Call of the Creator: Fantasy Writing from a Christian Worldview

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...

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 a...