Call of the Creator: Fantasy Writing from a Christian Worldview

Well, likely many of you reading this today got a chance to head over to your local theater and join the craziness that was the midnight showing of Peter Jackson's rendition of The Hobbit. I was not among that throng, but I have been able to get a good listen to the soundtrack over the past few days, so that's what I'll review for the time being. I have not been disappointed in Shore's return to Middle Earth. Well, except for Neil Finn’s performance of “The Lonely Mountain Song,” which will run under the film’s credits. The light, reverb-laden vocal interpretation of an otherwise excellent theme did not succeed in capturing the essence of the Tolkien universe the way Annie Lennox’s “Into the West,” or Enya’s “May It Be” did. That small failing aside, The Hobbit soundtrack strikes a wonderful balance between resonance and awe. The interpolation of themes Shore used in The Lord of the Rings creates the exact feeling that readers who return to Tolkien's ...

Well, I got to post my "winner" badge for NaNoWriMo on November 30th, with 12 hours to spare. Looking back, the question I ask myself is this: will I ever do NaNo again? For those of you unfamiliar with NaNo, November is National Novel Writing Month, and NaNo is a challenge to authors to write 50,000 words in one month. This boils down to just under 1700 words each day, but for most real people, works out to many more words per day they write, because very few people I know (if any) write EVERY day on the same project. Like most NaNoers, I slumped in the middle. A nasty cold got a hold of me and obliterated my plans for getting up at 5 am to write every day. Or maybe the cold was just an excuse. While there are things I did genuinely like about working in the quiet of the predawn hours and starting my day off with some creativity, I am, by nature, a night owl, so I probably only got up at 5 for about two weeks total. I may get back to the getting up at 5 routine after t...

Sometimes having ideas is a real pain in the neck. When I was younger, I was never consumed with artistic passion. Certainly, I enjoyed making things--films, drawings, the occasional sculpture. They were a natural outgrowth of who I was and am. But I'm finding as I get older, my ideas are beginning to take hold of me in a way they never used to. While I can never hope to aspire to the level of genius of one of the "old masters," I do begin to see what people mean when they ascribe the phrase, "the agony and the ecstasy" to the life and work of Michelangelo. When I began to write, I really only had one idea, the idea that birthed Curse Bearer . What began as just a toe in the water of writing quickly became an overwhelming flood that swept me away in the current of creation. I nurtured that idea for several years, and then began to realize quite a few other ideas were rushing along in the current as well. The Windrider Saga was born and entered the public...

Well, NaNoWriMo isn't going too badly. I'm still scheduled to finish ahead of time, even accounting for two days off from writing due to a really persistent cold that has been keeping me in bed instead of writing at 5 am like I'd planned. It's probably because my husband was so impressed how I managed to bolt out of bed at 5 for about a week and a half. Then the combination of sleeplessness, coughing, and eventually Nyquil shattered that illusion. But I hope to recover in the coming week. Being Thanksgiving week, I only have three days of work, so I will be able to indulge my night-owl productivity more than usual. Hooray for that! Now that the book is what I'd call mostly roughed out, I think it's about time to stop calling it WRIIINanoDraft. (That's the lovely file name it has right now.) It deserves a real title, and I historically rot at titling anything. The current phrase I'm looking at to entitle this installment of the saga is... Valor...

Well friends...I headed into this month thinking I would keep you updated on NaNo, but I fear my little sidebar widget has been all I've been able to depend on for updates. It seems trying to write 1600+ words a day leaves me for very little time to blog. There are a few things I wanted to make sure you knew about though, aside from my NaNo mania. This week, Jennette Mbewe is hosting a three-part interview and giveaway on her blog. We're trying to get as much word out about Curse Bearer as possible, so please drop by her posts. You can find the first one here:  Jennette's fine blog interview . There will be subsequent posts on Wednesday and Friday. You'll see there is a giveaway associated with the interview, which is hosted at my facebook page. By liking my page, tweeting or posting about my work, or reviewing Curse Bearer, you can gain entries into the giveaway for books, ebooks, tshirts, and artwork. Jennette worked hard to set up this excellent giveaway, so gain...

Well, NaNoWriMo began today, and believe it or not, this is my first time to give it a shot. Three books published, and I've never done NaNo. I was beginning to feel like I wasn't entirely sold out to this "writer" thing, so I took the plunge this year. Believe it or not, it was not hard for me to get up at 5 am to start writing. Who knew that creative time would be powerful enough to defeat my love affair with blankets and warm coziness? Well, at least for one day. As the battle continues to rage throughout November, we shall see how well I continue to do. Honestly, though, I can see how early risers have a bit of a love affair with the pre-dawn and dawn hours. Right now, because we haven't gotten back to standard time, the sun comes up at about 7:30 am, and I get to watch the sunrise on my way to work. It really tends to be a glorious display of pink and gold beauty. And since I now take winding country roads to work, I can appreciate it way more that I wo...

Curse Bearer , the first book in The Risen Age Archive released in early October, an I have been swept up in a whirlwind of activity in my efforts to work the promotion angle for this book. As many of you may recall, back in the end of August, I ran a successful Kickstarter Campaign to fund the marketing campaign for this book. We reached the $3500 funding goal in about 19 days, and even after the campaign was over, the donations continued to come in. We ended up raising $4997, all told. The Kickstarter campaign, in and of itself, worked as a marketing tool for the book because it generated some presales of the novel as well as interesting some of my local media outlets in what I was doing...something that might not have happened without taking a trendy approach to this book release. With the funds raised from the campaign, I will be able to push the book in targeted markets. With the extra donations, I will be able to enter fiction contests and try to win some accolades for the no...