Rachel Starr Thomson

(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

First, an Advent update: I am still working on revisions! I made such major revisions the last time around that a whole new ending was required, so I am currently writing that whole new ending. Writing should be wrapped up by July 10; first polish by July 15; and then I wait for feedback from beta readers. Thank you for caring.

It’s a MUCH better book than it used to be.

Now, to segue into today’s writing tip, I have noticed that every time I sit down to write I spend a lot more time sitting than writing. It’s HARD to come in from the cold and just start in on a scene, capturing its mood and emotions effectively. But I have developed a trick for helping myself get into the writing, a trick that also works to jump-start ideas or bring more sensory life into a scene: I call it entering the moment.

Pick a character from the scene you’re working on (ideally the character whose POV you’re writing in). Read what you’ve already written so you have the basic setting details in your head.

Now, close your eyes and enter the moment.

What can you feel? See? Smell? Hear? What colours meet your eyes?

Are you sitting, standing, running, riding?

If someone else is speaking, how are you listening to them? Are you emotional, detached, frightened, joyous? What does his or her voice sound like?

Try to sense the sun and the wind; try to smell the forest or the attic dust or the apple pie.

Just sit and soak it all up for a few minutes. Enter the moment as fully as you possibly can. Get inside your character’s skin and just feel.

Then open your eyes, type a few of those details, and see what happens.

My graphic skills leave much to be desired, but thankfully my sister Deborah’s artwork is so gorgeous that even I can’t ruin it! This ad will be placed in a book of encouragement from homeschool graduates put together by Amy Puetz. I’m also contributing a chapter to the book.

Rael of Reflective Beauty has reviewed Burning Light:

The middle of a series can be a hard book to read and, I expect, to write.  But Rachel Starr Thomson has done very well here.  This second book in her Seventh World Trilogy is just as exciting, just as full of wonder, and even cranked up a few notches from the first book.  It’s much more intense, and dark, and sad.  Characters grow miles deeper.   Wonderful and horrible new places in the Seventh World are explored.  I think even Rachel’s storytelling and word-smithing improved, and that’s saying a lot!

Check out the whole review here :). Thanks, Rael! Positive reviews are fuel for The Advent-writing fire.

The Advent is now a complete first draft!

A messy first draft, full of loose ends, accidentally dropped characters, rambling sentences, and scenes that are too sparse.

But I am finally happy with this story (which is now in its third completely different incarnation); finally satisfied that it’s the story it’s supposed to be. I typed the last words of the first draft yesterday afternoon and bought a hot chocolate and a cheese croissant from Tim Horton’s to celebrate. The book will now lay fallow until after Christmas, while I keep up with my student papers and an insanely busy touring schedule. Then revisions begin.

Thanks for all your encouragement on this journey :).