Call of the Creator: Fantasy Writing from a Christian Worldview

Today marks a fun day that authors never tire of: release day! The project that I'm humbled to be a part of is an anthology called Freshly Brewed Fiction , and it's a group of stories penned for the purpose of supporting a local library. Better yet, we'll celebrate the release of this book at our local independent book store, The Towne Book Center in Collegeville. It's good to know the piece I've written will be helping the honorable institution of the local public library as well as our indie bookstore, which does a great job with author events. In case you're interested to see what I've contributed to this book, I'm offering the first segment of the story for you here. "A Dragon Problem" introduces a new character to my story world, an ebony hatchling dragon named Silya, and it reunites readers with the tempestuous Raen, dragons warder, as well as the unquenchably direct Vinyanel Ecleriast. Mix in an undead necromancer, and you'v...

Many different people have referred to the process of creating books and movies like this: A book is never actually "released." It just eventually escapes. Now, I have to admit, for as long as I have been working on my current release, Curse Bearer , I know I'll  never feel entirely sure I have done everything I possibly could have to sharpen the book. But the fact is, if I was allowed to rework everything I possibly could, I would rewrite the book over and over for my entire life, and it would never come out. There is a great lesson to be learned in calling something done and allowing it to be what it is at that point. The reviews from my advance readers are coming in, and most of those reviews are from writers. I'm amassing a pile of solid, four-star reviews with a couple of fives thrown in. At first, the four stars were giving me heart palpitations, but the more I read them, the more at peace I am. The points that my reviewers have cited in withholding my fin...

The day a book goes "live" on Amazon or Barnes and Noble is exciting in a sickening, hang on for dear life, all I can do is watch everything unfold sort of way. For the past five years, my imagination and efforts have been consumed (for the most part) by the creation, rewriting, tweaking, overhauling, and details of a book I once called The Sword of the Patron . It was the first novel I ever began to write, and now I would say it is in something like its third version since its inception. And that labor of much angst, joy, struggle, and triumph is now available for sale, over a week before I thought it might be on the virtual shelves. Until now, the fate of my work has been more or less in my hands. I could have my say about what stayed or went. I could advocate for the story, or the look of the book, or the promotional information. But now that the book is released, it's like sending your child  away to college. You've done all you think you possibly could to pre...

Yes, fantasy fans, here it is! If you aren't one of my facebook contacts, perhaps you haven't seen this yet: The cover for my book releasing October 2012! I have known what the cover painting for this book was for quite a few months, actually, since Christina Hess did such an awesome job of getting it to me so quickly. I even had a pretty clear idea how the text would play out. But still, when you see it attached to an email that says "This project is done and going to the printer in the morning..." that's still pretty exciting stuff. I don't know if that ever gets old, no matter how many books you write. So keep your eyes open for Curse Bearer at your favorite book etailer...I will be sure to post an announcement when I know the book is up for pre-order or regular sale. Thanks for dropping by!

Today, I got the official word that the adjustments to the series name on my novel releasing next month are locked down. The journey through titles on this coming book has been something like canoeing through rapids. I wrote two-thirds of the manuscript back in the rough-draft stages (wow, that seems like ages ago) calling it nothing but "Danae's Story." I have always had a deep an abiding loathing of titling my works. I never title my drawings. I always struggled to affix a title to my films in college, and then they usually turned out to maintain the name of the works I was adapting for film ("The Highwayman," based on the poem by Alfred Noyes, and "The Cat and the Fiddler," based on the short story by Lloyd Alexander, for example.) This title-phobia extended quite naturally into when I started writing fiction. I finally settled on a title of The Sword of the Patron for my novel, since I was going to start showing it to people and I figured I be...

Lately, I've been in the mode of producing art work for several projects while I wait for the copyedit back of Curse Bearer , my novel set to release from Other Sheep (an imprint of Written World Communications) this summer. What sorts of projects have I been working on? Well, related to Curse Bearer , I have been noodling some ideas for chapter heading art, which I'm thinking might take the form of three symbols represented in the book. You see, Curse Bearer is a book that will function in three parts. Part one of the book deals with Danae Baledric's conflicts in her home city of Dayelston, where an occupying army has a choke hold on the natives. For this section of the book, I'm thinking it would be appropriate for the header image to be that of the occupying Theocracy. The symbol? The gargoyle of Queldurik. The conflicts and issues in Part I drive Danae from her homeland, and it is within this section of the story she learns some unsettling truths ab...

The day has finally arrived! The print edition of The Windrider Saga is now available in a print edition. As of this writing, the only retailer that has the book is Amazon , but it should be available at Barnes and Noble in the very near future as well. For those of you less-well acquainted with this set of stories, a little explanation may be in order. The stories in the ebooks ( Divine Summons and A Greater Strength ) had their first incarnation as serial fiction--stories I wrote for monthly issues of Digital Dragon Magazine, and then for my blog. So the novel-size book you can get today on Amazon won't read exactly like a novel. It is episodic, by the nature of the original format. Hopefully, though, it will be the fun read it's meant to be. Anyone who took a gander at the podcast interview I posted before will realize that the original release date for this book (January 31st) came and went. Alas, that's how it goes when all the folks involved are doing this as a ...