Saturday, September 22, 2007

Interview with Biblical speculative fiction author, Frank Creed, and Black Speculative Fiction Author, Cecil Washington




I spoke recently with Frank Creed and Cecil Washington. . As you will see from our interview, both men are on the edges of Science Fiction. They write for audiences that are not considered mainstream science fiction audiences.


Cecil, you are editor and Publisher of Creative Brother , a magazine that publishes and explores speculative fiction written by black men.

CW: This is not correct. It is about people who live with or around what we call Black Culture. I do not only publish black men. I'm still waiting for a futuristic story about an Eminem type of character, other than the one I wrote called "Street Mind". I have not received one yet. Does that mean that there will be no Eminems in the future? I thought that only black people and other non-white people were in danger of disappearing.

I understand what you mean by disappearing. So often when one watches science fiction –especially the old movies-- one wonders what happened to the non-whites. But that has begun to change, I think. On Amazon, for instance, there are many multicultural speculative fiction books. There are also many Christian speculative fiction books . Not as many as one would like, however. So, in the future I’ll remember that Creative Brother also publishes Creative sisters.

CW: Creative Brother's Sci-Fi magazine is about black people, black culture.

Frank, you are part of the Lost Genre Guild, a group that specializes in Christian speculative fiction and you also blog at
A Frank Review a review blog of Biblical Speculative Fiction. Some people consider those to be marginalized speculative fiction? By marginalized I mean, "not in the mainstream."

Tell me, why have you chosen to write in such marginalized areas?


CW: People fill up the Internet with complaints about the lack of blacks in speculative fiction. I decided to be someone who would stop complaining and start acting. I read Octavia Butler, Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, Delaney and John Faucette. I need to get on the ball and read more of Brandon Massey . I also decided to return to writing my own stories once I stopped actively writing Hip Hop.

FC: After years of fruitless searching, I stopped looking for Biblical speculative fiction in Christian bookstores or on religious shelves. I’ve been writing since very young and eventually started to write in the genre I enjoyed reading—but with the twist of writing in a manner that is respectful of Christian values. I’ve since found that there are many fans of spec-fiction who have a difficult time finding enough novels to feed their reading habit—connecting with them is the challenge I face.

Why not simply write stories that deal with what we have in common instead of what separates us?

CW: If you honestly tell your own story, can rip apart those barriers and dig out the raw expression, the common concerns and fears all humans have will be exposed. A good story is a good story. I like reading about other cultures, why can't others read about me?

FC: I think that history has proven the melting-pot to be a false idea. Our culture is a woven tapestry—what we have in common is our hearts. I didn’t deliberately set out to include characters of other cultures—I develop the characters as I see them in my mind.

Do you write for only those who are like you? And why?

CW: I write for whoever will read it because I want to be read and make money writing and publishing.

FC: My intended audience is anyone who was raised in church, and likes a page turner—no matter where they are in life now. I have been told by non-Christians, for instance, that the characters in, and story of Flashpoint have inspired them—perhaps not enough to convert to Christianity, but at least to search for something more in their lives.


Do you think that people who are not like you, not black or not Christian, would enjoy or understand your work?

CW: Yes.

FC: Yes, I have had reviewers indicate just that. The problem I face is that my work is labeled “Christian fiction” and that label alone may prevent someone from picking up the book and so there is a whole community of readers out there who will never get the opportunity to read my work. Part of the reason is that Christian fiction has had a reputation for slightly inferior quality. People remember the books they checked out from the church library or that they received as gifts when they were young.


True. Christian Fiction does have something of a bad reputation. But, accepting that you are indeed writing Christian Fiction and good Christian Fiction, wouldn't non-Christians think you're trying to preach at them? Cecil, would white readers think you're trying to preach to them or even to malign them? Frank, the same question.

CW: Some will, some won't, based on their own issues. One white reader told me I should have put more drug use in my first book because it reminded him of a dystopian story he read years ago where people got high all of the time. People are going to read into things what they want to read into them. All I want to do is tell a good story.

FC: A fiction author’s first job is to entertain. Nobody reads fiction for a sermon. If it's not about character and setting, people will stop reading. If a reader cannot identify with judgmental characters, yeah, they will feel maligned. Communicating Christ's love, reaching people where they're at in life, is all about the Golden Rule . . . do unto others.


Folks can be very uncomfortable with stories that deal with religion and race.

CW: That's probably why those are the good stories. Cannibalism and murder also disturb people. And let's not forget about sex. Shall we stop writing about things that humans are prone to do? If we do, we'll bore our readers.


FC: I'm hoping my novels will cross-over to seekers, but the Underground series is doomed to sit on religious fiction shelves, away from the eyes of a sci-fi readers. I pray the end-times sci-fi concept captures interest and catches-on. At book signings with other authors, I will take any opportunity to cruise the sci-fi shelves and talk to readers about Christian spec-fiction—most are very surprised that it exists and many immediately want to know more about it.

Do you consider your enterprises successful? Relatively speaking, that is. Do you have many readers?

CW: I have few readers. I want more. I'd like to be able to make a fortune from my enterprise. But, despite the few readers I go on because I know there is at least one magazine, mine, that is about black people in sci-fi/horror/fantasy settings.

FC: I founded the Lost Genre Guild to promote Biblical speculative fiction (most people don’t know what that is, so please check Wikipedia--a guild member wrote the definition), and I cannot believe the number of lives that have been touched. If the Boss strikes me down tomorrow, I've already lived dream one.

I just checked out the Wikipedia article . That’s a very good historical recap of Biblical Speculative Fiction.

My own short fiction has only been published in two anthologies—I’m nobody. I work in a factory. My first novel Flashpoint: Book One of the Underground , will be released on September 30, by The Writer's Café Press . Most of my readers have been reviewers for Flashpoint’s advanced-review-copy. I leaned on my publisher to make Christian-Pirate novelist ML Tyndall (Legacy of the King’s Pirates series), my front cover blurb. My three favorite novelists are George Orwell, CS Lewis, and ML Tyndall—so having my only living novelist on my front cover is dream two.

On September 30, my third dream will be realized. I was eight years old when I knew I wanted to write storybooks—dream three took 33 years.


Will you be content with a certain kind of niche audience for your works? Or are you aiming for fame in the larger marketplace?

CW: Again, I'd like to be able to make a fortune from my enterprise. I'm sure that people who are classified as black are not the only people who support black products. Do only Chinese people each Chinese Food? Do only white people listen to Mozart? Do only black people listen to James Brown?


FC: I hope sci-fi readers find me, but they don't look for their favorite fiction on religious shelves. I’ll be content with whatever he gives me: Christian science fiction is nonexistent as a subgenre, so if I'm ever able to pay the mortgage with fiction it will be a miracle.

Do you believe you're working from outside the mainstream in order to change the mainstream? Or don't you care about mainstream speculative fiction at all?

CW: I believe I'm working outside of the mainstream because the mainstream is not publishing me. If they published me, I'd stop working outside of the mainstream. You'll have to ask the mainstream why I'm outside of it. If I waited around for the magic blessing of mainstream publishing I'd never write anything.

FC: The big publishing houses have bought out most of the small Christian imprints, so I just hope to make a difference for my subgenre. As a reader through my whole life, I was so tired of only finding the atheist worldview presented in science fiction. According to Writer's Digest, religious fiction in general is predicted to be the big growth market in coming years. Cecil and I are in the right place.

Frank, have you ever read any speculative fiction by Black authors? Cecil, would you read white Christian speculative fiction? Have you read any?

CW: The nuns of St. Mary's Piscataway made sure I found out about C.S. Lewis when I was in elementary school. Barring that, I read whatever I think is good.

FC: *smiling at CW* most of the science fiction I've read was in paperback form, and paperbacks don't usually include author pictures. For all I know, these people were green!


What are your current projects?

CW: I've been writing poetry and just completed recording a rap song in my cousin's studio. I'm also working on a short story and the next issue of Creative Brother.

FC: I am working with role-playing game designer Mike Roop on a RPG based on Flashpoint; at the same time I am writing the sequel to it as well as collaborating with a small group of people who are writing in the Underground setting.

Thank you so much for the interview and good luck with your enterprises.


CW: You're welcome.

FC: Thank you, Carole.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Blessings Blog Tour: Stephen Todd Jones

First a note to Stephen:

Hi Stephen: The Bible tells us that the traditions of men have made the word of God to no effect. Loose translation: much of the stuff we believe about certain bad things that happen to us being God's will was created by human tradition.

Aiming for a miracle is a big challenge. But I'm also aiming for a miracle so you have someone else on your journey.

The thing we have to do right now is to tear down the strongholds of doubt and unbelief that the world, the flesh, and the devil have put into our minds. We have to cast down every imagination that raises itself against the power of God. We have to be transformed by the Word of God and let the Word of God renew our minds and we must not be conformed to the way the world thinks.

I would suggest going to www.awmi.net Andrew Wommack's website and downloading his teachings called

How to Get a miracle
A sure foundation
Hardness of Heart
Spirit, Soul, Mind and Body
You've already Got it.

I also suggest going to Emily Dotson's site. www.emilydotson.com She was paralyzed once and she waged the fight of faith and got out of it.

You might also go to www.sidroth.org and look around for tapes on healing.

In the meantime, remember that Communion is a healing service. It is true bread and true drink. It heals the spirit soul mind and body and feeds us in ways we can hardly understand or know. Take communion every night with your family or at least at church every sunday. And trust that the blood and body and word of God is working within you. The blade, then the plant, then the full flower.


TO MY BLOG READERS:

Please keep Stephen in your prayers.

Stephen Todd Jones is a writer and poet from Virginia Beach, Virginia.
While a sophomore at Liberty University, he sustained injuries in a car crash that left him in a wheelchair, and this perspective forms the basis for much of his writing. Through his poetry, he gives us a window into his world and his faith.

Here are some of his poems.


If Seen As God Sees

If I were transparent,
What would people see
Of which God is aware
Deep inside of me?

What blemish would
Appear-- before unseen--
If others saw, as God,
a panoramic scene?

Would some loving here
Draw back in disgust
If they knew, as God does,
Every deed and lust?

I am glad He is patient,
Loving and forgiving
When I come unto Him;
Sin is part of living,
Unfortunately.

I see the wickedness when
I honestly do inspection
To see what should not be
So on an introspection.

Who I Am Before

I must know who I
Am before
I can hope to be known
By one for---

If I am not aware
How can I
Expect others to distinguish
This guy?
(cont.)
I can not realistically
Hope for such
If I fail to really know,
Being out of touch

With reality. Reality, some say,
Is overrated here,
But we all need to dwell in
An actual sphere.

Why Sorrow Over

Why sorrow over
That had not
For the same is a
Heavy thought?

Why not enumerate
All here had
Rather than accounting
For those bad?

In content, do you
Not strive to
Obtain that reserved,
It seems, for few?

Or is content a state
Where you are
Never seeking that
From way afar?

Is dreaming wrong to
Do here when
You are dissatisfied in the
State you are in?

Are we not to seek to
Improve our lot,
Or as the fatalist here,
Are we not?

God, reveal to me the
Answer to those,
Or is there a definite
As I here suppose?
We Dream Still

Only some dreams
Are God's will
For us to obtain here;
We dream still.

Some are contrary to
His loving fill
Of events for our life.
We dream still.

Some are meant to be
Ours though until
Comes the proper moment,
We dream still.

Some of our dreams
God will not fulfill
For He knows better than we;
We dream still.

We think we know better
From our clouded sill,
Facing what we see dimly;
We dream still.

Through a glass darkly,
We see and we will
What may be impossible;
We dream still.

God, may dreams sifted
Be like wheat until
Chaff is winnowed out;
We dream still.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

The First 48

If you’ve ever seen The First 48 on A&E, you probably – as I do – have found yourself avoiding dramatic cop-shows such as Law and Order. Praised and time-honored as the Law and Order franchise might be, their storylines are pretty much crock. Their bad guys are over-the-top truly villainous people whose crimes are planned around L&O’s need for ratings and penchant for preachiness.

The First 48 however, is the real thing. Painfully, terribly so. It’s a reality show, of course! But what a reality! The premise for the series is this: the first forty-eight hours after a homicide are the most crucial. Evidence, witnesses, and the bad guy can simply disappear, fade, or be forever lost.

Each episode focuses on two homicide squads, in different cities. On any Thursday night the viewer might find herself involved in the investigation of a murder in Dallas, Kansas City, MO, Las Vegas, Memphis, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, or Miami.

Of course, we develop favorites. The Memphis and Miami squads are superb and stand-outs are Sergeant Caroline Mason, Sergeant Doreen Shelton, Sergeant Tony Mullins, Sergeant Mitch Oliver, Sergeant Eunice Cooper, Sergeant Ervins Ford, Detective Kevin Ruggiero, Detective Emiliano Tamayo.

We see these cops in their humanity. We see the adrenalin pumping in the adrenalin junkies who live to get the bad guy. We see the grief when they have to inform a family member that their loved-one has been murdered. We see their grief for both the victims and the victimizers.

That’s probably the strangest thing about The First 48. These cops know something that most TV cops don’t know: that murderers are not particularly evil. They aren’t even smart. The murderers are generally kids who haven’t got a lick of sense, who get involved in something that goes awry, who gave the devil a finger and the devil took the whole hand. The cops are educated, and mature. They understand common sense and they come in all sizes and shades. The murderers, on the other hand, unfortunately are of a darker hue: hispanic and black, they are often involved in gangs, fighting over the little 1% of the American dream the rich have allowed to trickle down.

When Sergeant Caroline Mason of the Memphis PD is on the case, she shows us that being a cop involves being part spiritual counselor, part trickster-manipulator, part maternal voice of the community, and part investigator. Yet, she’s got to be one of the most ultra-feminine cops you’d ever see. The woman has style, but she also has heart. A young criminal is like putty in her hands. At the end of the investigation, he is usually blubbering as much as we are.

He knows he’s wasted his life. He knows he’s not being the good Christian kid his mom wanted him to be. He knows that one moment of stupidity has cost him his future and possibly his life. If it’s a girl who was playing one guy against another, she knows how volatile hormones can be. And, most importantly, the murderer knows that another human died and didn’t deserve to.

Okay, I’m sounding a bit like a bleeding-heart liberal with a Law and Order fixation. But I can’t help it. The show makes even hard hearts weep. I kid you not. I find myself watching the programs and shouting at those young stupid murderers, “My people! My people! What are you doing to yourselves! And for what? The little cash a drug deal will bring?”

I know many parents don’t feel like sitting their kids down to watch documentaries or straight-up reality shows. But I’m the kind of parent who forced my son to watch Maxed Out, a film about the evils of credit cards; and SuperSize Me, a film about the horrors of fast-food addiction.

So, okay, I’m telling you to plunk your kid down in front of this show. Especially if the kid – like many teenagers in the hood – still doesn’t know how to think before he acts.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Writers of Color Blog Tour

Hi all:

My novel Wind Follower will be highlighted on my efriend's blog at myspace and Live Journal. Beginning September 15, 2007


My Space
http://www.myspace.com/moondancerdrake

my space blog:
http://blog.myspace.com/moondancerdrake

Live Journal
http://moondancerdrake.livejournal.com



This is a group dedicated to bloggers who are also writers, or to reviewers who review on Amazon. It's based on networking and the idea of virtual book tours

Every month, we will try to do reviews or post a comment on a book written by one of our members.

Reviews aren't necessary. Although if we do happen to do a review on the blog, I think we shouldn't forget to post it on Amazon or to the publisher of the book. If a person gets a pdf, they can post an excerpt of the book. Or not. If someone receives a review copy, it's only fair they post a review to their blog.


We want everything to be easygoing. We're all busy. This is not supposed to be a burden. Those who can't post a review will also be contributing if they post a jpeg of the book cover and a synopsis or small mention to their blog.

We should try to do the same book all in the same month. That's not too much to ask.

Members of this group may not be forced to tour books for one of three reasons:

1: if they object to the contents of a particular book.
2: if a blogger is sick or extremely busy
3: if a member of the group wants to tour the book of someone not in the group, that's fine. The other bloggers are free to go along but it is not mandatory if they do so. I just don't want us to get into the habit of doing tours for writers who tend be users and after one has spotlighted them they disappear.

Nor do I think we should let strangers email us with synopsis of their books begging us to spotlight them. We aren't there for them. And our goal is to help primarily bloggers in our group.

It would also be good if we posted each other's weblog links to our site if possible. If a blogger reviews a book, the other bloggers taking part in the virtual tour should post a link to that review.

She writes speculative fiction. We belong to a virtual book tour group called Writers of Color Book Tour. It's made up primarily of speculative fiction but there are a few romance writers in the mix. Pagan and Christian.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WritersOfColorBookTour/

It's a nice group...just starting out though.


--- -C

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Top 110 banned books

Here's a list, according to Alnita's blog, of the top 110 banned books - clearly from various times and places.

Bold the ones you've read. Italicize the ones you've partially read. Underline the ones you specifically want to read.

#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Qur'an
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Das Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh (Mayan creation myths)
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

My committment to avoiding racist, sexist, and violent hip-hop

Well, this is gonna be hard...cause i really do like rap. And rock and roll. But I'm not liking what it's doing to black youth. So here goes:

I hereby solemnly declare that I will no longer watch or llisten to musicians, videos, movies, or comedians who use the word

"hoe", s***, w**** when discussint women.

I also solemnly declare that I will no longer listen or watch any performer who uses the N-word or who does rap songs encouraging shallow mercenary values and Black-on-Black violence.

I believe that artists and performers are free to speak their own minds. I'm not against free speech. But honestly, I wish there are folks who were a bit more responsible in their speech to kids because most kids are pretty undiscerning.

I am tired of seeing kids kill each other over sneakers, bling, etc.

Update on Daughters of Men.

Right now I'm thinking Daughters of Men will be a combination of

Lancelot/Guinevere/Arthur and Tristan/Isolde/Mark and Wings of A Dove moral treachery kind of thing where two noble men love one woman. Adultery, etc.

But it's also got that Queen Esther --representation of her people/savior of her people kind of thng.

Plus the Guinevere and Isolde trapped in love versus power kinda thing.)

There's also that Wings of the Dove moral treachery thing happening because Siddhart is betraying Woden and thinks Medusa is using her telepathy to protect him.

So then. One woman -- my queen Esther figure-- has all these men loving her. And one of them, the Medusa character, is unloved. So we have Medusa as Medea/Clytemnestra/Antigone (and all those angry Greek women) as savior of her own people and rejected lover. Female Anger.-- Working out this strong rejected grief-stricken-til-she-loses-her-mind kind of woman


Then there is the lone human guy in all this mess. And regular human male doesn't mean much in this particular world.

These are the two daughters of men in the story and I want them to go to town.

The other problem is that this novel is full of prophecy. I had this idea of how prophecies can be misunderstood and misinterpreted. But then, I wrote Wind Follower. I really explored that issue a lot in WF...and did a great job at if, if I do say so myself. So why repeat myself? I don't want people thinking I'm a one-note writer. So I want to get rid of the prophecy business.

But some of those prophecies matter -- because there is "looking for a savior" issue that's really big in the story.

Daughters of Men is over seven years and I started it when I was just learning how to write novels. It looks as if I have to re-read the thing and diagram the chapters.

Robert Fleming, author of Fever in the Blood gave me the following advice:

Go slow and be methodical.

Try to fit the chapters into the larger scheme so that they can have
greater momentum and clarity.

Build it like a piece of music.

Let God work his magic through me...as he did with Wind Follower.

Don't let fear rule me or my work.

Read the whole piece and remove and retool the weak segments.

Believe in the story or suffer the sophomore curse.

Make a list of the themes.

Accentuate those points but keep in mind that tension and suspense rules.

Find the underpinning of the book.


So here i am wading through a mess and committing myself to simply tossing out what doesn't work. The thing is over 600 pages...and very episodic. Plot points all over the place instead of tight scenes leading to other tight scenes. It seems the best thing to do is to begin again because these many scenes are useless.

Plus i have to figure out how the needy eroticism of the novel will work with my Christianity. The book seems to be want to be about male sexual need. Will see. A Christian erotic novel? The last Christian erotic novel I hear of was Marian in Ecstasy.

And the eroticism was aimed at Jesus.

Oh well, will see what happens with DOM. Must however get out of Wind Follower mode. That book is done and published. Move on, Carole

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Wind Follower in my hands

Wind Follower is published.

Hand over eyes and screaming wild joyous songs!

Dancing a two-step and generally flaking out.

Didn't cry though.

Just wild, manic, joy.

So this is what it feels like to open one's door and find a box of
one's VERY OWN PUBLISHED book on the front porch.

Borders is not ordering enough to matter, so push everyone you know to go to B&N or wherever to buy the book. If we show Borders sales elsewhere, they will order.

Yep....consider this a push.

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