It’s that time finally! The January Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour. Whooo Hoo. I’m pumped. I’m excited. I’m proud to be a geek.
In preparation for this month, Wayne Batson and I created a little podcast on the phone: Good Word Editing Podcast #3 - Interview With a “Righteous Fantasy” Author! It’s exciting just to type out the title.
There’s a special treat at the end for READERS when Wayne reads ”The Betrayal,” a powerful excerpt from The Door Within—with voices and everything.Â
Wayne also talks about . . .
- What it was like to find himself on the CBA Young Adult bestseller list.Â
- His incredible speed as a writer—the completely attainable and humanly normal 2 pages per hour.
- The Door Within web site and his blog
- His amazon plog and his recommended “righteous fantasy adventures.â€
- His definition of Christian fantasy.
- The place where he hides himself “when I really need to pound the pages.â€
You’ll even hear him take a stand on the sometimes controversial question, “To Potter or not to Potter?”
“Christians are unfortunately gaining way too much of a reputation for being hypocrites. When Peter Jackson did the Lord of the Rings movies, the Christian community jumped on the bandwagon. ‘Hurray for Lord of the Rings!’ Christians were cheering on Gandalf and his use of magic on the same public talk shows where they were decrying Harry Potter. Maybe there are some specific differences that people can point to, but I haven’t seen them.”
I know thirty minutes is a long time to stream, so consider downloading the MP3 and swinging it over into itunes to listen on your way home from work tonight. Or just point out the interview to your young adult READERS at home, they’ll know how to handle the technical stuff. Or turn off the boob tube tonight and tune into some homegrown thoughtful entertainment from, um, me. (Ok, that was probably pushing it, right?)
(Rebecca, surely you noticed how much I’m trying to appeal to READERS!)
Tomorrow I’ll highlight a few of my favorite bloggers on the tour and post more reader friendly material about Wayne Batson’s work.
Don’t wait for me, though. Feel free to visit some of these other bloggers on the tour yourself:
Jim Black
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
Frank Creed
Gene Curtis
Chris Deanne
Janey DeMeo
Tessa Edwards
April Erwin
Linda Gilmore
Beth Goddard
Marcus Goodyear (duh)
Todd Michael Greene
Leathel Grody
Karen Hancock
Katie Hart
Sherrie Hibbs
Sharon Hinck
Joleen Howell
Kait
Karen
K. D. Kragen
Tina Kulesa
Lost Genre Guild
Kevin Lucia
Kevin Lucia’s The Bookshelf Reviews 2.0 - The Compendium
Rachel Marks
Shannon McNear
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Caleb Newell
Eve Nielsen
John Otte
Robin Parrish
Cheryl Russel
Hannah Sandvig
Mirtika Schultz
James Somers
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Daniel I. Weaver
10 comments ↓
Can’t wait to see more of your “reader friendly” stuff in the next couple of days (podcasts don’t work for me)!
Oh no, you are really missing out then. Podcasts are just another way to hear writers read their own work! The Writer’s Block from KQED. Audible.com. Writer’s on Writing. All of these heavily emphasize writer’s work. The last one also talks business, but almost always ends with an excerpt.
Michael Hyatt has some great stuff about this over on his blog for Thomas Nelson.
Yeah, I know I’ll have to get on the podcast wagon eventually… it just seems like so much work, you know?
For years I was just too cheap. Then my parents bought a new car, and the dealership gave them an ipod shuffle. They asked if I wanted it and I did. The price was right!
Apple has made it pretty easy to get sucked in. Just plug it in and they hook you.
Once you buy it, of course.
Hi, I’m doing the rounds of the CSFF blog tour participants (even though they left me off the list) and you’ve got some pretty good stuff even though I don’t really know from podcasts. Liked your poem on the previous page even though it’s not weird enough for my taste…
God bless
Marcus, thanks again for the AWESOME opportunity. It was fun to interview in that fashion, and getting a chance to do a reading ROCKED.
I’ll be around all tour long, so if anyone has any questions, fire away.
Mark, I’m VERY impressed. You’ve done an outstanding job. Our first Podcast! I love it. Of course, I haven’t figured out yet how to listen to it, but I’ll make every effort. You’ve motivated me. And you are absolutely right–target YA audience will know and will love to have this connection with an author.
Thanks so much for such a great addition to the tour.
Becky
Rebecca, you make me laugh. Don’t worry about the podcast part of it. Just follow the link to gabcast, click on #3, and use the mp3 player in the righthand sidebar.
In the next few weeks, I may apply to itunes for them to offer my podcast for free. I’m still debating. (There aren’t many editing podcasts, though.)
Wayne, you are one of the most generous writers I have worked with. Guys like you just make me happy. Be sure to listen to my daughter’s unfiltered response to the first bit we read together. She’s six, perhaps a little young. But I don’t think I did any damage. : ) We may wait a bit to read more, though.
Christianbook.com recommends the trilogy for ten and up. Wayne, I’m curious what you think about that.
Nissa, I’m glad you liked yesterday’s poem and I’ll try to remember to add you to the list of folks tomorrow.
Generally, my poetry tends not to be weird at all. After getting an MA in English, I just got tired of poetry that made its audience work too hard. (I don’t think yours does by the way–it’s fun.)
I guess in my poetry, I strive for something like a cross between Billy Collins, Elizabeth Bishop, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Speaking of awesome, Wayne. Hopkins is AWESOME.