Rachel Starr Thomson

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

The Christian Science Fiction & Fantasy Blog Tour is touring again! This month the featured title is The Bone House, Book 2 of the Bright Empires series. My review of the first book, The Skin Map, can be found here.

Bright Empires is a many-layered story exploring the idea of “ley travel,” a way of navigating time, space, and dimensions–with villains, of course, ready to give chase across all three, and heroes in the process of discovering more things in this world than were ever dreamt of.

The book’s Amazon page (my affiliate link) is here: The Bone House

The author’s website, including trailers for both this book and the whole series, is here: StephenLawhead.com. Stephen Lawhead is a prolific and often fascinating writer, and one of the first people to successfully write speculative fiction with a strong Christian base for a secular market. He is one of the reasons I write speculative fiction myself–his Song of Albion Trilogy and Pendragon Cycle remain among the greats of “recent” speculative literature. (I haven’t read Byzantium, considered by many to be his greatest work.) All that to say, check out his website. It’s an interesting and worthwhile stop.

And the rest of the tour, also interesting and worthwhile, is represented by these fine folks:

Noah Arsenault
Red Bissell
Thomas Clayton Booher
Beckie Burnham
Morgan L. Busse
CSFF Blog Tour
Jeff Chapman
Carol Bruce Collett
Karri Compton
D. G. D. Davidson
Theresa Dunlap
April Erwin
Victor Gentile
Tori Greene
Ryan Heart
Bruce Hennigan
Timothy Hicks
Christopher Hopper
Janeen Ippolito
Becca Johnson
Jason Joyner
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Marzabeth
Katie McCurdy
Shannon McDermott
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Joan Nienhuis
Chawna Schroeder
Kathleen Smith
Donna Swanson
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Phyllis Wheeler
Nicole White
Rachel Wyant

I promise that by Wednesday, I will actually write a review of The Monster in the Hollows.

Getting this far has been a journey, let me tell you. First, there have been other Wingfeather Saga tours, which I always missed. I’m not sure why, but I did. Then there were all the glowing reviews, the knowing smiles and inside jokes, the general sound of CSFF “huzzah!”ing that gave me to know I was missing a really good series. I visited the Rabbit Room website, decided to be a fan of Andrew Peterson in general, and grew sadder and sadder inside about so consistently not actually reading his books.

So, this time, when the CSFF was going to feature Andrew Peterson again and I was actually going to be able to participate, I reacted with glee. When the book arrived (a fine and bookish book if ever there was one), I trotted down to the local Christian bookstore and bought his first two books, because by jingo, starting with Book 3 in a series is not right, and I was going to do this right.

That was … last week?

I thought the Monster in the Hollows tour was for October, y’see. Obviously somebody wasn’t paying attention.

So far I have read On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness and have stopped just short of the climactic ending of North! Or Be Eaten, and before I go to sleep tonight I intend to be well into the book we are actually touring. I am greatly enjoying the series (except for the gross parts; I’m not a small boy); I’m finding it funny, moving, and quite beautiful at times. It’s also scarier than I expected, but in what might be a kind of commentary on life, underlying much of the scariness is comedy, and so we are assured that this book isn’t really so scary after all, so much as it’s funny. Or else it’s really not so funny after all, so much as it’s scary … or funny. I’m not sure.

Series overview coming tomorrow; review of the Book I’m Supposed to Be Reading on Wednesday, just in time to cap off the tour. In the meantime, check out some websites and the rest of the tour!

The Book I’m Supposed to Be Reading (aka The Monster in the Hollows–published, it would appear, by the author’s own company, which is a switch from the first two books, which were published by WaterBrook. This actually makes me quite happy, for reasons of being independently published myself.)
The Wingfeather Saga (mostly a blog, with illustrations and encyclopedic bits)
The Author’s Website

Aaaand the tour links:

Gillian Adams
Red Bissell
Jennifer Bogart
Thomas Clayton Booher
Beckie Burnham
CSFF Blog Tour
D. G. D. Davidson
Cynthia Dyer
Amber French
Nikole Hahn
Ryan Heart
Timothy Hicks
Jason Joyner
Julie
Carol Keen
Shannon McDermott
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirriam Neal
* Eve Nielsen
Joan Nienhuis
Donita K. Paul
Sarah Sawyer
Chawna Schroeder
Tammy Shelnut
Kathleen Smith
Donna Swanson
Rachel Starr Thomson
Robert Treskillard
Fred Warren
Phyllis Wheeler
Nicole White
Rachel Wyant

In this, my first CSFF tour in quite some time, I am proud to feature Jeffrey Overstreet’s The Ale Boy’s Feast, easily my favourite novel of the year. In the next two days I’ll be posting my review, and interview with the author, a book giveaway, and quotes from The Auralia Thread itself.

Today, the links:

You can visit author and film critic Jeffrey Overstreet at http://lookingcloser.org/fiction/.

You can buy a copy of this magnificent book here  (this is my associate link).

And you can visit the rest of the tour(ers? ists?) at the links below. My apologies for the relative brevity of this post. I am battling an uncanny number of obstacles to being online at the moment. But even so, I’m glad to be here :).

Gillian Adams
Red Bissell
Grace Bridges
Beckie Burnham
Morgan L. Busse
Valerie Comer
CSFF Blog Tour
Shane Deal
Chris Deane
Cynthia Dyer
Andrea Graham
Katie Hart
Ryan Heart
Bruce Hennigan
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Dawn King
Inae Kyo
Shannon McDermott
Shannon McNear
Karen McSpadden
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Eve Nielsen
John W. Otte
Sarah Sawyer
Kathleen Smith
Donna Swanson
Rachel Starr Thomson
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Dona Watson
Phyllis Wheeler

Sarah Holman is a young writer and homeschool grad whose articles are sometimes published in Home School Enrichment, the magazine I copyedit. She has just self-published her first novel, and when she e-mailed to say she going to embark on a blog tour, I volunteered Inklings as one of the stops. The info below was provided by Sarah. (As for the future of Inklings … I’m still thinking about retooling.)

Destiny – it’s a word that plagues Maria Morris. What does God want her to do with her life? Should she go to college or does God have other plans for her? When her parents go missing during a business trip, Maria embarks on a quest that will change her life forever. Trying to fight against an overbearing Milky Way Government, Maria travels to earth in search of a lost prince and some crown jewels. Her faith is tested, however, when a new law is passed. Will Maria be able to find her parents and the crown jewels before it’s too late? Is she strong enough to stand up for her faith even if it means never seeing her family again? Most of all, will Maria discover her true Destiny?

Though this is Sarah’s first book, she has been writing for years. Her articles have been seen in many different magazines, including Homeschool Enrichment, His Wonders, The Kings Blooming Rose and more. She also posts regularly on her blogs The Destiny of One (http://destinyofone.blogspot.com/) and Meditations of His Love (http://meditationsofhislove.blogspot.com/). She is a homeschool graduate and lives in central Texas. When not pursuing her passion of writing, she can be found taking long walks, reading, sewing or spending time with her family.

The Destiny of One will be available on May 14th at www.thedestinyofone.com.

What to see where The Destiny of One blog tour will be next? Go to http://destinyofone.blogspot.com/ to find out.

For today’s post, Hannah Stahlhut was kind enough to write about her journey as a young writer–and beyond that, as a young marketer of her own writing! Thanks, Hannah!

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As I typed the final words of my first book in March 2007, I had no idea what was to come of my story about a boy who talks to animals. Even if I hoped that it would one day be published, I never dreamed that Journey to the Homeland would become a trilogy and that the young readers would one day change my life. I thought the story ended with me, a sixteen year old girl, writing a book. But that was just the beginning.

To be quite truthful, writing a book is the easiest part of being an author. Most authors, myself included, spend much more time talking to readers and promoting their book than they did writing it. This task was admittedly daunting to me in my first months as a writer. I tried to do book readings at bookstores and libraries locally, but not many of them were interested. At last, I began talking to school administrators about giving presentations to classrooms. My book was geared for students ages 8-13, so I thought that elementary schools would offer the best opportunity for me to raise awareness about my book.

Speaking with students was the best thing I ever did. The moment I finished my first presentation I was surrounded by other young authors– each with their own story to tell. Their enthusiasm was something I had never witnessed before. Each of the fourth grade students were excited about my achievement and thrilled to share their own ideas with me. They wanted to know more about the book; they wanted to know when the next book was coming out; they wanted to know if they could write a story of their own.

I will never forget the young boy who assured me that he was going to write a book with “a hundred thousand” pages. Or the girl who said she didn’t like to read, but who read my book in only a couple of days. I am the first to admit that I didn’t always sell books at my school visits and readings, but the students’ energy about creative writing never let me down. As I began marketing for my second and third books, I realized that I wasn’t just inspiring these kids to write– they were inspiring me, too. Their excitement fed my creativity for my next two books, and they kept me believing in my books. And for their amazing energy, even if I never sell one book again, I am forever grateful.

Thanks to the support of my dear young readers, I am proud to announce the release of Keegan’s third adventure: Strangers in Madrona. In this new action-packed tale, Keegan discovers that another young boy in his village has been blessed with a magical gift– much like Keegan’s own ability to speak to animals. When he finds that there is a plot to kidnap this young boy, however, Keegan runs into a world of trouble.

For information and news about Keegan’s Adventures, my writing, and author visits, visit www.keegansjourney.com.

Hannah Stahlhut

Children’s author Patricia C. Wrede* has been blogging recently about what she calls “Lego Theory,” or the putting together of books from the very tiniest pieces–letters and words–to the largest. It’s excellent. Very rarely will you see writing advice that gets this down and detailed.

I define strong words as “the ones people pay more attention to.” They have more weight in the reader’s mind, and therefore make more of an impact. Since fiction is usually about making an impact on the reader, strength is probably the most important property and word, phrase, sentence, etc. can have.

What makes strength really useful, though, is that it isn’t an absolute property – it’s affected by a whole lot of other things that come along as words get strung together in different ways to make larger and larger units. This means that a writer can adjust the impact that a word or phrase or sentence has, by adjusting some of its other properties.

Read “The Lego Theory, Part II” here. Or check out her blog and read the whole series. I will be back with more thoughts on objectivity soon–but this was too good not to share!

* Many many years ago, I found a book called Dealing with Dragons at the local library. I read it, laughed over it, loved it, and walked around with it clutched to my chest. (I was very attached to my favourite books.) That book was the first in Ms. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest series. The fact that she is blogging now makes me feel that the modern world is encroaching too much on my childhood, but oh well.

After taking December off, I am back in the blog tour! This month, we’re touring C.S. Lakin’s The Wolf of Tebron, Book 1 in The Gates of Heaven series. (that link is my Amazon affiliate link, so thanks for clicking!). I reviewed the book several months back when I first got a chance to read it, so I’m looking forward to revisiting what I thought was an excellent read — and hopefully tackling a semi-controversial topic (that is, the nature of Christ figures in fiction) as well :).

For today, the links:

Susanne Lakin’s website, showing off what an incredibly versatile writer she is, can be found here: http://www.cslakin.com/

She blogs here, on topics ranging from fairy tales to WIPs to writerly advice: http://cslakin.blogspot.com/

And the rest of the blog tour can be found at the links below.

Noah Arsenault
Amy Bissell
Red Bissell
Justin Boyer
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Beckie Burnham
Jeff Chapman
Christian Fiction Book Reviews
Carol Bruce Collett
Valerie Comer
CSFF Blog Tour
D. G. D. Davidson
April Erwin
Andrea Graham
Nikole Hahn
Katie Hart
Ryan Heart
Bruce Hennigan
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Becca Johnson
Jason Joyner
Julie
Carol Keen
Dawn King
Shannon McDermott
Matt Mikalatos
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Joan Nienhuis
Nissa
John W. Otte
Chawna Schroeder
Tammy Shelnut
Kathleen Smith
James Somers
Rachel Starr Thomson
Robert Treskillard
Fred Warren
Phyllis Wheeler

Note: I received a gratis copy of this book from the publisher for the purpose of review. End note.

It’s time once again for the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour! This month’s featured book (featured late, as the astute among you may be aware, because of a delay in books reaching reviewers) is by one of the Grand Masters of Christian speculative fiction, Stephen R. Lawhead.

Stephen Lawhead has been writing books with fairly overt Christian undertones (and sometimes blazing overtones), mostly in the secular market, ever since In the Hall of the Dragon King in 1985. After the Dragon King Trilogy, he delved into Celtic mythos and the story of Arthur and the early Celtic church in two of my all-time favourite series, labeled “fantasy” and “mythic history,” The Song of Albion Trilogy and the Pendragon Cycle.

His latest work is The Skin Map, a “Bright Empires” novel, a book described as epic treasure hunt, science fiction, alternate history, fantasy, and a whole host of other things mashed together.

Mr. Lawhead’s website declares, “The series is underpinned by the cutting-edge work of quantum physicists, natural philosophers, and cosmologists who describe a universe not only much greater, but also far stranger than we imagine . . . ‘I have not read or written anything quite like it,’ says Lawhead. ‘It’s been forming in my mind for at least fifteen years. Now I am finally writing it, because I think I can finally do justice to such an intricately woven storyline. BRIGHT EMPIRES is the most challenging work I’ve ever undertaken, and I’m alternately exhilarated and terrified by it.’”

A review is forthcoming tomorrow, followed by . . . something-or-other on Wednesday. In the meantime, visit StephenLawhead.com, and then check out ArkMusic.com, where you’ll find brilliant soundtracks to other books by this author, written and recorded by Jeff Johnson and Brian Dunning (including Byzantium, The King Raven Trilogy, Patrick, and The Song of Albion).

You can also check out the links of my fellow bloggers below.

Red Bissell
Thomas Clayton Booher
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Beckie Burnham
Morgan L. Busse
Jeff Chapman
Christian Fiction Book Reviews
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
George Duncan
April Erwin
Tori Greene
Ryan Heart
Bruce Hennigan
Timothy Hicks
Christopher Hopper
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Becca Johnson
Jason Joyner
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Shannon McDermott
Allen McGraw
Matt Mikalatos
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
John W. Otte
Gavin Patchett
Sarah Sawyer
Chawna Schroeder
Kathleen Smith
Rachel Starr Thomson
Donna Swanson
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Dona Watson
Phyllis Wheeler
Nicole White
Elizabeth Williams
Dave Wilson

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.