Rachel Starr Thomson

I’ve been doing a little bit of research for the last few days–looking at sales-and-download reports from Smashwords, mostly. I’ve had my novel Worlds Unseen up for free download there since late 2009. Well, I found out some stuff. My recent Facebook statuses and excited Tweetings:

Just found out that “Worlds Unseen” is #35 on Smashwords “100 Most Downloaded” list. Very cool.

Also, it may be the only, er, family-friendly book on the list other some nonfic. (I didn’t keep reading to know for sure.) Support me!

Blowing my mind, when you take out short-form works and adults-only content, “Worlds Unseen” is #8 most downloaded on Smashwords. Wow!

Funny things happen in the world of e-books. I thought “Theodore Pharris Saves the Universe” was not in circulation anywhere … that you could only buy it as a PDF from my website. Turns out Lulu is supplying it to B&N, which would explain why I got a royalty payment from Lulu the other day! Yes, you can buy my very first book, written when I was only 13 years old, for $3.99 at BN.com. Cool.

I’ve also been keeping a running tab on how many times Worlds Unseen has been downloaded free. The count is currently at 17,083; my goal was to hit 20,000 by the end of the year. But it turns out I wasn’t counting downloads from B&N, Sony, and company. The actual number is closer to 24,000.

Why is all of this so exciting to me? My sales (while they tripled this year in comparison to last year) are still tiny. But here’s the thing: up until now, I have not been on Kindle. Epic fail right there–Kindle is THE biggest and most happening e-book market, and I’ve been ignoring it. And up until now, I have treated e-books like a secondary thing to which I’ve given almost no attention. Second epic fail.

Starting in 2012, I am an e-book writer and publisher first; print (which I’ll continue to produce, ’cause I love “real” books and can make them available very easily and inexpensively) is secondary.

I am VERY excited about this. I’ve been praying about a new direction to take with my writing/publishing, and I believe this is it. How fast or how lucratively it will grow, I have no idea–but I’m going to give it my best shot. I’ll keep you posted here as to how things work out!

So, I really spaced on the last CSFF Tour–totally forgot to write/post a third entry. This had nothing to do with the quality of the book and everything to do with me being in the midst of traveling.

We were featuring D. Barkley Briggs’s Corus the Champion, which was a really great read. My one qualm about it was feeling like so many elements of the plot were too familiar. Anyway, Dean very graciously responded to my review, and I thought I’d post his response here because it really does touch on a major issue genre writers face:

Rachel, thank you for your thoughtful review. I appreciate the insights, and also the frustration of feeling the familiarity of a sub-genre’s distinctives. As far as I can tell, that’s the double-edged sword: color too much inside the lines, and people may feel overexposed to the story (i.e. that it is derivative of other works), but color outside the lines, and people who wanted an epic fantasy may feel cheated, i.e. “If I wanted steampunk, I would buy steampunk!” Personally, I wrote what I like to read: epic fantasy, and tried to do it in a way that raises the bar for the quality of what the Christian market could expect from such a title. As you briefly and graciously referenced me in the company of Tolkien, Lewis, Alexander, Cooper and Kay (swapping McKillip or LeGuin for Lawhead), I’m quite pleased. Thank you!

Let me say, first off, that Dean absolutely HAS raised the bar. He deserves those comparisons, and the genre distinctions he’s referring to–including many familiar motifs, background myths, and even plot points–will no doubt make their first encounters with many young readers in his books. Those young readers couldn’t ask for a better introduction, in my opinion. And the quality of writing, plus serious depth in the themes and characters, make these books original as well–I don’t want to give the false impression that they’re completely derivative.

(Mind you, I say all this based on Corus alone. I ordered Book of Names from Amazon, but it arrived with a tragically bent-double cover. I’m sending it back but will pick up the rest of the series when I get a chance.)

All of this makes me wonder anew, however: how restrictive are the boundaries of genre, really? As a reader, do you go after books in a certain genre looking for something familiar, or for something distinctive? Have you had an experience like Dean describes, where an author coloured too much outside the lines and you felt cheated? Does it bother you to run across familiar things in different novels, or do you actually want that?

I’m curious, so please do share your opinions if you have them.

One other thought on this: when you read inside a certain genre all the time, that genre tends to shape your imagination. Maybe that’s why fantasy-style stories come so naturally to me, and “real-world” stories don’t. The first book I ever tried to write was a fantasy that ripped off Lloyd Alexander and Terry Brooks in equal measure, and even now I find “derivative” scenes and ideas in my stories a lot. They just seem to be part of the way I think. Maybe that’s a reason to read outside of your genre?

The Barlow brothers are not the first to cross between Earth and Karac Tor, two of the Creator’s Nine Worlds. But the crossing has positioned the boys, each of whom possesses a significant gift, to influence the future of the Hidden Lands. Hadyn, who has discovered the power in names; Ewan, whose music weaves magic and defines his soul; Gabe, Wingtalker, who speaks with birds; and Garrett, Windbringer, whose gift is not so much what he knows as who.

In Corus the Champion, the second book of the Legends of Karac Tor by D. Barkley Briggs, the brothers follow separate quests, accompanied by warriors, monks, and legendary figures of long, long ago. As Hadyn, the oldest Barlow boy, tries to deliver his message of impending war to the five lords of Karac Tor, dodging assassins and braving the intricacies of politics, Gabe, Garrett, and Ewan join the search for two legendary figures who lie at the center of two worlds: Corus, the Champion, long thought dead; and the Sleeping King—a figure of immense mystery with a strange connection to Earth.

But neither of the missing figures will be found without sacrifice. It is Ewan, whose gifts of song and sight connect him most intimately to the mysteries of Karac Tor, who must pay the greatest price.

The story of this series is becoming a legend in itself in Christian fantasy circles: the first installment, The Book of Names, was originally published by NavPress, who dropped their fiction line only weeks before Corus the Champion went to print. After several years, the series was picked up by AMG/Living Ink, whose Christian fantasy list gets more impressive every year. The series has been well worth the wait for readers. Briggs’s writing is sharp and descriptive, almost stylistically poetic, and the story is fully engaging.

Nor is this a story just for children or young adults: like all really good fiction aimed at this age group, the story is timeless. Its explorations of spirituality and truth, lived out by the White, Gray, and Black Abbeys; its tackling of beauty, selfishness, and sacrifice through the haunting world of the Fey; and its heart-wrenching and honest look at despair and forgiveness in the story of Corus the Champion are all themes that will resonate with adult readers—in ways that we can bring back into our own world with us.

Initially, I found the story hard to get into—not because the opening isn’t exciting, but because of the overwhelming sense that I’d seen this before. So much of the plot has been done before, by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and Susan Cooper and Lloyd Alexander, with a little Stephen Lawhead and Guy Gavriel Kay thrown in. Much of the blame for this lies in source material: Briggs is drawing on the same Arthurian, Norse, and Celtic (chiefly Welsh) mythology that underlies many of those groundbreaking fantasy books, and there can only be so many variations.

But Briggs is a good writer, deserving of a place among the aforementioned names: young readers who are encountering the source material for the first time in his work will not share my frustration. Rather, they’ll discover a world of wonder that is beautifully wrought. He does the sources proud, and that is no small thing.

At the end of the book, I found myself facing that same frustration again, as the Orcs—er, Cauldron-Born—er, Goths—march on Helm’s Deep. Or rather, Röckval. But I forgave him, because the story had done what great fantasy ought to do: it had ignited my passion to see the Great Story beneath the apparent mundanity of my own life and to seek for myself the power of truth.

For the Five Tenets of the White Abbey ring true here as in Karac Tor:

Light is truth,
Truth is knowledge,
Knowledge is hope,
Hope is vision,
Vision is Light.

And it will light our world as surely as it lights the world of Karac Tor.

Highly recommended for readers of all ages.

The first and third books in the series, The Book of Names and The Song of Unmaking, are also available from Living Ink.

(Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for review from the publisher.)

European mythology, great writing, deep spirituality, and an exciting (if familiar) story: this month’s book tour is for Corus the Champion, Book 2 of the Legends of Karac Tor series by D. Barkley Briggs. The series has been a long time coming to print after the original publisher dropped it, but it is finally here, and it’s a credit to AMG/Living Ink’s increasingly interesting line of Christian fantasy books (they also publish C.S. Lakin’s fairy tales and Bryan Davis’s adult dragon stories).

Review coming tomorrow, and an essay of some sort on Wednesday. For now, the links:

Corus the Champion at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Corus-Champion-Legends-Karac-Tor/dp/0899578640/

The author website: http://hiddenlands.net/index.php?Itemid=49&id=19&option=com_content&task=view

And of course, the rest of the tour. Check ‘em out: The CSFF usually gets some fantastic reviews and discussions going:

Gillian Adams
Noah Arsenault
Beckie Burnham
Morgan L. Busse
CSFF Blog Tour
Carol Bruce Collett
Theresa Dunlap
April Erwin
Victor Gentile
Nikole Hahn
Ryan Heart
Bruce Hennigan
Christopher Hopper
Jason Joyner
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Marzabeth
Shannon McDermott
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Eve Nielsen
Sarah Sawyer
Kathleen Smith
Donna Swanson
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Phyllis Wheeler
Nicole White
Rachel Wyant