, and the release date for the print compilation is TBD.

So break out you Kindles (and other ereaders) and keep an eye out for further announcements about when you can get your compiled editions of The Windrider. Better yet, if you’d like to be on a mailing list where I specifically alert you to exact release dates, email me at beckyminor123[at]comcast[dot]net.

Each ebook will be novella length (somewhere between 100-150 pages, as I can best guess right now) so I believe you'll feel you got your money's worth if you purchase them for your ereader. People keep asking me if I will be doing cover or interior art for the books, and at this juncture, I have no answer to that. I think it would be awfully cool to have a few illustrations on the pages of these stories, but graphics do create a whole 'nuther level of headache, so we shall see what the verdict is on that. And of course, I'll let you know when I know.

Thanks for your continued support, faithful readers. It's only because of you these stories are getting a chance at reaching a wider audience.

Update on Risen Fiction's Unpublished Author Contest

2011-08-01T14:50:00.000-04:00

Well, voters, ya done good.

Sword of the Patron has advanced from the voting round into the second round of competition at Risen Fiction's contest, where the winner gets a publishing contract for his or her novel! Scary as it is, it's out of our hands now.

From this point, authors already affiliated with Risen Fiction will judge synopses and first chapters from the twenty contestants who have moved on to whittle the field down to five. From there, those five will invite the scrutiny of Risen's editorial team, and voila! Number one gets a contract. (Number two gets a kindle, which wouldn't be too shabby seeing as I have some personal interest in a few ebook titles coming out this fall...but more on that when the powers that be loosen my lips on the subject. And number three gets books. What writer doesn't love free books?)

Anyway, I wanted to personally thank those of you who voted. I wish I knew who you were! But alas, the contest doesn't let me know who or how many. So if you clicked stars and sent me forward, please accept this as my heartfelt thanks.

I'm sort of in a manic mode here, because a lot of stuff is in motion in my life right now. But as we all know, moving fast puts us at risk also for a high-speed crash, so pray the things I see on the horizon are great milestones on the journey, not roadblocks. It's hard to tell from here.

I'll keep you, faithful visitors, updated when there's more to say!

The Risen Books contest continues!

2011-07-27T13:27:00.000-04:00

Hello friends! Some of you have expressed some confusion about what on earth I'm talking about as I have been posting links to Risen Books contest these past couple days, so I thought I would do my best to clarify. Forgive me for my presumption you would all be able to read my mind! I know many of you were with me when I was campaigning for the Marcher Lord Select contest back in 2009, so I erroneously assumed everybody would know all about voter-based publishing contests.

So, in an effort to tidy up the looks of bewilderment, which anyone who has cast one my direction is completely justified in having done so, here are the rules as the contest runners posted them:

Risen Books Contest for Unpublished Authors
First Prize: Publishing contract with Risen Books.
Second Prize: Amazon Kindle (with Special Offers)
Third Prize: Free books from Risen authors.
Submission Period
The submission period begins July 21, 2011 at 12:01 a.m. (U.S. Pacific Standard Time) and ends July 31, 2011 at 11:59 p.m. (U.S. Pacific Standard Time). The contest is limited to 40 entries and we will stop accepting entries when we receive 40 submissions.

*my book was accepted and is sci-fi/fantasy submission #1*

Authors are asked to submit the following:
Novel title
Genre
Hook (a 20- to 30-word premise)
Back Cover blurb (max 150 words)
Voting Round:
The general public will vote on the entries. The best 20 will be selected for the first round and will be asked to submit:
A one or two page synopsis that includes the ending
The first chapter
We reserve the right to advance fewer than 20 to the first round if, in our sole discretion, we do not receive a sufficient number of eligible or qualified entries.
First round
Between August 1st and August 12, 2011, Risen Books authors will select the best five (5) submissions based on the following criteria: originality of idea, strength of the plot (based on the synopsis), and the quality of writing.
The best 5 will be selected for the second round and asked to submit the complete manuscript.
Second Round
Between August 15 and September 25, Risen Book’s editorial committee will select the prizewinners, who will be announced on September 30th.

I hope that makes it clear what I'm trying to get mixed up in. Thanks a million, friends, and happy voting!

Contest time...

2011-07-26T00:28:00.000-04:00

Well folks, yes, it's been very quiet over here, but I like to hope I might be able to draw some traffic with a little smidge of an update.

Sword of the Patron, my first novel length work, has not yet found a publishing home, so it's taking another little jaunt into a contest. This one can be found at:
http://www.risenfiction.com/category/contest/

The winner gets a contract with Risen Fiction, so the stakes are pretty high on this one. (Second and third place aren't too shabby either...who wouldn't love a Kindle or free books?)

Anyway, this is the official "Vote for me" post on my blog. I don't like to self promote to the point of being someone you tune out, so I'll try to keep these posts to a minimum. The way I can do that best is if you, dear readers, also promote my entry to your friends. You have way more clout than I do! :)

So, Sci-Fi/Fantasy submission #1 over at Risen's contest is my work, and if you enjoy the blurb I've provided and would like to see this novel finally get a home, please vote for me. If you don't love it, please vote your conscience. I can't fault you for honesty.

Blessings to you and yours, and stay tuned for news on if I advance!

Not forgotten

2011-06-01T11:05:00.000-04:00

One would be tempted to say I've forgotten all about this blog over the past couple months. Let me assure you, nothing is farther from the truth. The fact that it sits empty, un-updated, and collecting dust haunts me daily. That's why I feel it's only fair (at least to my own conscience, and hopefully to a few others of you out there) to go ahead and make the following announcement.

The Windrider saga is going on hiatus for an undetermined length of time, which may become permanent, depending on a potential reprint market for (at minimum) the first season of the work. I know for a handful of you devoted readers, that is going to be a major bummer, and I do apologize for that. The fact is, I am no longer ahead on the stories like I once was, and I'm just not comfortable writing an installment and posting it the second it's cooled from the heat of the forge. I've been posting without sharpening, and that's not good for you--the reader, or me--the writer. May you forgive me for that. I'm not saying I'll never resurrect the series here...just that it will be a long time in coming if I do.

My goal is to get ahead on the story some day...as in finish the second season in it's entirety before I post any more episodes. After all, what if I have some great idea in episode ten that impacts how things SHOULD have happened in episode 7? I don't want to box myself into this little crate of no revisions like I have been.

I may still post the occasional article here, especially if I have ruminations that don't fit over at The New Authors Fellowship.

Should that be the case, I hope you will join me here at CotC and leave your comments. You have all been a blessing to me when you do. Have a safe and blessed summer!

Becky

Plugging another destination

2011-05-04T08:05:00.000-04:00

Hey Friends of fantasy,

I've got a new read for you, if you're interested. My good friend and critique partner Ruth Mills is launching a new blog this week, which will deal with movies, literature, and sometimes both at once. I'm sure she'd be thrilled if you dropped in, and since there's nothing to see here at the moment, hey, at least I pointed you to some reading, right? :)

http://themavenandthewritingdesk.blogspot.com/

I hope you enjoy, and if you do, drop Ruth a comment and let her know.

Where's My Windrider Installment?!

2011-05-01T22:09:00.001-04:00

At least I hope somebody, somewhere asked that today.

But either way, I thought it only fair to mention why you've got no story, since here it is the first of the month. First of all, I had a post go live today on The New Authors Fellowship today, and I said I wasn't going to stack Windrider stories on top of NAF posts, so that has bumped Windrider, I fear. (I've committed to Sundays at NAF, so Windrider doesn't have the clout to mess with that.) So, I'm thinking the adjusted method of operations for Windrider is going to end up being the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month. This will give a few breathing days between my pelting you with NAF links and new story segments. I appreciate we all only have so much time to read.

My other excuse for bumping Windrider back is that I didn't work on it while I was in UT. I just couldn't afford to subdivide my attention. The way I see it, I was paying about $18.75 an hour for the education I was receiving and writing I was doing there, so every moment I didn't give The Sword of the Patron my full attention was money slipping through my fingers. (Now that is only the most surface of ways I can assign value to that experience...the rest is less tangible but far more profound.) So, I regret to report that the story did not make enough progress to be be ready to post in the little bit of airport time I spent on it. Hopefully by next week, I'll have some other fix for Vinyanel to try to find his way out of. Mwahahahaha!

All right, enough of my excuses right? What about some content here?

I've been watching some of the updates Pater Jackson and Weta Workshop have been offering on The Hobbit movies that are coming up 2012 and 2013, and I've found fan speculation to be interesting. We're all watching for our favorite characters to be confirmed as to who's playing whom, and there's this one rogue character in there who caught my eye. The character of Itaril, female elf warrior. Who is she? I'll be darned if I remember her from JRR Tolkien's book. A bet she's not in there. (Some Tolkien aficionado mightier than me, correct me if I'm wrong, please, and let me know where she is.)

But here's my speculation. I think this warrior female is going to provide the romance angle every blockbuster Hollywood movie requires. They need some angst-filled looking pair of people occupying eachother's personal space to at least put in the trailer, don't they? My out-on-a-limb prediction is that if they confirm the casting of Itaril, then there's going to be some kind of romantic subplot involving her and Legolas. A wild guess? Yes. Completely without any backup? Yes. All except for the fact that I don't think big budget blockbuster movie makers would make these two movies sans romance, like the Hobbit, was originally written and write off a portion of their potential audience.

But since I have no inside scoop on the movie industry, only time will tell. What do you think? Will Peter, Fran, and Philippa create a romance subplot from nothing? It will be interesting to see if they can recreate the magic they worked on their first trilogy masterpiece now a decade old.

New Authors Fellowship Reminder

2011-04-24T18:34:00.000-04:00

I think it's going to become standard practice that Sundays around these parts are going to point to the New Authors Fellowship, since I'm blogging over there once a week.

S here it is, this week's link to my post: Of Easter and Ebooks Seems unconnected? You're right. I didn't try to connect them over there, but I'd still be gratified if you read the two "miniposts" over there.

I think next week is going to be "Beauty in the Weeds," inspired by a dandelion bouquet my 6 year old strenuously worked to pick as a surprise.

I hope you all had a Easter full of rejoicing. Now get thee over to NAF and comment. ;)

The Curtain Closes

2011-04-23T09:02:00.000-04:00

Here it is Saturday, and I'm writing this post from the business center of the LaQuinta Inn and Suites I spent the night in, (which, by the way, was unexpectedly nice) since my laptop and the internet access here had a tenuous truce between them, as best I could tell. I decided not to wake up the old laptop this morning, since who knows what surly early morning maneuvers it might have pulled.

I failed on my promise to blog daily about this trip, but well, I got too busy writing. Which is a good thing. I hit my stride on Wednesday morning, and since then have cranked out a handful of new scenes and nuanced countless existing areas of The Sword of the Patron.

So, in reflection, what am I coming away from this trip having gained? This won't be an exhaustive list, I'm sure.

Traveling alone is much easier than traveling with small children, but the wonder they have when they see things for the first time is well worth all the juggling at airport security as you wrestle 3 pairs of little boy feet from their sneakers. I wish they (and my husband, of course) could have been with me to go to Snow Canyon, for instance.

The secular writing market, at least from Dave Wolverton's perspective, is a lot less rules-bound than the Christian market. It felt good to be able to write and just turn off the internal editor that often hollers at me about word count. (Let's face it. I'm well over 90,000 words at this point, which closes a lot of publishing options to me anyway. I might as well write what needs to be told and shoot for the markets that don't care about wordcount until you start getting in excess of 150,000 words.)

Will you still love me if I publish in the secular market? It's on the table as a possibility.

The ebook is going to turn publishing on its head in the next five years, and well it should. I'll post a link later, but there's tangible evidence the big New York publishing houses are cooking the books beyond well-done when it comes to reporting on ebook sales, as a desperate grab at something buoyant in a sinking market. Shame on them for being scummy, but they'll reap what they sow. And I'm sure this practice is not isolated to big secular publishers. I wish I could say without reservation that Christian publishers would never do such a thing, but desperation is a powerful motivator, and publishing everywhere has taken a hit.

There's more, but if I'm going to go snuffle around the breakfast at my hotel before I need to hit the airport, my deadline is upon me. Thanks for dropping in, and my your Easter be filled with the joy of life Everlasting!

It's come to this...

2011-04-20T09:59:00.000-04:00

Writing Adventure, Day 3

I've officially hit the moment where I can't go on without some caffiene, I'm am sorry to report. In an effort to avoid the other less than desirable effects of the mini-drug, I decided I was going to try to do without as much as possible while I'm out here. Well, when I woke up this morning and felt like my head weighed about 250 pounds and I couldn't have strung a conherent sentence together had anyone actually spoken to me, I gave up the fight.

Now, mind you, that's not straight coffee in that cup. I'm not a coffee drinker, unless it clearly tastes like something else. I poured a packet of hot chocolate mix into that cup first, then added coffee instead of water. The result was reasonably palatable, to my taste. Though I'm wondering what would happen if I threw one of the Werther's Originals hard candies that are sitting on the microwave cart in my room in there.

But anyway, since I am in a state where I need pseudo-coffee to function at all, I fear I have no poignant analogy for you today. All I can say is: this writing stuff is hard. The first draft came easy. People said it would. Now that I'm trying to go back and analyze everything I did by instinct on the first pass? That's a whole different story. I admire those people who can use the snowflake method and have everything in place before they pen a single sentence. But then I wonder, is that just swapping the long, hard work in the beginning, where I'm doing it at the end? Maybe I'll try to be an in-depth outliner for the NEXT book, and then I can see just how the process plays out in contrast.

For now, my task is to take what's left in my unanalyzed, instinctual yarn, and calculate everything for maximum emotional impact. No wonder I'm exhausted. Reader manipulation is tiring.

My Out West Writing Adventure, Day 2

2011-04-19T15:00:00.000-04:00

You know what's cool about hanging around with a whole bunch of writers? They all have really big vocabularies. And nobody looks at you strange if you choose a word from your working lexicon that is a little, well, off-beat.

You know what's not so cool about hanging around with a lot of writers? The creeping sense of mediocrity that can set in...a feeling of being mediocre in a world where mediocrity is a death sentence.

So, that's where I am today: enjoying the conversations between people who "get" the writer thing, because let's face it, few do, and yet floundering in a thick mire of inadequacy. Certainly, the critiques I got back didn't say "I'm sorry, but this really stinks." But neither did they say, "Holy frijoles, you are so awesome I can't see how you will be able to avoid selling 8 million books the first day you release."

It reminds me of the bible verse that tells us that we should either be hot or cold, for those who are lukewarm are worthy of little more than being spat into a napkin. It's clear, in my writing endeavors, that I'm not cold. That would be easy. I could just say, "Hoo-boy, I stink at this" and never give it another thought. But I think, on the spectrum, I'm a few shades warmer than that temperature you take a bite of and worry if perhaps salmonella has gotten a foothold in that particular buffet item.

I need to keep the goal in sight: work my tail off until my lukewarm emits an enviable plume of steam. Can I pull that off? I pray I can use this week to stoke that fire to its greatest possible intensity.

For now, it's back to class!

The Adventure Begins

2011-04-18T10:04:00.000-04:00

so now there's proof. i am indeed in st. george. technical difficulties are preventing me from even capitalizing letters in this post! but all things considered, the trip so far has been pretty smooth.

my object lesson for the first couple days has to do with mountains. on the way here, i had a layover in denver, and yes, i had a view of the snowcapped rockies from the airport, in addition to having seen much of the various types of terrain this great country has to offer, albeit through an airplane window.

seeing mountains from a distance can never compare, though, to getting right up close, to finding youself enfolded in their towering presence, in places where only the noonday sun can chase their shadows off. i drove through a littke canyon in northwest arizona that showed me this. it made me think of how we can appreciate god's greatness from afar, but we really need to step close enough to him to have his shadow envelop us to really understand his majesty. i'm thankful we have a god who invites us to draw near.

well, hopefully my little shopping trip this morning will help me solve my internet access issues...you can have this post from my phone, but uy. i don't want to make a habit of posting on a blackberry keyboard.

It was quiet. Too quiet...

2011-04-09T22:04:00.000-04:00

I'm hoping some of you have been missing my weekly (ish) ruminations on life, writing, and whatever else. If you have, I invite you to drop by my new home for all things article-like at The New Authors Fellowship. My next bunch of thoughts goes live on Sunday morning, April 10th, and I'd be gratified if you dropped in. Now, bear in mind, being a group blog, new content goes up all the time, so if you dink around, you might have to hunt a little bit for my article. Of course, even if you don't find me, you're bound to read something good, since the folks over there all provide a great read.

Tomorrow's article expounds upon one of the goals we as writers ought to have, as I learned from the wise words of the great Chip MacGregor.

Hope to see you there! More Windrider coming to this venue on April 15th. (That's something better to think about than taxes on that day, I hope.)

The Precise Word

2011-03-29T08:54:00.002-04:00

They say the average mass-market novel is written at a sixth grade reading level.

Now, that terminology is nebulous, at best, because if you talk about a sixth grade education in say, 1780, versus a sixth grade education now, the words you'd find in the vocabulary of students sampled from each era would be vastly different. I'm going to assume when the statistics people say "6th grade education," they mean a relatively contemporary version of that body of knowledge.

I tend to write blind to reading level, personally. If the precise word for the moment is one that the average child who walks into my seventh grade literature classroom won't know, so be it. Admittedly, that's probably a bit of a cavalier attitude, coming from somebody whose work has not yet garnered a royalty paying contract, but this is not a new soapbox for me. I have always had a deep conviction about the use of the precise word. If it happens to be "lassitude," then I think most readers have easy enough access to a dictionary to discover what that means. That is, if they can't get the meaning through context.

The meaning through context...this is close to the heart of the matter, if it isn't the actual life-pulse of it. I must be getting old, because I look around me and say things like, "People these days..." I shudder to think what I'm going to be like when I'm retirement age, sitting on my porch blustering about how the world's gone to pieces since I was a kid. I'm going to be that lady, I can see it. As usual however, I'm digressing. The point I'm trying to make here is that it amazes me how we as a society have access to so much more information than ever in the history of the world, and yet we're getting dumber by the minute. People don't know how to figure anything out, how to research. If it doesn't come up in the first four entries of a google search, or if the article in which the information exists can't be found in a fifteen-second skim, then it's too hard. If a book has any words that the reader doesn't know, or sentence structure that requires a little unraveling, then it's "boring." (I have discovered of late that "boring" in twenty-first century vernacular actually means "too hard." Strange, how challenges are somehow now boring, and being fed stimulation that requires no active engagement on the part of the recipient is now fun.)

So do we play into this continual dilution of society's pool of knowledge by only presenting readers with material they know and can grasp without discomfort? I, personally, would be most blessed if people came away from reading my work, not only having enjoyed a few sittings worth of escapism, but perhaps learned something, whether it be a word, a turn of phrase, a setting detail, or--brace yourself now--how to dig for information that wasn't spoon-fed to them. After all, does it serve my story best to stop the action to explain that a troika is a team of three horses, one hitched to a post on the vehicle they are pulling, and the other two hitched by means of specialized harness, typically used in Russian and similar eastern European cultures? Or is it more dramatic to have my villain thunder through the city gates, whipping his galloping troika of horses as though the lash of the leather will somehow sooth his fury at the hero's escape? (And leave the definition of a troika unexplained.) Perhaps the reader will simply gloss over the unfamiliar term and come away from the sentence knowing the villain is abusing a few horses who are pulling some kind of vehicle, and perhaps the few after my heart will take a second to look up what a troika is, and gather the full, Slavic picture I had implied.

Either way, at least for now, I intend to stick with the deployment of precise words into the battlefield of my novels as we struggle against the continual tide that is dragging humankind into vapid, monosyllabic expression. Will any publisher ever sign me with my idealistic ways? I have no idea. Though I suppose if not, that will give me something else to bang my cane on the porch over when I'm old and crabbing about the state of the universe, if nothing else.

Write on, language enthusiasts!

Just a quick shout-out

2011-03-22T08:34:00.000-04:00

Hey CotC readers!

Heather Titus has paid me the ultimate compliment of asking me for an interview to post over at her blog, so if you want a quick peek into my background and process, hop over there and give her a read. If I had a prize to offer for people who comment, I would hand them out like candy.

(Hmmm. Note to self. Do some kind of really cool fantasy drawing I can make giclee prints of as givaways...)

Blessings on your week ahead!
Becky

Hot Buttons

2011-03-21T09:26:00.000-04:00

Let's face it. We all have those topics that force us to pronounce the familiar disclaimer--"Don't get me started"--when they come up. Me, I actually have more than my fair share of these subjects, that when I get going on one of them, people must look at each other with woeful expressions that say, "Why did I bring this up, exactly?" I've taken to calling these tirade-inducing topics Can o' Worms Concepts.

So what opens up a Can o' Worms for me? Weird passions, as you can imagine, if you know me. For one: music education. I have no formal training in the area, but boy can I get on a streak if somebody has a substandard program in their schools with teachers who are burnt out, don't care, or are incompetent. If you bring up marching band in this context, prepare for an all out, hands trembling inundation of information you never wanted. Institutional education is another one of these subjects for me, though somehow I stay more level headed about that discussion.

The Can o' Worms I want to bring up here, though, is self publishing. On a writing forum I frequent, it seems like there's a new thread every few days established where people get into verbal fisticuffs as to whether self publishing is good, bad, vain, pointless, the new model, or any other number of assessments in-between. I'm not here to make a judgment call on the value of self publishing or peer into any crystal ball to predict whether it will bring traditional publishing to its knees. What I do feel hugely passionate about, however is this: if you're going to do it, do it right.

Self publishing is not new...it's just gotten easier to do with the way technology has shifted in the past decade or so. With print on demand technology widely available from any number of vendors, and ebooks looking as though they are now here to stay, anybody who has cobbled together a few words can offer them up for public consumption. (Case in point, here I am blathering on this blog, at no expense aside from the time it takes to draft the post. Though I, perhaps erroneously, consider blogging to be on a slightly different level than self publishing entire books.)

Anyway, back in the old days, when an author decided he was going to self publish a book, the endeavor required a large monetary investment. A print run of books isn't cheap, no matter how you try to cut corners. But now, with the financial risk being a non-issue, it seems to me more and more writers are offering up books that aren't really ready for public consumption in the name of "getting their story out there."

I've been tempted to do so myself...not with my novel, but with a novella I've got rumbling around here. But I just can't get past that niggling fear in the back of my head that says, "Sure, this has been through a couple rounds of peer critique, but does that make it good enough to call 'ready?'" The last thing I want to do is totally embarrass and discredit myself as an aspiring novelist by wheeling out an ugly baby for the world to see. And yet these ugly babies exist all over the internet, and people scratch their heads about why their books have only sold twenty-eight copies.

The point at the bottom of this Can o' Worms is this. I really don't think anybody should self publish unless they've put their manuscript through the rigors of being edited by somebody who has no personal stake in liking the work. A professional whose paid job it is to say whether the thing is a mess and doesn't have to worry about how awkward it will be when he has to shake your hand in the time of greeting in church the next Sunday morning. I know it's hard to trust the opinion of a stranger, but I feel very strongly that its absolutely necessary in this self publishing world. Your mom isn't going to tell you what you've written is painful to read. Neither will most of your friends. Even if they do, most of them will word it gently enough that you might not actually catch the full drift of how bad the writing really is. (Now, granted, not every person who endeavors to self publish has a crummy novel in their hands, I acknowledge that. But even the best writing will benefit from an objective opinion before it makes it foray out into the cold, cruel world.)

So if you're thinking of going the self publishing route for whatever reason, don't go it alone. All great things are worth the extra headaches of doing them well. And if you do decide to self publish that story, for the love of all that's good and just, get a professional quality cover done by a credentialed artist.

But that's a whole 'nuther can of worms right there.

An Array of Perspectives

2011-03-07T22:38:00.000-05:00

One of the most subtle tools I think the writer has to coerce to his or her side in this battle we call fiction is point of view. I keep reading everything I can get my hands on about it (henceforward referred to as POV) so I can know as much as humanly possible about the enemy. Ahem...I mean, the fabulous nuance available to me as a writer.

The current book on craft I'm studying, at David Farland's behest, is called Writing the Blockbuster Novel by Albert Zuckerman, and the author asserts that you are best able to write a book that garners a wide audience by employing a handful of POV characters...not one, not a dozen. His logic is if you give your readership an array of personalities to see the story through, and you're sure to make those POV characters different enough, different readers will glom onto different characters and hang with your book because of their favorite.

The trick I hope to figure out is how to make my POV characters fascinating in ways that cross over expectations. Of course, men are more likely to identify with a male character of a similar age as themselves...but how do you get them to identify with that female character I have interlaced in my story? How do you endear her to the male reader...going beyond perhaps just a sense of attraction, or an instinct to care for that character in a protective way? (Hold on one sec while I duck the hurled objects coming my way for making stereotypical generalizations. There's a reason those generalizations exist, you know...just sayin'.)

How do you encourage your female reader to invest in the grizzled once-war-officer turned slave? I haven't figured out yet how Brandon Sanderson has done it, but I have very much bought into the character of Kaladin in his Way of Kings. I have nothing in common with the character at all, and yet, I find in just a few hundred pages, I definitely care about what will befall him.

So it seems to me, the job is two fold. The author first has to get you to generally like the character in question. Whether that means you like the character because you identify with him, you admire her, or you simply can't help yourself (which is my situation regarding Tony Stark. I can't help but love him, even thought I feel sort of stained for doing so!) doesn't matter. You just have to want to see more of that fictitious person.

Then you have to feel the compulsion to care about what that character wants, no matter how far-fetched or outlandish. (On an unrelated point, another thing Zuckerman says sells books is larger-than-life plots and stakes.) If you as an author can accomplish these two goals, likability and "buy in," whether the character in question is an old man or a teenage girl will be secondary. The reader will keep the pages turning to find out what befalls their new friend.

So I open up the floor to you, readers: What factors help you invest in a character so you'll stick with him through hundreds of pages, perhaps lousy (though dramatic) choices, and unbearable peril? Add your comment below.

How Much Advice?

2011-02-21T09:39:00.000-05:00

In general, seeking more experienced counsel, especially when you are a newcomer to any arena, is a productive thing to do. When you've become the most knowledgeable person within your circle of influence, then that means its time to widen your circle, right?

While I have not yet exhausted the wisdom of my peers (I have a great critique group among whom I consider myself the least skilled) I do have an opportunity coming up to get a big batch of advice on The Sword of the Patron, and I'll admit, I'm biting my nails on this one.

In April, I'll be headed to David Farland's Novel Rewriting workshop. For those who don't know David Farland, the man is the real deal when it comes to writers who know how to take a passion and make a tidy living (at least I assume so from the information he sends out in his newsletter David Farland's Daily Kick in the Pants. If you're a writer and you don't subscribe to this newsletter, I highly recommend you get on his list. The subscribe button is on the right of the linked page.) Anyway, digressions aside, David Farland has mentored more writers than whose names I care to drop here. He's taught or worked with Stephenie Meyers, Brandon Sanderson, and a host of others.

Now, say what you will about any of these authors' works, love, hate, or otherwise, but the fact of the matter is: they sell books. Lots of books. And I believe Mr. Farland's contributions to their early careers may have something to do with that. So, my darling husband has graciously given me quite the birthday gift in buying me the opportunity to go sit at Mr. Farland's feet for a solid week and do nothing but focus on my novel. I'll get a comprehensive edit of the first 50 pages and read a through of the first 150, and my hope is that I'll come out of that week with a manuscript that can't help but catch some editor's eye.

Of course, there's also the chance that Mr. Farland will say, "You know, you really ought to stick to drawing." I have to be prepared for that. That's really the crux of my message for this post today. In the life of a creative person, lots of advice crops up, either solicited or unsolicited, good or bad. The real trick is figuring out which advice to take...when to be teachable, and when to stop being teachable, to paraphrase Jeff Gerke of Marcher Lord Press.

I like to think that whatever advice I get from Mr. Farland should be well worth listening to, though when I mentioned to a friend I was going on this excursion, he got a very concerned look on his face. "Don't let anyone compromise your message," he told me.

And that's the real trick, isn't it? Figuring out how to take the advice of people who are better/more experienced than you and then apply it to YOUR work. Your story. Without trying to make it their story. In a book I read some time ago about worship ministries called The Heart of the Artist, the author warned about taking somebody else's ministry and trying to mimic it in your own. I think that idea also applies to advice I get on writing. In the end, it has to be my book in my voice. I can't try to write like someone else and have it come out anything but forced or pale. (I'm not that good.)

My prayer for this journey I have ahead is that I will have the wisdom of Solomon when it comes to sifting through the piles of advice I will get from David Farland as well as the other eleven authors who will be taking this class with me. I have all kinds of preconceived notions about what they will tell me. What I need to manage to do is to hoard all their advice into some little storage bin in my mind so I can sort it with discernment, so what I end up with is a book that is mine, and a book that is better. Not a book that is everybody's and hence more like an oil painting where I've gone back into wet paint too much and ended up with brownish gray mush. (Done that. I'm a horrible painter.)

I'm looking forward to the adventure. But in the meantime, I'll keep gleaning all the great things I can from the folks in my immediate sphere of influence. There's always something new to learn, whether from the new reader, or the industry professional, and I pray I never lose sight of that.

Following the Rules

2011-02-09T09:05:00.000-05:00

I have always been ridiculously bound by rules. I'm that person who would rather die than take the department store shopping cart out of the store and into the hallways of the rest of the mall. After all, the cart says right on it: Do not remove from store. So you don't. It's that simple. Instead, you slog through the mall with thirty-five pounds of shopping bags while trying to keep a hold of the hand of a preschooler and bellowing like a drill sergeant at the two older boys who are chasing each other in circles, threatening to barrel into every senior citizen within a hundred yards. That wouldn't break any printed rules.

So what does this have to do with writing? The more I write, and the more I seek feedback on my writing, the more I come into contact with the current "rules" that govern fiction. They usually start with some kind of stomach-punching qualifier like, "If you want this thing to have a chance at publication, you need to..."

I admit, I am very easily steered by such ultimatums. After all, I do want to see my manuscripts make it to traditional print. That's the goal. So it's in my best interest to listen to the rules that say you need to kill adjectives and adverbs. The edicts that declare a certain number of words too many for a first novel. The wagging fingers that kick into motion if you start blathering about backstory. But to what degree?

I try to keep in mind an adage coined by Jeff Gerke of Marcher Lord Press, who says, "Be teachable. Then stop being teachable." The trick is this: using that time where I'm teachable to get good enough at this writing thing that I can start making my own rules for the sake of my story. How do you get to the place where your readers will say, "Sure, it doesn't adhere to compulsory rule #28, but man, it's so good, it doesn't need to." More importantly, how do you reach that point in the eyes of an acquisitions editor?

The kicker in all of this is that I get the sense that the things that get published aren't the stories that follow the rules, but the ones that know how and when to break them to serve the narrative. I hope I can get to that point. Otherwise, I'll have spent a lot of time on formulaic words that don't break out enough to get noticed.

It's going to be tough for me. But I begin to see where friends of mine have always been right that I can be lawful to a fault.

So what about you? What rules of writing (or reading) do you think you break well? Are there some rules of the day that you think ought be followed with Victorian British Nanny strictness? And are there those you think ought be run out of town? Feedback welcome.

My Valentine's Day gift to you will be up and running on Monday night, Lord willing. The Windrider continues on February 14th.

Do Your Research

2011-01-28T22:19:00.000-05:00

This evening, in an effort to get caught up on my 5th grader's science project that is coming due, we spent an hour or so investigating the effect of viscosity on boiling point of a selection of liquids. My son had chosen four different household substances, all he perceived as having varying levels of viscosity, to boil and measure the temperature at which they did so. One of these chosen substances was vegetable oil.

As he measured the oil to pour it into the saucepan and heat, I told him to hold on a second. In all my years cooking, I have never once seen vegetable oil boil. It has smoked. But bubble to a steady boil? Never. So I quickly did a little snooping around on the internet, and soon informed my son he would not be using vegetable oil as one of his subjects.

What does all this have to do with fantasy? Or writing? I promise, I'm getting there.

I learned in my quick Google search that it could potentially take raising the oil to three hundred degrees (Celsius, mind you) to get it to boil, and that just ain't gonna happen here in my kitchen. Even if I could make that happen on my stove, I wouldn't want my 5th grader within range.

Which brings me to the fantasy tie in. You hear all kinds of books that employ a pseudo-medieval, western European structure at their core, and in those epic sieges of castles, you hear talk of intruders being doused in boiling oil poured through murder holes. Now, the murder holes are something you can go to any number of castles that are still standing and observe. But what about the boiling oil? Would medieval technology really offer the means to boil oil, rather than just heat it to smoking and potential combustion? I don't know the answer to this, but I could know. How? A little thing called research.

Yes, fantasy is one of those places you have a lot of wiggle room to make stuff up, since if you can't do something in real life (like boil oil over an ordinary fire, maybe?) there's always magic to bridge the gap. But even fantasy writing is so much better when the mundane facts are researched and based in plausible reality. Sure, you can throw us into your fantastic world, where people wear armor that makes them able to jump many times farther and run exponentially faster than they otherwise would, or dragons spew way greater a volume of their substance of decimation than would logically fit inside a physical organ of some sort, and you can chalk that up to magic. But when ordinary people are trying to accomplish every day stuff, a little research goes a long way in building depth and richness.

I see the researched stuff as the steak of the meal, and the magically enhanced, fantastical stuff as the crumbly gruyere topping. You wouldn't eat a whole plate of the topping. A big chunk of steak, more likely. The cheesy goodness, in moderation, just makes it all the better.

So whether you're deciding if your soldiers can carry armed crossbows on their backs, or you're planning a massive, cataclysmic war in your world, do yourself a favor. Undergird it with some research.

Otherwise, you might just find yourself standing at the electric range rescuing a ten year old from a pot of oily inferno. Figuratively.

By the way, drop back in at the beginning of next week...a new installment of The Windrider will be up either late Monday or early Tuesday.

Multiple Exploits

2011-01-06T16:32:00.000-05:00

So, some of you may be wondering, "Hey, what has you so busy you can't get us our installment of the Windrider serial, you slacker?" And I do apologize that there's been such a gap since last time. Consider this my solemn promise I will have the next episode up and for consumption on January 15th.

The thumbnail image above is part of the "other" stuff I've been focusing on. Those of you who traverse the same web-roads I do may already know that Port Yonder Press is going to be releasing a book later this year called The Book of Silvari: An Elven Anthology (sometime during the summer/fall of 2011.) I have been blessed with the honor of providing illustrations for at least one of the stories in this work, particularly, Ruth Mills' excellent fantasy yarn "The Renewal." It has been a great joy working with Ruth to convey a couple of the most cinematic moments in her work...and hey, I can't complain abut having an illustration credit in the book.

Doing the images for this particular story has tickled the part of me that loves a great epic movie, and I'm very fortunate the author and I talk almost precisely the same language when it comes to inspiration from the worlds of film and fantasy as we discuss what she wants for her artwork. The opportunity to tap back into the old draftsperson toolbox, with a reason besides my own self-gratification, has brought a smile to face with every stroke of the pencil. (Okay, between the times I'm cursing myself for not being able to get some devilish nuance right. As I said on my professional facebook page the other day, the devil is in the details, but you'll find the artistry there as well.)

So, despite the fact that my not-so-short story didn't make the anthology, I am equally as pleased that my artwork will as I might have been if my writing had hit that pages. It served as a reminder to me that God is sovereign, and he wants his best for us, even if we have a hard time getting our finite heads around what that is.

So, in-between drawings, I again promise the exploits of Vinyanel and his um...friends (?) will be back to fill this spot soon. If you want to drive that endeavor and help motivate me to keep the tale spinning, invite a friend to the site. I'd love to have the fan base grow over the coming months, and your word of mouth is a huge part of that.

Blessings upon you in this new year!

The End of a Year, the Beginning of Another

2010-12-31T23:15:00.000-05:00

As I huddle in my trusty dining room chair, bathed in the bluish white glow of the computer monitor, I'm stricken by how much has changed over the past few years...and yet, how much has not. As for what has changed...

Three years ago on this night, I wrote the first word of what would eventually grow into The Sword of the Patron, my first novel, which today hunts for a publisher willing to bless it with printed pages to call its own.
Like all things that start small and on a whim, my little experiment in storytelling grew and changed. What began as one novel split like a single celled organism and grew into two, when I learned I had far too much story to cram into a first-time novelist's meager pages. Two books then birthed the concept for a third, though this story remains in its infancy while I tend books one and two. Amusing, given that prior to that day in 2007, I had continually told myself I was no writer.

That novel I started three years ago has undergone multiple transformations since its inception in 2007. After all, I had never heard the phrase Point Of View, at least not in the prose sense, before I had written almost all of The Sword of the Patron. I blundered into a less flawed rendering of the story than I might have, since I wrote the story using my protagonist as the "camera"...later I would learn I had used limited third person point of view. Granted, I had mountains of errors in need of revisitation, but I'm thankful for the learning I've gained over the intervening years that have helped me recognize them. I can only imagine the days, weeks, and years to come will help me see more places I can tighten and polish. Heaven forbid I ever reach the point where I decide I have no more to learn. And praise God for people brave enough to point out when I've made a mess of things and need to fix them.

An ever widening garden of writing endeavors grew from seeds planted by The Sword of the Patron. From characters mentioned in that tale and its sequel, A Voice Within, The Windrider serial took flight. I have long known who Vinyanel Ecleriast is...I believe he marched into my head in the late 90's...but his very mention in my second novel gave him breath enough to demand more screen time of his own. (He's demanding like that.) And from there, the early-history rendering of Delquessa's Lament, a novella in progress, has also taken shape.

Since my unfocused start, I've learned how very little I know and gotten a sense of just how mammoth the task of learning how to write really is. Through a couple writers' conferences, a few contests, and a handful of rejections (some more painful than others), I've discovered more about the world of fiction than I ever thought possible. All this set into motion by taking a few blundering steps into fleshing out a character I had in my head who I thought wanted her story told in greater detail.

So, why am I recounting all this on this New Year's eve? I suppose it's because we all tend to wax nostalgic on nights like this, but it's also to encourage you...if there's a story inside you waiting to get out, don't insist it remain within only your soul, never to breath the fresh air of the world. Certainly, some will throw a few rocks at your baby. But others just might cheer and say your story has brightened their lives. You might be able to shed light upon a message only you can tell in your words, but will resonate with just the person who needs to hear it.

Here I am, three years later, in the same spot (or at least nearly) as I was that handful of New Year's eves ago. But at the same time, what a vastly different place I now sit. In a place I once restrained my inclinations, I have now found passion. Where I once feared to tread, I find irrepressible motivation. I'm looking forward to where 2011 will take me as I continue the journeys that ensue every time I sit in this chair and place my fingers upon the keyboard.

As for you...find your adventure this year and head out upon it. Without so much as even a handkerchief in your pocket. You won't regret it.

Little Haitus

2010-12-21T17:17:00.000-05:00

As I suspected, all things December have made editing the next episode of The Windrider pretty much impossible, so I'm just dropping in here to give a quick update on what's going on in my writing life.

November and December generated a couple of rejections for both a short story of mine and my novel, the former which I took quite hard, actually. Why? Because the reasons they rejected the story were spot on. It's hard to hear you gave somebody a peek at your ugly baby...but fortunately, in this case, I have power to make that ugly baby a real looker, if I do it right. For this particular story, I had experimented in writing above my ability in an epic lore style, and little character-driven me just shouldn't write that way. At least not at this point in my journey.

So what am am doing about that? I'm attacking that short story, which I believe will be a novella by the time I'm through, to deepen the characters, add a more specific sense of wonder, and hopefully get the story up to snuff. It's the story of an immortal elven duchess, a king of the most powerful human civilization on the planet, and the trouble a dragon can interject into such scenarios. It starts out something like this:

A shofar’s shrill cry pierced through the din of steel upon steel. Desperation rang in its overtones.

And well it should. Major Telenius wrenched his sword free of the rebel soldier slumped over the blade. At the soldier’s final gurgling cry, Telenius winced. Perhaps he would never grow entirely accustomed to the gut-wrenching sounds of battle. Telenius’s combatant was only one of hundreds of Durik’s troops to utter a scream of despondency or death at the hands of the Vareinorean army this day.

The enemy trumpeter blew the blast again, and the major cast his glance around the valley where the battle raged. Fractured enemy lines scrabbled in a disorderly retreat, though such a choice of tactics seemed premature in Telenius’s view. True, the Vareinor had already dealt Durik’s troops some telling blows, but did they really have so weak a constitution for the conflict? Why instigate the engagement at all, simply to withdraw when there were men still fit to fight? Years of warfare under King Aeleronde’s banner had taught Telenius that the cornered man typically fought hardest.

The rebels that withdrew looked as one to the rise south of the battlefield. Their attention compelled Telenius to follow their gazes, and when he did, all the blood drained from his face.

Like a blood-red sun lifting its wrathful head over the horizon, a figure staggeringly loathsome, incomprehensibly profane, crested the ridge. Yard after yard of armored, crimson terror slithered into view.

Telenius’s heart thundered against his ribs.

The beast reared a reptilian head upon a lithe neck. His gold eyes gleamed with an impure appetite as he regarded the battlefield. Telenius’s hand fumbled to his hilt.

The beast stretched membranous wings wide, eclipsing the sun so the vein-riddled webbing between his bony pinions glowed like firelight. Vareinorean troops exchanged wide-eyed looks.

Of course, quite a bit of plot ensues from there.

What does one do with a fantasy novella? Well, in this day and age of ebooks, I'm thinking of doing a little experiment self publishing it, and seeing if I can't get some practice promoting and selling my own work. After all, promotion is largely a first time author's job these days, and quite frankly, I'd rather get the hang of it on something short. Stay tuned for more information on the possible release of Delquessa's Lament.

Beyond all this, I'm still submitting The Sword of the Patron to editors, hoping beyond hope I can find one that will touch a book that pushes 120,000 words before I mercilessly start amputating plot threads. It may also be destined for ACFW's Genesis contest this spring. We shall see what life's progression has in store.

So, even though I had no story for those of you who have read faithfully all this time...fret not. It's not because I have opted to sit around in a pink track suit watching reruns of old game shows. I won't even get into the illustration projects I've got in process now. More on that another time.

I pray the Lord richly blesses your Christmas with abounding joy! Stop back in around the New Year for whatever insists upon being posted here next.

A Dead Genre?

2010-10-22T21:20:00.000-04:00

I'm a subscriber to David Farland's "Daily Kick in the Pants," and email newsletter that goes out...well, daily...and offers a wealth of practical advice to writers. I've gotten some priceless tidbits of wisdom and motivation from his offerings.

Well, today the "Daily Kick" dished up a line that felt more like a kick in the teeth. (No fault of Mr. Farland's...he calls things like he sees them, and he's just being frank without any malice toward me or any other reader.) David Farland said something in just few little lines that sunk a sword into my gut. He wrote that his agent believes Tolkienesque fantasy to be dead and unsellable.

What?

I can't help but wonder at the plausibility of this statement, given the number of teens who every day who discover Middle Earth for the first time, and how if you hang around at least the younger readers of fantasy, how there is still a deep, tremulous excitement over worlds populated with elves, dwarves, and the entire zoological gamut of humanoids Dungeons and Dragons has since lifted and expounded upon. Perhaps it's just my own bias tainting my view, but I simply can't see a book market devoid of books that take place in a wholly separate time and place. I think the market would be sadly lacking if all we could buy for the next who-knows-how-long is contemporary fantasy.

This seems to be my week for discouraging speed bumps, though. Almost drives and author to self publish.

But I digress. What do you think? Is today's reader sick of castles, armor, and swords? Is contemporary fantasy the only sub genre one ought be writing currently if one hopes to become a published author? You can probably guess what my answer is to all this, but I'd love to hear your comments.

And by the way, more Windrider to come in a week or so.

We interrupt this programming for a quick mention of ACFW...

2010-09-23T00:03:00.000-04:00

Well, several days have passed since I flew home from the ACFW conference in Indianapolis, so I had better get around to a short reflection on my time there. I know I have said this before, but it bears saying again.

If you are a writer...or want to be one...go to a conference!

Granted, not just any conference. A reasonably recognized one where they will have top-notch faculty is of course a better use of your time and money. But nowhere but the uncommon setting known as the writer's conference will you learn so much or have the chance ot rub elbows with so many great and influential people as you will on one of these sojourns.

At the ACFW conference this year, I had the chance to:

Pitch my manuscript to three people who either would never take an unsolicited email from me, or else never would have found that email in the pile of messages that clamor for their attention. Two of these connections resulted in a solicitation of either a full or partial manuscript.
Sit under the teaching of someone as awesome as Chip MacGregor and learn the world of fiction marketing in two short days. Jim Rubart, author of the fascinating sounding Rooms also provided insight. The two of them together had us rip-roaring in gales of laughter one minute, while feverishly scribbling notes the next.
Participate in an awards banquet where pioneers of the industry came along side wide-eyed unpublished authors (like me.)
Meet friends I've only ever known by screen names and avatars, and forge friendships I know will stand the test of time.
Encourage others by offering a sympathetic ear, the gift of a well-timed prayer, or cheers and props when the weekend treated them well.
Even after it was all said and done, I was able to ride the wave of inspiration and plot out my entire season of Windrider stories while I sat at the airport. That is nothing short of a miracle for this seat of the pantser.

And the list goes on. But I won't. (After all, the marketing class did say blog posts over 250 words are effectively talking to yourself. I'm hoping fiction is an exception. Ahem.)

But I do have to say, I don't know how anybody does more than a couple conferences a year. I was delirious with exhaustion by Sunday night. Like words slurring and coherent thought next to impossible exhausted. But would I trade the opportunities, the connections (or even the food) for a normal weekend of sleep? Not on your life. And for those of you who know my priority I put upon sleep, that's saying something.

So, if you want to be published some day...get thee to a conference. You won't regret it.

What the Market Will Bear

2010-08-24T10:39:00.000-04:00

Duchess Delquessa Ildonian leaned against the stone frame of her chamber's window, while her glance roved over the rolling terrain outside the palace. Rain fell in a steady thrum, shrouding the grasy hills and the winding road through them with a silver veil.

"Mistress, surely," her waiting maid's voice chided from behind her. "You must pry yourself from that window for a morsel. I worry over your insistent return to that spot, day after day."

Delquessa's gaze lingered upon the horizon. "Why sends he no word? Could the campaign stretch this overlong?"

"I assure you, I know not, mistress." The maid's footfalls neared. "Who among elves can fathom the minds of men?"

Not I, Elyrin, not I."

Welcome to a quick excerpt from one of my current projects--a 10,000 word short story I hope to submit for a short story anthology to be produced by Port Yonder Press this fall. As my new critique group looked over this particular story, a bit of a discussion came up about "reading level" and what today's fiction market will bear.

Now, let me start off by saying that I don't consider myself anywhere near intelligent enough to truly pull off "literary" as a genre. I won't go into the full definition of literary here, but lets just say it includes work that is written in an elevated style that uses words like the components of a complex mosaic...much different than we tend to think or speak in this day and age. But as much as I peg myself as a fairly average jane when it comes to complexity in my writing, the critique group had a slightly different opinion.

Anyway, the style in which I wrote the story began the discourse on whether today's fiction market can bear something written on a late high school to college level when it comes to vocabulary and pace. To write with words that aren't in the working lexicon of the average American narrows your audience, I'll admit. Fantasy already has a limited reach in the arena of readers. Christian fantasy...well, now we're really finding a tight niche, aren't we? At least I've had the common decency to write in this style only for about 25 pages. I wouldn't dare ask anybody to digest a whole novel of the stuff.

It all brings me to the point of a deep lament...if readers don't read to expand, sharpen, and stretch their minds, where will this happen? Does making reading easy actually expand the number of people who decide they love to read? Just by glancing around society (and admittedly, I have no scientific numbers to back this up) I would have to guess the answer is no. It's a cycle and a downward spiral. We make books easier so that people who don't read might feel less intimidated. People might read them, but because the reading material fails to expand their vocabulary and complexity of thought, an author dare not write above am 8th grade reading level as he continues to produce work, lest he lose his readers.

And yet, despite all this, apparently I've written a short story that disregards the market on all fronts. I've written it for Christian fantasy readers who love detailed word pictures. I cannot fathom telling this particular story in any other way. Will this all turn out to have been an interesting, while slightly fruitless, endeavor? Only time will tell. But I open the discussion to you, followers, visitors and friends...is there a place for literary style fiction in the Christian fantasy market?

Thanks for reading. Keep an eye trained on this spot come early September for the season two premier episode of The Windrider.

Windrider Finale and an Announcement

2010-08-08T22:33:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to drop a quick note here to let any of you who are interested know that the season 1 finale of The Windrider is now live on Digital Dragon. The Windrider, Episode XIII: Creo's Sight

I'd be deeply grateful if you dropped in on my friends and I over there and gave the story a read. While you're there, browse around an d see what else you like in the issue.

This all leads me to an announcement regarding the future of The Windrider. There's certainly no shortage of other exploits I can write about Captain Ecleriast and his cast of supporting characters, but due to a lot of converging circumstances, there's a bit of a change on the wind. Starting in September, the story of Vinyanel Ecleriast, Majestrin, and Veranna will indeed continue, only you will find the stories here at Call of the Creator, rather than over at Digital Dragon. (More on my thanks to DDM is coming, just not here and now. But if you'd like to hear Tim's perspective on how our journey together has gone over the past year, you can read his article: Tim's kind farewell)

I will be experimenting with the format of the releases (whether it will be partial stories either weekly or bi-monthly, or an entire story once a month) so your feedback will be paramount. Also integral to the success of this endeavor will be word-of-mouth. Please, if you know somebody who you think would appreciate the stories, tell them about this blog and encourage them to visit.

Why am I so insistent, you may wonder? Well, first of all, let's face it, most writers write to be read. I admit that. I'm not such a lofty artistic purest that I can put stories down and feel satisfied with the process with no sense of having provided anybody else with a moment of entertainment at least. But just as importantly, gaining readers for The Windrider has everything to do with the eventual success of my novel-length fiction. A reader base is essential to the successful marketing of a book, and one of my efforts to build a strong reader base will focus here.

So, if this sounds like a plea for you to drag as many people as you can over here to read what I'm posting, I guess that's because that's what it is, pretty much. Statistics show that the single most popular reason a person picks up a book to read is because someone they respect told them it was good. I'm "gazelle intense" as Dave Ramsey would put it, about getting my novels into print, and I'd be deeply grateful if you readers could be a part of that equation.

More fiction to come!

Too weird to be normal--too normal to be weird

2010-08-03T13:57:00.000-04:00

This is just about a constant refrain in my household. We live in limbo...in that gray twilight that knows neither mainstream nor alternative.

I'll speak mostly for myself here, since I'm sure my husband would rather I didn't mock him on the internet, though he is the one who told me I must blog on this. Anyway, as a Christian who is an artist, I find myself in a strange position. The parts of me that look artsy: my hobbies, the strange things I think about while I'm doing the dishes, the fact that I have more than a few sketch books full of elves, knights, and unicorns...these leave me with scant common ground with most of my physical social circle. I think I appear ordinary enough until you get to know me a bit...then it becomes glaringly apparent that I'm a little kooky. My physical social circle (those people I have actually stood beside, rather than those whom I know only virtually) pulls mostly from church and homeschooling, and those people who are fantasy enthusiasts are few-and-far-between in general, let alone in conservative bible-believing communities. So while I enjoy my friends from church, and I like to believe they enjoy me, I get the sense that I am just a shade wackier than most everybody else I fellowship with.

Then there's the group of people with whom I have much in common when it comes to interests and hobbies--most of whom I am not quite gung-ho enough to quite keep pace with either. I don't own a costume for the Renaissance Faire. I have never carried a sword anywhere. (Well, not recently. I did have to bring somebody's broadsword back to the dorms in college after I used it for a sound-effects recording session. I believe it saved me from a potential mugging...but that's another story, for sure.) I have never dyed my hair...not black, not striped with any color that does not grow naturally out of human heads. I refuse to talk role-playing-games in mixed company. So, when immersed in a group of overt fantasy enthusiasts, I don't quite fit the bill there either.

So, I suppose that leaves me with the option of simply remaining who I am and forgetting my inclination to try to pigeon-hole myself into a group of easily-defined peers. (As I write this, it seems that perhaps my best compatriots would be those who over-use hyphens.) If I look at things objectively, I can see that my opportunity to rub elbows with both ends of the spectrum is a good thing. It helps me keep some perspective. When you spend as much time as I do trying to create magical problems and fantastical solutions for people who don't exist, it certainly helps to hang around people who have a better grip on reality than I do. When I'm dry on ideas and can't seem to come up with a fresh angle from which to approach anything, those people I know who are happy to set aside the world's conventions are a breath of much needed fresh air. So I suppose I'll continue to hang out here in the middle, and try to absorb the best of both sides.

*****

In other news, keep your eyes trained on www.digitaldragonmagazine.net sometime after the 8th for the finale of season 1 of The Windrider. In a couple of weeks, I hope to have another dose of stand alone fiction, or perhaps a preview of a bigger work, posted here at Call of the Creator. Thanks for reading...if you like what you've seen, invite your friends.

Fiction, as promised

2010-07-20T12:23:00.000-04:00

In an effort to shift my blog over from articles (though occasionally, some will still appear here when I feel I have something to rant about, or a book to review, or something like that) I am posting a short story here for your enjoyment. The following was a story I submitted to a contest in the early part of 2010. It was a "tell us what happened in this picture" type of contest, where the catalogue running it offered an image of a knight, a king, a princess, and the suggestion of a nearby dragon. The story below takes a traditional stab at the image, but hopefully it will meet with your discerning standards anyway. ;) Without further ado...

A Willing Heart
by Becky Minor

Nothing spoils a momentous occasion like an uninvited guest. So when a forty-foot, bronze-scaled dragon swooped down upon the field of tournament behind Stonewarden Keep, the festivities not only ground to a halt, but the throng of spectators burst into cacophonous panic. Courtiers wailed. Peasants stumbled over one another. Knights stood with jaws dropped, paralyzed by a moment of shock.

The dragon’s first snatch at the Princess Lydia missed only by a hair’s breadth, for the Tournament’s Champion swept her aside. The winged serpent ascended and came about.

Finally overcoming their stunned stupors, many of the knights drew bows, fit arrows to the nock, and let the missiles fly at the beast. Most of these darts, fashioned to pierce the stoutest armor upon the field of war, bounced off the hide of the dragon with no more than a spark. Only those arrows that met with the membranous webbing of the creature’s wings stuck fast. They fired a second volley.

The dragon, black blood oozing from his wings, sped to the arena floor and landed with a thud that rattled the earth beneath Squire Caleb’s feet. It bellowed a roar that elicited further cries of dismay from the crowd.

Caleb snatched a sword from amidst his master’s gear.

After another volley of arrows bounced off the dragon’s hide, the knights glanced to one another, hesitant. A look of black smugness overtook the dragon’s features, and in the knight’s dalliance, it shot out a claw and ensnared the princess.

Caleb dashed forward a half-dozen steps, but turned to look back as he realized no knights followed.

“Knights of the crown! Is this not just the sort of duty to which your office calls you?” Caleb cried.

The Tournament’s Champion balked at the squire, askance. “What would you have us do, young one? Do not mistake foolishness for valor. You saw how our arrows fell harmless upon the beast!”

“Surely the creature has some weakness,” Caleb retorted.

The dragon wheeled, lumbering for the arena gate. Princess Lydia strained and writhed, but could not free herself from the beast’s iron grasp.

Still, no knight made the first move.

“If you will not use your God-given talents for such a cause as this, I shall test my own mettle.” Caleb set his jaw. After a deep breath and a wordless prayer, he leapt after the beast.

“Clearly, we cannot allow the youth to challenge this evil alone,” another knight said.

Infected by Caleb’s determination, a phalanx of knights swept into a wide circle around the wyrm as it loped across the castle lawn. The glistening stain of the dragon’s blood marked a spattered trail to mark its retreat. The girl had fallen silent, which Caleb prayed was only due to a swoon, and no worse.

The dragon whipped its head back and forth, baring rows of crooked, yellowing teeth at his adversaries. Hatred flared in its blood-red eyes as the press of many sword points cornered the creature against the waters of Lake Thistleburgh. The dragon halted, claws digging into the sandy soil as it hissed its defiance. The dour-faced knights encircled the beast, but kept their distance, weapons clutched in white-knuckled hands.

The wyrm sniffed the air. “I smell your fear.” A laugh of derision rumbled in its throat.

“Not mine, foul one!” Caleb roared at the wyrm. “Go, foul beast, back to the watery depths from whence you came!”

A slow, disquieting smile spread across the creature’s lips. “You mistake me for the pup old Saint George cowed in his day. I assure you, I am made of sterner stuff than that.” The dragon cast princess Lydia’s limp form to the ground.

With the swiftness of a cobra strike, the dragon shot its head toward Caleb, who barely tumbled clear of the snap of deadly jaws. He swiped his blade at the dreadful beast, though its edge skittered over diamond-hard scales. He rose to one knee and braced himself for the dragon’s next assault.

The knights glanced to one another. None advanced.

The dragon reared, its disdainful voice echoing above the din of weapons and armor. “You are outmatched, little mortals. I claim this princess unto my deathless appetite.”

Caleb bellowed in response. “You are no less mortal than we. This battle belongs to the Almighty, immortal alone!” The squire swept his blade in a circle as he stood, holding it high and daring the dragon’s attack.

“In your false confidence shall I send you to meet this Almighty,” the dragon replied.

“That choice is neither yours nor mine, but God’s. Should I die, you remain a tool of his will!”

The wyrm screeched. It dove at Caleb, maw gaping.

With a thrust, Caleb pointed his sword to the sky, a prayer in his heart that his end, though swift, would glorify his Lord. A bone-shattering impact struck his raised sword, and utter blackness engulfed him.

When Caleb opened his eyes, he saw above him the flapping banners of the king. The summer breeze caressed his face, and the smells of horses and honeysuckle drifted to his nose.

“Father, he awakes!” a feminine voice, no less sweet than the scent of nectar proclaimed.

“Does he now?” another speaker replied.

Caleb blinked the haze from his eyes to see none other than his Highness, King Thaddeus striding across the castle lawn, waved over by his ivory-skinned daughter Princess Lydia. His right arm bound across his chest, Caleb struggled to rise for his earthly liege.

“We owe you more than words can convey, Squire Caleb, for my daughter’s rescue,” the king said. “What my knights hesitated to do, you performed without hesitation.”

“Truly, Sire,” Caleb replied, “if I ever hoped to count myself as one of them, I did only what I believed the office requires. I’m humbled to have done my part. Tell me, though, did the knights finish the beast?”

The princess giggled, an infectious sound that drifted like bubbles on the breeze. “They didn’t need to! Your stroke did the deed.”

Caleb shook his head. “How can that be? I don’t recall dealing any blow.”

“When the dragon dived at you, your lifted sword pierced the villain inside his maw, felling him outright,” the princess said. “Or so I’m told, for I had fainted and saw nothing.”

A sheepish grin tugged at the corner of Caleb’s mouth. “It sounds more like a stroke of luck than prowess.”

“But it was bravery that put you in place to deal it. Do not dismiss as luck what was more likely a miracle.” The king clasped Caleb’s good arm. “Hand me the sword you wielded, young squire.”

Caleb knelt. He stretched a trembling hand toward the blade that lay in the grass beside him. The king took the weapon in a firm grasp.

King Thaddeus rested the blade against Caleb’s left shoulder, then his right. “I knight thee, Sir Caleb of Drastony. Swear, from this day forth: thou shalt serve thy earthly king with valor, until the King of Kings releases thee from thy service to join him in his Kingdom eternal.”

The nearby crowd of knights and courtiers erupted into torrential applause, and Sir Caleb of Drastony, Wyrmsbane, stretched tall. “I swear it.”

Feeling Disoriented?

2010-07-12T22:51:00.000-04:00

Yes, I admit, there are a few changes going on around here, and if that's disconcerting to you, I sincerely apologize...and will continue to apologize, since I have no idea when I will be done the renovation of this blog. I am one of those people who would rearrange my furniture every six weeks if I could--the fact that my current home allows for one configuration, and one only, of our furniture is making me batty.

Anyway, perhaps you're shaking your head at my swap of templates. Now that blogger has upgraded your ability to see your blog with new "clothes" on, I've been trying a few templates on for size. The current template's font sizes and the like are not my favorite, so we'll see if I can get that swapped out for a custom header soon. But nonetheless, it has been fun to see what other looks I might utilize around here.

The Donate Button (Dun-dun-DUN!)
Another detail you may have noticed is a little button on the right that says "donate." To be honest, left to my own devices, I probably never would have placed such a thing on my blog. However, every day, I receive an email called "David Farland's Dail Kick in the Pants." For those of you who don't know David Farland, author of the Runelords series, you may know his as Dave Wolverton, who wrote at least a handful of Star Wars novels. The Courtship of Princess Leia comes to mind off the top of my head. Okay--so what does he have to do with a paypal button on my blog?

Whatever one might think of Mr. Farland's writing, one fact you can't deny is that the man is a successful writer, in a career sense. His books routinely make best sellers lists and I get the impression he has a pretty comfortable life due to the royalties from his writing. He composes his "Daily Kicks" to offer new writers practical advice on how to attack their writing from a career standpoint. One of his recent kicks suggested offering a "donations" button on your website or blog.

Let's face it...we're all struggling along this "get into print" road together. As a reader, you have minimal power to insist a publisher take on your favorite budding author. But if the Lord has blessed you financially and prompts you to do so, you could make a contribution to a writer, which would enable said writer to pay for things like airfare to conferences (ahem, the particular place I have a shortfall right now), cover the cost of registration for a conference, contribute to the fee it would take for that author to pay for a professional edit of his or her work...you see what I mean. While the time a writer spends writing costs him nothing in dollars and cents, to say there is no monetary outlay necessary to build a career as a writer is a misconception.

So, I hope you don't view my little button as an online way to sit on a street corner and mutter in a barely intelligible voice, "Spare any change?" In future months, I intend to start offering short fiction here on CotC, and maybe, if there's something you read and feel you enjoyed, you might just feel moved to throw a few coins into my little online cup. If not, that's great too. Just keep stopping back, reading new stories, and telling your friends to drop by too. I'll be blessed if you do.

2010-06-19T20:02:00.000-04:00

Since I am typically remiss in posting any recent artwork, I figured I'd throw an image here on the main page for folks to heckle. Most of my writing is character driven, which means (to me) that the characters come first. I design them, build at least a skeletal framework for their personalities, then throw them into a situation and see how they will deal with it. The outcome is usually a surprise, at least to me.

The character providing me with the most startling revelations of late has been Lieutenant Commander Vinyanel Ecleriast...oh wait...if the one or two people who read that serial drop in over here, I guess that was a tiny spoiler about something that happens in season two. But anyway, I felt it was high time I put a face on this character I've been writing about for a year now...or should I say, a face visible to someone besides me.

It's always a risk, putting an image with a written character. People always say "Wait, that's not how I pictured him." But I figure, I'm reasonably safe, since this sketch is pretty much "animation style," so it doesn't really register in a person's mind like a photographic image would as being as right or wrong for the character might. At least that's what I'm hoping.

So, what's in store for my writing journey as I head into summer?

I hope to finish at least season 2 of The Windrider, where Vinyanel leaves Delsinon in pursuit of the stolen talismans of passage that will allow whoever carries them to penetrate the illusion that has protected the city from invaders for generations. Veranna and Majestrin will continue to play a key role, with supporting plot threads supplied by Major Galdurith Emynon and another character of dubious intent who worms his way into the band of travelers. I recently posted something about a ninja assassin on facebook making his way into the story, and while this new character isn't exactly a ninja, I hope you'll enjoy the part he plays in the story development.
I am putting another coat of wax and polish on The Sword of the Patron (and a hearty thanks to Jennette for going through the whole manuscript with me to help me find those missing words and other hiccups that still have managed to elude editing.)
I'm trying to get all my "front matter" for SotP in tip top shape, since I recently registered for the ACFW conference in Indianapolis this fall. With any luck, I'll make some contacts that will bring that book closer to publication. All that remains is to scrape together the pennies for the flight out there and the hotel, since I don't think the conference folks would appreciate it if I slept in my 1995 Dodge Grand Caravan in their parking lot. ;)
I'm working on a tragic short story set in the early history of my world, with hopes of submitting it for Port Yonder Press' Elves Anthology that they are hoping to fill with submissions this October. I'm about 8000 words into it, and very close to finishing the first draft. Then editing it will be.
And somewhere in there, I considered adding short fiction to this blog. That may have to wait for fall.
This is in addition to all things in the word of being a wife, mom, and VBS decorations guru. Pray I can keep all the priorities in the right order!

So that's what the next few months have in store in the world of fantasy writing. As always, your prayers, readership and snarky comments are more than appreciated. (And I mean that, even about the snarky comments. A laugh is good medicine, so I'm told.)

What's coming

2010-06-04T11:49:00.000-04:00

So, as those of you who drop by here at all, you know I don't blog prolifically. I want to keep the blog running, since there is value in blogging that I won't get into here. But as I look at the content and purpose of my blog, I think I may make some changes around here.

I'm toying with the idea of doing monthly releases of stories written solely for this spot. As many of you know, I already am in a contract with Digital Dragon Magazine (www.digitaldragonmagazine.net) to write serial fiction, and that isn't changing. But, if I can do it, I may start offering fiction here as well...that is, if anyone wants to read it. (Comments about that would help! Nudge, nudge.)

I'm also debating taking some slightly risky advice from mega-selling fantasy author David Farland. (Runelords) I get an e-mail bulletin from his called "David Farland's Daily Kick in the Pants," which he uses to offer writers tips on the world of writing. Today, his advice was to set out a donations jar.

Now, being the conservative that I am, I don't believe in getting something for nothing. I figure, if I'm going to set up a donations jar on my blog, I could at least try to offer something entertaining on the blog in exchange for a reader even considering a donation. I have a very specific goal in mind, actually,for these donations: to collect enough pennies to pay my airfare and hotel for the ACFW conference this fall. I'm determined to go...where else can I hope to learn a ton about the craft and business of writing, as well as to make some contacts to get closer to having a publisher for The Sword of the Patron? You, as a reader, may be able to be part of helping that novel and it's subsequent members of the series to publication, and this little donations jar could be part of that equation.

It's humbling to look to readers for help in becoming more widely available to be read, but it's also a fact: without readers, writers go nowhere.

So, keep an eye out for potential changes around here. If the muse blesses me with a plotline soon, perhaps a new story or even a serial will soon grace the pages of this slightly weedy blog.

The Changing Face of Books

2010-05-19T21:25:00.000-04:00

When I started my journey toward publication just a couple of years ago (and I mean barely started--at that point I had a manuscript that was in such sorry shape that you would never know it was the embryonic phase of the novel I'm now sending queries about) I started poking my nose around the idea of the e-book. Just two short years ago, the overriding opinion was that e-books sat in a tiny niche that made it so you couldn't lose the user's manual to a piece of electronic equipment, and that the publishing industry didn't see the e-book ever growing into a mainstream means of publication.

Fast forward to 2010, and statistics show us that books sold in electronic formats have seen a 233% surge in sales over the past year. We've got the Kindle, the Nook, Sony's reader, and of course the iPad (which, by the way...the iPad's sales at its launch apparently dwarfed the launch of iPhone, and if you've been awake for even a few minutes over the past five years , you know what a phenomenon that was.) So that little niche reserved for technical manuals and obscure pamphlets that were too tiny either in content or readership to garner paper publication has suddenly exploded into a force to respect.

I'm amazed, that even just in two years, this reversal has unfolded before my eyes. Where I once dismissed e-books, I'm now thinking that it's a non-negotiable that whatever publisher picks up my book will have to possess the capability to release my work in e-format. While I don't think the hard copy book is going away any time soon, (so many of us still love the smell and feel of a book) I do think that the electronic book is here to stay.

So what do you think? Do you own an e-reader? Are you anxious to buy one? Money aside, if you could have one in your hand today, which one would you choose? If your answer is "none," why is that?

To Darkness Fled by Jill Williamson

2010-05-05T12:10:00.000-04:00

It's always a happy day when book-sized packages arrive on my doorstep. Granted, this does not happen with great regularity around here, but when it does, you can count on my being buried in whatever I've bought until I've turned the last page.

Part of this latest shipment of books to my home included Jill Williamson's second installment to her Blood of Kings Series: To Darkness Fled. If you heft the book and its nearly 700 pages, don't let its length daunt you. It moves at a brisk pace...brisk enough that even this homeschooling mom who's trying to write her own serial as well as edit a novel (or two) managed to down the book over the course of a long weekend.

To Darkness Fled continues the story of Vrell Sparrow, Achan Cham and their companions as they flee the usurper Esek. Both Vrell and Achan have their turns telling the tale from their point of view, which I think the author handles well. It took me a while to shake the cobwebs out of my cluttered brain and recall some of the events and tertiary characters from the first installment of the series, By Darkness Hid, but the author reintroduces those characters clearly enough to jog even my questionable memory.

The story gives the reader a pretty comprehensive tour of several of the kingdoms of Er'Rets, helping us to see the differences in customs, affiliations and nobility (or lack thereof) of each. You can see the depth of world building Williamson has done in order to craft the political climate of the continent. The cultures are varied, each with their own flavor, which I enjoyed.

Love, marriage, and the pitfalls of relationships interweave throughout this installment of the series, and I will be interested to hear what male readers of the book have to say about these aspects of the plot. While I understand the need for Achan to systematically discover none of the other romantic options available to him hold the appeal of his eventual choice of love interest, I am curious as to whether the pervasive romance of the story will "work" for the male reader or not.

The character development of Achan is thorough and satisfying. His growth into a new follower of the creator God of Williamson's world is believable and not overly swift, which I appreciate.

Vrell's character development was very interesting over the course of the two novels. I admit, I found her whiny and unlikable at the beginning of the first book, but she grew into an appealing character through the end of the first book and through most of the second. I'm sad to report, however, that the turn she takes in the end of To Darkness Fled throws her back to that place where I wanted to shake her by the shoulders and tell her to get a grip. Now, let me qualify this by saying I don't think this is a bad thing in terms of the storyline. I think the third book that is on its way (From Darkness Won), would suffer if both Vrell and Achan had ended this story well on their way to being put together and heroic. I will be interested to see where these characters' personal journeys take them in the future.

To Darkness Fled is rife with subplots, ranging from Vrell's continued struggle to conceal her identity, to questions about her true parentage, to Achan's ability to make wise choices befitting a king. It's not your typical sword and sorcery quest model...while there is the broad plot motivator of taken Achan around Er'Rets to muster an army to fight for his throne, and the short quest to liberate the Old Kingsgard knights from imprisonment, it's character development that drives the story, not the quest. But fear not, fans of swordplay, there is still plenty of action. Peril comes to the good guys in bursts that are appropriately exhausting before the story gives both characters and readers a respite.

The story is an excellent continuation of the series, answering some questions but still leaving an assortment to be solved. I enjoyed my read of this book two, and I'm looking forward to the further exploits of these characters in the next installment.

A first, it wasn't so bad...

2010-04-21T12:48:00.000-04:00

As everyone who suffers through my continual yammering about the progress on my novel, The Sword of the Patron, already knows, my book is currently sitting on the desk of the second agent I've queried about it. The wait for a response from the first agent wasn't so bad, but I credit that to the fact that for the 5 weeks it took the response to come, I was insanely busy, so I didn't have time to hover over my email like a hungry seagull at a picnic on the beach.

This time, life is relatively calm, and I'm finding the wait much harder to endure. I'm questioning everything. Should I really have gone the route of querying agents on my first-ever novel? Or should I have gone with smaller presses, waiting until I have a book in print with decent sales numbers before I bother the big guys? Or am I deluded that it would be any easier to get through the gate of a small press than it is to catch the attention of an agent? Should I have entered some contests, like ACFW's Genesis contest instead? Should I have my book on Authonomy.com? (This isn't off the table...I'm debating this, in an effort to generate some buzz while I'm waiting. I'm fully aware that could backfire, though.)

I've never been good at waiting, so this process, while agonizing, is also instructive. I hope that through it all, my character will be refined, however slightly. Will learning how to wait on agents make me more patient with my children? (I wish.)

One this is certain: remaining idle while waiting is a very bad idea. I'm thankful that I have my serial fiction to work on, illustrations to continue to chip away at for Tony Lavoie's Many Stops to Make, and my family to offer me more than enough to do in the meantime. One day at a time, one query after another, I am determined to find a publisher for this book, and hopefully it's subsequent members of the series. Only the prayerful request for the Lord to steady me as I wait will provide the firm foundation I'll need to weather this journey, that I know.

Getting a chance to read...

2010-03-23T11:56:00.001-04:00

I admit, I don't read as much fiction as I would like. Not at all.

So, that helps explain why it is I am just starting in on my discovery of Karen Hancock's work. One would think, as an aspiring female Christian Fantasy author, that Hancock would have been one of the author's I'd have tracked with all along. Well, finally, thanks to inter-library loan, I have finally begun her Legends of the Guardian King series, having just finished The Light of Eidon.

I won't give a synopsis here, but here's a link: http://www.kmhancock.com/Eidon.htm in case you want to research on you're own.

My reaction?

World: Ms. Hancock created a convincing world with enough detail that I could visualize the locales in which she placed the characters, as well as the local inhabitants of those places. She took the time to create the macro-scale relationships between cultures and governments as well as to get down to the micro level so much as to mention the peculiarities of local cuisine. I found the world a nice blend of exotic and familiar, which she achieved only using "human" characters.

Characters: I cared about the fate of just about all the characters woven into this story. (Almost...the only character I found a bit flat was Philip. And Clarissa was irritating, but I am guessing that was by design.) When characters died or turned out to be on the wrong side in a plot twist, I was saddened at the "loss" of those characters. Ms. Hancock does a great job of crafting the friendship between Abramm and Trap, which I found genuine and a good story driver.

Plot: The Light of Eidon has no shortage of twists, a lesson I hope to take away from the book for my on writing. The plot moved forward well and quickly, and perhaps my only gripe were places where we got summary instead of scenes. (I know we can't show it all and expect to end up with a publishable wordcount, but still, I consider it a compliment to the writing that I didn't want to miss a moment of interaction between these characters.)

Some who read Hancock's work, from what I've heard, have a little trouble with some of the more "adult content" in the text. Yes, there's violence, and some gore (though none of it did I find gratuitous) and yes, there is some immoral sexuality employed by major characters. However, where this morality issue comes up, I believe that Hancock handles it by not letting it slide without repercussions, showing remorse in the offending character, and also by having the behavior occur at what was a spiritual low point for that character. So, while I know it sparks debate, in my opinion, the use of sexual content in the context she offers has rhyme and reason. It's not there simply to titillate.

On a more general note, I found it interesting that Karen Hancock managed to use both adverbs and clauses that start with -ing and get published. (Tongue firmly planted in cheek here!) But seriously, I am heartened that the so-called "rules of 21st century writing" that many would-be writers bang over others' heads don't seem to hold sway here. There is hope for the well placed adverb! ;)

So, overall, I give the book a strong affirmative nod, and I'll be hitting up those inter-library loan folks for the next book in the series. Of the time I've spent reading fiction this year, I'm glad that The Light of Eidon graced some of it.

Coined words

2010-03-11T13:40:00.000-05:00

When people are geniuses, they get leeway the rest of us don't. But what are we, as writers, allowed to do with the precedent these geniuses set?

My current train of thought comes up over a single word I am debating over using (or not.) People like Shakespeare coined words all the time, words that have worked their way into our everyday speech. After all, according to Michael Macrone's Brush Up Your Shakespeare, the Oxford English Dictionary credits Shakespeare as the first to use these words, among others: "arch-villain," "bedazzle," "cheap" (as in vulgar or flimsy), "dauntless," "embrace" (as a noun), "fashionable," "go-between," "honey-tongued," "inauspicious," "lustrous," "nimble-footed," "outbreak," "pander," "sanctimonious," "time-honored," "unearthly," "vulnerable," and "well-bred." Now, if I used any of these words in my writing, would anybody point at me and say "You lifter of words?" I think not.

Where my trouble comes up is over one single word, not from Shakespeare, but coined by Tolkien. What word?

Weapontake.

In the sense of using the word to mean the mustering of troops, it is generally regarded as Tolkien's invention. If I wrote romance, or thrillers, or some other genre, perhaps it wouldn't be a big deal. But since I write fantasy, would the use of Tolkien's word, a word he coined within the last century, invite ire?

Clearly, I spend too much time ruminating on the absurd and the obscure.

But the fact remains, I love the sound of the word, and I think it sits in my story nicely. But the last thing I want to do is thrust my reader out of my tale with word usage.

But here is my bigger question: when does the word an author coins become the property of the populace? When you use a word used in an unconventional way by another author, are you giving a nod to a master, or are you functioning as nothing more than a pale shadow of someone greater? These are the questions I hope to answer as I think my weapontake dilemma through.

And I better figure it out before June, since that's when Digital Dragon Magazine needs the story in which the word will (or won't) appear.

When sentience isn't just a human trait...

2010-02-23T10:37:00.000-05:00

Fantasy often presents the reader with not just fictitious cultures, but diverse races of creatures that all share the blessing of sentience. What is an author to do with this situation when it comes to deciding what these races believe about their origins and their eternal destination?

Secular fantasy doesn't have any obligation to wrestle with this question, but I believe that fantasy that has a Christian sensibility at its core cannot overlook this conundrum. Biblically, we are told that God created man in His image, giving man a component that will live on forever, and differentiating man from all the rest of His creation with this eternal part of his being.

So, what happens when a world has not only men, but elves, dwarves, gnomes, dragons, centaurs, and myriad other thinking creatures? (In reference to this question, I really ought to read Summa Elvetica by Theodore Beale, but in the absence of any insight from that book, I'll just have to ruminate on my own.) Does the Christian author insist all of these races share the same creator? In my current "world" in which I write, I have taken that route...I suppose it's the smoother path.

Can Christian Fantasy fiction weather the concept that each race has it's own creator? J.R.R. Tolkien dabbled in this idea a bit in The Silmarillion, when Aule, in his eagerness to create as did Iluvatar, made the dwarves. But that act of creation worked to further illustrate Iluvatar's supremacy, in that he insisted Aule's children remain unquickened until Iluvatar had brought forth his firstborn, the elves. So does that address the idea of multiple creators? Not in the purest sense, although it does show precedent.

To be fair, however, Tolkien never set out to write "Christian fantasy." In fact, especially with The Silmarillion, he wove many different mythos together while adding his own twists, so while the battle of good versus evil underpins the work, to call it Christian fantasy is a bit of a stretch.

If we want to read and write Christian fiction that won't garner debate, my impression has been that a single creator is a necessary element. Others might add that a picture of fallen-ness and redemption are also key. So as usual, I end this blog entry with questions, rather than answers. Just how "biblical" does Christian Fantasy need to be in order to remain Christian and not simply become fantasy? My answer to that question is that Christian fantasy is storytelling that I can read without having that story challenge my worldview. Does it have to express every intricacy of that worldview? I don't think so. But in my opinion, multiple creators start to step over that boundary.

But even so, I've still read The Silmarillion. Call it trust.

February DDM

2010-02-07T23:05:00.000-05:00

Hello friends and readers!

Just wanted to blip a short message here to let you know that the February issue of Digital Dragon Magazine has hit the web. If you head over to www.digitaldragonmagazine.net, you'll find my ongoing serial, "The Windrider" in its seventh installment. The plot is getting thicker (or at least I hope you'll think so.)

If you do get a chance to head over there, I wonder what you think about the format changes for the e-zine. They are publishing to a downloadable PDF in addition to their online format. What do you think of that? How's the readability? They are making a lot of other changes there as they ramp up to launch Diminished Media, which will handle print publications as well. For reasons I cannot yet disclose, I am watching carefully how the transition goes. Things could get pretty exciting for those writers tied into Diminished Media's offerings, should all go well.

Also, if you do give the story(ies) a read, I'd love to hear any feedback you might offer. I have no way of tracking my readership or people's reactions through DDM, so I'd be gratified if you shared your impressions. And I'm not just soliciting pats on the back here. If you think the stories are drivel, judicious, constructive comments to that end are also welcome. To improve is to take the good with the bad, right?

Thanks in advance to any of you who have a moment to offer up your coveted opinions.

The truth, the whole truth...

2010-01-28T10:34:00.000-05:00

Is fiction a lie?

It amazes me how although we Christians all worship one God, we have such widely varying opinion on so many things. One of those areas of divergence is fiction. There are religious leaders who will say that only the bible and non-fiction books are worthy of the time it takes to read them. While I won't argue that any time spent in the Bible is time well spent, I do have to take issue with the idea that fiction is in some way wrong or evil.

So, those of us who like fiction argue that Jesus told stories and site his parables as an example. The fiction detractors come back with the idea that the parables weren't made up, but rather accounts of things that really happened. Now granted, just about any of the illustrations Jesus used were very practical, contemporary scenarios, so of course they could have happened. Does that mean that Jesus got the directive from the Father: tell the story of Esther of Capernaum...you know,the time she lost her coin? (Okay, now I'm being a little flip.)

But beneath my digression lies my point. Does a story have to have happened to possess value? If that's the case, well, then...we fantasy writers better just take our "My Documents" file and move it to the recycle bin.

As you have probably guessed, I don't think that a story need to be factual to have value, but what it does need to do is point to truth. Western Society has abandoned the existence of truth, even as it contradicts itself to do so. ( I can't get into the argument right now, but how can a person say it is true that there is no such thing as truth?) What the reading world needs is material that reflects the deep, God designed truths that no matter what philosophy comes along, no person can truly deny without eventually talking himself into a knot.

So, in the sense of thinking on whatever is true, I believe we can still do that in the context of fiction. If a fantasy story points the reader to the truth that one leads best by serving, is there no value in that? After all, isn't it the veiled truth that we pursue and discover hidden within our experience the one that brings us the greatest, most personal revelation?

Slim Pickin's

2010-01-05T15:17:00.000-05:00

Nothing brings a smile to my face quite like a box from UPS on my porch.

Today's delivery? My copy of the 2010 Christian Writers' Market Guide by Sally Stuart. (I must interject, this woman gets some kind of medal for tackling this book every year.) I pushed the supple cover open to begin my treasure hunt through the pages within. My goal: to track down likely publisher/agent candidates to whom to send my manuscript for The Sword of the Patron.

To be fair, I am not entirely settled upon whether I will start sending the book to the four winds before Jeff Gerke of Marcher Lord Press has actually rejected it through the traditional submission channels. Since he has only had it involved in Marcher Lord Select, he hasn't actually weighed in on it. But I do need to do my due diligence on other publishing options, after all.

What I'm learning so far, however, is that the publishing options for a Christian fantasy novel aren't exactly numerous. The publishers that do take them on often don't take unsolicited submissions or at least unagented submissions. The agents that want speculative fiction are few and far between...and they crop up between a forest of agents that write on their websites "interested in all genres EXCEPT: Sci-Fi/Fantasy."

I suppose the bright side to all this is that I won't be overwhelmed with options when it comes to sending out my materials. The negative? I won't have a big trove of choices when sending out my materials. But discouragement will gain no foothold here at the beginning of my journey, as much as it tries to sink it's little grappling hook into my soul and cling to me. After all, I'm only in the "h's" or so of the agent listings, so I'm sure I'll be able to put a little star next to a few more names before I finish that chapter of the book.

Let the journey begin.

Christmas and Fantasy

2009-12-28T10:33:00.000-05:00

'Tis the season to consider what we as Christians feel about Santa Claus.

Now, I know this isn't exactly a classic fantasy discussion here, but it does bear examination. I myself have held a varying opinion on the topic in my lifetime, due mostly to a re-examination of the condition of my soul and how that colors my opinion about Santa.

When my firstborn was very little, we were vehement that we weren't going to perpetuate a "lie" to our children, only to have to tell them that we had been pulling the wool over their eyes, building up the false hope that Santa Claus did indeed show up and leave presents every Christmas eve. As the years have passed and subsequent children have arrived in our family, we've stepped back from that position to a degree, mostly because I felt like it smacked of legalism. Granted, we've never actually said anything about Santa Claus coming to our house, and the kids know full well that mom and dad shop for Christmas presents. We talk about the real Saint Nicholas and other historic figures that inspire the idea of Santa Claus.

And yet, somehow the magic of Christmas has still had its way. My boys still wonder if Santa is real. They look at the red suited man in the mall and ask me if he's the real deal. Me, I just shrug and say, "What do you think?" While I'm not using Santa as the nebulous threat or motivator that I know some parents laugh at themselves for doing, I'm also not squashing the little ones' imaginations on it either.

This all brings me to the point I'm trying to make. Where does imagination begin to supplant faith? Can Santa and Jesus inhabit the same holiday without an appearance of hypocrisy?

I heard a speaker recently on just a snippet of the radio program Family Life Today, and on that show they talked about how the story of Santa Claus points to the giving love, the living out of the Christian life that Saint Nicholas and subsequently, Santa Claus can represent. As long as we frame Santa Claus in the bindings of Christ's love, and how giving is an act of love, I think we can leave some room for some fun and imagination.

However, should the pretty boxes under the tree begin to supplant the most important Gift of Christmas (which it is easy to have that happen) much is suddenly lost. Joy becomes replaced with the much more nebulous "happiness." (Think of the root of that word, and how it shares meaning with "mishap" or "happenstance.") Agape, giving love gets pushed out of its seat by materialism. These are the issues of Christmas I want to avoid, and I've come to the conclusion that Santa isn't at the heart of them.

So, readers, tell me: What do you think about Santa Claus? Does he have any place in a Christian observance of Christmas?

The Last Marcher Lord Select Post

2009-12-16T10:20:00.000-05:00

Well, it's official. As of about 1 am the morning of the 16th, I discovered that The Sword of the Patron did not make the cut for the finals of Marcher Lord Select.

But as I've been saying in all my other internet "hang outs," I cannot say I am battling any sense of disappointment over it. Maybe it will set in later. Maybe not

What I do come away with from the whole thing is that I have a healthy number of people who would stand behind my book. Maybe not enough to run away with a contest on Jeff Gerke's forum, but enough to encourage me that my story is one people will read and enjoy. Does it still need work? Of course. I don't know that any novel is ever really done. You just eventually stop working on it. (Hopefully that stopping point connects to a publishing contract.)

So, now I'm faced with the question...do I dive into rewrites now? Do I focus solely on finishing my serial for Digital Dragon, the come back to SOTP? Do I switch gears entirely and write a short story to submit to Port Yonder Press' Elves Anthology that wants entries in January?

Never a shortage of choices.

The one choice that is not on the table, however, is giving up. A few sweet encouragers have said to me "Don't quit! Hold your head high!" to which I can only smile and say, "Quit? Of course not!" The road is just beginning to wind ever on and on for this tale, and I look forward to seeing where it leads.

2009-12-01T18:32:00.000-05:00

Okay, in an effort to avoid boring all of you to tears with continued blathering about Marcher Lord Select, I'll make a single, short announcement about that, and then blog about something entirely different.

The Sword of the Patron has officially moved into phase three of the Marcher Lord Select Contest, now standing amidst a field of eight semi-finalists contending for the prize of publication in the spring of 2010. As you can imagine, I'm very excited, but doubly as thankful to those of you who have voted. I exhort you to keep voting! The margins have been extremely tight between winners to those eliminated, so every single vote counts.

Now, onto other subjects.

The Language Barrier

I was watching Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring (yes, for about the gabillionth time) and a new thought struck me with reference to my writing. As the Uruk Hai brought their particular brand of mayhem to the fracturing fellowship, their chieftain bellows, "Find the halflings!" Now, this isn't so remarkable on its own, but the context of my writing struggle highlighted this moment for me.

Now, of course in movieland, people tend to all speak the same language for the sake of the viewer, and we all sort of have to suspend our disbelief on that. (The occasional sojourns into elvish with English subtitles is another matter, but I won't get into that right now.) So, rather than yell in orcish, the Uruk Hai yells, "Find the halflings." That way, the viewer knows of Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin's impending danger, in case they forgot that was the whole reason the orc had shown up. (Of course, being created by Saruman, perhaps one could argue that the language of men was the Uruk Hai's first language and thus the logical tongue for the orcs to use, but I'm not deep enough in movie/Middle Earth lore to know.)

The point it brought up in my mind still stands, though. Languages are a sticky wicket in fantasy writing. In my short stories, I've been dealing with a couple of vastly different races, and since I'm writing from mostly my protagonist's point of view, this has created some interesting writing situations. He wouldn't speak the language of my "bad guys." So, anything the reader needs to know can't come out of the mouths of those bad guys. We're experiencing the story through the eyes and ears of Captain Vinyanel Ecleriast, elf, so what he knows, we know.

Other story franchises have dealt with this in different ways. In Star Trek (TNG), for instance, we get the concept of the Universal Translator. In some stories...older ones, of course, since this is now the mark of literary leprosy...the author wrote from a 3rd person omniscient POV. That let the reader be in anyone's head the author needed him to be to understand what was going on. But, given these options are not among those I might choose, instead I have to decide: do I keep my protagonist, and hence my reader, in the dark? Do I swtich POV characters for a time so that I can get some bad guy-to-bad guy conversation on the page for the sake of building tension? I've done both so far, and I wonder if there are other options I'm overlooking.

I suppose I could design the entire language of any creature I'm going to use, write the passages in their own language, and then include a dictionary of each language at the back of the book for the reader's amusement. (Actually, no, I couldn't. Not in a hundred lifetimes!)

But, all in all, the challenge of multiple races and even more multitudinous languages in my "world" has given me quite the maze to run through as I try to unfold the stories of my characters doings. And all the while I think about it, I can't help but muse...the things that go on inside my head! How completely baffled would the average Joe be if he could hear them?

Round Two Voting

2009-11-27T21:44:00.000-05:00

Here we go!

The voting for Marcher Lord Select: Round Two began early. The polls for both the Premise Contest and the Main Contest (In which The Sword of the Patron competes) went live Friday at about 9:30 pm.

So, if you're voting in this one, you can do so any time over the weekend until midnight on Monday. Once again, the contest requires that you vote for 3 selections for your vote to count, so enjoy picking at least three of your favorites.

Will Danae's story live on to phase three, where voters and contestants alike will get to read the first thirty pages of the stories that remain? If it does, I don't think you will be disappointed with the mix of action and character depth you'll find in those pages.

Technical information:
Go to www.wherethemapends.proboards.com to find the contest of the forum called "The Anomaly." All contest rules and polls are posted under the top message board called "Marcher Lord Select."

Keeping it clean

2009-11-18T08:44:00.000-05:00

Over the past week, there's been some dust kicked up over in the world of Romance Novels (don't worry, I'm not shifting the focus of this blog from fantasy to romance...just using the current debate as a jumping-off point!)

Anyway, agent Chip MacGregor and author Ted Dekker seem to be at loggerheads concerning an imprint of Harlequin called Love Inspired, which takes submissions for very "clean" Christian Romance. Love Inspired, on their site, has a very detailed list of what words they will not allow to appear in manuscripts they publish.

If you want to browse the list, look at this

Now, Mr. Dekker went a little nuts about the "narrowness" of this list, and Mr. MacGregor came back with a scathing rebuttal, but without getting into their arguments, how does this apply to Christian Fantasy?

I think the ideology is something we all have to consider when we talk about books of any genre that bear the prefix "Christian." Just how pristine should the text be? Does an author sacrifice believability for the sake of keeping certain, possibly offensive words from their text?

With specific reference to fantasy, one place I have wrestled with the idea of "purity of prose" is in the fact that my book does portray a few people in desperate socio-economic situations, and the questionable behavior that births. Granted, this behavior isn't the action of my protagonist, just something she observes on her journey through parts of the world she's never before seen. I use the brief, darker images in order to paint a sense of danger to the protagonist, and I think my book would suffer if a publisher told me, "No, you can't have those prostitutes on the corner in that scene." I also use the word "harlot" in book two, but I would like to hope the lesson Praesidio teaches by using it would give the word a pass, even in the world of Christian publishing.

Another difficult spot in fantasy is the propensity for it to contain sword fights and the like. Just how far do you go in the portrayal of violence? One of my biggest pet peeves in fantasy reading is when the embattled protagonist spend the entire fight graphically decapitating, disemboweling and otherwise devastating the anatomy of his opponents, while he quips and chortles his way through the endeavor. No matter how "easy" the fight, I would think there's a degree to which the battle gets those "fight or flight" chemicals going. And if you want the protagonist to be sympathetic to a Christian audience, do you really want to paint him as so desensitized to gory killing? Even if you're slaying the denizens of hell itself, it seems inappropriate to me that you would be flip about it.

That particular rant aside, there still remains the issue of how detailed a battle should be. Should Christian fantasy contain detailed accounts of how much blood, which organs, every sword stroke? For The Sword of the Patron, I decided not. I pray that they way I wrote the battles are still exciting and full of tension, despite the fact that I neglected to inform my reader of just how each villain who dies meets his end.

For the final consideration I'll toss out for consideration, I offer the conundrum of the protagonist who begins the story unfamiliar, or even antagonistic to the things of God. Do you write that protagonist "clean" anyway? Is there a way to depict this lost character that is believably "of the world" without offending the majority of your readership, or worse yet, casting an ill light on Christianity by what you, the author, has decided gets a pass?

All in all, while I find the list on Love Inspired's guidelines page pretty confining, the spirit in which the list was created is something I think all of us, as authors and readers, need to consider. To simply write to the opposite end of the spectrum, under the banner of being "real" doesn't hit the mark for me either. While I want my story to resonate with my readers because it contains believable conflict, I would not want to write that conflict in a way that grieves my Heavenly Father. After all, even if no mortal ever reads what I write, He will know what I have poured onto the page, and first and foremost, I want him to be proud of every word I have chosen, and the reasoning by which I have chosen them.

End of Round One

2009-11-16T16:18:00.000-05:00

It's with my humble thanks that I inform all of you the outcome of the first round of voting for Marcher Lord Select. It appears that my book, The Sword of the Patron, has garnered enough votes to make it through to round 2! For each an every one of you who took the time to participate in the voting, I offer my deep appreciation. When Jeff Gerke explained that the last slot to advance came down to a single vote, an author can't help but heave a sigh of relief. My congratulations to my co-competitors who have advanced, and my applause to those who submitted but did not move on. It takes perseverance to finish a novel, and bravery to hold it out for public scrutiny. Everyone involved has enjoyed a victory on one level or another.

A part of me wondered if I ought to contact Jeff Gerke, as he said if we wanted to know specifically how our books fared, that we were welcome to ask. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, "Why?" Whether I came in 1st, 18th or anywhere in-between, would that change the fervor with which I will campaign of my story in the coming rounds? It certainly shouldn't. Therefore, I will pour all the passion I have into the continuing contest, and may that passion ignite the interest of voters. And may the excerpts of the actual novels people now get to read exceed the voters' expectations, that any one of them might be proud to cast their lot with me.

All that being said, here are the business items:

The first 500 words of the remaining books in the "Main Contest" will go live on http://wherethemapends.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=mlsphase1 sometime on either the 16th or the 17th.

Readers will have about 2 weeks to read these excerpts and choose their favorites
I will be sure to let you all know the date and time the voting for round 2 will go live.

While I am overjoyed to have made it this far, it is only the beginning of the journey. I pray you will continue to walk along side me as far as this road will bear us. And invite friends to join the adventure. :)

Ever closer

2009-11-11T22:40:00.000-05:00

The countdown has wound to a scant few days before the voting will begin over at Marcher Lord Select. This may be one of the longest weekends of my life, barring the two times I went 3 days overdue with babies who seemed content to remain within the safety of the womb.

But just as those sons of mine eventually made their way into the light of the outside world, so shall this coming weekend pass, and to what end, who can say? I have several loyal readers (dare I call them fans while I am still unpublished?)who promise their votes, and a few readers I have not yet met who have stated their intention to vote for my novel over on the message boards at The Anomaly, but the truth of the matter is that the many, many voters who have remained silent insofar will determine the outcome of this round of voting. My continual prayer has been that I will make it past round one, but then I keep amending that to say that whatever the Lord's will is in this, that I will have the wisdom, courage and maturity to face that outcome with grace and dignity. It's all a good exercise in realizing just how few of life's outcomes are really in our hands. For the person who has no God to trust with these inescapable uncertainties, I feel a deep sense of compassion. For myself, I am so glad that all that matters rests in the hands of my mighty Creator and Maker, a personal God who holds back nothing that is in our best interest.

So, let the weekend come. It will test me as the tempest tests the galleon that weathers it. I'll see you on the other side.

Quick Update

2009-11-02T13:39:00.000-05:00

Hello, Fans of Speculative Fiction!

Well, it has begun...the opportunity to read the 30+ contenders for a spot on Marcher Lord Press' spring release list is up at www.wherethemapends.proboards.com. If you're so inclined to help choose the book Marcher Lord Press puts into print, you'll have to create a free account, and then at the top of the forums, you'll be able to access the Marcher Lord Select boards. Be warned, you must vote for three entries, so the contest won't be heavily weighted by folks who just drop in to vote for somebody they know and really don't invest in the process.

There's a pretty wide range of offerings in the fray, for sure. I, as an author, am permitted to vote, and how hard is it to choose the two books I will vote for along side my own!? Having a part in choosing one's own competition is daunting, to say the least.

It has been interesting to watch the guidelines of the contest unfold, as Jeff Gerke, the mastermind behind it all, tries to figure out how to mitigate human nature, basically. How to keep the contest form becoming solely about who can drag the largest number of their acquaintances over to the forum and force their click on the right entry, or how to head off any sneaky ways people might find ways to cheat. (I'll admit, some of those strategies have cropped up in the back of my own mind, and boy are they hard to ignore! I just keep reminding myself that in the long run, any paltry effort I might make to pad my vote count will probably fall far short of boosting my numbers above the other competitors, especially if my work doesn't speak for itself. All I'll succeed in doing is setting myself up for a bad reputation. So not worth it!)

But no matter what happens, the next couple of weeks are bound to be exciting! My prayer is that my blurbs on the forum right now speak for themselves and carry me into the next phase of the contest, where you readers will get a better feel for the actual writing in my novel.

So, if you think The Sword of the Patron deserves to have a beautiful cover and a spot on the bookshelves of the wide world, do go to the forums at WheretheMapEnds.com and cast your vote accordingly. No matter what happens, I keep reminding myself that the Lord has carried me this far, and He has planned how it will all turn out. I pray I have the strength of character to manage whatever outcome He deems proper.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming...

2009-10-18T14:37:00.000-04:00

Hello friends of Christian Speculative fiction!

I know I said I was going to come back here and make some comments about our local production of Dracula, but I had to push that to another burner for a moment,due to an exciting development in my journey towards publication for my novel, The Sword of the Patron.

Below, you'll find a press release form Jeff Gerke of Marcher Lord Press, the publisher that currently has my manuscript. I have received my formal invitation to participate in the votes-based contest you'll read about below. Since The Sword of the Patron is my first novel-length work, I am humbled and honored to be in the running for publication through this contest.

October 17, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Marcher Lord Press Announces Marcher Lord Select

(Colorado Springs, CO)--Marcher Lord Press, the premier publisher of Christian speculative fiction, today announced the debut of a revolution in fiction acquisitions.

"Marcher Lord Select is American Idol meets book acquisitions," says publisher Jeff Gerke. "We're presenting upwards of 40 completed manuscripts and letting 'the people' decide which one should be published."

The contest will proceed in phases, Gerke explains, in each subsequent round of which the voters will receive larger glimpses of the competing manuscripts.

The first phase will consist of no more than the book's title, genre, length, a 20-word premise, and a 100-word back cover copy teaser blurb. Voters will cut the entries from 40 to 20 based on these items alone.

"We want to show authors that getting published involves more than simply writing a great novel," Gerke says. "There are marketing skills to be developed--and you've got to hook the reader with a good premise."

Following rounds will provide voters with a 1-page synopsis, the first 500 words of the book, the first 30 pages of the book, and, in the final round, the first 60 pages of the book.

The manuscript receiving the most votes in the final round will be published by Marcher Lord Press in its Spring 2010 release list.

No portion of any contestant's mss. will be posted online, as MLP works to preserve the non-publication status of all contestants and entries.

Participating entrants have been contacted personally by Marcher Lord Press and are included in Marcher Lord Select by invitation only.

"We're also running a secondary contest," Gerke says. "The 'premise contest' is for those authors who have completed a Christian speculative fiction manuscript that fits within MLP guidelines and who have submitted their proposals to me through the Marcher Lord Press acquisitions portal before October 29, 2009."

The premise contest will allow voters to select the books that sound the best based on a 20-word premise, a 100-word back cover copy teaser blurb, and (possibly) the first 500 words of the book.

The premise contest entrants receiving the top three vote totals will receive priority acquisitions reading by MLP publisher Jeff Gerke.

"It's a way for virtually everyone to play, even those folks who didn't receive an invitation to compete in the primary Marcher Lord Select contest."

Marcher Lord Select officially begins on November 1, 2009, and runs until completion in January or February 2010. All voting and discussions and Marcher Lord Select activities will take place at The Anomaly forums (http://wherethemapends.proboards.com/index.cgi?) in the Marcher Lord Select subforum. Free registration is required.

"In order for this to work as we're envisioning," Gerke says, "we need lots and lots of voters. So even if you're not a fan of Christian science fiction or fantasy, I'm sure you love letting your voice be heard about what constitutes good Christian fiction. So come on out and join the fun!"

Marcher Lord Press is a Colorado Springs-based independent publisher producing Christian speculative fiction exclusively. MLP was launched in fall of 2008 and is privately owned. Contact: Jeff Gerke; www.marcherlordpress.com.

So, there you have it. I would be further humbled and deeply grateful if you and any friends you can drag with you would head over to www.wherethemapends.com and cast a your votes to usher The Sword of the Patron into print.

And I promise, I'll get back to Dracula soon.

Drawing the Line

2009-10-14T08:52:00.000-04:00

Let's face it, it's something we all have to do. We have to decide what we believe honors God--what we will allow into our minds and subsequently, our hearts. The world is rife with entertainment that looks innocuous at first glance, but will slowly poison the soul. It's also full of garbage that looks horrible from as little as the thirty second teaser that pops up during commercial breaks for other programming. I'm thankful for those horrific blurbs. They save me a lot of time in deciding what I can absolutely avoid.

What I want to address today, however, are the instances where the line is blurrier. In my recent experience, one of these foggy places had to do with my husband's participation in a local stage production of Dracula.

I realize that the vampire has made a comeback, with the overwhelming popularity of the Twilight series. I admit, I know next to nothing about Stephenie Meyer's phenomenon, since I have no fascination with vampire stories, and have never followed the genre. The craze isn't new, though. Ann Rice had her heyday, I believe starting with her Interview with the Vampire, written in the 70's but propelled to becoming a household word by the 1994 film. And I'm sure there were other surges of vampire lore that came up just about every decade before. (Given Anne Rice's current body of work, I should probably familiarize myself with more of what she's done, but I digress.)

What I'm saying here is that the vampire, like so many other denizens of the speculative sub-genres, sees the spotlight in cycles, and I think that has a lot to do with why our local theater chose Dracula for this year's fall production. Whether or not any spiritual consideration went into the choice, I have no idea, but in the reading of the script, the spiritual content is there. The power of God to overcome evil, forgiveness, all of our need for salvation...it lingers in the subtext, and sometimes even the outright spoken word of the play, and it's for this reason I can say I came to grips with my husband taking a role in the show.

Many Christians might not agree with our choice in having my husband participate in the production. They all have to draw their lines for themselves, and if any naysayer has a biblical reason he'd like to discuss with us as to whether we have misstepped, I'd gladly hear it. One undeniable benefit of the experience, however, is that his belonging to this cast has given my husband the chance to rub elbows with some folks who were ready to engage in a spirited debate about the matters of faith in the play, as well as his walk with the Lord. Through a carefully chosen secular vehicle, I believe my husband has encountered a chance to speak freely about the gospel. In that regard, he's doing immensely better than I am in furthering the gospel. Real world interaction and honest debate are powerful tools in shedding light on the gospel to those who haven't considered it beyond a passing familiarity.

So, once again, the challenge of being "in the world but not of it" rears it's head, and we all have to search the scriptures and our souls as to what this means in daily living. We also have to decide how our passions, interests and talents can be used in the context of the world to show others that there is something immeasurably greater that lies beyond our daily experience. Whether this production of Dracula raises any of those questions to the audience, I don't know, but I'll find out this weekend, and perhaps post a review of the show here. But what I do know is what went on behind the scenes, in the context of dressing room conversations, and that itself had eternal value.

The Building of a World

2009-09-17T17:43:00.000-04:00

I'm going to be honest here. I'm typing right now because the great, unwritten rules of blogging say one must update with some degree of regularity, or else risk perpetual anonymity. So here I am, doing my "butt in chair" time, as other writers I've read call it. The difference between the professional and the hobbyist, so I'm told, is the dedication to do something even when you're not feeling particularly inspired.

So, what should I talk about when my inspiration is a at an ebb? Perhaps inspiration itself would be a good topic, specifically, the muse that eggs on many a fantasy writer: world building.

I am a proponent of world building before you sit down to bang out that first story. Not that details won't come to a writer as he crafts a tale, but from my own experience, the writing of my fantasy trilogy has been eased greatly by the fact that my world was in place long before I endeavored to write stories in it. I see it as an equivalent to what the writer of historical fiction accomplishes through research. Knowing the "facts" about your world allows you to reveal them through your story, and prevents you from bogging down as you write. Who wants to stop in the middle of an exciting conflict between the heroine and the cock-of-the-walk knight in order to come up with the in and outs of the protocol of your knighthood? Or how will you convince your reader that your system of magic is believable if you yourself don't know exactly how it works?

A lot of what I know about world building, I'll admit I learned from writing my own campaign setting for role playing games. If you're running a game and you're unprepared, you end up having to make up people and places on the fly. Typically, you end up defaulting to your comfort zone when you do that,and you end up with a bunch of characters, places and events that are all painted the same color, if you follow my analogy. Every townsperson ends up a surly, unhelpful curmudgeon, or every building is a tudor wattle and daub cottage with windowboxes, every gnome is a prankster...you get the picture. Just like you wouldn't paint every room, the furniture and decorative accessories in your home the same shade of red, you don't want to offer up a flat, monochromatic world, either.

Aside from a lack of originality, writing before you build the world serves up another risk: implausibility. Now, don't confuse implausibility with a lack of realism. Fantasy writing allows for a great deal of unrealistic stuff going on, but if all of those fantastic elements don't seem to "fit," if the world around them is not crafted in such a way that they seem a natural outgrowth of the atmosphere, then you're going to lose readers. Even if you never get the chance to explain the nitty gritty details of how the race of centaurs came into allegiance with the elves and often serve as city guardsmen, you had best know that backstory, because in subtle ways, it will infiltrate your writing and make your world more convincing.

And incidentally, I don't recommend you try to explain every nitty gritty detail either. If the element doesn't advance your story, resist the urge to saddle your readers with all the cool details you've assembled. Otherwise, you'll quickly end up with a 250,000 word book that no publisher in his right mind would consider binding together into one volume. Not to mention, much of said book will read much like a long slideshow of your vacation, forced upon people who were not there and could not care less.

Well, I started out this post with no idea where I would begin, and now I find I could go on and on. But I won't. We all know if you readers have to scroll down too much, you bail on a blog post. (I'm guilty of the same.) But this blog post has taught me a couple of things. Firstly, if you you just start writing, the words will come (eventually.) Secondly, the process of worldbuilding is a huge, complex beast. Far too lumbering to contain in a single blog post. We'll see if the muse demands I say more on it next time.

Some self promotion, I admit it

2009-09-01T19:09:00.000-04:00

Alright, I'll come clean right at the top here...a big part of why I have started this blog is in an effort to gain some visibility as I zero in on my goal of publication for my fantasy trilogy of novels The Call of the Creator Series. Book One, The Sword of the Patron, is nearing submission to publishers...Lord willing, by the end of September.

But besides editing those novels, I've also been trying my hand at some shorter fiction, and the bulk of this post will be with regard to that endeavor.

For the past couple months, I've been chattering occasionally about a few short stories I've submitted to a new web-zine at www.digitaldragonmagazine.net. The editor has been very complimentary of my submissions, accepting the first two stories and even asking me to take the characters and setting and expand it into serial fiction.

And so, the continuing saga of "The Windrider" has been born. On the first of every month for about the next year (at least that's my sketchy plan at the moment), I will offer a new installment of the story of Vinyanel Ecleriast, Captain of the High Elven Cavalry and his journey from ordinary soldier to Commander of a wholly new division of highly specialized warriors who will take to the skies in the defense of their people.

The stories themselves will expound upon the journey of spiritual maturity Vinyanel must undertake in order to be fit for his new post. An overarching plot centering on a struggle between good and evil over an otherworldy chalice will bind the stories together and pepper them with a little good old fashioned "Sword and Sorcery." The complex and often stormy relationship between Vinyanel and his mentor, a Prophetess of Creo, will add plenty of conflict, even when there are no "bad guys" on the scene. And what High Fantasy story would be complete without at least one dragon?

So, if you like fantasy, I hope you will take a moment once a month to stop by DDM and see what happens next in the continuing tale. And while you're there, you might just run across a few stories from some other talented spinners of yarns as well.

In the news:
August, 2009: The inaugural story, "The Windrider", gets published on www.digitaldragonmagazine.net
September, 2009: Part 2, "The Facets of Might," goes live

Yet Another Hot Button

2009-08-22T12:55:00.000-04:00

I realize this is a little departure from my professed focus of Christian Fantasy Writing, but it's still a topic that bears discussion.

If you think that being a reader or writer of Christian fantasy fiction invited suspicious stares from the non-fantasy-reading world, try admitting to being both a Christian and a role playing game enthusiast. Role playing games (which shall be abbreviated RPGs from here) certainly have what the general populace regards as a "weird" following. I'll be the first to admit, gamers aren't ordinary. They spend Saturday afternoons huddled around a big table with a grid map, miniatures, stacks of rulebooks and resources, polygon dice and wild imaginations at work, rather than heading to the ballpark,mowing the lawn, or whatever other "normal" task their non-gaming counterparts may undertake on that same day. Or perhaps they take up residence in front of their computers for a few hours for a journey into another world.

Now, why is it that this past-time invites ridicule, or sometimes even venomous attacks from the non-role-playing community? Sadly, some of the vitriol is earned. People have made the news for neglecting their responsibilities in favor of escaping to their fictitious world of choice. Some gaming systems, and hence their players, glorify evil in any number of ways. Some people have forsaken real-world relationships for the construction of alter egos that exist only in a game. But are these poster children for "Why RPGs are evil" the majority? I would argue that those who choose to let a game take over their lives are few and far between.

But these are the gamers the outside world hears about in the media, reported on largely by people who have never seen the actual events of an RPG. The truth of the matter is, if you live a troubled "real" life, then you will abuse, exploit, over indulge in something, chances are. An obsession with sports, cars, wealth, or whatever else a mainstream person may latch onto simply doesn't garner as much attention, as these obsessions seem less "bizarre" to the general populace.

Now, to get even more focused on the problem, RPG's face another level of conflict in circles of "churched" people. There are people in every congregation who are quick to site "those kids who got so into RPG's that they committed suicide when their characters died" or "those sourcebooks with real occult spells in them." The first falls under the argument I made in the previous paragraph, the second falls to the discernment of the player.

I completely agree that if you want to call yourself both a Christian and a Gamer, you need to watch your step with which gaming system you use, and where you put your support and money. Systems that promote evil behavior among players, skirt too close to making flippant use of occult elements, or riddle their pages with art that profanes a Christian's sense of modesty should be avoided, in my opinion. But is the practice of essentially writing a collaborative story where multiple people have a hand in what the characters of that story will do, in and of itself, questionable?

I say no. If the character are working together toward an admirable goal, if the delineation between good an evil is discernible, if evil behavior has consequences, then I believe the RPG has a job to do. It can grow imaginations. It can offer fun social interaction between a group of good friends.

Like any pastime, when kept in perspective and enjoyed in moderation, the RPG needn't draw the ire of the Christian Community. Most people will never resonate with the past-time, and that's fine. We Christian RPGers just need to make sure that we live our lives beyond reproach, and always make sure we do not grieve God with anything we do in the name of fun. The RPG, like every other form of entertainment in this country, needs the Lord's people to hold their ground, and keep the tide of evil from washing over the entire activity.

Fantasy Fiction and the Ultimate Victory

2009-08-08T21:36:00.000-04:00

While attending the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers Conference this weekend, one of my teachers, Jeff Gerke of Marcher Lord Press, ( http://www.marcherlordpress.com/ ) said something that really struck me as a topic that begs for deeper reflection. Well, to be honest, he said about 453,000 things that beg for deeper reflection, but I'll just take a stab at one for now.

This one statement that struck me went something like this: Fantasy, as a genre, may have the greatest potential to convey a Christian message of any fiction that is being published today. Why is that? Mostly, it has to do with the fact that fantasy tends to deal with very black-and-white delineation between ultimate good and absolute evil. Where else can a writer paint a story with those "brushes", so to speak? In an age where society wants to homogonize all thoughts and theories into a cask of gray neither-here-nor-there philosophy, we, the fantasy writers and readers, still hold the ground of calling good "good" and evil "evil". Sure, our good characters will make mistakes, have flaws, and sometimes even choose to do what's wrong, for what story would be interesting if no one ever wrestled in this contest for the soul?

The fact still remains, however, that at the core of most fantasy plot threads, there is a sense of right and wrong that exists outside of what the characters tell themselves is true. In a time when relativism is the supposed wisdom of the enlightened world, I believe it is of dire importance that we fantasy enthusiasts continue to dig our trenches and state that we will not allow the tide of ambivalence overtake us. Fantasy has the power to capture the imagination, and into the hearts and minds of the reader, plant the seed that we do not ultimately decide what is good. That label has existed from the foundation of the world, and we did not ascribe it.

May we continue to offer glimpses of the divine reality that Good will ultimately overcome evil. Whatever struggles come along that way, we have that promise to lean on. And may what we read and write also depict that struggle and echo the hope of that final destiny.

I invite your comments and reflection on this as well! Post your thoughts and invite your friends to do the same.

Highs and Lows

2009-08-03T11:32:00.000-04:00

Fantasy, as a genre, splinters into a gaggle of subgenres, the definitions of which vary from source to source. The two subgenres I'd like to deal with today, through the goggles of this Christian worldview I keep mentioning, are High Fantasy and Low Fantasy.

First, let's start off with a couple of simple definitions, for the sake of beginning the discussion on common ground. Low Fantasy, simply put, is fantasy that takes place in what we all know as the "real world", in real places you can find on a map here on planet earth, or at least put in a general geographic region between real places. High Fantasy, on the other hand, takes place in a wholly invented place, like J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth.

I, personally, prefer High Fantasy, not only for the experience of being transported to something vastly different than what I find around me in suburban Pennsylvania, but also, because spiritually, I find dealing with a fictional universe less problematic.

There are many popular fantasy series' being written today that take place in discernable "real world" locations, and the reason I struggle with this kind of writing is the fact that people in fantasy typically derive their power from a system of "magic". To choose empowerment from some sort of otherworldly source in a universe where Jesus should be an option for the characters strikes me as too stark a depiction of choosing something ungodly over the Truth of our Universe. When you deal with our world, fictional magic smacks a little of at least ignoring, and at the worst, rejecting Christ and his transfroming power in our lives.

Now, some folks will go so far as to say Low Fantasy novels invite exploration of the occult, but I find that very much of what is written as Low Fantasy (at least what I've read, and I don't spend much time on it, to be honest) uses what I'll refer to as "hokus pokus", which doesn't even faintly resemble true occult. But this topic could easily spin into a whole 'nuther post, so I'll decide at some future daye if I want to tackle that. It will suffice to say that the "magic" employed in most Low Fantasy doesn't bother me so much as the setting it occurs in.

So, why do I find High Fantasy preferable? Again, on the simplest terms, in a fictional setting where there is no Christ for the characters to reject, I can immerse myself in the workings of that universe with fewer nagging, disquieting questions. Now, if that fictional universe incorporates allegorical elements that either directly or indirectly speak of scriptural truth, then mores the better, at least for me.

Having laid out these two contrasting approaches, it occurs to me that there is a third option, which is Low Fantasy that incorporates faith in Christ in its inner workings. I want to make a goal of finding some books that attempt this, simply to see how an author has handled such an idea. I, myself, can't get my head around a book set in otherwise historic anywhere, with the truth of scripture underpinning it, that also throws in Sword and Sorcery elements or mythical creatures. It's certainly something worth exploring.

My preferences aside, the lables "High" and "Low" fantasy, while we might be tempted to label one as Elevated and one Not-So-Inspired, I believe we'd make a grave error in doing so. To me, the greater goal is to take whatever setting you as an author choose and to spin a compelling tale that captivates your readers, leaving them a little different in their hearts than they were when they began the journey through your tale.

Fantasy in the Crossfire

2009-07-07T16:22:00.000-04:00

Among Christians, it's true that fantasy divides people into a lot of camps. There are people who assert that if something isn't true, (citing the definition in Phillippians 4:8*) that at the very least, it isn't worthy of the time it takes to read it; at worst, it leads down a path to damnation. There are folks who say as long as the fantasy functions as an unmistakable Christian allegory that can be aligned seamlessly with scripture, then it's acceptable. There are people who feel that as long as the story isn't rife with promiscuity and flagrant glorifying of the occult, then it flies with them. And of course, there are all shades in-between.

Myself, I fall a little to one side of the folks who support allegory. In my own work, I strive to interweave concepts and themes that are God honoring. Are they specifically trying to teach theology or scripture? No. Will there be people who bluster at me because what I am writing doesn't paint an exact picture of the God of our universe? Probably. But am I losing sleep over that? No.

The reason is this: I write because when God created man, he breathed his image into Adam, and I believe as part of that has blessed us all with some degree of our Creator's love of creating. But in what I write, I realize that there is simply no way to please everyone. Even in a single church body, you will find a wide spectrum of what people believe about, say, the Harry Potter series. Some will condemn them as the gateway to real-life witchcraft, while others will dismiss such claims and swear the books are innocuous entertainment. And a wide host of people, who have never read word one of the books, will attach themselves to one opinion or another, feeling that they should at least have a position. Now, I realize that Rowling's series is a secular example, but I have found that similar attitudes crop up when dealing with Christian authors. (Except maybe Tolkien and Lewis, who get larger passes than most. But who can, or should, be them?)

So, as you've probably guessed, I'm not somebody who feels you need to write specifically about Jesus to provide a Christian with worthwhile reading material. I do pray that by writing about concepts that reflect some of God's nature, that perhaps I will point either a pre-believer or a shaky one toward the one God of this world. While that's not the end goal of my writing, it certainly is a worthy aim to include.

In the process, I remind myself that we live at war, and sometimes we Christians struggle to all fight on the same side. But despite what high emotions Christian fantasy elicits among Christ's people, I believe if the Lord has given someone a story to tell, then He, in His wisdom, knows how He will use it.

*Philippians 4:8 (New International Version)

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Welcome

2009-06-08T15:28:00.001-04:00

I'm so pleased that your journeys have led you here, and I hope that you will hang up your coat, take off your shoes, and join me for a while at the fireside. In this place, I hope to engage friends, both old and new, in the rapt discussion of what makes fantasy so appealing. Better yet, I pray we will explore together how fantasy fiction can bring glory to the one who created imagination when he breathed his image into man.

Who am I, and why do I spend the time thinking about these things? My name is Becky Minor, and I am the aspiring author of a Christian Fantasy Series called The Call of the Creator. Book One: The Sword of the Patron nears its great and fearsome entrance into the quest for a publisher (more on that at the end of the summer), Book Two: The Voice Within, which concludes the adventures of Book One, has an appointment with deep scrutiny, editing and expansion, and Book Three (as yet untitled) has begun to rattle around in my head, dropping bits and pieces of its plot into my path when it deems convenient. (Which is usually when I am far from a computer to pitter pat it down!)

Besides writing, I am the wife to the man the Lord destined for me; I am the mother of three boys who have not yet gotten old enough to have more than a single digit in their ages. I am a homeschooler. (Quite possibly the most distracted homeschooler on the planet, may my children forgive me.) I am an illustrator, was once an animator of the old pencil-and-paper variety, a singer by association. Did I miss anything? Probably. I am an endless dabbler, for certain. If any of this sounds interesting enough to read about at your leisure, I invite you to follow along my artistic adventures.

So please, stop back for a visit when you're in the neighborhood, or follow along how you see fit. Every journey is better with comrades.

Blessings