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This blog experiment was made to serve the Alumni of NAF. And now us Alumni are going back. Thanks for hanging out with us!

-k

I maintain the first book an author writes is a therapy book: meaning, intentionally or unintentionally, we write it as part of our own therapy. I may think this because I trained as a marriage and family therapist and tend to view the world through that lens (relax. It’s a strengths-based lens and I’m looking for what’s right with you, not what’s wrong).  I will concede – grudgingly – that the first book written may not be the first book published, but I suspect it is more often than not.

Why? Because writing and completing a book is hard work. Very hard work. Something drives the author to work that hard not only to finish but share his masterpiece, and I posit it is his desire to tell his story in whatever altered form his subconscious dreams up. He may disagree if he wishes, but I will apply Shakespeare’s “the lady doth protest too much, methinks” and he’ll lose anyway.  No offense, gentlemen.

I’ve written in this topic elsewhere, and I’m sure I’ll write about it again, so I’ll move on to my title theme.

What I did not realize before I published is how often a reader approaches my book with an automatic bias. The difference may be that I now hand over a brick with a picture on the cover and a concise little blurb on the back that supposedly sums up the story (it doesn’t, really. No blurb ever does justice to the real story) which allows the reader to form an opinion other than “Good Lord! That’s a 4 inch, two ream, 6 lb binder you’re handing me!” And God bless all of you who took it.

Since I’ve handed over that brick, I’ve heard “Dragon-worshippers? So they’re the bad guys?”, “Ooo, shape-shifters,” and my personal favorite so far, “Blood? You wrote a book with blood in it?” Each of these statements says more about the speaker than me. Why assume dragon-worshippers are bad guys? What makes “shape shifters” stand out? Why is it so surprising I would write about blood? Have you met me?

It’s almost as interesting as the questions and comments I get after the book is read. It’s fascinating to see which parts capture people’s attention, especially when I compare their reactions to what I intended when I wrote it or what I wanted people to take away from it.

TT: It is amazing how we manage to communicate with each other at all. Our separate experiences and focuses are so different, how can my words mean the same thing as your words, and how does that meaning travel through sound or sight and take up residence in your brain in any shape remotely similar to my intention? Wow. Just…wow.

I almost didn’t write this because I fear shutting down those comments and questions that fascinate me so much, like Captain Picard who couldn’t think what to say when he discovered the empath loved listening to his voice. I do hope you’ll keep asking and commenting. It’s my story, after all. I want to tell it.

I have, at times in my life, been at a loss for words. Generally bad times. The most vivid was the year I spent so angry at God all I could say to Him was The Lord’s Prayer. I said it sullenly, but I said it. I was like those disciples who remained after Jesus’ hard teaching turned the crowds away. “Where else can we go?” they asked. “Only You have the truth.” I don’t like you very much, but You’re all I’ve got, so I better stick close, you big meanie. OK, that part wasn’t in the Bible story, but I’m sure some of them were feeling it.

I’m not angry at God (much), but I’m tired. I’ve said everything I know how to say. I’ve pleaded, I’ve begged, I’ve railed and I’ve cried. I don’t have any more words.

I’m watching people I love do stupid things. I’m watching people I care about go through intense trials. I’m fighting my own exhaustion and interrupted schedule and losing. My garden dies for lack of rain, and I find dead sparrows in the parking garage stairwell. Every little pain seems amplified into mortal wounding and I’m tired of talking about it. Even to God.

So, He and I stare at each other. I don’t understand what He’s thinking or doing (I never have), but I’m not going anywhere and neither is He. I’ve said it all. It’s His turn to speak, if He chooses.

I’m listening.

So why do I dread my birthday?

Remember Arthur Dent’s stroke of bad luck in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?  Yeah, my birthdays pretty much go like that.

Like the year I wanted to spend my birthday shopping at a local outdoor mall, and out of nowhere a huge storm hit and we were stuck dodging pouring rain all day.

Or my thirtieth birthday, which was supposed to be a surprise party, but a fight I had with Jeff over the logistics of getting to “dinner” forced him to tell me about it.

A couple years later, my family and I spent my birthday driving back from Tenessee…all day…long, long hours…and had to stay overnight in a complete hole of a hotel.

How I normally look on my birthday.

For my thirty-ninth birthday, we decided to go camping. Beastie 2 came down with a cold. Beastie 1 broke his glasses–both pairs–so we had to delay our leave time to wait on the new pairs to be made.

We also had to drive my inlaws’ truck to the airport as they were coming home from a two-week trip and had left their truck with us. It had gotten egged and we didn’t realize this until we got it to the airport parking lot. More delay trying to scrub dried egg of the door.

It rained on us while we drove to pick up our travel trailer from my inlaws’ house–with our bikes on the back–and the whole time we were hooking the trailer up to the truck. We didn’t get to the campsite until 6:00 pm, all of us starving. And then Jeff had issues with the hitch. Again.

Finally, able to leave the campsite and head out for dinner, my hopes totally set on this awesome Mexican place we’ve been eating at for years and years…had to drive a long way through Orlando traffic to get there…….it’s gone, replaced by something we’d never heard of.

I have no idea what to expect with year “42″ though. But as things have gotten progressively worse over the years, I am having a hard time not panicking. No one has, um, seen any Vogon ships hanging around, have they?

TT: Not sure why I object to the label “high fantasy.” It should appeal to the elitist in me. Maybe it does and that annoys me.

I also had a high enough page count I couldn’t justify adding another two just so people could pronounce made-up words. I made a mistake. Not my first.

Readers appear to be more comfortable with a pronunciation guide. I’ve had three specifically ask for one, and I’ve had two others respond with “Oh, that’s how you say that?”

Yes, that’s how I say that, but it doesn’t have to be the way you say it. I come from a State where creek and crik are the same thing (a tiny running stream, in case you’re not a Kansan). You can pronounce my made-up words any way you like and I don’t mind.

But, for those who absolutely, positively believe the only way to pronounce a made-up word is the way I pronounce it, here ya go:

PRONUNCIATION GUIDE:

Aerion (AIR-ee-on)

Aeriad (A-ree-ADD)

Caissa Ocren (CAY-shuh OH-cren)

Dryad (DRY-ad)

Ehsu (EH-soo)

Flamas (FLAHM-ahs)

Galena (Guh-LAY-nuh)

Gamaliel (Guh-MAY-lee-el)

Golor (GAH-lahr)

Gowan Rudebec (GOW-an Ruhd-a-BECK)

Grambage Garralar (GRAM-badge GAR-uh-lahr)

Indira Sampath (in-DEER-ah SAM-path)

Manarot (MAN-ah-row)

Merritt MacEwan (MARE-it mac-YOU-en)

Naiad (NIGH-ad)

Neriadim (NARE-ee-ah-DEEM)

Oread (OR-ee-ad)

Nauvoo Vehle (NOW-voo VELL-uh)

Radiac (RAY-dee-ack)

Rhami Harvarkoset (RAH-mee HAR-VAR-koh-set)

Shanti (shawn-TEE)

See, Kansans tend to emphasize the first syllable of a two syllable word. That’s really the trick to pronouncing any word in my world. If there’s a word you don’t see up there and want to, leave me a comment. I’ll be happy to tell you how to pronounce it the Kansas way.

As I thought about these things I came to a sad realization. The only anecdotes or funny stories I know of to tell are ALL rantings or complainings about some dumb or idiotic observation I’ve had about the nature of human beings. Or in some cases, the observation of a specific dumb or idiotic human being.

I’m truly bothered by this. Here I am studying to be an advanced teacher of the Bible, maybe one day to lead a church or other ministry, and I can’t think of one positive or uplifting story to tell. I can’t point to the good in human beings. I can’t pass on the encouragement of a story with a happy ending.

I put a lot of darkness in the stories I write. That’s because life is full of darkness. It’s what we know best and it’s what we have to overcome. Nobody has to teach us about the darkness of life. We have to be taught about the light. Nobody has to strive to live in darkness because it’s natural to be that way. We have to strive to live in the light. And that’s why I write from that perspective. I write about the struggle to live in the light and about the harsh reality of how much darkness there is in the world.

Maybe that’s why I have trouble seeing it everyday. I focus too much on what’s going wrong that I don’t see what’s going right. The irony of it is that I’ve always been a glass half-full kind of person. I always expect the best and hope for the most.

What about you? What do you see in the world? Do you have trouble seeing the good in others? Do you focus on what goes wrong or what goes right? Do you recognize a triumph in someone’s life when you see it? Or do you see the stupidity of mankind first? What kind of stories do you tell others?

What do you see everyday? The darkness? Or the light?

-k

The trigger incident involved an author getting a nasty review because he failed to clearly identify his fiction novel as “Christian,” even though three of the tags applied to the novel contained the word “Christian” (I’ll save a rant on the -ehem- silliness of readers for later). The author countered by creating a tongue-in-cheek warning to all that his book might contain material known to incite riots in avowed atheists or something to that nature. Good on him.

The thread bounced around a bit, with some authors being pro-warning and some pro-”undercover Christianity” – as in avoiding any and all trigger words that might cause a Christ-hater to “go off” and stop reading, thus getting some Christianity into the reader by accident, as it were.

Wow. I sound a bit harsh there, don’t I? Guess I have some issues of my own.

I faced this question for the first time when a person I later learned to be an atheist asked me what “Christian fiction” was. He caught me off guard, but I answered, and, I think pretty well for me, a book that expresses a Christian worldview.

I’ll warn you upfront. I’m a Christian. It doesn’t matter what genre I choose to write. My writings will stem from a Christian worldview. Do I mind? No. Will you mind? Maybe. Is that my problem? Absolutely not.

Jesus Himself said the world would hate Him and most people will reject Him. Why should I gritch and moan because they reject me because of Him? I’d rather proclaim Him before men and be cursed by them than be denied by Him before God.

I do have to point out the irony of an atheist complaining about Christian fantasy, though. Isn’t that where all Christian writing should be? In the same genre with false, mythological beings like Ra and Gaia and Zeus? I would think atheists would be thrilled to have Christians writing fantasy. We’re doing half their work for them.

I guess there’s no pleasing some people.

But I wanted to share it here. It is very special to me. It hit me out of the blue, fully formed. And it is a companion story to my novel Finding Angel. Actually, it’s even more related to the sequel, Seeking Unseen, which I’m in the process of editing. Maybe that’s the reason I feel compelled to share…

Well, whatever. Either way, here it is:

“The Artist”

I was six when I began to understand what the whispering was all about. My parents did their best to pretend everything was fine, that I wasn’t different from the rest of them. But children are amazingly aware of their surroundings, and I had an especially keen eye for detail. Unfortunately, an eye for detail isn’t magical.

“It’s got to show up some day,” my dad said, not bothering to keep his voice down. My parents thought I was playing in the back yard as I crouched behind the hedges below the open window.

“Caryn’s nearly seven now, Roger. Her Talent should have shown up years ago.” I heard my mother sniff. “Maybe we should take her to the doctor.”

“No! There’s nothing wrong with her.” A thump like a fist hitting a wooden tabletop. “She can already do magic like everyone else. Her Talent will develop in its own time. We just have to be patient.”

I scooted to the end of the hedge and dashed across the back yard to my tree house. After I climbed inside, I crumpled to the floor and cried. My Talent was never going to show up. I would never have anything more than ordinary magic. It wasn’t fair! Everyone had something they could do better than the rest—why not me?

My father would say, “Magic comes in bits and pieces, Caryn. And the biggest piece is always last.” But I’d known better. My cousin had shown signs of his Talent when he was only six months old. Most of my neighborhood friends were at least showing the beginning stages, like William Kleidon who carved magical wood and changed it to stone without losing the wood’s powers.

I wiped the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand and took a deep breath. My eyes felt puffy, and I didn’t want my parents knowing I’d been crying, so I stayed in the tree house for a while, drawing. Even at six I showed real skill, but, like an eye for detail, being able to draw well isn’t magical either.

By the time I turned eight I’d given up. My Talent would never develop. At least I had my art. I spent every spare moment drawing or painting. It was a release for me, a compulsion. My walls were covered with sketches of plants and animals from the forest. I gave them away to friends and family, and even sold a few in town. Everyone oohed and ahhed over my ability to capture the colors. They said my paintings “popped off the page.” But the praise was always followed by a look of pity.

Around strangers I pretended I was one of those people who liked to keep their Talents secret. I even began to wonder if some of them were pretending, too.

“Don’t be silly,” William said one day as we walked through the forest looking for fallen branches. At ten, he stood a full head taller than me even though his birthday was six months after mine. “It’s just that some people have really weird Talents, or they don’t see the value of them, so they keep quiet. But we’ve all been given gifts, Caryn.” He stopped and looked at me with those bright blue eyes so full of friendship and concern. “Yours is in there somewhere. You just haven’t figured out how to reach in and pull it out.”

My cheeks warmed and I turned away. Why did he have to be so sweet? I didn’t deserve a friend like him, someone whose Talent outshone everyone else’s as far as I was concerned. He had gone beyond turning wood into stone, and could now transform any natural substance into any other. I was jealous and proud of him at the same time.

The flush left my cheeks when I spied a branch half-hidden behind a toadstool. I reached down and grabbed it, and then held it out for William to see.

“This one would be perfect, don’t you think? It looks like Water Maple, and it’s big enough around, isn’t it?”

William’s face widened with a smile that crinkled his eyes. “Yes! If I carve it into a sphere, I can hollow out the middle and transform it to crystal.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” I said, as the flush returned, but on my neck now instead of my cheeks. Sometimes it seemed as if he read my thoughts.

We spoke at the same time then—“A snow globe!”—and William grabbed my hand as we ran to his house.

***

The snow globe sat in a place of honor on my nightstand. The dragon figurine William had put inside it was such a deep purple it appeared black. Until the sun hit it just right, then it burst into iridescent swirls.

I picked up the globe and shook it, then leaned in and watched the tiny flakes settle.

“I’ll be thirteen tomorrow,” I said to the dragon. “Almost a woman.” My throat closed up and I buried my face in my pillow. A woman with no Talent.

My sobbing had barely subsided when my mom stepped into the room.

“Honey,” she said as she laid her hand on my back, “William’s here.”

“Tell him I’ll be right out.” My voice croaked, and my mom squeezed my shoulder.

“Take your time, sweetie. We’ll be downstairs when you’re ready.”

I listened to her soft footsteps as she left my room, and then sat up. Get a grip, Caryn. Who needs a Talent when I have Mom and Dad? And…William. My gaze fell on my latest painting. It hung over my dresser and nearly filled the wall. That would have to do. Not a magical Talent, but talent nonetheless. The corners of my mouth quivered, but I managed a smile and headed downstairs.

My mood lifted when I saw William. He held out a huge, wrapped package, but I ran past it and threw my arms around his neck.

“Whoa,” he said, returning the hug, and then stepped back. His smile crinkled his eyes as always, and my neck grew warm. “Come on, I can’t wait another second for you to open your present.”

I laughed as I ripped the paper, and then gasped when I saw what he’d made for me. The picture frame looked like no wood I’d ever seen before. Different grains and shades of brown swirled together as though made from liquid.

William cleared his throat, and looked down. “I, um, transformed several different kinds of wood into oil, poured it into a mold, and transformed them back again. I had no idea if it’d even work, but…”

“It’s beautiful!” I cried. “And I know just the picture I want to hang in it.” I grabbed his hand and led him up to my room. He laid the frame on my bed while I pulled out my largest sketchbook.

“This is the one.”

I watched him scrutinize the drawing.

“That’s the lily we saw in the forest. I can’t believe you drew that from memory. It looks totally real.”

“Well, I had no choice.” Butterflies flitted around in my stomach and I tried to hide how nervous his gaze made me. I walked over and laid the picture in the middle of the frame. “I could never pick one from the forest. They’re too rare. But I’ve always wanted one.” I adjusted the paper, and looked closely at my drawing.

I squinted. What is that?

“There’s a smudge,” I said, reaching toward the paper. When my hand brushed the picture, my palm tingled and I pulled back. My eyes widened and my ribcage tightened around my lungs.

“What’s wrong,” William asked. He sounded distant. The room tilted.

“N-nothing.”

I reached back down and touched the picture again with the tips of my fingers, and the tingling traveled up to my wrist. I forced air into my lungs and pushed against the paper. There was no resistance. I inched my hand forward until I felt the silky softness of flower petals. It took all my strength to hold my hand in place. I trembled from head to foot.

“Keep going,” William whispered from over my shoulder. The sound of his voice calmed my trembling.

My hand seemed to move forward on its own, as if obeying William’s mind and not mine. I held my breath as my fingers wrapped around the lily.

When I pulled my hand from the picture, the lily remained in my grasp.

“Happy birthday, Caryn,” William said. He grabbed my shoulders and turned me to face him. His eyes held all the sunshine in the world, and his smile made me tremble all over again even as he cupped my hands with his. “I told you, didn’t I? That someday you’d figure out how to pull your Talent out.”

Grown-ups who refuse to be grown-ups is one of my biggest pet peeves. For some reason they seek out the childish drama of life. It’s as if it gives them some kind of crack rush. And they whine. OH they whine. They whine about the unfairness of life and about the meanness of others and about how so-and-so didn’t pay them enough attention.

It’s an obsession. It’s selfish megalomania about the importance of their own trivial lives, without an inkling of ambition to better that life. At some point you’ve got to put the Superman undies and Snow White panties back in the drawer. You’ve got to realize that as an adult, as a parent, there are more important things than yourself.

It’s called maturity, folks. And it’s high time a lot of grown-ups learned what that word means.

We have an immaturity epidemic in our society and in our churches. Children learn how to be adults by the examples of the adults with the greatest influence in their lives. And when those adults, those parents, are really still children in grown-up bodies, what hope do the kids have of becoming mature adults?

And what about the churches? We put the most spiritually immature, biblical untrained, barely out of puberty kids in charge of our youth and we call them “Youth Ministers.” These pseudo-grownups train our youth to be spiritually immature, biblical untrained, and barely out of puberty Christians. It’s no wonder 90% of youth abandon the church after high school. It’s because we’ve got kids teaching kids what it means to be an adult. What we should be doing is seeking out mature and trained leaders to trust with our youth.

It’s high time we had a return to maturity and high expectations for adults. When we see childishness in an adult, instead of shaking our heads and walking away, we need to get in their faces and tell them to GROW UP!

I’m tired of putting up with childish adults. I shouldn’t have to pander to their selfishness just to keep peace. I think I’ll go collect me a stash of adult underwear and panties to hand out to childish adults whenever they’re being especially immature. And when they ask me what they’re for, I’ll say, “You’re too old for the cartoony stuff. They’re cutting off the blood flow to your grown-up parts. Go change.”

That’s my rant for today. If it offends you, good. Maybe you’ll take the hint.

-k

TT: Yes, Kat, this is why the scene with the clothesman in Elementals is so long.

I read Louis L’Amour, who also manages a fair bit of romance in his westerns. I learned to admire manly, independent men with grit under their fingernails and dirt on their pants. Helps to know how to ride a horse and wrestle a bull, too.

Anne McCaffrey came next, a fantasy/sci-fi writer who always managed to sneak a little boy-meets-girl into her stories about fighting dragons and artificial intelligence. Danger might fall from the sky, but men and women will always find time to woo and marry.

Through it all, George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis’s “master,” instilled a love of fairy and natural wisdom that masquerades as magic in a cold, unfeeling world.

I like a little romance in my action/adventure/mystery novels. I like the energy a feisty exchange between genders can bring to a story. I especially like showing that love is more than chemistry, more than circumstances, and more than fate. Love is a choice, and, more often than not, love is a hard choice.

I hope you’ll forgive me if you find a little romance in my books. I try to keep it on the side.