Rachel Starr Thomson

I know that our CSFF tours are technically three days long, but lately I have a hard time saying all I want to say in three days. This interview was supposed to go up yesterday, but the post was getting long — so here we are. An interview of me by Joshua Gilman of JGills fame.

Joshua: So we have here the Author of the Seventh World Trilogy. Rachel Starr Thomson. Hello!

Rachel: Hello indeed.

Joshua: On a scale of one to super duper, how excited are you for this interview?

Rachel: I’d have to say super duperly. I’ve heard rumours of your mad interviewing skills.

Joshua: That was definitely the best possible answer! Now, people may not know this, but you are also a professional Editor. So we know you have excellent grammar. But as we all know, the best actors are the ones who can “act badly.” Please grammatically murder a sentence for us.

Rachel: Oh dear.

Joshua: That is only bad if you were trying to talk about “deer.”

Rachel: I never claimed to be an actor. Editors EDIT. Not ACT. Although sometimes they mumble dialogue they’re editing out loud.

Joshua: Well. Allow me to harrumph for a moment. Pauses….Harrumphs…clears throat. OK, different line of questioning.  The Seventh world Trilogy. Can you quickly sum it up for us?

Rachel: No. But I need to get better at that, so I’ll try. Six Gifted individuals fight to uncover the truth about their world before lies can destroy them all. (That’s really not very good.)

Joshua: You do realize that most people reading this already know what the Seventh World Trilogy is. Probably all the people who had no clue what it is stopped reading this interview right away. So you have nothing to worry about.

Rachel: Well, considering that I’ve spent the last two days introducing it to people, I suppose you’re right. But that doesn’t excuse me–I really DO have to get better at the elevator pitch. Once a guy at a show asked me what my books were about. It was terrible.

Joshua: Let’s pretend that I understand what an “elevator pitch” is, and keep going. Everyone who has read the first two books has their favorite characters, storylines, etc… But let’s talk about how YOU feel about them. This will be slightly offbeat. Hope you don’t mind. First question. If you were going to have a dinner party and invite 5 of your characters, who would they be?

Rachel: To a dinner party? Not Evelyn. And not any of the Earth Brethren. I suspect they’d make a mess.

Joshua: Just answer the question.

Rachel: I’d enjoy eating with the Pravikians: The Ploughman, Libuse, Huss, and maybe Jerome and Maggie. High class, intelligent, world-changing people.

Joshua: Mine would be Nicolas, Marja, Huss, Michael, and Miracle. You have many great characters. But I think I would get along with those ones best.

Rachel: Yeah, but I might worry about some of them at a dinner party. Chances of being invaded by an Order of the Spider hunting party or a big flock of birds would be too high.

Joshua: You have a wide variety of characters. Many many main characters. Is there any character that you really didn’t expect to play a prominent role who just kept on popping up in the story?

Rachel: Marja. And also Harutek.

Joshua: Hold the phone….Harutek hasn’t been very prominent in the first two books. Is this a small piece of insider info on the third book?!

Rachel: It might be .

Joshua: Swell. Following the same line of questioning: Is there a character who turned out differently than how you planned? Someone who refused to follow the “destiny” you had charted out for them?

Rachel: Well, my characters are generally pretty compliant–they don’t take over much. But most of the main characters took on life in ways I didn’t necessarily expect. The more mature Maggie of the third book is somewhat of a surprise to me, and Virginia has a scene near the end of Coming Day that surprised me.

Joshua: And therein lies a topic of discussion all its own. You just referenced Coming Day. But you’ve been discussing it as The Advent for the past year. I assume this is an official Title Change?

Rachel: It is, though I can’t promise it won’t go through another title change before the book comes out. That is unlikely, though–Coming Day is it unless some flash of absolute brilliance hits before November.

Joshua: So one more question about characters. Is there any character that you despise? As in one who became vital to the plot, but every time they arrive on the scene you think to yourself, “You….How I despise you. I wish I’d killed you off sooner.” I mean this on the character level, not in terms of how you think you’ve written them.

Rachel: No, not really. Some of the bad guys are really nasty, but they’re just so necessary to shape everyone else that I can’t wish them out of the series earlier. Which might be a profound commentary on the realities of life.

Joshua: That leads excellently to my next question. Some of your story is obviously allegorical. How much has been intentional and how much is people just reading into it?

Rachel: Really, the only directly allegorical element in the trilogy is the King — and even he isn’t an exact representation of Christ. But I believe that any really good story will point to all kinds of truth, and I hope the trilogy does that–gives readers lots they can “read in.”

Joshua: So let’s talk Origins. When did you get the idea for this whole story, and did you think of it as a continuing saga from the beginning?

Rachel: The story actually started coming together when I was reading about the first stirrings of the Reformation — in particular about Jan Hus and Jerome in Eastern Europe. Since I have a speculative brain, I transferred elements of that story into a fantasy/sci-fi world and started playing around with them. The original idea was actually much more futuristic. Then, at some point the characters of Maggie, Nicolas, and Virginia took shape, along with Michael and Miracle. Well, by the time I’d written a story for the first three, I realized Michael and Miracle needed a second book,
and that still didn’t really finish things, so the third one was also necessary.

Joshua: As any writer does, you obviously go through several drafts and revisions. Has any storyline turned out EXACTLY how you wanted it from start to finish?

Rachel: I’ve actually been pretty flexible with this series, so the storylines have developed as they’ve gone–there wasn’t really a master plan for any one storyline. But I’m happy with how everything has come together. It wasn’t easy with so many characters and storylines at once!

Joshua: Be as vague as you want, but what is something in this third book that you are most excited for your readers to see?

Rachel: The role of the Darkworlders. I knew when I introduced Rehtse into the story in Burning Light that she’d have to play a bigger role at some point, and she definitely does!

Joshua: Having gotten an advance look at it, I must say I agree with you there. She was my favorite new prominent character. Speaking of which, the Darkworlders were something of a big surprise to me reading Burning Light. I did not expect them to appear. Did you have them in your mind in the beginning or did they surprise you too?

Rachel: They weren’t there from the start–not from the Worlds Unseen start. But once the people of Pravik got underground and started going deeper, I realized something needed to be down there. What was down there was the Darkworld–a society that brings a whole new level of fascination and poignancy to the story.

Joshua: So here is a big question that I’m sure ALL your readers want to know: The Seventh World is vast, and you have MANY characters. They obviously all have stories that you never touch in these books. Is there any hope that you might revisit this world in your next 50 years of authoring?

Rachel: Well … yes. There is always hope . I can’t really see ever writing a sequel to the trilogy, but there’s a lot of backstory that could be explored.

Joshua: As a fan of your work myself, I say…”Splendid.” Thanks for doing this!

Rachel: Thank YOU.

Joshua: And I can’t wait for the official release of Coming Day. Unless you change the name again. Then I will “can’t wait” for that!

(First, an announcement: I’ve signed on as a regular contributor to the newly revamped Speculative Faith blog, along with Becky Miller and Stephen Burnett and Stuart Stockton. My first post, “The Stakes Are High,” is up today. Check it out.)

As I prepare for the release of Coming Day, Book 3 of the Seventh World Trilogy, I’ve been writing a website for the trilogy that will include book synopses, trivia, character profiles, reviews, and lots more. It’s not up yet, but I thought sharing some of its content would be a cool way to give you a look into the Seventh World.

About the World

The Seventh World’s geography is loosely based on that of our own world, as the story was originally written as a sort of alternate history — though that approach changed drastically as I wrote! Bryllan and the Green Isle correspond to Great Britain and Ireland (Cryneth is Wales; the Highlands, of course, are Scotland). Galce corresponds to France; the Eastern Lands to Eastern Europe; Italya to Italy/southern Europe; and the North to Scandinavia. These areas with their dramatic histories inspired geographic features, place names, and even some story details. But the correspondence is loose. The Seventh World has very much become a place of its own.

The lands of the Seventh World are gathered under the rule of the Morel Dynasty, an empire which has been in place since Lucius Morel conquered the tribes five hundred years before Worlds Unseen began–leaving only the wandering Gypsies to remind people of the way things once were. The Morel family has brought good to the Seventh World by bringing peace between its lands and peoples, but the empire also brings oppression and fear. It is the empire that constructs and runs the cruel Orphan Houses, and the empire’s High Police demand the service of young men from all over the Seventh World, tearing apart families and bringing ruin to the hearts of those who serve. The empire is antagonistic toward the Gypsies and sometimes persecutes them, and it levels heavy taxes on its people–especially in the Eastern Lands, where rebellion has long brewed.

In Worlds Unseen, the empire is under the rule of Lucien Morel. But lurking behind the scenes is the real key to the empire’s power and to its evil: the Order of the Spider, a mysterious group of black-cloaked figures who commune with the Blackness and wield terrible power.

A Few of the Characters

Maggie Sheffield
Chapter 1 of Worlds Unseen opens with Maggie, and even though it follows the paths of many other characters, the trilogy remains her story in a special way. Maggie grew up an orphan in Bryllan, living in the loveless, tyrannical Orphan House until she was adopted by Eva Cook. Time spent with John and Mary (Grant) Davies shaped Maggie’s tender spirit and desire to know the truth behind appearances. Throughout the story, Maggie grows in understanding and in courage, discovering along the way that she is the Singer, one of the Gifted whose purpose is to bring the King back into the world. (Worlds Unseen is primarily Maggie’s story.)

Nicolas Fisher
Nicolas Fisher enters the Seventh World Trilogy in Worlds Unseen when he rescues Maggie from seedy characters near the docks of Galce. Accompanied by his animal companion, Bear, Nicolas is a half-Gypsy who doesn’t feel that he belongs anywhere. Abandoned by his father, the child Nicolas was saved from life in the orphan houses by a band of Gypsies who took him in when his mother died. But his strange gift of hearing and his restless spirit drove him out from them too. Nicolas is truly a free spirit, courageous and clever, but afraid of loving too much or committing himself to anyone. As the trilogy progresses, Nicolas finds that his destiny is tied up with Maggie’s and that he must settle his wandering heart in the song of the King if he is to find his place in the world and save those he is learning to love from destruction. (Burning Light is primarily Nicolas’s story.)

Virginia Ramsey
Virginia Ramsey, the blind seer of the Highlands, has seen visions since childhood. When we meet her in Worlds Unseen, her ability to see into the hearts of others has made her an outcast from her village, and she is haunted by a vision of a great death hound hunting her down. Virginia is the first of the Gifted to be recognized by the Order of the Spider, so they are determined to capture her and use her power for themselves. But Virginia is also the first to see the King and commit to following him. He tells her that through her he will wake the world, and Virginia struggles to hang onto that promise as she fights those who hunt her and becomes a leader in the new world of Pravik. (Coming Day is primarily Virginia’s story.)

And NOW, a sneak peek at an interview! I often conduct author interviews as part of my tour posts. I felt, however, that conducting an interview with myself might be awkward. But that’s OK, because my friend and fellow blogger (the infamous JGills himself) happens to be visiting my family this week, and he agreed to do the conducting. I’m going to post the entire interview tomorrow because today’s post is getting ridiculously long, but here’s a preview:

Joshua: Some of your story is obviously allegorical. how much has been intentional and how much is people just reading into it?

Rachel: Really, the only directly allegorical element in the trilogy is the King — and even he isn’t an exact representation of Christ. But I believe that any really good story will point to all kinds of truth, and I hope the trilogy does that–gives readers lots they can “read in.”

Joshua: So let’s talk Origins. When did you get the idea for this whole story, and did you think of it as a continuing saga from the beginning?

Rachel: The story actually started coming together when I was reading about the first stirrings of the Reformation — in particular about Jan Hus and Jerome in Eastern Europe. Since I have a speculative brain, I transferred elements of that story into a fantasy/sci-fi world and started playing around with them. The original idea was actually much more futuristic. Then, at some point the characters of Maggie, Nicolas, and Virginia took shape, along with Michael and Miracle. Well, by the time I’d written a story for the first three, I realized Michael and Miracle needed a second book
and that still didn’t really finish things, so the third one was also necessary.

More to come tomorrow. Thanks for coming on this tour with me! If you’d like more info on the first two books, check out the Worlds Unseen and Burning Light book pages.

I stand behind a table laden with my books and talk to passers-by about my work, and as they stop and handle ink and paper and converse, they ask, “Where did you get your ideas? What led you to become a writer?”

I smile — such a simple question, such a not-simple answer. I was born a writer, I think. I tell them, “I’ve always told stories in my head. Eventually I just started putting them on paper.” Sometimes I look around and wonder if all these people, drifting by as families and couples and individuals, see stories everywhere like I do. If they get distracted from real life by imaginary creatures and possibilities and atmospheres. If we’re all storytellers and it’s just that some of us share and some of us don’t.

I don’t know — I think it’s possible that many people DON’T live in their heads like I do. But I wasn’t just born a writer, I realize. I was raised one, raised by the words and the music and the imaginations of others.

Like so many of the bloggers on this tour, my imagination was shaped by writers like J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings), A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh), Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking) and C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia). George MacDonald was influential too (The Princess and Curdie; Lilith), and Madeleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time), and to a great degree Lloyd Alexander (The Book of Three; Westmark; The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha). And not just because they wrote about fantastic worlds and talking creatures and magical events. Their very words shaped me. The way they used words, sentences, rhythms — prose and poetry — taught me how to write. They taught me that words mean things. That words make magic. In later years, other writers taught me. Stephen Lawhead, Guy Gavriel Kay, Jeff Overstreet, Bryan Polivka, Annie Dillard, Ray Bradbury, and a whole slew of 19th-century poets, especially Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

I was also raised by music and the stories it tells. (That probably has something to do with why I direct a dance company now!) My dad had thousands of vinyl records in his collection, of every genre and style. These days I still turn to music to tell me stories and to help me write mine. And just as fantasy is a bit off the mainstream when it comes to writing, so I like music that fuses styles and explores cultures and isn’t exactly Top 40. I listen to E.S. Posthumus, Kate Rusby, Deep Forest, AO, and Jeff Johnson; to Enigma, Era, Muse, and Coldplay (OK, there’s a little Top 40 in there); to Karan Casey and Velile and Alela Diane and Josh Garrells and innumerable movie soundtracks.

When you read the Seventh World books, you are reading my work. But you’re listening to echoes of the words and music and stories of others. In some way, we’re all making up one big tapestry of literature and art, influencing and inspiring and being influenced and inspired. And behind all that is reality, the real reality of spirit and creation and the God who is really there, and that underlying presence is bringing us up as writers and artists just as surely as any other.

Who are some of your inspirations?

Welcome to August’s CSFF Tour and something … rather different. As you probably know, every month, the CSFF Tour Bloggers read, review, and heatedly happily discuss a new title that falls under the Christian speculative fiction umbrella. Well, we were going to do that this month too, but the title fell through.

SO, we are having a special tour called “Your Favorite!” in which we get to talk about anything we like as long as it’s Christian and spec and fic.

First order of business: voting is on for the Clive Staples Award! Please to visit these links and put in your qualified vote:

Clive Staples Award voting information - http://clivestaplesaward.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/2010-clive-staples-award-voting/
Clive Staples List of Nominations - http://clivestaplesaward.wordpress.com/2010-nominations-complete-list/

Second order of business: Becky Miller (our Fearless Leader) said that we could write about anything including our own books. Well, I wasn’t going to do that, because it feels self-serving. But then some good friends of mine got rather insistent about it, so I capitulated. Presenting Worlds Unseen and Burning Light, books 1 and 2 of the Seventh World Trilogy (Book 3, currently titled Coming Day, is due to be released in November):

A trilogy description:

Warrior, Singer, Seer, Healer, Listener, Voice.

For five hundred years the Seventh World has been ruled by a tyrannical empire and the mysterious Order of the Spider that hides in its shadow. History and truth are deliberately buried, the beauty and treachery of the past remembered only by wandering Gypsies, persecuted scholars, and a few unusual seekers. But the past matters, as Maggie Sheffield soon finds out — it matters because its forces will soon return and claim lordship over her world, for good or evil.

An orphan, Maggie’s steps have been dogged by tragedies she’s always seen as disconnected. But when a dying friend appears on her doorstep with proof that the empire is lying about the source of its power — proof in the form of an ancient scroll — she learns that her own tragedies have been part of a deliberate plan to crush the truth. Convinced of the scroll’s importance, Maggie agrees to carry it to the only man who can read it, a scholar who lives across the sea in the eastern reaches of the continent.

Maggie’s journey connects her with rebels and dreamers and makes her the enemy of terrifying shadow creatures and the powers of the empire. And so the past is revealed, and an ancient war begins again, with the Gifted at the heart of it: Six individuals whose powerful gifts point to a world beyond their own. The Singer, the Seer, the Healer, the Listener, the Warrior, and the Voice must join together to show their world what is true and what is false — and in the process, to save them all from the evil that lies at their door.

The Seventh World Trilogy is an epic fantasy, beautiful, terrifying, pointing to the realities just beyond the world we see.

You can download Worlds Unseen in its entirety for free, and the first 50 pages of Burning Light are also available from my Smashwords page: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/rachelstarrthomson

I have lots on the agenda for the next couple of tour days: an interview with me by my insistent friends (which should be, um, interesting), tips of the hat to authors and books that have inspired me and mine, recommendations of my favourite writing music, and some thoughts on writing fantasy. And also more info on some of the characters, history, and world of my stories. Thanks for coming along.

In the meantime, the CSFF Blog Tour is a showcase of fascinating people who may be talking about all sorts of favourite things, so check them out. Here they be:

Brandon Barr
Thomas Clayton Booher
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Beckie Burnham
Morgan L. Busse
Jeff Chapman
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
George Duncan
April Erwin
Andrea Graham
Tori Greene
Ryan Heart
Timothy Hicks
Becky Jesse
Jason Joyner
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Mike Lynch
Rebecca LuElla Miller
New Authors Fellowship
John W. Otte
Donita K. Paul
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Jason Waguespac
Fred Warren
Dona Watson
Phyllis Wheeler
KM Wilsher

“Remember how I followed you and Adrian like a little puppy until I was eight?”

Jason grinned. “I remember. We didn’t mind. We needed a fair maiden to rescue whenever we stormed the sand castles.”

“Well, I always knew you’d be a warrior. Remember what I used to say when we were getting ready to wade across the Elbon?”

“I remember. ‘Lead the way, warrior.’”

“Those were good days.” She hooked her arm around his and sighed. “I feel like they’re back. I’m a little girl again, a maiden rescued from a witch hunter.”

In yesterday’s interview with Bryan Davis, I asked about the magical elements in Starlighter — the mysterious gifts possessed by Koren and Elyssa. The gifts add to the appeal of both characters, by making them fascinating in their own right and placing them both in peril — Koren because her power is coveted by evil rulers, Elyssa because people with her gifts get burned at the stake. Yet both believe that the Creator has endowed them with their powers, and both seek to use their gifts in His service.

Controversy could enter, however, as it does so often with Christian speculative fiction, because in our world Koren and Elyssa’s gifts would probably be demonic at worst and anti-biblical at best (for example, the title used for Elyssa, “Diviner,” calls to mind Scripture’s admonitions against divination).

In the interview, Bryan revealed his process for dividing reality and fantasy:

Since the Dragons in our Midst series takes place in our world, I had to draw the line between reality and fantasy very carefully, more so in that series than in Dragons of Starlight. In Dragons in our Midst, I adhered to the realities of our world and added the fantasy elements without violating the truths of the Bible’s revelations of the spiritual world. I have the real God, and I mention the real Jesus, which established my story as one that could not trespass lines drawn by the Bible. So all my heroic characters never use magic or other powers that Christians in our world would consider demonic or as arising from forbidden sources.

Starlighter . . . takes place in another world. The characters have inherent abilities that would be considered demonic in our world, but in this world, they are endowed by the Creator. Just as the Holy Spirit gives different gifts to humans in our world, God does the same in the Starlighter world, but some of the gifts don’t match those in our world . . .

I realized when I wrote the story that some people would challenge these abilities as demonic. That’s why I created the persecutors who chase Elyssa and characterize them as dark-ages style inquisitors who are blind to the possibility that God is able to endow people with gifts they don’t understand.

Bryan’s answer touches on something Christian fantasy writers understand: powers or abilities are not evil in and of themselves; it’s the source of those powers or abilities — and the way that we access and/or use them — that make them good or evil.

In another world, the rules could very well be different than they are here. By exploring these possibilities, fantasy writers can turn a mirror on our own world and our attitudes and responses to people, to events, and to things we don’t understand. It’s this transferral of the familiar into the strange that gives fantasy its emotional and spiritual power: taken out of our usual surroundings, we’re forced to see life differently for the duration of the story, to ask questions of ourselves and challenge our assumptions.

The best fantasy will give us a vision we can take back into the real world with us — not blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, but equipping us to see through the outsides of things and into the heart a little more clearly.

Today, I interview Bryan Davis, author of Starlighter, on the characters, upcoming titles, the strange and fascinating journeys that lead to publication, and the difference between magical powers in fantasy and magical powers in the real world.

Rachel: So let’s start with a really easy question: who’s your favourite character in Starlighter? Why?

Bryan: I get asked about favorite characters many times, and it’s always hard to answer, because I like so many of them. I create characters (the heroes, of course) who are appealing to me. If I had to pick one, I think I would go with Koren. There’s something special about a heroine who suffers greatly but still rises to sacrifice for others. I find her captivating. Koren is vulnerable, yet strong. She is naïve is some ways, yet filled with wisdom in others. She despises the cruelty of slavery, yet is willing to endure it for the sake of others. She is truly heroic.

Rachel: I ask because you did something in this book that’s an essential for me: wrote great side characters. For some reason I never like protagonists as much as I should, so I latch onto side characters, and I like big casts. Jason and Koren take center stage in Starlighter, but I was equally fascinated by Wallace, Randall, Tibber, and especially Elyssa. Will any of these folks be playing a bigger role in the coming books?

Bryan:Elyssa and Wallace will definitely take bigger roles, especially Elyssa. She is a mysterious character who has gifts that go unexplained in Starlighter. I didn’t understand them myself until I wrote the second book. I am working on the third book right now, and her role grows even more.

Rachel: I was intrigued by Starlighter’s mix of classic fantasy with sci-fi elements. What inspired you to mix genres this way, and what are the challenges of doing so?

Bryan: I’m not sure where to draw the line between fantasy and science fiction. I have defined science fiction as fiction that could be true if technology developed far enough, and fantasy is fiction that doesn’t explain the strange elements at all. Usually, a fantasy story can’t happen no matter how far technology advances. I see Starlighter as pure fantasy, because the technology, for the most part, is behind our own, and the strange elements could never happen. I don’t explain how the portal works, how the litmus finger guides Jason, how the river reverses course, etc. I provide no science to explain it, so, to me, Starlighter falls squarely in the fantasy category.

Rachel: Dragons of Starlight is your fourth YA fantasy series—and three involve dragons. How did you fall into this ongoing relationship with our scaly, fire-breathing friends?

Bryan: My Echoes from the Edge series doesn’t involve dragons at all, so Dragons of Starlight is my third dragon-oriented series. Dragons in our Midst began when I had a dream about a boy who could breathe fire. I told my eldest son about it, and he suggested that I write a story about the dream. He and I brainstormed together and decided that the boy’s father was once a dragon. Eight years later, AMG Publishers took a chance on that story, and it became Raising Dragons, the first Dragons in our Midst book. Oracles of Fire is a sequel series, so it also had dragons. After I wrote Echoes from the Edge for Zondervan, they wanted me to write a dragons series for them, since my other dragons books were so successful for AMG, so that led me to write the Dragons of Starlight series.

Rachel: Do you anticipate moving into non-dragon waters in fiction at any point?

Bryan: Besides the Echoes from the Edge series, I have written I Know Why the Angels Dance, a standalone contemporary novel, published by AMG. I have ideas for other non-dragons stories that I am excited about, so I hope I get the opportunity to write them soon.

Rachel: Speaking of waters, you’ve entered some potentially controversial ones in this book. Several of your characters possess gifts that, in our world, most Christians would condemn as demonic. (Koren essentially “channels” the voice of the dragon prince, and Elyssa’s hyper-awareness of the world around her earns her the title “Diviner” and has her all but condemned as a witch.) Talk to me about the line between fiction and reality and how (and why) to walk that line as a Christian fantasy author.

Bryan: Since the Dragons in our Midst series takes place in our world, I had to draw the line between reality and fantasy very carefully, more so in that series than in Dragons of Starlight. In Dragons in our Midst, I adhered to the realities of our world and added the fantasy elements without violating the truths of the Bible’s revelations of the spiritual world. I have the real God, and I mention the real Jesus, which established my story as one that could not trespass lines drawn by the Bible. So all my heroic characters never use magic or other powers that Christians in our world would consider demonic or as arising from forbidden sources.

Starlighter, however, takes place in another world. The characters have inherent abilities that would be considered demonic in our world, but in this world, they are endowed by the Creator. Just as the Holy Spirit gives different gifts to humans in our world, God does the same in the Starlighter world, but some of the gifts don’t match those in our world. Koren can spiritually speak to the unborn dragon and make her stories come alive. These abilities are inherent in a Starlighter, and they are provided by the Creator. The same is true for Elyssa. Her Diviner gifts come from the Creator. Again, it’s a different world, so humans can have abilities that we don’t have here.

I realized when I wrote the story that some people would challenge these abilities as demonic. That’s why I created the persecutors who chase Elyssa and characterize them as dark-ages style inquisitors who are blind to the possibility that God is able to endow people with gifts they don’t understand.

In our world, people who seek power from sources other than God are rightly criticized if, indeed, the source of power is from darkness. A problem arises when someone has a gift from God that people simply don’t understand, and ignorance gives rise to fear, and fear gives rise to attack. This happened when the Pharisees accused Jesus of casting out demons by the power of Satan.

Starlighter presents a similar situation in which we have a character who is able to do things the religious elite don’t understand, and they accuse her of having demonic influence. They refuse to consider the possibility that God provides some humans with these gifts. I cast these persecutors as the Pharisees of the Starlighter cosmos, people blinded by their own religiosity.

So, in essence, if people accuse me of promoting the powers of darkness in this story, they are really in that category as well, since they are unable to comprehend that this is a different world with different rules. They are blinded by their religiosity.

Rachel: Starlighter’s dedication credits Amanda (your daughter?) with giving you the idea for this story. Can you share how that came about?

Bryan: Amanda is my 19-year-old daughter. I mentioned before that Zondervan asked for a dragons story, so I asked my children if they had any ideas. Amanda suggested a story about a world populated by dragons that enslaves humans kidnapped from a world of humans. She also came up with the idea that two teenaged humans would go to the dragon world to try to bring the slaves home. I told Zondervan about the idea, and they loved it. I made up the details as I wrote the story, included the Starlighter and Diviner characters, but Amanda invented the basic storyline.

Rachel: You’ve left us with something of a cliffhanger at the end of Starlight. Can you whet our appetites for the next book?

Bryan: Telling about the next book is challenging for two reasons. One is that the next book is not part of the Dragons of Starlight series. Two is that I don’t even know the title for the next Dragons of Starlight book.

Originally, Zondervan was going to publish two series, one for young adults and one for adults, so I wrote Starlighter with that fact in mind, creating two adults in Starlighter, Adrian and Marcelle, who had minor roles. I planned to make them the main characters in the adult series. After I wrote the first adult story and submitted it, Zondervan canceled the adult series because of the departure of the editor who acquired it. AMG Publishers picked it up, but they are not allowed to use the “Dragons of Starlight” name, so they are calling the two-book adult series, “Tales of Starlight.”

Therefore, the next book will be Masters & Slayers, book one in the Tales of Starlight series. It will debut in September. After that, sometime in January, the second book in Dragons of Starlight will come out. In that story, Jason and Koren continue their journey toward the Northlands to find the ally that Arxad said would be there, but when the black egg hatches, the new prince will use his influence on Koren to try to bring her back. In the meantime, Elyssa and Wallace begin their search for Jason, and they make an amazing discovery in a secret room in the Zodiac’s lower level. What did they find? I’ll just say that it is something that Arxad and Magnar have kept secret for many years, and if the prince from the black egg obtains it, all will be lost.

Rachel: Bryan, thanks for a great interview!

Tomorrow, a few of my own thoughts on the reality/fantasy division and how fantasy can act as an all-too-revealing mirror on the real world.

Jason Masters is trained to be a hero, a peasant whose skill takes him to the top of warrior training. With his brother Adrian, he grows up fighting homemade dragons and “rescuing” his best friend, Elyssa, from all manner of peril. But growing up brings unwelcome realities with it. His oldest brother, Frederick, disappears, and Adrian’s involvement with an underground movement that believes in real dragons places him in constant danger. Elyssa’s unusual gifts bring her under the scrutiny of witch hunters, who are foiled only when she’s dragged away in the night by a man-eating mountain bear. And Jason’s dreams of glory are brought down a few pegs when he’s appointed bodyguard to the corrupt, selfish Governor Prescott.

Life is not looking up.

But then Adrian tells Jason where he’s going — to find the gateway to the dragon world, another planet where, rumour has it, humans are kept as slaves to the fire-breathing beasts. Adrian gives Jason a message — from Frederick — and a mission. Murder, political hijinks, and the rescue of Elyssa from the dungeon (not from a mountain bear’s cave) turns life around again, and suddenly Jason finds himself on a dangerous journey to rescue the slaves from the dragon world and prove himself a true hero after all.

Meanwhile, on the dragon world, a slave girl named Koren memorizes the Creator’s Code, dreams of freedom, tells stories to dramatic and mysterious effect, and hopes that rumours of a home world to which escape might be possible are true. Events — and her own storytelling gift — soon promise to reveal the truth. But they also threaten Koren’s life, and more, her heart, as she’s drawn into the service of a dragon prince whose power is seductive and deadly.

Starlighter is an engaging story, made especially so by its cast of characters. It’s a clean read, appropriate for any reader who can handle a little (non-gory) violence and scariness. Davis writes with good humour and plenty of heart. The story is at times thought-provoking, and I’m looking forward to seeing where the characters’ journey takes them.

This month’s CSFF feature is Bryan Davis’s Starlighter, a book I almost didn’t get to review. You see, Zondervan was only sending review copies out via UPS, and as a Canadian that didn’t work for me. I asked Bryan for an interview anyway, and when he learned about the situation, he sent me a (signed!) copy at his own expense.

Which establishes that Bryan Davis is a Really Nice Guy.

He’s also the reigning king of YA Christian fantasy, much as Donita K. Paul is the reigning queen. Maybe that makes dragons the reigning pets of YA Christian fantasy, because both authors write a lot about them.

In Starlighter, dragons have kidnapped humans from another planet in order to force them into slavery, and then covered up the truth about their own nefarious deeds with lies. Tomorrow, I’ll write a review that looks at the story in a little more detail, and my interview with Bryan Davis will post on Wednesday. Thursday I’m hoping to write up some thoughts provoked by the book and interview (although I failed to do so for Matt Mikalatos in the previous tour — sorry about that!).

For now, check out the other tour(ists? ers? guides?) people, listed below.

You can also check out Bryan Davis’s blog or his website.

Brandon Barr
Beckie Burnham
Jeff Chapman
R. L. Copple
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Andrea Graham
Tori Greene
Nikole Hahn
Ryan Heart
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Leighton
Jane Maritz
Rebecca LuElla Miller
John W. Otte
Donita K. Paul
Crista Richey
SarahFlan
Chawna Schroeder
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Dona Watson
Phyllis Wheeler
Jill Williamson
KM Wilsher

Today, an interview with Matt Mikalatos, author of Imaginary Jesus, in which we discuss controversy, the significance of style, the people behind the story, and more. Venture on!

Rachel: The info sheet sent with Imaginary Jesus proclaims that your book “has the potential to get a Christian publisher in a whole lot of trouble.” The comment is tongue in cheek, but there’s no denying your book is controversial. Is that something that scared you as you wrote it? If so, how did you find the courage to keep on writing?

Matt: During the writing itself I wasn’t thinking much about it, I was busy entertaining myself. If it made me laugh I threw it in. During the editing process we cut quite a bit of the needlessly controversial episodes. When I was uncertain whether we should keep something in the book I would use two criteria: Is this funny? Is it true?

My editor Lisa Jackson was really instrumental in this process as well. She would help me put things “on trial.” She would come after things as a skeptic (“Prove to me that you NEED that offensive event in the book.”) and I would give my best apologetic for why it was good and necessary. Sometimes things got cut, sometimes they survived. But I have to give enormous props to Tyndale that they let me make the final call on what would be left in the book and what would be edited out. They gave me a lot of leeway.

Truthfully, I don’t mind offending people if it moves them toward Christ. What I don’t want to do is offend people just for fun. So there are some controversial things we agreed to keep in the book because we felt it shook people out of their misconceptions of Jesus. I hope there aren’t any gratuitous offenses left in the book.

Rachel: Was “funny” part of your original concept for the book, or did you ever consider writing your story in another style? What’s the significance of humour to you as a Christian and writer?

Matt: Yes, funny was always in the plan. I think humor has a way of disarming us. Serious essays knock politely on the front door and ask to be let in, and comedy sneaks in the back window, makes itself a sandwich and puts its feet up on the table. You see this so clearly in, for instance, Shakespeare’s presentation of “the fool” in King Lear. The fool can say things to the king that no one else is allowed to say, because he’s funny and maybe a little unhinged. Comedy lets you sneak messages past people’s defense mechanisms.

Humor has always been an important part of my life, I guess. I like to see people laugh, and there are a lot of wonderful things in the world that should give us riotous belly laughs. It’s important to celebrate the good things that God has given us in life. Christians should not have a reputation as the dour, sour-faced people. We should be full of vibrant life. Certainly in scripture we see a lot of satire, especially in the prophetic works, where a prophet points out the mistakes and sins of those around him in a funny way by saying something like, “Look. You cut down a tree and use half of it to make a fire to keep you warm and carve the other half into an idol and worship it.” He’s pointing out the absurdity of the situation and making light of it. That’s a pretty unique thing that humor allows you to do.

Rachel: How have you found reception to the book so far?

Matt: Surprisingly, overwhelmingly positive. I had visions of being chased out of churches by villagers with torches, or at least of being publicly humiliated on the internet. I’ve found that the age range of the fans is much broader than I expected (a seventy year old woman at my church pulled me aside to tell me it was the funniest book she’s ever read), and I have been amazed by the number of e-mails I am getting from people who say, “I realized while reading your book that I was following an imaginary Jesus and now I’m working on following the real Jesus.” There have been a few detractors, but they’ve been pretty mild, and from people who aren’t really the target audience for the book, anyway.

Rachel: In my review I stated that this book shouldn’t be read as a theological treatise on “the real Jesus,” but as the spiritual journey of a real Christian. It’s open and honest and sometimes surprisingly raw. Can you share a little of the story behind the story?

Matt: Sure. This is a mild spoiler if you haven’t read the book, so avert your eyes now if you care. A few years ago, my wife became pregnant with our third child. The night before we left for a trip to Thailand she had a miscarriage, which was completely unexpected and emotionally devastating. We cried all the way to Thailand. I was surprised, actually, by the depth of my own grief and sense of loss over our baby’s death. It brought up a lot of questions… if God is good and powerful why doesn’t he intervene in these situations? I know from experience and from scripture that he is both good and powerful and even that he loves me, so why doesn’t that seem to match what I am experiencing? And of course we knew all the theological answers, but they weren’t terribly comforting. I wanted to know Christ was near me, not know some theological factoid about him. In a lot of ways our story parallels that of of Mary and Martha when Lazarus died. They say to Christ, “Where were you?” And that was my question, too… I know you are good, I know you have the power to intervene, so why didn’t you? I tried to share honestly about that part of our spiritual journey in the book.

Rachel: As “Matt” in the book comes closer and closer to encountering the “real Jesus,” I found myself wondering how on earth you were going to pull that off. Unless you were to simply present Jesus through the verses of Scripture, how can you write the real Jesus into a work of fiction without making Him just as imaginary as the rest of the bunch? Is this something you struggled with as you wrote? Are you satisfied with your presentation of the real Jesus?

Matt: I was scared to death that I wasn’t going to be able to pull off a convincing “real Jesus” by the book’s end. The easy route, of course, would be to have some moment in which I was witness to a Biblical event (and I do use that technique in the book) but I was concerned that implies that Jesus is “dead”… that there aren’t new stories with him in them. And I was sensitive to the fact that if I presented a “This Is The Real Jesus” moment that it might really be “Here’s Matt’s Current Understanding of Jesus.” So, I took a real encounter with Jesus from my own life, and presented it in a way that I hoped would be compelling and true in the context of the book. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with the way it turned out. My hope is that it takes people to the place of saying, “There is a real Jesus out there, and I can get to know who he is if I look for him.”

Rachel: I loved the atheists’ Bible study. Are those folks real? And are they all still atheists?

Matt: The study is real, yes. I actually only went one time, but I was impressed with their commitment to discovering what the Bible actually is trying to say… they were a lot more serious about it than many Christians I know. My experience is that there are many reasonable atheists who enjoy intelligent conversation on spiritual matters. I would encourage everyone to find an atheist and make friends!

Rachel: What’s with the talking donkey?

Matt: Sweet Daisy, the talking donkey, was not part of the plan. She nosed her way into the book during a time I had sworn not to edit anything until I was done writing. I remember thinking “I’ll come back later and get rid of this talking donkey.” But by the end of the book she had become one of the more necessary and intelligent characters. Donkeys are used by God at several key points in scripture, which is rather funny. In the story of Balaam, we see that a donkey is sometimes a better prophet than a human. That’s what Daisy does in the book… she’s a theologian who is constantly pointing out my own flaws, inconsistencies and idiocies. She’s a construct very similar to the apostles Peter and John in the story, and hopefully she gives the reader a little clue into the origin of those characters in the book.

Rachel: Most of my readers are also writers, including myself, so I wanted to ask about your publication process. In the Acknowledgments, you wrote “This book would not exist in its present form if Wes Yoder (agent and friend) hadn’t declined to represent the original sugarcoated collection of Sunday School lessons by saying something along the lines of, ‘This is no good,’ and graciously reading the next draft.” Can you tell us a little about that early incarnation and how it evolved into the book that’s been published today?

Matt: I hope I don’t get in trouble for saying this, but I rarely read theological essay-type books. I don’t like them. But I hatched a plan to write one that would be funnier than normal. You can see the original book proposal here. I queried three agents, all of whom were interested in seeing the proposal. The first one to get back to me was a guy named Wes Yoder who read the proposal and then said, “Forget all those other agents, I’m going to be your agent!” which was very exciting, indeed.

We set up a phone appointment, but by the time I called him he had read my sample chapters, which he did not like. He asked me if I even liked books like the one I was proposing to write, and I had to admit that I did not. He told me that it needed a stronger narrative, and I asked him if he meant something more like Dante’s “Inferno.” Some college kid could probably write a great paper on the parallels between my book and Dante. He also told me to write something I would enjoy, not something I thought agents or editors would like As I recall I said, “It will be weird.” He said that would be fine, so long as I was being honest with myself. He had already said something to the effect of, “I can tell you’re a deeply weird individual who is trying to write something normal.” He didn’t want to be my agent, but he agreed to read the next draft and give me his feedback, which was very generous of him.

So, I debated his advice, talked it over with my wife, turned off my internal editor and spent the weekend writing the most insane six chapters of my life. I had a spectacular time, I felt like a mad scientist who had been given permission to harness lightning to bring a monster to life. I sent Wes those six chapters and he e-mailed, called and texted me within minutes to say that he loved “Imaginary Jesus” and wanted to be my “real agent.” And that’s pretty much the story of how the book went from humorous essays to inexplicable not-quite-true-memoir-fiction-comedy-thing.

Rachel: My thanks to Matt for a great interview, and for giving us all so much to talk about! Readers, browse the rest of the blog tour for the insightful comments and reviews of my fellow tour guides .

The story begins at the Red and Black, a Communist coffee shop in Portland, Oregon, where Matt (our hero) and someone he thinks is Jesus are just hanging out. Enter the Apostle Peter, a.k.a. “Pete,” who recognizes Matt’s Jesus as an imposter and quickly instigates a fistfight. Imaginary Jesus takes off running, Pete and Matt take off after him, and thus begins a story that’s funny, unpredictable, and would be irreverent if it didn’t actually have so much respect for the real Jesus, as He was in history and as He is in Matt’s life — and in ours.

As Matt, Pete, and Daisy the Talking Donkey chase Imaginary Jesus across Portland in an effort to unmask him and help Matt get back to the real Jesus — the one he actually loves, and who really loves him — they run into a host of other Imaginary Jesuses, figments of imagination and theological constructs that sometimes come close to being like Jesus but aren’t Him. They include such memorable figures as Magic 8-Ball Jesus (good for quick guidance, but rather predictable), Testosterone Jesus (who mostly goes to men’s mountain retreats and watches Braveheart for inspiration), and Portland Jesus (who likes art, social justice, jeans, and house churches).

Matt’s journey also takes him back to the first century, to locales all over Portland, into encounters with a pair of Mormon missionaries, a former prostitute, and the Atheists Bible Study, and finally into contact with an event in his life that hurt him deeply and led to the creation of his Imaginary Jesus in the first place. It’s witty, but also surprisingly moving and insightful at times — the honest, if quirky, journey of a man struggling to reclaim an authentic faith and reestablish relationship with a real Lord.

And that’s where my caution comes in: this book should not be read as a theological treatise on “the real Jesus,” but as the spiritual journey of a real Christian. Every one of Matt’s Imaginary Jesuses shares characteristics with the real thing, and this is where things can get hazy: this isn’t a book about discovering objective truth about who Christ is. It’s a book about getting out of our comfort zones and self-made safety nets and seeking to encounter Christ in our own lives. It is autobiography. It is not theology.

Also, it pokes fun at just about all of us. I don’t think it actually crosses the line into poking fun at God (the real one), but be prepared to squirm a little.

End of caution. Overall, this is a heartfelt call to seek truth and relationship with God. It has the potential to raise some great questions, and I think to point us to the source of the real answers.

Matt Mikalatos (the real one) has given me a great interview, which I’ll be posting tomorrow — so check back!