Call of the Creator: Fantasy Writing from a Christian Worldview

I'm in a phase of life right now where I am questioning everything. Not in a panicked, despairing sort of way, but in an analytical, if-it-doesn't-pull-its-weight-it's-out sort of way. You see, since I have started working full-time, I have become extremely protective of my time with my family, and this is beginning to make me reflect on that with regard to how we do church. I have never been a big fan of "children's ministry" as many churches do it in the current American Evangelical culture. Don't we spend enough time with our children being taught by others by sending them to institutional schools 7 hours a day? The whole process of bringing my kids to church, dropping them off in a kid corral, and then going upstairs for "grown up church" has been wearing very thin for me. Yes, I can completely get behind nursery care for babies and for the most part, toddler/preschooler care during a church service, but now that all my children are past ...

My life of late has been a little like that show on Discovery Health Channel, "Mystery Diagnosis." For the past few years, I've been feeling increasingly cruddy with issues like non-refreshing sleep, ulcerative colitis flare ups, exhaustion, confusion, depression, and most recently, ringing in my ears and constant inability to feel warm. A lot of this you figure could be traced back to poor sleep, but a full diagnostic at a sleep center indicated my night-time sleep was somewhat unremarkable, but my daytime sleepiness was abnormal. Which could be traced to a million different things for which a million medical tests would be necessary. Since we had just sunk about a thousand bucks into the sleep study and we have high-deductible insurance, I wasn't about to run off for another battery of tests, which would need to be charged on credit cards. So I started a process of internet research to figure out what was going on with me. Some indicators pointed to my thyroid, ...

It's officially that time of year: the time when the awards contests for Christian fiction begin accepting submissions and nominations. And so I write this post as a shameless ploy for help from you, my readers. There are currently two reader-nominated awards I specifically need help with. The first is the INSPY-- The Windrider Saga is already nominated in this contest, but Curse Bearer , as of this writing, is not yet. If you feel the novel deserves a look from the INSPY judges, please consider stopping by this site:  The INSPY nomination form  My works will always fit under the category of Speculative Fiction. The site has all the information you need to understand how the award works. Because this award is not votes-driven, it doesn't hurt me to have two horses in the same race, as it were. The second award is the Grace award, and this is where things get a little tricky. The Grace Awards determine their finalists by the number of reader votes for the categories. ...

As of about 11 pm on January 1st, 2013, I finally typed the last sentence of Valor's Worth , the third installment of The Windrider Saga . This project has languished in the word of creeping progress for far too long, so let me tell you, it has never felt better to write that last sentence. You see, when projects linger too long, they lose their spark. You hear about writers drawing out a book over a course of years, nipping at it here and there, but I could never be that writer. Sure, those long-gestation-period books could become enduring classics, like the result of Tolkien's twenty-some-odd year labor on The Lord of the Rings. But I don't presume myself to be another Tolkien. As for me, I need to bull through, doggedly plugging at a project start to finish. Even putting something aside for a just a few days completely destroys the momentum on that project, and it's like I'm starting over when I open it again. The main trouble I ran into with Valor's W...