… My interview, in the sense that I am the one being interviewed. Over at Homseschool Authors, I discuss writing, homeschooling, and The Last Heir. Next week – the CSFF blog tour! Tune in to find out what sort of book, exactly, is titled Night of the Living Dead Christian.
Category: Writing
You Had Me At Hello
A couple weeks ago I checked into Becky Miller’s blog on writing and found a post on Hooks Versus Openings. While analyzing what sort of novel opening is best, she quoted Jerry Jenkins: I recently critiqued a beginner’s manuscript that began, “I’m sure we’ve all heard the old adage …” Well, if it’s an adage,…
CSFF Blog Tour: When Pop Culture and High Fantasy Collide
In my review of Realms Thereunder, I said that Ross Lawhead was like D. Barkley Briggs in rejecting the ideal Elves of Tolkien for the ambiguous fairies of folklore. There is another way in which they are similar: Both invoked pop culture in their fantasy novels. I’ve been pondering this. Is it a bad idea…
Character Profiles: The Masked Hero
“We’ve come to save you. This man in the ridiculous black costume – ” “It art not ridiculous, thou pigeony person!” ” – is the Florid Sword. Or you can call him Gammon, like I do.” – Andrew Peterson, The Monster in the Hollows The Florid Sword was a dashing hero in black, jumping down…
Character Profiles: The Hapless Hero
Maybe I can’t read or write, but that doesn’t make me an illiterate! Georgi, The Inspector General, 1949 Georgi was not such a bad fellow. True, he was the stooge of a lying, thieving charlatan. True, he played a primary role in selling healing elixir that was actually furniture polish. But he wasn’t really such…
Christmas Books of Dickens
Two nights ago, in honor of the season, I picked up Christmas Books of Dickens, a volume I bought at my library’s fall book sale. The first story was, of course, A Christmas Carol. I last read A Christmas Carol a year or two ago, and reading it again I was struck anew by what…
CSFF Blog Tour: Tinkerbell vs. Elrond
Modern fantasy was weaned on J. R. R. Tolkien. Among the precedents he yielded to us is that of the tall, beautiful, wise Elf. This Elf’s principal rival in modern culture is the Fairy – the Pretty Butterfly Fairy, glittery and about fifteen inches tall. You would ask the Elf what to do with a…
Dreaming At Speculative Faith
Last Friday I made a guest post at Speculative Faith. It was an essay called “Dreaming at the Crossroads,” and it focused on the intersection of Christianity, transhumanism, and speculative fiction. Here are the first couple paragraphs: Nietzsche once declared that God is dead. Later he added that Man ought to be. “Man,” he wrote,…
Blog Tour: Interview with Rachel Starr Thomson
November’s CSFF blog tour has been moved to early December, but no fears – we’re still going to have a blog tour this month. This tour’s book is Worlds Unseen, book one of the Seventh World Trilogy. It is written by Rachel Starr Thomson, a freelance editor and writer who has authored numerous fiction and…
Mankind a Bridge
Writing broadens your horizons. Recently it broadened mine to nanotechnology. I already had a vague idea of what nanos are – gleaned mostly, I admit, from science fiction. Those sci-fi writers have crazy ideas, some of which are borrowed from scientists. A good number of scientists are hoping to create artificial photosynthesis. “Yes,” you may…