Rachel Starr Thomson

All right, friends who wanted to keep up with my fiction journey. I am trying my hand at improving novel descriptions. I would love it if you’d give me your feedback on the following descriptions of the same book. Which would more likely interest you enough to read a sample (or even buy the book)?

1.

The Council for Exploration Into Worlds Unseen believed there was more to the world and its history than the empire had taught them. Treating ancient legends as history, they came a little too close to the truth. Betrayed by one of their own, the Council was torn apart before they could finish their work.

Forty years later, Maggie Sheffield just wants to leave the past behind. Memories of the Orphan House where she grew up are fading; memories of her guardians’ murder are harder to shake. When a dying friend shows up on her doorstep bearing the truth about the Seventh World–in the form of a written covenant with evil–Maggie is sent on a journey that will change her forever.

2.

Quiet, timid, and haunted by the murder of her guardians when she was a child, Maggie Sheffield wants peace and healing—not an opportunity to uncover truths so frightening and so vast that they threaten to forever unravel the world she thinks she knows. But when a dying friend gives her an ancient scroll that purports to contain just such truths, Maggie finds the lure of understanding too hard to resist.

For the power that killed Maggie’s loved ones was not human—and she has reason to believe the same power is both hunting down others and ruling the entirety of the Seventh World.

Leaving her hopes for peace behind, Maggie sets out to carry the ancient scroll to the far eastern city of Pravik, seeking the only man in the world who can read it and reveal its secrets. Along the way, Maggie falls into the companionship of a charismatic young wanderer called Nicolas Fisher, who has secrets of his own that he has long been trying to keep hidden.

Together, their journey plunges them into a strange new world of colourful Gypsies and ancient legends, of death-hounds and beautiful witches, of wilderness treks and unexpected love. But the price of truth may be too high: for Maggie, Nicolas, and the rebels of Pravik are tearing at the veil between the seen and the unseen, between good and evil, between forgotten past and treacherous future—and when that veil grows thin enough, it’s anyone’s guess what may come through.

So as I announced in my last post, I am going whole-hog into e-book publishing this year. And the biggest thing for me is that I can do what I haven’t done in any serious way for years: I can write fiction again. In fact, I need to. As the Very Smart People I’ve been reading on the topic of indie publishing point out, writing and publishing prolifically is the best way for a writer to make money and build readership. It is the best way to build an indie publishing business.

If you don’t write, you don’t have product; if you don’t have product, you don’t have a business. Period.

This should be fantastic news for me. By the time I was in my early 20s, I had written 16 book-length manuscripts in various genres. Stories ran through my head constantly, as did words. I love words.

But life is not like that anymore. I go to write, especially fiction, and hear my hopes plinking off the pebbles at the bottom of a very dry well. Honestly, this has been building for years. The only book I’ve written in the last few years, Coming Day, was murder to write. I’m happy with the finished novel, but it was HARD.

Why? What happened–where did all the inspiration go?

I’ve been wrestling with that question for years, but I think I finally figured it out.

I stopped writing.

I decided that I needed to concentrate on promoting my old books before I wrote new ones. I got deep into building a couple of different business, starting running more numbers than words in my head, and just lost touch with the creative half of my brain. You know, the part that tells stories.

So now here I am, facing a new business model that requires me to be what I love being–a storyteller, a wordsmith. And I’m gaping into it wishing I remembered how to be a writer.

Sorry if this sounds a bit doom and gloom. I fully intend to get it back. I know that God created me with “writer” as part of my essential makeup; my bad for dropping the ball for so long. Currently my plan is to do a little editing on some old manuscripts that I never really finished, and then I’ll launch into something new. I’m not sure what yet. But by the end of this year, I plan to have written two entirely new novels. So the creativity is gonna have to come back.

I’ll keep you posted on what’s happening. In the meantime, if you’re a writer, or you’ve written a book and want to write more, take it from me:

Keep writing.

It’s the most important thing you can do.

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

What we must never be encouraged to do, although all of us are guilty of it over and over, is to force Scripture to fit our experience. Our experience is too small; it’s like trying to put the ocean into a thimble. What we want is to fit into the world revealed by Scripture, to swim in this vast ocean.

- Eugene Peterson, “Eat This Book”

In The Bone House, Book 2 of the Bright Empires series, the race to recover the fabled Skin Map — once tattooed on the torso of the greatest traveler the multiverse has ever known, and rumoured to contain the greatest secret of all — is still on. Kit and Giles have escaped from the disease-ridden tomb to which the Burley Men confined them, and the good guys are beginning to gain the upper hand. (Mostly thanks to Wilhelmina Klug, whose experiences in 17th-century Prague have transformed her from stressed-out Londoner to time-ranging adventurer, equipped with raging confidence and above-average intelligence.)

But their attempts to find the map and keep it out of the hands of Archelaus Burleigh, the Black Earl, will send them careening into worlds and times they never dreamt of — and at cross-purposes with other ley travelers whose existence they know nothing about.

I have never found Stephen Lawhead to be an author who inspires the breathless turning of pages; his plots tend to unfold slowly, and the incredibly well-researched and authentically depicted settings of his books invite readers to soak themselves — when they do, the experience is usually rewarding. But in this case, the setting is not a culture or time period; it’s an idea: of the universe as multiverse, navigable by invisible lines that jump time, space, and dimension; and inhabited not so much by people as by immortal souls.

In my view, this is both a strength and a weakness. The whole concept of the multiverse and of ley travel is fascinating, definitely worth steeping yourself in. But at the same time, the idea isn’t always easy to grasp (just ask the characters); and the sheer breadth of this story makes it hard to steep yourself in any particular atmosphere or even get close to any particular character. I found myself getting blissfully lost in one place or one character’s story but then having little motivation to pick up the book again once I’d put it down. The nonlinear nature of the plot (which is totally appropriate for the setting of ley travel) also tended to work against any real tension or suspense. Add to that the omniscient voice, and we get the sense that we are watching a story unfold that is somehow predestined, that has already happened. The combined effect is to invite detachment from the story while encouraging engagement with an idea.

If my review of The Skin Map (Book 1 of the Bright Empires series) was ambiguous, it was because I found it hard to express my feelings about a story that wasn’t over yet — one, in fact, in which the major themes and plot thrust were only beginning to emerge. The Skin Map laid ground, and I was interested to find out how The Bone House would build on it.

And now? The Bone House was more interesting, more exciting, than The Skin Map; more thought-provoking as well. But I still find it hard to review. The story and its themes are still emerging. Like Kit, the chief protagonist, I find myself observing this story, going along with its flow, being interested in its people and places, and yet still not really having a clue what is going on.

Becky Miller of the CSFF, in her review, wrote, “Instead of picking at the story to find something to fault, I’d rather give my thoughts on what might be coming or what it all might mean. The Bright Empires series is, in part, a mystery, after all. And part of the fun of mysteries is to try to make educated guesses, then see how close you came to the way things actually are, story wise. ” I prefer to keep out of the guessing game for now. This is an intriguing series, puzzling in many ways, frustrating in others, always pointing to an enlightenment that lies just ahead — in the next world, across the next ley line, and (hopefully), in the next book.

(A note to readers: Do not even try to read this book without reading The Skin Map first. I’ve seen some incredibly unfair reviews by readers who did just that — in no way is this book a standalone. And a disclaimer: A copy of The Bone House was provided to me by the publisher.)

A word of explanation is in order: you may have noticed that “Day 2″ of this tour got skipped (for the first time ever, I’d like to point out). The sad fact is that my copy of the book arrived really, really late, and by the time it got here, it collided head-on with an unusually busy week. I could have tried to cram the book and write a bleary, half-formed review tainted by the fact that I’d stayed up all night to read it, but I didn’t think that would be fair to anybody.

Least of all to Stephen Lawhead, who has been one of my favourite writers since I was a young teenager.

With that in mind, I thought I’d wrap up the tour by writing about an aspect of Mr. Lawhead’s writing that has always made it outstanding. (I will review the book when I’ve had a chance to read it properly.) And that is his grasp of history.

The Bone House, like most of Stephen Lawhead’s books, is set in an otherwhen. Actually, it’s set in many otherwhens, and just as many otherwheres: 18th-century England, ancient Egypt, Egypt in the 20s and 30s, 17th-century Prague, Etruria before the dawn of the Roman Empire (ten points if you’ve even ever heard of Etruria), and, I’m assured by the cover, the Stone Age. Notably absent is the Celtic world, which he has fully explored in other books.

The remarkable thing is how fully he’s able to delve into every one of these settings, even if he only drops us there for the equivalent of a few minutes. Never do you get the feeling that you’re just seeing a temporary, airbrushed backdrop: every setting has texture, and depth, and detail. I recently read a review that praised his abilities as a writer on the “sentence level,” but it’s much more than that: good sentence-level writing can only partially cover up for a lack of substance in the details.

And it’s there that he excels. He always has, and he still does.

As the settings of the story change, the world kaleidoscopes around us in a finely wrought rush of landscapes, colors, weather, food, social strata, speech patterns, clothing, transportation, eating utensils, desert cooling systems, musical styles, and moods. And in all of it we get a glimpse of another story, a much larger one, across which Bright Empires is only playing: the story of humanity, and the world, and everything in it. The story we’re a part of every day, but to the details of which we only rarely pay attention.

Genre fiction can only benefit from this kind of attention to detail. May we all read and learn.

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