Find yourself in a better story
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A Review – The Enclave (Day 2)
The Kendall-Jakes Longevity Institute is a literal monument to science, creativity, and the ability of man to rise above his limitations: a black glass ziggurat in the Arizona desert, labs and conference rooms interspersed with rainforest atriums, coffee bars, and incredible views. True, the Institute’s director, the globe-trotting, womanizing Parker Swain, once fell out of…
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The Enclave: CSFF Blog Tour
Books–stories themselves–come in so many shades and textures and ways. Some books are lush, gorgeous, enriching. Some are dense but necessary. Some, like The Enclave by Karen Hancock, are just plain riveting. It took me all of about two chapters to be sucked thoroughly into The Enclave, guessing at its mysteries, marveling at its setting,…
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wind
The wind had a secret. All across the Seventh World it blew, whispering, shouting, singing its wild way in the far northern mountains and fjords; it danced the new-growing leaves and flowered boughs in Galce and the vineyards of Italya. It whistled through hollows and secret places in the Eastern Lands and skipped across the…
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A Review – Vanish (Day 2)
Conner Hayden: divorced lawyer struggling to relate to his teenaged daughter. Mitch Kent: tattooed mechanic on the eve of proposing to his girlfriend. Helen Krause: aging career woman and lonely ex-model. Three people with nothing in common — except that each is hiding a secret. Thunder rumbled louder now, low and sustained. Flashes of lightning…
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Vanish: CSFF Blog Tour
Over dinner recently my cousins and I got into a discussion about why anyone would read a book twice. One declared that she has never done so: “You read books to find out what happens, and once you know what happens, there’s no point in reading it again.” Others disagreed, including me, and the whole…
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Passages: Crystal-Clear Awake
I read Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising Sequence over ten years ago, but long after I had forgotten the details, its mood still lingered in my memory. It’s no wonder, with atmospheric writing like this. In this scene from The Dark Is Rising, eleven-year-old Will wakes up in a time that is not his own.…
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The Unpredictable Power of Prayer – Tuck (Day 3)
On Monday I promised to wrap up the CSFF tour for Stephen R. Lawhead’s Tuck by writing about "Deux ex machina , highly improbable happy endings, and the marvelous, unpredictable power of prayer." It is very late now, and I’m typing in the dark at the end of a long day that ran away with…
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A Review – Tuck (Day 2)
What we know now as legend, old and familiar as the dusty books we read as children, began in the dark distance of the past as something else—as some truth we’ve changed until we remember things that never were and forget those that really happened. For every legend we love, another story lies buried somewhere,…
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Tuck – CSFF Blog Tour
As a writer, I’m commonly asked who my influences are. And ever since I was pulled heart over heels into The Paradise War , oh, many years ago now, I’ve named as chief among them Stephen R. Lawhead. In setting, in mood, in battle scenes, and in a sort of mythic vision of Christianity, he…
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Writing an Epic: An Interview with Marilyn Burns of Pendragon
Before I’d even seen Pendragon: Sword of His Father, I knew I wanted to interview its creators. Marilyn Burns, who stars as Wenneveria in the film but also handled other film creation aspects — from cowriting the score to designing costumes to helping with a million logistical details — was kind enough to grant me…