Rachel Starr Thomson

Conviction Life, my latest article, is up on Boundless today. Most of us live by default or reaction, but God calls us to live deliberately — thoughtfully — by conviction.

In yesterday’s post I touched on Dean Briggs’ personal reasons for writing The Book of Names (and its sequel, Corus the Champion, due out July 2009). I started reading the first few chapters of Corus last night and was struck by the poem that begins the book:

What if sorrow was a doorway,

And memory, a gate?

What if we never passed through?

What worlds would go unfound?

The truth is, of course, that sorrow is a doorway. We’re never the same after passing through it. Literature dwells much on sorrow and the way it changes us; fantastic literature is no exception. The best stories have a bittersweet edge. They’re real, because the author has gone into this new world, willingly or unwillingly, and finally embraced it enough to share it with us. Writers write because they are changed.

CSFF’s Valerie Comer has been posting some great stuff on why Dean Briggs writes: you can read her posts here and here. And rest assured she’s not just making it up: she asked him :).

I asked my own readers some time ago why they write (you can still answer the question here; apparently I deleted all the old answers in my unfortunate war on spam). I’d like to ask the question again, with a bit of a different focus: what events have inspired you to write? If you write because you are changed, what are the elements of life that have changed you?

First, an introduction: a week or so ago, I joined the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour group, which means that I have access to review copies of upcoming Christian speculative fiction and that I get to participate in promoting those books. I was too late to get a copy of the book I’m about to write about, but the author has generously provided a sneak peak of its sequel. It’s all rather exciting. End introduction.

The Book of Names by D. Barkley Briggs is the first in the new Legends of Karac Tor series published by NavPress. It looks to be classic portal fantasy for young adults: two brothers, grieving the loss of their mother, find their way into “a world in peril,” where their destiny will play out. Its underlying myths are northern, like Tolkien’s; Norse and Celtic. Its underlying truths are Christian.

Particularly fascinating to me is the story behind the story. Portal fantasies appeal to us perhaps because we can’t make sense of this world without coming to grips with another–with its existence and central importance to us–and this story’s background especially reflects that. Mr. Briggs wrote The Book of Names to help his four sons through the loss of their own mother. You can read more about the author, his story, and the story he’s written on his Hidden Lands Web site.

More about The Book of Names tomorrow. In the meantime, here are links to the other participants in the blog tour. Most of them have been doing this longer than I have, so you should find some actual reviews below!

Sally Apokedak
Brandon Barr
Keanan Brand
Rachel Briard
Valerie Comer
Frank Creed
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Shane Deal
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Timothy Hicks
Joleen Howell
Jason Isbell
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Magma
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
Alice M. Roelke
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespac
Phyllis Wheeler
Timothy Wise

Yesterday an editing client sent me a painting (digitally) that he had commissioned to go with his book. It is VERY cool. So I looked up the artist and also the studio he works for, and found that both keep clever blogs, and they blog about tea! And also paint with it. Not only does this post tell us the origin of tea and explain why it’s a mark of civilization, it also has tea paintings.

Let Them Drink Art

After that I surfed some more and found out that in Peanuts, classical music was a character in its own right. Schroeder wasn’t just playing around.

Listening to Schroeder: ‘Peanuts’ Scholars Find Messages in Cartoon’s Scores

“I was the youngest of three daughters. Our literal-minded mother named us Grace, Hope, and Honour, but few people except perhaps the minister who had baptized all three of us remembered my given name.”

As a very young child, Honour renames herself “Beauty,” a nickname which sticks despite the fact that she is hardly the beauty of the family. An awkward young woman in high society, Beauty’s chief interests are horses and books, and she dreams of going away to university and burying herself in Latin and Greek. Her dreams, like those of her sisters, are shattered when her father’s hard-built merchant business is wrecked by a storm at sea. The family must go north, to the wild country with its whispers of magic and its very real hardships, and start life anew.

There, on the edge of a dark forest where no life dares to stir, the familiar story of Beauty and the Beast truly begins.

From the first chapter onward, Robin McKinley’s Beauty is a rich and engaging read. I read it many years ago as a young teenager, and had forgotten everything about it except that I thought I liked Rose Daughter better (McKinley’s second version of the fairy tale). But I picked up a worn copy of Beauty from a local thrift shop, and at long last, over the Christmas holidays I found time to read it. It’s been revisiting me ever since, the way rich and lovely stories do.

Though it shares many details with Disney’s animated movie (which it predates by a good 20 years), McKinley’s version of Beauty and the Beast is quieter, finding its strength and poignancy in the very real joys and struggles of its characters. From Beauty’s blacksmith brother-in-law, who cares for the whole family by the sweat of his brow, to the sisters who love and live so sacrificially, to the heroine herself, the characters do what is right, what is true, and what is truly beautiful. When Beauty explains the origin of her nickname, the Beast responds, “I welcome Beauty and Honour both, then. Indeed, I am very fortunate.”

Beauty is a fantasy, and supposedly a children’s novel, but it delighted me as an adult, and its most fantastic scenes still hold the warmth of real life. I could wish for some of the luxury Beauty finds at the castle, where invisible servants tend her every need and a vast library allows her to study for hours. (“I didn’t know there were so many books in the world,” Beauty says; and the Beast answers, “Well, in fact, there aren’t.”) But it also highlights quiet joys–cups of tea, beautiful sisters, good men, newborn babies, and the altogether worthwhile pursuit of love.

My shelves are full of books that I have yet to read, but Beauty will remain where I can reach it–and read it–again.

Last year I participated as a judge in the Tweener Time International Creativity Competition, a contest that gives teen writers the chance to submit their book manuscripts for prizes including scholarships, publication, and cash. Besides which, they get constructive feedback on their novels from professional writers and teachers and folk of that ilk. Very cool. This post isn’t about the book contest, however (that’s coming later), it’s about the related ART contest. Since I’m short on time today, I’ll just paste in the email sent to me by Tweener Time Ministries:

Here is an awesome opportunity for teens!

January 17 is the deadline for the Tweener Ministries Art Competition.
First place receives a $44,000 scholarship to Anderson University and
has their work published as a book cover.

Second and third place receive a partial scholarship to Bethel College
and their work is published as book covers.

Go the web site where there is a synopsis of the manuscript. Design
and submit a cover for the book. That’s all there is to it! This year
the nummber of entrants is very low so your chance of winning
is very high!

If you have questions, phone Tweener Ministries at 574-269-6100.
Pass this to any student who has graduated 8th grade but has not
graduated high school.

PeggySue

January 17 is not a lot of time (I’ve been slow in passing this along), so if you’re interested, I encourage you to check it out. For more information, you can email info AT TweenerMinistries.org or visit www.TweenerMinistries.org.

My friend and fellow self-publisher Phyllis Wheeler recently started a blog that is right up my alley, and possibly up yours, too — she’s reviewing Christian fantasy books. I’m honoured to be one of her recent reviews!

Rachel Starr Thomson is a homeschool graduate who is becoming a serious writer.  Her fantasy trilogy, the Seventh World Trilogy, begins with this book . . . Thomson has a great imagination, full of a variety of characters. She is able to tell a rousing good story.

Click here to read the whole thing. WARNING: there is at least one spoiler contained therein.

Ever since the holidays ended, I’ve had a lot of trouble getting up in the morning. My alarm goes off, but in some strange coma-like state I turn it off and go back to sleep. For hours. I was far less reprobate in my habits BEFORE Christmas, so what happened?

It occurred to me this morning that, whereas I used to walk every day, I haven’t taken a decent walk in over a week. Moreover, whereas I usually keep my sugar intake pretty low, during the holiday season I’ve eaten significant amounts of sugar every day. And taking the law of cause and effect into account, it’s quite possible that these habit changes have something to do with why I can’t seem to wake up in the morning.

So today I am changing the habits: no sugar today, and I’m going for a two-mile walk to the post office and back. It’s nice living so close to the downtown area of the city. Not only am I not handicapped by lack of a vehicle, but I’m forced to use my legs and lungs once in a while. It is cold, true enough, but in the past I have forced myself to walk in worse. Besides, the river is really strikingly gorgeous and wild when it’s full of ice.

As I’ve grown into adulthood, I’ve tried to glean parenting wisdom from my own parents and others. What have they done, I have asked myself, that really worked? Well, for one thing, they had twelve kids! More and Merrier, up today on Boundless.org, takes an up-close look at big-family blessings.

I have finally finished the first draft of “Ogres Is,” a short story I started writing in November. Short stories should not take that long, but true to its subject matter, it was a beast of a job (ha ha). I’m not especially good at short stories, since everything wants to mushroom into novel complexity, and with this one I got very distracted and blocked.

I discovered three valuable things through writing “Ogres Is”:

1. When faced with writer’s block, try backtracking and rewriting the end of a pivotal scene. This can have the effect of exploding the corner into which you have written yourself. I did this three times in this story, and it always worked!

2. Writing from an ogre’s POV is fun, but it’s very difficult not to end up writing Shrek by accident.

3. I need to read more short stories. Why do I not understand how to write in this form? Probably because I never read in it.