Levels of Maturity

What do a crawling baby, a kid reading his first book, and teen with a new permit have in common?

That’s right—they’re all maturing.

It’s part of life, a part of growing up and a part of growing older. Sure, the maturing might not be always in the same way. But we all do it, and it affects our perceptions of the world. That’s why it’s important to consider our level of maturity when creating guidelines.

As a result, during the next few weeks (four to be exact, if I don’t get long-winded), we will be considering our maturity as it pertains to our perspective of fiction. We will look at the four basic levels we each mature through (infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood), and consider these four levels within the two arenas that affect our fiction habits the most: mental/emotional capacity and spiritual development.

CSFF Tour: The Wilderking Trilogy, Part I

Title: The Bark of the Bog Owl

Series: The Wilderking Trilogy #1

Author: Jonathan Rogers

Genre: Mid-grade (8-12 years) Adventure

Excerpt from Chapter 1, “The Bark of the Bog Owl,” of The Bark of the Bog Owl:

Holding the stiff palmetto paper between ink-stained fingers, Aidan admired his letter one more time before rolling it and putting it back in his side pouch. The mail wagon wouldn’t be by for another couple days, and he thought it best to keep the letter on hand in case another postscript came to him.

Besides being an avid letter-writer, Aidan Errolson was a warrior and an adventurer. He lived to ride with King Darrow’s armies. He thrilled to hear the clank of plate armor, the bright ring of a sword unsheathed. He would rather sleep on a bedroll in a battle camp than in the finest bed in the finest castle in all of Corenwald.

At least, that’s who he was on the inside. On the outside, Aidan was a shaggy-headed shepherd boy—a twelve-year-old bundle of knees and elbows in a homespun tunic and leather sandals. He had never had any real adventures. Being the son of one of Corenwald’s great landholders, Aidan lived a comfortable and settled life. And that, he believed, was the one great injustice of his otherwise happy existence.

A 12-year-old shepherd boy yearning for adventure gets more than he bargained for when an old man proclaims him the prophesied Wilderking.

The Writing: I have very few complaints about the writing. Both the beginning and the epilogue are unimpressive, and I felt discombobulated at times by the omniscient voice that does some head-hopping. But I immediately identified with Aidan, his longing for adventure, and the 12-year-old confidence that he can take on the world—even if that doesn’t match present reality.

Humor flavors The Bark of the Bog Owl without detracting from it, and even though this story is a very close parallel to the familiar account of David, Mr. Rogers presents the plot in such an engaging and surprisingly suspenseful manner that I kept turning the pages long after I would have normally put a similar Bible retelling down.

The Story: This is an unmistakable parallel of David, from Aidan’s ability to compose songs to the fact he carries bread and cheese to his brothers at war. Therefore, The Bark of the Bog Owl carries many of the same wonderful themes as the Bible story in a manner no more graphic, and as a whole, no more preachy. Finally, the closest thing to “magic” in this fantasy world (for those of you sensitive about such) is the prophetic ability of the Samuel-like character.

The Summary: It’s hard to find a safer read than this that is as entertaining. While not without its flaws, The Bark of the Bog Owl is clean, suspenseful, funny, and only marginally preachy, providing a fun fantasy for all ages.

Rating: 4.3 out of 5

Can't wait to read it? Order it here now!

(Check out the reviews for Book 2 and Book 3.)

Starring Jonathan Rogers!

Welcome to the October Christian science-fiction and fantasy blog tour!

We are highlighting Jonathan Rogers and the first book of his mid-grade series, The Bark of the Bog Owl. A Ph.D. with six kids, Jonathan Rogers retells the ancient story of David with humor and an American accent.

I’ll be posting a full review of The Bark of the Bog Owl later this week, but in the meantime take a glance at what the other bloggers are saying (links listed below) and stop by the website of Mr. Rogers. Then check back during the next two weeks for my normal Friday reviews for my thoughts on the last two books of the Wilderking Trilogy.

The other bloggers this month:

Brandon Barr, Jim Black, Justin Boyer, Grace Bridges, Amy Browning, Jackie Castle, Valerie Comer, CSFF Blog Tour, D. G. D. Davidson, Chris Deanne, Janey DeMeo, Merrie Destefano or Alien Dream, Jeff Draper, April Erwin, Linda Gilmore, Marcus Goodyear, Andrea Graham, Jill Hart, Katie Hart, Sherrie Hibbs, Christopher Hopper, Becca Johnson, Jason Joyner, Karen, Dawn King, Mike Lynch, Rachel Marks, Karen McSpadden, Melissa Meeks, Rebecca LuElla Miller, Eve Nielsen, John W. Otte, Lyn Perry, Deena Peterson, Rachelle, Cheryl Russel, Ashley Rutherford, Hanna Sandvig, James Somers, Steve Trower, Speculative Faith, Donna Swanson, Daniel I. Weaver, Laura Williams, and Timothy Wise.

The Sword of Lyric, Part II

Title: The Restorer's Son

Series: The Sword of Lyric #2
Author: Sharon Hinck

Genre: Adult Fantasy/Alternate Reality

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Restorer’s Son:

“Hills of Hazor take you,” I swore for at least the tenth time since first light. My sword hacked at thick underbrush, but when I shouldered my way forward, a twig snapped back to hit my face. I cursed the day I’d met the last Restorer. It was because of her that I was battling through this forsaken forest below Cauldron Falls. My blade deserved a more substantial enemy.

A squint-eyed badger rambled out from a thornbush and paused to sniff the air. It bristled and ducked back under cover. Wise plan. I was hungry. Stinging beetles landed on me from the low-hanging branches overhead. I swatted them away and stalked onward.

Why hadn’t I convinced Tristan to leave her in Shamgar when she first turned up? A witness to his crime, and he had brought her to our refuge in the deserted city. Typical. He was a naïve idiot sometimes.

She hadn’t looked very threatening that day—rain-soaked, bloody, and unconscious. If only I’d known then how much trouble she was capable of causing. What was that old say? Don’t judge a rizzid’s menace until you see its teeth.

An outcast is chosen for a role he doesn’t want, to serve the One he can’t stand or escape.

The Writing: Clean, straightforward, and engaging, even better than Restorer—what else is there for me to say about the writing of Restorer’s Son? Okay, maybe the title is a bit misleading. Maybe the plot and characters aren’t spectacular like in some stories. But in many ways, that is part of the charm of the story.

Its unassuming air simply draws you in, and you let it, thinking you’ll put down after one chapter and get back to the work you’re supposed to be doing. But one chapter becomes two, then ten, and suddenly you realize an hour or two has passed, but you can’t put it down now because the characters are in the middle of a swordfight and what’s going to happen to this character—who is an absolute rogue, but you wouldn’t wish what’s happened to him on your worst enemy and in a strange way you understand exactly what he’s going through and it hurts and things are only getting worse and…

Well, you get the idea.

The Story: I was impressed with the spiritual depth and emotion in Restorer. Restorer doesn’t hold a light cube to what Ms. Hinck has done in Restorer’s Son. She deals so openly and in such a real way with the struggles of the Christian life. No perfect images here. Just real characters who deal with the raw emotions we all combat, saying and doing the things we’ve all wanted to do at one point or another—even if we were too “Christian” to admit it—and the God who sees us through it all.

Summary: I highly recommend this story, even more than the first. Great emotion, great adventure, great spiritual depth, and good, solid writing—what more can you ask for? Easy enough the uninitiated, detailed enough for the fantasy aficionado, Restorer’s Son is an excellent read for teen and adult alike.

Rating: 4.5 of 5

(For the review of Book 1, click here or check out Book 2 here.)

On My Bookshelf

To learn to write, writers must do two things: write—and read.

So what does a fantasy/sci-fi writer like me read? Well, the answers might surprise you. Here are ten books in my stack, either being read or slated to be read soon:

• Restorer’s Son by Sharon Hinck (Adult alternate reality fantasy, CBA)
• Crimson Eve by Brandilyn Collins (Adult suspense, CBA)
• The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner (YA Greek Mythology, ABA)
• Revelations of a Single Woman by Connally Gilliam (Adult nonfiction Christian living, CBA)
• Scarlet by Steven Lawhead (Adult medieval fantasy, CBA)
• The Nephilim Seed by James Scott Bell (Adult thriller, CBA)
• Time Lottery by Nancy Moser (Adult fiction, CBA)
• Reluctant Burglar by Jill Elizabeth Nelson (Adult mystery, CBA)
• The Kindling by Jennifer Armstrong and Nancy Butcher (YA apocalyptic fiction, ABA)
• The Jamestown Adventure: Accounts of the Virginia Colony, 1605-1614 Edited by Ed Southern (Adult nonfiction history, ABA)

That should keep me busy for a while, don’t you think?

Maturity and Personal Limitations: What’s the difference?

A four-year-old cannot reach the highest kitchen cupboards. An 84-year-old gives up her driver’s license due to poor eyesight. A new Christian gifted in teaching learns under the tutelage of another before taking on his own class.

In each case, maturity and personal limitations cross, to the point where it’s sometimes hard to tell where one ends and another begins. Therefore, I thought it apropos that we start with a basic definition of each, to help guide us through our coming study.

Maturity: Progressive levels of growth which most people pass through.

Maturity includes emotional, mental, and spiritual development. We all start out as babies, grow into children, mature throughout the teen years, and finally reach adulthood. Each of these stages comes with special problems and freedoms.

Likewise, when we become Christians, none of us start out as fully mature, adult Christians. Rather we begin as babies on milk and mature until we can eat the meat of Scripture. And like our emotional and mental development, each stage of growth comes with special problems and freedoms.

Personal Limitations: Special problem areas specific to an individual.

This covers basically anything else not marked out by the other two areas. These gray spots are generally okay for most people, but are wrong for you due to a personal variable. After all, God didn’t make any two people exactly alike—even twins will have different personalities.

Most of these variables can be divided into four basic categories:

• Relational Basis: gender, marriage and family status (e.g. a male has a different perspective than a female; singles face different temptations than happily married couples.)

• Culture: occupation and location (e.g. a housewife in Utah will be sensitive to different issues than an actor on Broadway or a rancher in Montana.)

• Past Experiences: anything you’ve experienced in the past (e.g. someone with a history of abuse or dabbling in witchcraft will need extra protection when reading fiction with those topics.)

• Personality: Quirks, gifts, weakness, strengths, etc. (e.g. an overactive imagination, a tendency toward a certain type of addiction, a gift of discernment or knowledge.)

As you can already see, these categories crisscross each other—maturity affects marriage status (or am I the only one who thinks six-year-olds marrying isn’t a good idea?), and marriage status affect past experiences, and past experiences help shape personality and can in turn influence occupational choice. However, for the sake of clarity, we will study each area separately in the coming weeks.

Alpha Centauri

Title: Alpha Centauri

Author: Robert Siegel

Genre: Mid-grade (8-12) fantasy

Excerpt from Chapter 1, “Canters,” of Alpha Centauri:

As their headlights rose and fell on the fog, Becky strained to see beyond the edge of the road. It was an hour since they’d dropped down off the motorway into pockets of fog, which soon spread to a blanket. The glittering cat’s-eye markers were missing from the roadside, and only an occasional ghostly tree or fence showed they were still on course.

Two hours ago they had left London for the wilds of Surrey. The suddenness with which the English landscape changed was exciting to an American. One moment you were in the heart of a modern city and almost the next in country that looked as it had hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years ago. Especially in the fog! Becky flinched a little as an enormous black limb reached out for her. Things didn’t look the same in the fog. Trees swept by in grotesque postures. Hills and houses stared sinisterly at their passing car. At times the car seemed to float in an ocean which cast up before it shapes and faces from the depths of time.

She was glad when her father broke the silence: “I hope Charlie leaves the lights on, or we’ll miss the place.” Charlie was an old friend of her father’s, a fellow American who had settled in Surrey years back. She’d met him briefly in London. A month ago, Charlie had asked them down to his farm for this weekend, but since then they’d heard nothing from him.

A young American girl rides back in time to ancient England and the impending destruction of centaurs.

The Writing: Alpha Centauri is a clean, straightforward story. No phenomenal twists, no fabulous characters. Not that either of these aspects is bad. The characters are likeable… but predictable. What you see is what you get.

Likewise, the plot is pretty conventional. The beginning is very slow pace, but gradually picks up tension before slowing again past the book’s mid-point. One set of tests for the protagonist between that and the end is rather anticlimactic. Nonetheless, tension is regained and the ending is appropriately satisfying.

The Story: There is not much to say about themes, and the spiritual thread is nearly nonexistent (which isn’t all bad, since it eliminates preachiness). The story, since it is about centaurs, is steeped in mythology, and as a consequence, has some questionable retellings about the beginning of the world and the rise of evil. It has is a bit heavy-handed on the common environmental thought that man is evil and nature is good, even though the later is also been corrupted by sin. However, it’s not prominent enough to weight heavily against the story.

Summary: It’s an interesting afternoon read, but don’t go out of your way to find it. And despite the concerns listed above, I consider the story safe reading for mid-grade readers (8-12 years) and up.

Rating: 3.3 of 5

The Guideline Triangle

Fiction guidelines form a triangle.

At the bottom is the Bible. Immoveable, this baseline provides the foundation of the triangle. If you try to change this, the whole triangle with shift and likely fall apart. We have laid this baseline in the past weeks through a detailed study of Philippians 4:8.

Built on this baseline are the other two sides of the triangle, which we will be looking at in the coming weeks. These two sides are maturity and personal limitations. Unlike the baseline, these sides can and will vary in length, size, and proportion for one simple reason: no two people are the same.

Sometimes one line will be longer. Sometimes they will be equal. But together your maturity and personal limitations will shift as one side accommodates for the other, leaving room for personality, culture, and growth.

Together these three lines provide a safety net. On the inside of the triangle lie the stories safe for you. On the outside, the questionable. This doesn’t mean that you never venture out of your triangle. Nor does it mean that the triangle itself doesn’t change. In fact, you will need to occasionally adjust the lines of maturity and personal limitations, anchored by the unchanging Biblical baseline, because who you are today is not who you were nor who you will be.

But this triangle provides an island of safety in the midst of the strong currents of fiction, a point of reference to keep you from being swept away.

Beating Post-Conference Blues

You go to a conference, get all revved up, take pages of notes, make friends and contacts, come home, and… thump, everything falls apart. You don’t want to write, don’t want to think about writing, don’t want to think about how you don’t want to think about writing.

Welcome to post-conference blues.

I was fortunate this year because I didn’t battle the blues, but I have in the past and frankly, it stinks. So when the topic came up in one of my writing e-mail lists, my mind started churning: What did I do differently this time?

And the answer is nothing.

That is, I did no writing, no brainstorming, no trying to apply what I learned or frantically fixing up the proposal requested. For a week after the conference, I rested, restocking the emotional, metal, and physical reserves drained by the conference. I did a bit of journaling about the conference itself. Spent time with relatives. Watched some television. Slept hard. Ate chocolate.

It worked.

By the time I reached home, I felt refreshed. A day-long writing retreat with two close writing friends a couple days later provided the final kick-start I needed, and now I’m back into schedule, writing several hours a day.

And that beats the blues any day.

Ten Conference Lessons

1. A two-bed hotel room will barely fit two dozen science-fiction and fantasy authors/fans.

2. Even if you don’t understand what the speaker is saying, take lots of notes and try applying the tips when you get home. Sometimes it will make more sense away from conference stress. Or not.

3. Never make your first shift at the bookstore during the pre-book signing rush.

4. Though pitching does get easier, sometimes your tongue will still get twisted.

5. The most memorable moments often come at the strangest and most unexpected times for the weirdest things (like rings with holes and the beauty of death-defying sports).

6. Guitar + a lawyer/author = very strange music

7. It takes 3-4 large conferences before a wallflower will recognize enough people to feel semi-comfortable and not completely invisible.

8. Your friends will screech louder than you when you have success, no matter how small.

9. Never eat the chocolate offered by the agent before giving your pitch.

10. Conferences are adventures—come prepared for the worst and the best.

Philippians 4:8 Recap

“Finally, brothers, whatever it true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Philippians 4:8, NIV

For over fifteen weeks we’ve chopped, minced, diced and spliced our way through the thirty simple words of Philippians 4:8. Now it’s time to mix everything back together and see what we have:

My fellow-Christians (brothers), since God’s peace places troops around our hearts and minds to protect us from enemy attacks (finally), let us separate the good from the bad and then make the good ours through continuous meditation (think), the good being (such things) anything—Christian or not (whatever)—which:

• Matches reality, whether scientific principles, historic facts, or moral law (true)
• Treats serious topics in a dignified manner (noble)
• Conforms to revealed truth—that is, the standards, character, and will of God (right)
• Will not stir up attitudes or thoughts that could contaminate—cause us to sin—should it manifest itself in our lives (pure)
• Pleases the senses, softens the heart, and evokes a I Corinthians 13 love (lovely)
• Carries positive qualities resulting in a good reputation (admirable)

—that is, we should dwell on those aspects that sets themselves over and above for their good quality in craft (excellent) or have content bringing glory to God (praiseworthy).

So much for thirty simple words. But then Mom always said I liked to make things complicated. I guess I’ve not outgrown that trait yet.