Rachel Starr Thomson

It’s been a while, but I have a new article on Boundless, all about how a business introduced me to a mission field I frequent every day.

According to Internet World Stats, there are 1,802,330,457 people online. I’m no math whiz, but that’s close to a sixth of the world’s population. It’s more people than live in North America and Europe put together. And the continent with the most Internet users? Asia. The Internet is a virtual meeting place for people from every continent, speaking many different languages, interacting in a million different ways and congregating in a few key places. Among them: Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, YouTube and the Blogosphere.

The conference was not a Christian one, so it’s likely the presenters didn’t intend to impact my personal missionlogy. But they did. I had a significant “aha moment” while I sat in those uncomfortable hotel chairs clicking my bright green Writer’s Digest pen and wishing I could sneak a refill on tea.

For the first time, I recognized the Internet as a legitimate — and exciting — mission field.

Read the whole thing here.

I am writing today from the splendidly autumnal hills of Connecticut, where I’ve been visiting good friends since Tuesday. I titled this post “a change of scenery,” even though for the last few weeks there’s been so much changing scenery that I feel like it’s all blurring past my windows on fast-forward. Nor is it over. I’ll get home and spend a day with my family, then hop back in the car and travel again, travels which will not end for another week or so.

One thing I must admit: it is really hard to keep a regular, disciplined work schedule while I’m traveling like this! My first year as a freelancer, I figured I would enjoy my freedom of movement by traveling and visiting many people throughout the work year. What I discovered was that my focus got shot, I couldn’t really visit, and my work life felt like a never-ending game of catch-up.

I stopped traveling so much. These few weeks are an anomaly. I am enjoying the visiting immensely, but finding (again) that a change of scenery makes it hard to work. Funny creatures we are. We crave normalcy, but thrive on change.

When all my travels are over, I’m hoping that the changes in scenery will have added something to my writing, my editing, my work–new perspective, renewed enjoyment, or just the sheer appreciation of uninterrupted work time. Ultimately, that’s what most change offers us. Challenges, sometimes even hurt, but ultimately renewal.

So I’m still working at revisions for Coming Day. Still endeavouring to have this book released next month, thus wrapping up a trilogy that began nearly ten years ago. I don’t feel old enough to have begun a series ten years ago . . .

Before I began all this revising, the basic plot arc of the book was finished. We got from Point A to Point B, with all the furor and tribulation and triumph that comes in the middle. But so much was going on that there were few quiet moments–few places just to breathe, get to know the characters, add depth to the story.

What’s interesting is how much that affects the resolution. We can go flinging headlong toward the climax, everything can come together, but without that underlying depth, no one is actually going to care.

I leave that to you to apply to your own work, and maybe even to your own life. It’s definitely challenging me.

I had originally intended to post “Light Isn’t Boring” today, but I messed up on scheduling and accidentally posted it two days prior to when I actually wrote it. I was not alerted to its active presence on my blog until a friend posted it on Facebook for all the world to see. Jolly :). So instead, I’m resurrecting a related article, one of my favourites from my first year writing for Boundless:

In these dark days, we desperately need Christian artists who will love God with all their hearts, minds, souls, and strength, and who will pour that love into unique creative expressions of truth that have the power to bridge into the souls of others.

This is my charge to them, to you, to myself more than anyone.

Go and meet with God. Seek Him in your relationships, your circumstances, the creation around you. Immerse yourself in scripture. Pray with your whole heart. Let His Spirit fill you with light. And then do what God has asked you to do — be a candle, a burning light, a city on a hill blazing with truth and shelter for those who are lost in the darkness. Use your art to do it.

It is such a dark, dark world. Is there light in you? Then hear my call to you, and to all in whom truth is burning.

Oh Christian, please paint the light!

Read the whole article here.

Steve Rzasa’s The Word Unleashed is the most rip-roaring, heart-pounding space adventure since, well, since The Word Reclaimed. (Read my review here.) That book ended with the treacherous overthrow of the Realm of Five’s monarchy by Kesek, the Realm’s secret police. The Realm’s finest defenders had been lured away to a distant planet to be ambushed and destroyed even as Kesek orchestrated the kidnapping of the king and the arrest of their every congressional opponent.

But Kesek didn’t count on God, whose existence they do not acknowledge, getting involved—nor could they ever have predicted the people He would choose to accomplish His purposes.

This second volume of “The Face of the Deep” continues the story of moody teenager Baden Haczyk, whose life is increasingly turned upside-down by the illegal Bible he possesses. The Book convicts him, speaks to him in ways he doesn’t understand, and seems determined to use him as a mouthpiece. Not only that, but the Bible is extending its influence on others as well, from the hungry Christians on Bethel to high-ranking members of the Verge family—who, along with their surviving soldiers and every other loyalist in the Realm, are planning an invasion of Earth to find the king and stop Kesek once and for all.

Into the story are woven the fates of many fascinating characters, from the enigmatic, genetically enhanced Jason to Mission-Impossible-style secret agent Najwa to pirate captain Charlotte Ruby Bell, who offers comic relief while still managing to be a believable and even poignant character (gesundheit, Captain Bell).

Rzasa’s love of history shows through in his projection of a future where earth’s distinct cultures and religious traditions are still recognizable and influential and where events are believable because they are so familiar—history repeating itself on an intergalactic scale.

The Word Unleashed combines heart-stopping action, humour, and pathos with a sweeping plot and a masterfully drawn universe. At the heart of it all is an honest look at censorship, “tolerance,” and mankind’s deep need for religious freedom.

I highly recommend this series to anyone. A word of advice: buy both books at once. You’re not going to want to stop at the end of the first volume, and this story deserves the opportunity to carry you away with it.

PW’s Genreville recently posted “In the Dark of the Shadowy Dark Shadows,” an entertaining piece on the prevalence of “Darkness” in fantasy titles (I note, with satisfaction, that of my three fantasy books, two involve light). But they went into the thematic importance of darkness in recent titles, too:

Particularly in paranormal romance, darkness is both evil and enticing, the source of both fear and power. Light tends to get a bad rap by comparison, of the “Evil will always triumph because good is dumb” sort. No one actually wants to be on the side of right and good. It’s boring. So dark ends up being cast as antagonist and protagonist and plot device all at once, and that gets boring too.

No surprise here–one look at a bookstore’s YA shelf clearly displays this troubling attitude toward moral and spiritual darkness. But comments like the above inspire me all the more to write books that display light–in all its dazzling glory. As Christian writers, we should never be guilty of presenting the True Light in such a way that it’s seen as “dumb” or “boring.” (E. Stephen Burnett wrote of one famous end-times novel that it “presented such a boring world, it may have even turned me to an opposite end-times view. I hope it didn’t also turn some readers away from the real hope of the New Earth!”)

Light (and the things it represents–goodness, faithfulness, glory) is not naturally boring, and we can’t afford to paint it that way in our story worlds. Light isn’t boring in the elves of Tolkien’s world; it isn’t boring in Narnia; it isn’t boring in Susan Cooper or Madeleine L’Engle or L.M. Montgomery or George MacDonald or Lloyd Alexander or our real human history.

So what does it take to represent it well? Imagination, unbridled. Passionate belief–a conviction in our own spirits that goodness is to be vaunted, admired, celebrated, rejoiced in. Knowledge of the real ways goodness and truth play out in our world. This is what we’re here for–to shine the light, on and off the page.

I’m continuing my thoughts on love for readers over at Speculative Faith. This week’s post looks at the role of excellence.

Excellence has to be a part of that. Love and excellence go hand in hand. Where we don’t love, we can’t be bothered. When we care passionately, on the other hand, our best hardly seems good enough. If we love our readers, we’ll work at the story, at the sentences, at the themes. If we love our readers, we’ll revise. If we love our readers, we’ll apply ourselves with dogged commitment.

Read the whole thing here.

Underneath your story lies structure, pacing, principles of storytelling that make a story work. Or not work. Writer’s Digest recently published a couple of articles that look at some of these things underneath. Both are perceptive and well worth reading.

Four Novel Story Structures examines four basic structures that are used in novels: the Milieu Story, the Character Story, the Idea Story, and the Event Story. This article was written by Big-Deal sci-fi writer Orson Scott Card. Read it.

4 Ways to Improve Narrative Drive is a little more nuts and bolts — but again, really worth reading. Sara Sheridan offers hugely practical advice like this:

3. The easiest way to improve narrative drive is to simplify your verbs as much as possible. In English we have a huge amount of tense formations and a high proportion of irregular verbs. It’s astoundingly easy to use three or four words where one will do. Keep it simple—make every word count. Stick to the simple present, past, and future where possible. If you can write in the present tense your prose will have especial immediacy.

Thoughts?