TAgGEd bY CAP & BECKY

Another game of tag in the blogosphere?

DrAt! I’m IT!

Christian spec-fic associate-compadres of mine, Caprice Hokstead and Rebecca Miller, who blog at Queen of Convolution and A Christian Worldview of Fiction respectively, picked on a slow-moving handicapped guy, and tagged me.
8-/

Here are the rules for those I’m tagging. Check the list after my 6 GROOVY HIFALUTIN' THINGS to see if you’ve been tagged.
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six-ish people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know he or she has been tagged.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

As sans tech-savvy as they come, methinks even I can manage six Random things.

1. I married my sweetheart of an editor whom I met ONLINE! (The secret is out, Frank Creed mosied on into the 21st century and became a really hip guy)
2. My twelve-year old daughter is the most adorable kid on the planet. Don’t even think about debating this point.
3. I’m founder of the Lost Genre Guild for fans and writers of Christian and Biblical spec-fic, and head literary critic at The Finishers.
4. I’m convinced that the USA is currently like the British Empire in its decline, and that we’ve had, since the 1960s counter-culture, all five signs of a failing culture noted by Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
5. We have six cats, and are currently feeding and attempting to cat-burgle a large white neighborhood stray.
6. A rabid Packer fan of 32 years, I’m really angry with the IdIoT mopes in the front office of my beloved Green Bay Packer’s front office who let the NFL’s greatest QB ever go for a FOURTH ROUND DRAFT PICK!!! Therefore, I’m now a New York Jets fan until the aforementioned mopes (president and personnel director), have either been assassinated, spindled, and/ or mutilated.

Here are the bloggers too slow to outrun a tagged cripple:

1) M.L. Tyndall Cross and Cutlass But I refuse to take up my favorite living author’s fiction time with silliness, so I’m not notifying MaryLu, and I need a seventh.
2) Grace Bridges Graces' Blog Sweet mother of squirrel, Grace has already been tagged—I need eight!
3) Karina Fabian DragonEye PI Dang, Karina’s been tagged too, I need an NINTH! Grrrr . . .
4) Robi Ley Robi's Blog
5) Sherry Thompson) Narentantales
6) Deb Kinnard) Just Tell the Story
7) Terri Main Wayfarers Journal
8) Paulette Harris Writing by Faith
9) Karri Compton Fiction Fanatics Only!
10) Scott Sandridge A Work in Progress
11) Jeff Gerke Where the Map Ends boards

Oops—too many. ShUtUp: I’m a writer not a mathematician.
8D

Frank is coming to Mt. Vernon Ohio

.

LOCK UP YOUR KITTENS!

CYBERPUNK AUTHOR FRANK CREED IS ENROUTE TO MT VERNON, OHIO

AND HE'S ALWAYS ON THE LOOKOUT FOR KITTENS IN DISTRESS

Okay, here's the deal: if you live in or near Mt. Vernon, Ohio it'd be great to see you at Sips Coffee House on Saturday, October 4, 11AM to 3PM.

I'll be there with some wonderful ladies who are real authors:

Brenda Nixon
Stephanie Reed
Cindy Thompson
Janice McCament

Booksigning

Basket 'o Books door prize

Ask the Authors

Review of The Falcon and the Sparrow

A Review of M.L. Tyndall’s The Falcon and the Sparrow
By Frank Creed

Winner of the Road to Romance Reviewers Choice award for her novel The Redemption, MaryLu Tyndall deserved it—and more. Her fiction made her a 2007 nominee for the prestigious Christy Awards. The fact that she did not win means there are some judges due some slaps!

Now that her Legacy of the King’s Pirates series is concluded, Ms Tyndall’s newest offering, The Falcon and the Sparrow, came available in August. Expect to see her name again on the list of Christy nominees in 2008. If it’s possible, MaryLu’s powerful literary skill is like fine wine: it gets even better with time, and can be intoxicating when sampled. She takes you there like nobody else.

Walk through the port city of Dover in 1803, a time when Great Britain ruled more of the planet than any other empire before or since. Drink in the accurate sensory imagery of the era through the eyes, ears, and nose of, her main character Dominique Dawson. Poor Dominique is forced to spy for the French at a time when Napoleon seeks to destroy the British fleet.

With the twists and turns typical of Tyndall’s fiction, Dominique’s stressed arrival has her thrown immediately into a dinner party with London’s high society. By page thirty, Dominique lurks and eavesdrops to learn whatever she can to save her brother, who’s held hostage by the French.

Like no other author I’ve read, Tyndall’s research into her historical setting paint the people and issues of 1803 in amazing colorful detail. This novel’s intrigue depends on the customs and social etiquette of her characters, the affluent ruling class. What could easily be tedious to a twenty-first century reader, is another page-turner.

Rather than my poor attempt to communicate what Tyndall does so well, I prefer to just give samples so you can see for yourself:

Dominique’s pulse battered her ears. She dashed around the marble statue at the bottom of the stairs just as heavy boots hammered into the hall. Squinting into the darkness, she rushed into the cover of the murky shadows toward the back of the house, praying no one had seen her. Soon, however, the men’s boots echoed like claps of thunder up the stairs as they went to join the ladies, letting out a sigh, she leaned against a set of thick double doors and laid a hand upon her heaving chest. Lord, I can’t even listen in on a conversation without being petrified to death. What kind of spy am I?

Christian fiction can easily be preachy. MaryLu never goes there. Characters’ faith are all part of the subtext, like the following scene, which takes place just after Dominique is treated horribly by an English Lady:

“May I ask why you forgave my sister so easily? Her behavior toward you was beyond reproach.” The gracious act still baffled him. Why, if they had been men, a duel would have resulted from such a scurrilous affront.

She pressed her shawl against her chest. “Who am I not to forgive others when I have been forgiven so much?”

Chase grunted. He assumed she meant by God. “And what horrid things could someone so young have done that required forgiveness?”

“’Tis not so much what we have done, but the condition of our hearts, Admiral. A wrong motive can be just as spiteful as an evil act.”

Forgiveness. Chase had taught about God’s forgiveness at church all his life, but he had never felt he was forgiven, had never witnessed anyone else receive forgiveness in a way that changed him, and had never really seen true forgiveness in action. Until that night.

It’s all about Tyndall’s characters. You can’t help but care for them. Like you and I, they’re real flawed people. Let MaryLu take you to their world as only she can, and enjoy her newest offering: The Falcon and the Sparrow.

The Falcon and the Sparrow
M.L. Tyndall
Barbour Publishing, Inc. August 2008
ISBN: 978-1-602600-12-6
320 pages; $10.97

Publishing Christian Spec-fic

I've written an article about Christian spec-fic (sci-fi, fantasy, horror) and the publishing industry that some of you may be interested in. The introduction is below and then a link to the actual article follows.

In 2006, a spring issue of Writers Digest magazine predicted that religious fiction would be one of the biggest growth areas over the next five years. In spite of this welcome news, the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA), an organization of Christian bookstores, remains slow to embrace some genres, such as speculative fiction's three subgenres: fantasy, science fiction and horror.

Thanks to the Lord for Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia films' successes in the general market. Major Christian publishing houses have experimented with trials in the young adult fantasy market and signed a handful of authors. (Unfortunately, the major houses have yet to venture further-the adult fantasy market remains largely untapped.) The independent houses are taking the lead, and the risks, to get good Christian speculative fiction to readers but their efforts are blocked in several ways.

Horror, disguised on Christian bookshelves with spiritual thriller or chiller labels, has been accepted since the late 1980s with Frank Peretti's first novels. T.L. Hines and Ted Dekker carry on today with their supernatural thrillers.

That leaves science fiction. Thought Probes: Philosophy Through Science Fiction Literature, a college textbook, describes sci-fi as "the handmaiden of worldviews." For over a decade, Christian sci-fi authors have seized this opportunity as the perfect vehicle for the Christian worldview. The genre, alas, remains virtually nonexistent in Christian bookstores.

Christendom has always been suspicious of and slow to accept new things. Science fiction, horror and fantasy stories of faith have long been marginalized by believers. Not just believers who once said that rock music was of the Devil and could never glorify God, but even by actual genre fans. There are three main ways in which Christian speculative fiction artists have felt the brunt of discrimination.

1. Profit motive and Believers who judge books by their cover
2. Theological: speculative fiction cannot, by its very nature, glorify God.
3. Literary: genre fans automatically assume Christian spec-fic must be preachy--that the book's primary purpose is to spread the Gospel and any "story" is secondary.

Read the whole article here.

Let me know what you think! There are some points of real controversy and I'd welcome discussion on it. If you'd like, I have a discussion board set up at frankcreed. proboards52.com