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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Wind Follower has arrived at my door steps

Hi all:

I just got my novel Wind Follower from the publisher. I'm sooo happy. My very first book. I am sooo happy. Soo happy. I'm a published author of my very own book.

If you know anyone who is into folkloric fantasy, or Christian fantasy, or ethnic fantasy, tell him/her to go on over to Borders and B&N to order it.

Thanks so much.
-C


Then said I, "Here am I. Send me."
Carole McDonnell
www.carolemcdonnell.com
WIND FOLLOWER
www.juno-books.com/windfollower.html

My inner gold-digger

Hi all:

I'm trying to get back into the Daughters Of Men work-in-progress again after a brief hiatus away from it.

I was so into thinking about the male motivation/issues in the story that I wasn't really exploring in a truly deep way the motivation of my female character.

I suspect now I have to get in touch with my inner gold-digger. It seems to me that women growing up in a bereft culture where there are men with power and men without....well, these women would see the overseers as sugar-daddies. This connects in some ways to my love of reality love-match TV shows like Flavor Flav.

Most of those girls were poor and in need and the show was their way of getting money...and fame...even in some small fading hip-hop hipster kind of way.

I have to decide if Ellie, main character in DOM, is needy enough to want one of these guys ...secretly. Or maybe she's a user. And even if she's not a user, she might very well be so oppressed by all the sorrows and responsibilities of life that she finds a part of herself that actually needs a relationship with a paranormal sugar daddy.

The problem is I have to decide if she is like me or not. Satha was pretty much who I would be if I were in that situation. Now I have to decide how noble a character Ellie will have to be. Or rather, how noble a character I would be if I were in Ellie's situation.

The true glory and the true blessing of Josh my main human male character is that he's human. The true horror and the true curse of Josh is that he's human.

An inhuman overseer has power, wealth (presumably), the power to heal, the power to understand everything going on inside a woman's mind. And all they want is love. A real guy can't stand up to that.

Women want real guys who happen to be super-human.

I want to find the real Ellie. Not an Ellie "feminists" or "Christians" or "blacks" or "good girls" or "bad girls" would like. I want to find the real Ellie who will make DOM work. And she probably is not a "pure" user. But an impure one. One with a mix of need and desires and insecurities.

-C

Wind Follower first review

Well, the first review of wind follower is up.

It's up at The long and short of it.
Long and shortreviews a site which specializes in romance.

I'm happy.
It has begun.

And it is interesting that the first reviewer of the book is a Malaysian Christian. The book deals with multiculturality.

She said, "Wind Follower had me hooked from the first page and I found it hard to stop reading. It is very different from the stories I normally read, but nonetheless, interesting."

And she also said, "Wind Follower is a page-turner right from the beginning."

Ooh, I loved that.

Who knew I had it in me to write a page-turner?"


Nice.

experience, observation, imagination

Quote of the Day: A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

--William Faulkner

This is sooo true. And I often see the lack one of these things...but often the other things that are in the author don't seem to supply the lack of the others. This is just my opinion. For instance, I didn't know much about observation. I was terrible about "showing" because I truly had to learn about the various kinds of body language. My characters tended to be talking heads. And they still kinda are...so i'm glad my crit friends remind me of these kind of things.

As for imagination, I've seen a lot of imitative writing. People think they're being imaginative...and they are being imaginative as far as they know...but honestly in a lot of allegories I've read, they're imagining a world that is already created. Or a concept that already exists...and they aren't using it or mining it...anymore. They think they're imaginative because they are stringing together a kind of plot....but it's really a plot based on something they didn't imagine. For instance, why are so many dragons in the stories of beginning writers named "Draco." It's a bit much.

The last thing is experience. This is kind of tough. We all have experience...It's not really about youth, i think...but about the ability to be in touch with your own experience of joy, pain, need, fear, whatever, and get it into the story. So many of the stories I've read feel so unlived in. Someone writes a story about an ugly brute who is being rejected by a beautiful woman. Yet when one reads the story it's as if they don't seem to understand rejection or what it means to be ugly....even if one knows they must have been rejected...or that they must have considered themselves ugly at one time or another.

I wonder why that happens. Lack of courage? Lack of the ability to see ourselves?

-C

passion, sex, love, shame

Okay,

this waiting around for Wind Follower to be published has been spent fitfully.

A couple of days ago, I did nothing but re-read the pdf version of it in my computer. Okay, I had to see for myself how marvellous it all was. Hey, sometimes we forget.

It is lovely, and wonderful...if I do say so myself. In it's folklore questing passionate spiritual way.

But then I happened upon a sex scene. There are six in the book -- of all kinds (pre-marital engaged couple, rape, concubine, plus a couple flirtations.

And what happens when I happen upon this sweet little sex scene which is kinda spicy and sensual (those are the words the romance genre uses) I found myself avoiding the scene. Yep, I SKIPPED over my own sex scene. What's that about?

Well, obviously it's either false shame or true shame. If it's false shame -- a shame that one shouldn't really feel but which one is gonna feel anyway because one has been brainwashed-- then I can only think that I've gotten so many tongue-lashings from my Christian friends who "NEVER" put semi-graphic sex scenes in their book...that they have made me very nervous about my book. And honestly, it's not so terribly, terribly graphic. Just kinda graphic. Or it's my own prudish upbringing.

If it's true shame, then it's God telling me I shouldn't have written the scene. At this point I don't think it's a true kinda shame. But who knows?

Wind Follower is an interracial love story. Okay, I don't really know if Loic the main character is Native American or Asian. I think he's South Asian. From the way I describe him.

There was a time I used to feel shame when I wrote interracial love stories. And I no longer feel it. So obviously that was brainwashing....

will see. -C

KultureFirst survey on African American Literature.

KultureFirst posted a short survey on Af Am literature .

Here's the survey for anyone interested in participating: African American Literature Survey

Creative Procrastination

Well, I'm working on my second book, Daughters of Men. I'm in the middle of trying to figure out the mechanics of a floating city. How, I ask myself, should it work?

Should it be on an asteroid? Should it be anchored on the earth by some kind of space elevator or extremely strong columns rising up to the sky? Should the asteroid be stable -- by which I mean, should a city on the asteroid be always above a particular city on the earth? Should they be like sister-cities, sharing the same name...except that one is on the earth and one above? Should the asteroid be man-made or natural? Should it be one single asteroid or a ring of asteroid around the earth? Or should it be one long (terra-formed) bit of land encircling and floating around the earth? Should the place have its own weather and how? How much machinery should this sky city have? Or should it all work by the powers of the minds of its inhabitants?

I've got to tell you that when I last worked on this book I made matters very difficult for myself. Lord knows why! I actually had a two-tier floating city. I have to re-read this thing to see why the heck I decided to do that. Now it just seems kinda silly.

Anyway, being all confused about this city and not wanting to change it too much until I figured out why I made it that way, I've been procrastinating. I made a

multicultural speculative fiction listmania list,

a christian speculative fiction list,


and a multicultural christian fiction list.



I'm kinda hoping tons of people will go clicking on these lists...to kinda let them float up to the top of the listmania list. (Hint, hint!)

That multicultural christian fiction list was hard and still isn't finished. I need to add some more minority Christian writers...and I don't want them to be only modern contemporary writers but ...well, a few of the old-timers. I really have to figure out if multicultural excludes or includes folks who are white. One would think that white people belong to cultures, although there is no such thing really as a "white culture" because "white" involves so many different countries. I have to think about that.

In the meantime, the first review of Wind Follower will be posted soon (I think it'll be posted soon) at a romance site called
The Long and short of it .

Wind Follower is an odd little book which crosses many genres. I figure a romance site will look at the romance aspect. A multiculti site will look at the multiculti aspect of it. A Christian site will look at the christian aspect of it.

It'll be interesting to see where it will be most honored.

-C

Eroticism in Wind Follower and Daughters of Men

Well, I'm just waiting for the reviews to start coming in on Wind Follower. In the meantime, I'm trying to finish Daughters of Men.

For some reason, DOM is perched very precariously. A part of it wants to be an erotic novel. Now, what to do?

On the one hand, I want to write a Christian novel...and it definitely is. And I don't want to alienate Christians by having a scene in the book which will upset them. (Although Wind Follower has a couple of sex scenes.)

But I want to write what I want to write. Of course, the question to ask myself is: does this erotic part of my story comes from a part of me that needs sexual healing? (and therefore should be explored) Or does it come from a part of me that is just plain worldly and which has watched way too many movies on Lifetime televion?

But I also don't want to force myself to write in a particular way if that's not who I really am. (Not that we Christians should go around worshiping "who we really are.) I don't want to get all rigid and too brainwashed by the rigid guidelines of the Christian market.

I tend not to get too graphic in my love scenes. But the eroticism is definitely there. I know a few Christian folks might have a problem with the sex scenes in WF. A graphic rape scene where she loses a baby, sex with her slave- owner, and the Loic-Satha pre-marriage dalliance. But the book needed it. So in it went. I felt right having those scenes.

In DOM, there is a real element of sexual need. I might even go so far as to say that sexual need is a main character in the book. So even if there isn't any sex scene (can't imagine this, but even if) there is gonna be an erotic quality about the book.

I don't know if you've ever seen DIVA (French movie) or Rebel without a cause. In Diva the guy woos the woman by taking her for a walk in the Paris rain. Nothing happens and yet there's all this eroticism. Just by them walking. Then there's the ferris wheel ride in Rebel without a cause. Again, nothing happens. But it is absolutely incredibly erotic. That's what I feel is happening with DOM. There might be a sex scene or two -- if the plot calls for it-- but whether there are or not, there's gonna be a heck of erotic tension.

I don't really think that eros and religion are in conflict. God invented sex. And eroticism.

The proverbs say that a true witness delivers souls. Many Christian fiction books just simply aren't true. If we are to be witnesses to a truth, we have to start out with the truth-- about our own issues. Christian books are often more legalistic than gospel. The main characters are good people who often are in conflict with some bad aspect of themselves...but the bad aspects are often not bad enough to make the characters real people. They often are temptations rather than incredibly deep character traits. By making the "evil" a character faces something which is a mere temptation, the Christian writer can simply separate the main character from the "evil" and have a nice legalistic happy ending. Person is good now, so person can go to church and be a good part of society. It just doesn't speak to me of grace, of God loving us even when we are evil. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

In a lot of my stories, characters do bad right and left. But they are loved by God because they love Jesus. That is the gospel. When we get caught up in good and evil and believe that making a character good is telling the story of the gospel, we are making a bad mistake. We're teaching the importance of keeping the law. We're writing about and spreading teaching about the knowledge of good and evil. What does it matter if we know what good is, and what evil is? It's grace -- God's love for us in spite of our behavior, and while we are still sinning-- that is the gospel. And when we start saying that sex is bad or that writing about sex is a stumbling block then we are in a hazy world of saying that God has made something that is evil. We also are in the old Augustinian mind-set that says sex is evil.

In this story, I've made Ellie a Creed believer who is loyal to God above else. But she has done a crime. (I don't know what the crime is.) She's real. In that way she'll speak to real people, unlike the Christian characters in much modern Christian fiction who don't speak to the really really unsaved person. For instance, I think more incredibly bad people could probably be touched by Angels with Dirty Faces or Prayer for the Dying or Festen or The Bad Lieutenant than they would be by Christy or a Jeanette Oke book.

God called me to write to the really really really bad unsaved people, and as such I have to be a true witness. I have to witness to what I see in life, to the goodness I see in bad people, and to the lostness I see in saved people. For instance, in WF I had the two young characters make love on the day before they were married. Satha (although she is virginal) did it because she feared not giving in to him would be disastrous and might make him not go ahead with the planned marriage. And her folks needed the dowry money. He did it because he was a spoiled kid who always got his way and he was using her fear for her mother to get into bed (the grass) with her. That was truth, as far as I saw it. It would've been good for me to write a story where Satha held out for one more day, and where Loic didn't have that selfish ability to manipulate a woman, but although it would have been "good" it wouldn't have been true. In the long run, that little bit of dalliance caused some trouble for them but they are human...not Christian cardboard cookie-cutter tereotyped "good"
main characters.

For me to write something that doesn't feel right to me is to go against the idea that "a true witness delivers souls."

In DOM, Ellie is facing death. She is also badly-scarred. A human male loves her dearly. But so does a demon prince. She doesn't want to marry the prince but at the same time the prince has power to kill
her and to force her. And there is a lot in the mix about her conflict. Women like strength. Ugly scarred women like attention, especially if they haven't been getting any. Women like powerful men (at least in romances.) A powerful man with telepathic powers is going to use it to seduce a woman who thinks he's demonic. And the human male is going to have much sorrow and conflict about what to do with a woman he loves who has seemingly given up her faith to save her life.

It's been said that a novel is a conversation about the conflict between the soul and the spirit. In Wind Follower, the conversation was: "would you give up your religion for the religion of your oppressors?" That echoed conflict in my life. Sometimes one's religion puts one in the company of people one doesn't really like. And giving up one's religion means giving up certain things you are attached to. So there is always conflict in novels.

In Christian novels the conflicts are pretty narrowly-defined within home, faith, marriage. Very narrowly-defined. So I don't write for Christians because they don't want to read about Christian racist character working against his racism. They can't handle that kind conflicted characters or plots that don't have easy answers. They really can't. But God has called me to write Christian novels for a secular audience who can deal with such conflicting stuff.

I mean...what a different world it would be if Christian writers dealt with the racism of Sarah (Abraham's wife) or even with the fact that Abraham probably slept with Hagar quite a bit. Or even the fact that according to the ancient Jewish rabbis, Keturah Abraham's third wife was really in fact Hagar. I love that kind of stuff. The man wasn't perfect. He was a conflicted human. And Christian writing has no edge and has lost its ability to be very complicated. I have no doubt that if the books of the Bible was being gathered together today, Christian people would leave out a lot of David's misdemeanors, all of Song of Solomon, most of Judges.

The Christians who have read portions of Wind Follower didn't stumble. So far as I know. But the book isn't for them. And considering how rigid the christian guidelines are...the CBA's attitude is that most everything can make their readers stumble. I mean...they don't want to talk about race because they say Christian
readers need something safe to read. By avoiding certain supposed stumbling blocks, they have enabled close-minded folks to stay close-minded.

That's just my opinion. Christian writers write about sex in non-fiction books. Why not write about the weird inner conflicts of sex in fiction books? What's the difference?

Yes, the truth is about letting our light shine: healing the sick, raising the dead, binding up the broken-hearted. We shine the word in dark places. But then we have to show the dark places also so people can recognize the darkness of it. Sex is also a wonderful thing. Why not spotlight it in a story? Christians won't be reading it, probably. But I suspect the non-christian who reads it will see much of the spiritual glory of sexuality. Just me. -C

-C

Interracial love stories and normalcy

I once had a white friend in my writer’s critique group ask me, “Why do you always write about mixed couples? That’s a very bad habit of yours. Can’t you write about normal couples in regular same-race relationships?”

I suppose I could, but I don’t want to. I want to write love stories that heal my soul. I am married to a white man and I want to tell love stories about black women and white men. The typical black woman has seen enough from the media to know that many folks consider black women the bottom rung of beauty and attractiveness and the white woman as the pinnacle. This can be very wounding to the soul. I'm pretty sure this lack of appreciation of our beauty certainly contributes to our habit of medicating ourselves with food. Racism is a cruel thing.

The white writer either did not want to see the importance of my life experiences, felt uncomfortable with interracial relationships, or perhaps (I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt) didn’t realize that by asking me to write in a “normal” way that she was trying to nudge me and my writing toward a little space she considered proper and appropriate.

Actually, let me backtrack a bit. I'm gonna be honest. She was plain racist and uncomfortable with my stories and she was trying to shame me. She belonged to that group of liberals who think they're non-racist and enlightened and deep ("spiritual") but who was really overflowing with all sorts of issues. There, I said it.

She was speaking from her privileged status as a “normal” person, someone who—like the “majority” of people in the world—are in same-race relationships. I suppose I should have challenged her, but the emotional fact is that when among the normal, the non-normal person often forgets how different he or she is. Because of the illness our son endured and other issues, hubby and I have slowly slipped into non-normality. The slippery slide was imperceptible but that's how these things happen. (Heck, I got used to seeing a naked teenager walking through the house!) Anyway, an accusation or call to normality does the trick of getting the non-normal person in line.

The non-normal will always interpret lives (real and fictional) differently than the herd; and the herd, because of majority privilege and because they hang around normal people and generally see normal things, will always consider the non-normal a bit paranoid, touchy, or contrary. But there are enough folks out there who have had life push them toward the abnormal. They will understand writers and mommies like me. And that alone enables me to speak, breathe, write, and interpret freely.

Unfortunately, in that small world (the writing group) that writer friend had a large say. She was quite a mocker and I quickly retreated and therefore did not challenge her interpretation of my “habit.” I kept quiet and seethed at her call to normalcy, knowing that—whatever her wishes—I would write what I wanted to. Being quiet was easy because in a world larger than that writing group I had allies. And I was writing for them.

Wind Follower is an interracial novel, among other things. The characters in the story aren't particularly upset by it. I'm working on Daughters of Men now. In this story, race and interracial marriage also play a part. There are so many different kinds of humans in the novel and yet...in some ways race does matter. After that there's Inheritance, a May-July Relationship between a bi-racial white/Asian young man and an African-American older woman. I'll see how that comes out.

But whatever happens, I won't be ashamed of my stories.

thoughts on windfollower

Hi all:

In one of our emails together, Paula (the editor at Juno) said something to the effect of, "Well, don't get too worried about it. After all, this is not great literature we're writing. It's entertainment."

The funny thing is, I DO think Wind Follower is great literature. It's not a literary book, of course. But my heart is in it. It's an epic. It's got heart and depth and soul. All my issues...from Monua's lament about poverty to Satha having a messy house because one is too depressed and overwhelmed with life to fix it to Loic's miniature weepy fetal position breakdown when all the religious people are telling him what he should do (telling him who he is in fact) instead of listening to him to religious issues. All my soul is in this book.

As I work on DOM -- and don't get me wrong about DOM, I like DOM-- I feel lots of fun. But I don't have the sense of the beautiful permanent literary worthiness of the book. Of course all books feel differently to their authors. DOM will probably be a good book --even if it's not written from my soul's pain-- but I am so hoping the reception the book gets will challenge Paula's words (I wish I had challenged them, since lately I've been going through the decisions in life to Speak my mind because silence means assent.)

I see a lot of the synops for Juno books and I want to read many of them, but not because I think they speak to my spiritual or emotional condition. They just look like good stories. But the stories they tell are stories that aren't epics, stories that don't deal with large racial, religions, and emotional existential questions.

Anyway, I had to get that off my chest. I suppose there are many writers out there who want to write a permanently-loved classic. And being a lit major that's all I think about: great works.

Ah well, we will see. I'm hoping it speaks to a lot of people. It goes to printer around 7/23, I think. Maybe later. Due for release in October.
-C

Tribal photo site

Some of you know how much I love tribal customs. I'm always watching Travel Channel Discovery Channel, etc. I started liking tribalism and anthropology when I was a kid and my mother was in college studying the Yanomamo Tribe...the fierce people.

From then on I was hooked. Marriage customs, courtship customs, death rituals, rite-of-change rituals.

Of course it slipped into my book, Wind Follower which is about four tribes..and which uses Christianity at its most primitive and Scriptural. The Christian mythos is obvious and yet not pushy or preachy. The book will be out soon. Those who love anthropology and folklore and speculative fiction (or weird missionary stories about missionaries battling with shaman) will love it.

In the meantime, check out one of my favorite sites on the internet:

Tribal Photo

Wind Follower update

Hi folks:

Got this from the Juno author update:

*Windfollower, Carole McDonnell - is back from the copy editor; cover is being done now. This one will have an Advance Readers Copy. We will be going ahead and publishing the book soon after (July/August), but the ARCs will be dated officially as October. (This is in order to get reviews. You need a three month lead time.)


Remember also that pre-orders are important so you can go to Amazon or to Borders and pre-order. Those pre-orders help. Paula wrote that she cancelled some books or sent them to POD (instead of offset) because they had few pre-orders. So -- if you're inclined to like multiculti paranormal romance (or if you know someone who likes it) definitely go ahead. Again, it's rooted in the christian mythos but it's not really like much of the Christian fiction one sees. Think folklore/C S Lewis kinda thing. But waaay different. I can't explain it. It's just an odd little book. If you know anyone who might like it, pass the link along. Muchas, muchas gracias.

To buy Wind Follower by Carole McDonnell click here or go to Amazon


Thanks so much. -C