Stephen Lawhead may just have the perfect author’s name, and the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour is featuring his new book, Scarlet, this week.
Since I was at an N. T. Wright retreat at Laity Lodge, I couldn’t post until today. (”Bishop Tom” is one of my heroes, and this weekend was about as wonderful as I could have dreamed. We talked about everything from theology to poetry to fantasy. After I dropped him and Mrs. Wright at the airport, I cried.)
Speaking of fantasy, I’m supposed to be reviewing page one of Lawhead’s fantasy of King Raven.
I’ve been emailing Austin Boyd back and forth a bit this week about his blog tour, trying to get his impression of its value. He gave me permission to post his comments here on my blog.
To set the context, Austin Boyd’s book The Return was featured on the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour two months ago. (Go here to read my blog’s Page One review of the book from the tour.) Austin has a little bit of perspective on the event, and I asked him the hard question:
Now that the dust has settled on the CSFF blog tour, I’d be curious to hear how you felt about it.
Yesterday, I met Bob the Tomato. And Mr. Lundt. And Pa Grape. Any American Christian with kids my age, probably knows those names. They may even know the name Phil Vischer, the founder of Big Idea.
At the Religion Newswriter’s Association Conference last night, Big Idea and Lovell-Fairchild previewed The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything. There’s an embargo on reviews, so I’m not going to review the movie or share spoilers.
I was talking with John Leax via email today. One of the perks of being editor for TheHighCalling.org is that I get to work with some of the best writers and poets in the country. If you don’t know Leax’s work, you must check it out.
He also edits an interesting blogzine called Stone Work Journal, that published two of my poems in their last issue. Eventually, they hope to host audio content for the poems as well.
All that to say, it’s been awhile since I posted a poem here. So here’s a poem and a podcast of me reading it:
Yesterday, I wrote my thoughts on The Return‘sfront cover, back cover, endorsements, and stuff.
Today, I’d like to do a quick community review of page one. As Camy Tang said recently, most readers give a book a page or two to hook the reader. She figures that’s about 20 seconds.
To be fair, I should judge The Returnby a little more than its cover, right? But we do need to start at the beginning with…
1) The cover
As a science fiction fan, this cover gets my attention. I recognize that photo from NASA’s archives. Looks like a genuine Rover shot, but I’m not really sure.
My feeling that The Return could actually be good, sound, technical science fiction is reinforced by the blurb on …
To be fair, she’s in the first grade now, but she did begin reading chapter books last year. I was the typical proud dad, but I only recently realized what most kids are reading at her age. The contrast is startling.
I guess I could pat myself on the back about all of the wonderful things we did, including pass down some apparently awesome genes. But that’s obnoxious, and probably untruthful.
So instead of gloating, I thought I would talk about the easy things we do that have probably helped our kids learn how to read. Most of them are accidental. Here they are in no particular order: Continue reading →
Here it is Wednesday, and I’m just now getting to the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy blog tour! My apologies to everyone for the weak showing this round. All that to say George Bryan Polivka’s The Legend of the Firefish looks awesome. He’s got a new blog, too.
I thought it would be fun to play acquisitions editor based on the first page. What if I got this first page as an unsolicited manuscript? What works? What questions does it raise?
I’ve been emailing 
To be fair, I should judge 
Here it is Wednesday, and I’m just now getting to the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy blog tour! My apologies to everyone for the weak showing this round. All that to say George Bryan Polivka’s 
