Terry Brooks Comes to Town!

Yesterday was a great day for several reasons, one of which being that Nadine and I attended an event at the Carmel Barnes and Noble bookstore featuring NY Times Best Selling author Terry Brooks.  Terry Brooks put epic fantasy on the literary map with his 1977 publication of The Sword of Shanarra.  It stayed on the list for five months.  He has written twenty-two additional novels.

Terry spent the first hour talking to us about the writing process (see video) and then read from an upcoming novel.  He also took questions from the crowd of nearly 100 people.  We stood in line for another hour for him to sign six of his books from my library.  As he did so, we talked about writing.  I told him that I had been writing fantasy and science fiction since 1984 and that his style of bringing different plot lines together with cliffhanger chapter endings helped me in structuring both novels I have self-published.  He nodded and said, "You need to write what you like to read.  That's why you won't find any Tom Bombadils [e.g.J.R.R. Tolkien] in my stories."  Then we stood together for a picture.

Terry has created two fantasy universes: Shanarra and Landover.  He said that he is giving ten more years to finish what he wants to say.  With plans for two movies in the works (Magic Kingdom of Landover and Elfstones of Shanarra) the next ten years might be the best yet!

Check out his website: www.TerryBrooks.net

 Terry having fun with his audience

 Making a point

 Making another point

 Getting ready to read from Bloodline Quest (out March 2013)

 Signing my copy of Ilse Witch

 I ask an interesting (or stupid) question!

I amaze Terry Brooks with an insightful comment

 Terry's glad to be finished signing books for me

 

The Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


My first read of a Meltzer book.  Not a long book and fast paced.  Read 100 pages before I had to turn in.  Finished it the next day.

Book of Lies is a well-researched novel that touches on so many inter-related human themes: religion, father and sons, grief, justice, pop culture, history, politics, war.  The moment I felt loaded up in one area, Meltzer shifted to a different focus while moving the plot along well.  The violence, while shocking because I came to care for just about every character in the story, was not gruesome.

It worked for me on a lot of levels, such as helping me understand and even empathize (a little) with the bad guy(s).  Now I have a deeper take on Cain (see Genesis), of how God responds to sin, and one aspect of the immortal life that God wants for us all.



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River of Heaven by Lee  Martin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I heard Lee Martin at the Midwest Writers' Workshop in Muncie, IN this July and knew I wanted to get into his writing.  This is not the kind of book that I normally read, but after reading it I wonder why I wouldn't.  I quickly cared about the characters and the small town setting he created.  I also came to care about my own life in a deeper and more hopeful way.  I saw it as a great treatment of how one's spirituality develops and deforms in relationship with other people.

Martin's writing style is so moving and colorful.  Here are some examples:

"I wondered what it would be like to be so in love with your life that you could reach out to strangers that way." (108)

"This is the home of a man who has lost faith and has decided that the world can go on without him." (113)

"One we know the hidden life, the secrets someone carries, how can it not be ours?  How can it not be something we live? . . .My life used to be so simple . . .Now here are all these people.  Now I have all their stories." (133)

"It's enough to make me glad for all the days and months and years that have added up to this." (147)

"It takes just the nearness of people to make you feel there may be a good reason for all we suffer." (198)





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Mystery Writing and the Christian Hope

One the workshops I attended today at the Midwest Writers Conference was about the mystery novel.  The presenter's name was Terrance Faherty, a mystery writer from Indianapolis.  I learned a lot about a genre I seldom read.  But it was what he said about the kind of ending that makes for an excellent reading experience.  The ending of a well-written mystery novel "sends a shockwave that runs back through all you have read and changes the way you see everything.  All the pieces come together in a satisfying way."

As a Christian I immediately thought of one aspect of my eternal hope.  I Corinthians 13:12 says that when a believer sees Jesus in the next life one of the experiences will be "knowing fully, even as we are fully known."  Can we see God has the writer of the mystery we are living and that faith means that we live every day in quiet certainty that we will have the joy of seeing in a moment how everything contributes to our happy ending/new beginning?

"Behold, I am making all things new!"

And our story continues.

First Timer @ Midwest Writer's Conference

The Olympic Games of 2012 open tonight in London and I feel like I'm in the running for a medal in writing.  I am taking my writing game to the next level by attending my first REAL writing conference.  I'm feeling the burn!  I hadn't planned to pitch my novel Wavelength but when the agents opened up more two minute slots, I said "Why shouldn't I?  If not now, when?"

It seems like I had to go against my tendency to devalue what I do.  No.  It's not that.  It's fear.  Fear of someone else not liking or approving what I've done.  Fear of my creation being snubbed or discarded.  I chose to not live in fear of "what if".  I've decided to live in expectation of "what could be."


I had worked last night creating a pitch on my computer.  I was planning to make the pitch on Saturday, but the agent suddenly announced he would see the extra signups today.  One big problem -- my laptop's battery was going dead.  I fired it up praying that it would last.

It didn't.  I sat in front of the agent [a handsome 20 something man from New York] and condensed my plot line and main characters into no more than ten sentences.  I think I did it in less than six.  I answered the one question he asked.  Then he reached into his jacket pocket and handed me a card.  "I'd like to see how you set this up.  Send me a query and three chapters."  I took the card, said thank you, and tried not to dance as I left the library of the Alumni Center at Ball State University.

Go for the gold!  Even if the world doesn't give you a medal, you'll never regret believing you belong on the track.

Here's a link to the conference.  http://www.midwestwriters.org

Look for me.  I know they took my picture!

The Moscow Option: An Alternative Second World War by David Downing

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The author presents an alternate scenario to WWII.  The main differences are the German decision to attack Moscow directly and the Japanese discovery that the United States had broken their military code.  The German aspect seems more believable than the Japanese account.  I felt that the book sometimes got bogged down as too many pages were given to minute moves of army units.  I was more interested in seeing the bigger picture and understanding the political, economic and industrial reasons why certain campaigns succeeded while others did not. Contrary to the advertising script, this is not about a world where Hitler reigned supreme.  I wish the author had expanded his epilogue to describe the circumstances of the retreat of Nazi Germany and Japan.  It would be interesting to see his speculation as to how the alternate post-war world would have looked.



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Brennan Manning has been someone whose books God has used to form my life.  Here is a quote from his book Abba's Child (p. 110). May it bless you too.

"Without deliberate awareness of the present risenness of Jesus, life is nonsense, all activity useless.  Apart from the risen Christ we live in a world of impenetrable mystery and utter obscurity -- a world without meaning . . . a world of inexplicable futility.

"Living in the awareness of the risen Jesus is not a trivial pursuit for the bored and lonely or a defense mechanism enabling us to cope with the stress and sorrow of life.  It is the key that unlocks the door to grasping the meaning of existence.

"All day and every day we are being reshaped into the image of Christ.  Everything that happens to us is designed to this end.  Nothing that exists can exist beyond the pale of His presence, nothing is irrelevant to it, nothing is without significance in it . . .Through union with Him nothing is wasted, nothing is missing.  There is never a moment that does not carry eternal significance -- no action that is sterile, no love that lacks fruition, and no prayer that is unheard.  "We know that by turning everything to their good God cooperates with all those who love him." (Romans 8:28).  The apparent frustrations of circumstances, seen or unforseen, of illness, of misunderstandings, even of our own sins, do not thwart the final fulfillment of our lives hidden with Christ in God."

Yours for the journey.