CSFF Tour: Vanished

Title: Vanished

Series: Christian Chiller Book One

Author: Kathryn Mackel

Genre: Adult Supernatural Suspense

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Vanished:

The letter arrived at the police substation special delivery, signature required.

Jason Logan couldn’t bear to open it, couldn’t bear to see black lines forming letters and letters resolving into words that would destroy his life.

Subject 58RS is negative for paternity.

Five years of pretending would be for nothing once he opened the letter and let the truth out. Back then, he did the research and discovered the combination of genes that would allow a blue-eyed blonde to be born to a sable-haired woman and a part Korean, part who-knows-what guy.

Highly improbable. A million-to-one shot. But statistically possible.

Within hours of Kimmie’s birth, Logan had refused to entertain any other possibility. For in truth, wasn’t the heart far more than muscle and blood, and parenthood more than the sum—or the discrepancy—of one’s DNA?

He and Hilary had named the baby Kim Li after his biological mother, a woman he knew only as a scrawl on his adoption papers. It never mattered that Kimmie didn’t have his tawny skin or sturdy build. Logan carried her on his shoulders, kissed away her boo-boos, and chased away the monsters under her bed.

Now the monster under his own bed had reared its evil head.

When a bomb explodes, a police sergeant and a nurse practitioner must ward off a terrorist, chaos, and fear sparked by the delay of outside help.

The Writing: Vanished combines solid writing (no obvious flaws) with a winding plot full of small twists both expected and unexpected.

But the strength of this book lies in its premise—a sort of urban Lost. For reasons not understood by anyone, a bomb triggers a strange mist around the edges of this mixed community, and book one covers the first few hours as the city tried to regroup.

Unfortunately, despite the intriguing premise, getting into the story was difficult for me. I simply failed to connect with characters and therefore to be hooked to the story. It’s not that the characters weren’t well-developed. They were. Motivations, flaws, virtues, dreams, quirks—it all was there.

So why then didn’t I connect? Part, I’m sure, is me. These characters are in a different place in life than me, and so their struggles didn’t pull me in, made me say, “I understand. I ache with you and want you to survive, overcome, succeed.” But in the hands of a different reader, the story may very well hook him or her to the end and beyond.

The other reason I had a problem with connecting might be the disconnect of stakes. I’m not sure completely how to explain that, but the external and internal didn’t seem to fuel each other. While each character has something they want, the external circumstances don’t affect it—that is, put it at stake. A bomb going off doesn’t fulfill Kaya’s longing to have back the clinic, nor does it threaten to permanently separate Logan from his daughter. The outside events neither hinder nor help the attaining of the goal.

Or so it seemed to me.

The Story: Vanished spotlights choices. Little choices that seem insignificant at the moment they’re made. Big choice that might affect very little. Choices that accumulate over time.

As for areas of concern, there is some violence (deaths, explosions, gun-shooting, resulting corpses), but the blood is kept to a minimal over all, making the story accessible to adults and teens alike.

Summary: I had a difficulty getting into the story and caring about what happened to the characters. But it’s likely other will find Vanished fast-paced and heart-pounding. Are you one? Maybe, maybe not. Give it a try, and if you like it, great! Tell all your friends about it. If not, pass the book along to someone whom you think will.

Rating: 3.4 out of 5 stars

5 Questions for Kathryn Mackel

A novelist and accredited screenwriter, Kathryn Mackel has written across a wide range of ages and genres. Screenplays, children’s sports fiction, YA fantasy, adult “Christian Chillers”—this mom of two seems to have done it all, redefining the word “impossible.” (For more of her story, click here.)

So it was with delight I had the opportunity to ask her a few questions about her and her writing:

Chawna: What is one or two things you would like readers to know about you and your writing?

Kathy: Rather than considering myself a fiction writer, I consider myself more of a storyteller who works and works on my craft to support the privilege of being able to tell stories. What goes into my first (and second-third-eighth, etc.) draft is often not very palatable. Until I learned the craft of writing, my stories used to live in my head—and honestly, made me feel a bit sinful. It was a relief to learn that I was a writer, though admittedly still one with a lot to learn.

Vanished has a very intriguing premise. Would you tell me a little bit about how you developed the idea?

How I came up with the concept is described on Melissa Meeks’ blog. (Chawna: Check out her whole interview—there’s some great stuff in there.)

But what was important to me that the area under the mist include different demographics. A rich neighborhood within a mile of inner city might not happen in other parts of the country but in old New England cities, that’s not an impossibility. After settling on geographical distribution of “types” of characters, I had to think the heroes and villains I’d need to drive the action. I chose a nurse-practitioner instead of a doctor for two reasons—to avoid copying Lost, and to put a character in over her head. The same thing holds true for Jason Logan who, as a police sergeant, has to order around a Secret Service agent as well as a terrified and disparate groups of people. These are examples of what I planned ahead.

Logan’s custody battle was unplanned and came to me as I wrote the first few words of the book. What if it’s already the worst day of Logan ’s life—and the bomb hasn’t even blown? The same question is true of Kaya. Though her heart is breaking as she packs up the clinic, things go from very bad to unimaginable. This kind of story works well with elevated stakes, but others would suffer with this kind of pacing.

The first step in developing a story is deciding what do I want it to be, then submitting to what the story demands to be.

I know that when I finish a story, whether writing or reading, usually one thing (a character, a plot twist, a fascinating premise, etc.) becomes dominate in the memory. In your mind, what stands out about Vanished?

It’s hard to say too much because I don’t want to spoil any surprises or twists. I love to think about Ben Murdoch (Kaya’s 15-year-old son) and the various steps he takes to maturity. I am cheered each time he chooses to do the right thing, despite his fears and insecurities.
And, as I write this, I think I would do better to emulate my own character!

Likewise, one thing will probably stand out for the reader. What would you like readers to get from this story the most?

I broke my shoulder very badly at Dallas-Fort Worth airport last fall. Apart from the physical trauma, I was stunned by not being able to use my arm. Not one bit—it just hung there. This kind of partial incapacity was nothing I had ever imagined and certainly nothing I could have anticipated. Fortunately, there were helpful fellow travelers, wonderful paramedics, and—still in Dallas —a top-notch surgeon who all helped me get back on the road.

The response we’re seeing in Iowa (in regard to the terrible floods) is an unfortunate but apt illustration of what Vanished is about. We can’t plan for disaster, we sometimes can’t stand against it, but by working together and “loving” our neighbors in a crisis, we will get through.

That “love” can never been sufficient until it’s God’s love we are sharing.

Finally, what is one question you've never been asked but wished you had been, and what is the answer?

No one ever asks me why I’m such a big sports fan. I grew up a Red Sox fan in Connecticut , surrounded by Yankee fans. There’s so many spiritual metaphors to be found in sports. (And I’ll spare your readers by not getting into them. Suffice it to say, my Bible study class knows I’ll always come up with at least one every Sunday.)

I love sports for the celebration. I don’t mean the dancing in the end zone. What I enjoy is being able to shout for joy. We talked in my last Bible study class about the celebration in Nehemiah 12 and how the sound of rejoicing could be heard ‘far away.’ As responsible adults, we seldom get the opportunity to jump and yell and clap. (Keep in mind I’m a New Englander.)

I also love sports because it’s a privilege to watch the bodies God create move in excellent and extraordinary ways. I think that’s why I love instrumental music so much—for the physical grace it takes to play a piano or guitar or saxophone, melded to the talent that has been gifted to the musician.

When those gifts and talents are raised heavenward—such joy! And for those of us who don’t have those gifts—it’s still a joy to watch, and a duty to allow the Spirit to direct us to where we can bring joy.

Do you have anything else you'd like to add?

Just a quick word about Vanished. There was a mix-up in which the book went to print without Book 1 printed on the cover. Some readers who didn’t know it was a series were rightfully incensed. I do apologize and wish I had been able to change that. Book 2 (Darkening) is almost ready for release. It will not be with the same publisher and I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say where it will be released. (I hope I’ll be able to before this blog tour is over!) I do want readers to know that Book 2 answers a lot of questions, including the real identity of Luther (the terrorist). The book is named Darkening because it’s the first night after the bomb. With no power, communication, it is a very dark night indeed.

And yet, the fire burns on and God holds tight!

Thank you, Kathy, for taking the time to answer my questions, and I encourage everyone to take a minute to check out her website and her very fun blog, GodandDogWalking.

CSFF Tour: Starring Kathryn Mackel

This month Vanished is being highlighted by the Christian Science-Fiction and Fantasy blog tour. Book one of a new supernatural suspense series, Vanished sets off a bomb in a contemporary suburban community, with results no one expected.

Tomorrow I’ll be posting a short interview with the author, Kathryn Mackel, followed by a complete book review on Wednesday. In the meantime, check out the Ms. Mackel’s blog and those of my fellow tour members:

Brandon Barr, Justin Boyer, Jackie Castle
CSFF Blog Tour, Gene Curtis, D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper, April Erwin, Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard , Andrea Graham, Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart, Christopher Hopper, Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner, Carol Keen, Mike Lynch
Terri Main, Margaret, Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks, Rebecca LuElla Miller, John W. Otte
Deena Peterson, Rachelle, Steve Rice
Ashley Rutherford, Mirtika or Mir's Here
Stuart Stockton, Steve Trower, Speculative Faith
Linda Wichman, Laura Williams, Timothy Wise

Personal Limitations: Marital Status Part 4

During the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at marital status and how it can affect our personal boundaries with fiction.

We’ve considered the single and purity of heart. We’ve seen examples of married couples and the necessity of considering your mate as well as yourself. Today brings us to the third and final group: widows and divorcées.

I understand that widows and divorcées carry very different scars, problems, and needs. However, I have put the two together here because they share one major characteristic: widows and divorcées both were in a relationship that is now broken.

So how does that broken relationship work with personal limitations? It’s hard for me to say. I am not a widow or a divorcée. Nor have I had much opportunity to discuss faith and fiction with those who are.

But as far as I am able of understanding, this group walks a line between singles and married couples. They know the experiences of someone married, but are restricted in current relationships like a single. So I would suggest two simple things:

1. Monitor reactions. Does your reading allow you to relive the good memories—or reawaken the bad? Do the movies you watch reinforce skepticism or renew hope? Chose that which brings out the good and avoid strengthening the negative.

2. Favor the suggestive over the explicit. Yes, you now have the knowledge and experience to “go there,” and there is nothing wrong with that. However, the suggestive allows you to control exactly how far you go on any particular day.

Of course, what do I know? :o)

The Sword of Lyric, Part 3: The Restorer’s Journey

Title: The Restorer’s Journey

Series: The Sword of Lyric #3

Author: Sharon Hinck

Genre: Adult Alternate Reality

Excerpt from Chapter One of The Restorer’s Journey:

My mom was freaking out.

She stared out the dining room window as if major-league monsters were hiding in the darkness beyond the glass. Give me a break. Our neighborhood was as boring as they come. Ridgeview Drive’s square laws and generic houses held nothing more menacing than basketball hoops and tire swings. Still, Mom’s back was tight, in the shadowed reflection on the pane, I could see her biting her lip. I didn’t know what to say to make her feel better.

I ducked back into the kitchen and used a wet rag to wipe off the counters. Clumps of flour turned to paste and smeared in gunky white arcs across the surface. I shook the rag over the garbage can, the mess raining down on the other debris we’d swept up. Broken jars of pasta and rice filled the bag. Our dented toaster lay on top of the mess, looking like it had been drop-kicked across the room. I stomped it down, twist-tied the bag, and jogged it out to the trash can by the garage. Usually I hated the chore of taking out the trash. Not tonight. Maybe if I erased the signs of our intruders, Mom would relax a little.

A teenage boy follows his mom’s kidnappers into another world, only to become caught between a corrupt king and outlaw guardians.

The Story: With a no-frills style that allows the raw emotions to seep across the page, The Restorer’s Journey is by far the most intense book of the Sword of Lyric. It plunges unashamedly into the jungles of confusions fraught with dangerous animals and wanders the deserts of despair, where hope shimmers like a distant, unattainable mirage. It drives the reader to confront the shadow within we’d all rather forget exists at all.

Yet through all the swordfights and isolation, deception and death, truth pierces the night: God is here. He is at work. He is in control. He will never forsake.

Sometimes that light is only a flickering flame; sometimes it’s a glaring sun; sometimes it’s a soft glow in a wispy fog. But it is always there, beckoning you on, culminating in a challenging question: When the cost is counted, when the darkness of the path is revealed, will you follow Him?

The Writing: Because The Restorer’s Journey deals with the darkness of the human heart—including in the heroes—the characters could have easily become unlikeable or off-putting. Yet they are not. At every step, you’re there beside them, cheering them on in their struggles, agonizing with their decisions, begging them to turn back when they go the wrong way even as you admit that you would have probably done the same. Through it all, the heroes remain heroic, and even a tingle of sympathy is created for the villains. And if that had been the only strength of this book, it probably would have been enough to pull most through to the end.

But not only are the characters very identifiable, the plot is well-paced also. The beginning is slightly off-kilter and occasionally one POV seems to overwhelm the other, but these are minor flaws and do little to impede the building tension. In addition, this current final book of the Sword of Lyric wraps up the series with great satisfaction, while leaving an opening for imagination and even future stories. (That, of course, depends on sales—so if you want more, buy more of the books!)

Finally, I especially appreciated the dry sarcasm of the teenage son and how the language/descriptions remain fully rooted in the POV, whether it’s memories of home or comparisons to TV crime shows.

Summary: The Restorer’s Journey may not be the perfectly crafted book, but it remains well above the average with great depth of character and emotion. A good read for teens and adults (especially moms) with extra accessibility to those new to the fantasy genre.

Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars

Also check out the reviews for Restorer (book 1) and Restorer's Son (book 2)--or buy Restorer's Journey here.

Going Around the Block

For days—yes, even for weeks—my ending has eluded me.

It all started back at chapter eight of my current work-in-progress. Everything wass moving along, not extremely fast, but at a consistent pace. Then my characters decided they wanted to take a left turn.

A left turn?! But they are supposed to go right. I fuss and fume at them. I complain how that would mess everything up. I try to persuade them that such a decision would only complicate their lives. Then when that fails, I consider exercising the authority of an author to make them turn right. But in the end, I know it is best to let them have their way, even though it is uncomfortable for me. They go to the left.

Now, however, I have an extra problem and no idea how to resolve it. How can I weave this loose end satisfactorily into my ending?

No brilliant solutions present themselves. So I plod forward, hoping the answer will reveal itself along the way. Thus I start this week—except now I’m within two chapters of confronting that problem.

My progress slows to a crawl. Extraneous words stretch across the pages as I try to avoid the inevitable. I fall asleep at night playing with possibilities, only to wake up and reject them all in the morning. Brainstorm sessions are improvised. I retrace my plot’s path and re-examine my character’s motives and personalities, good guys and villains alike, searching for a key—any key—that might unlock the secret to the ending. Three separate endings are designed and discarded because my gut instincts say they don’t work, don’t fit, don’t make sense.

Grrrrrr.

Then last night it clicks. I know what must happen. I find the piece that interlocks everything, including the extra tangent—and it is the ending I toyed with at the very beginning, when I first started planning this novel but threw away as impossible after I started the first draft.

Once again I have traveled a great distance—only to end three paces behind where I started.

Personal Limitations: Marital Status Part 3

Today we are looking at how readers who are married approach the fictional world.

Never having been married, I cannot speak to this from personal experience like I can with the single’s limitations. But in talking with those who are married, I have found the experiences of marriage increases both freedoms and restrictions, because now you must not only consider yourself but also your mate.

So what does this mean?

1. Respect your mate’s limitations. Your wife very imaginative and easily unnerved? Then insisting you watch a horror movie together is probably not the best idea.

2. Know how your perceptions affect your mate. For example, a friend gave up her habit of reading romances when she discovered that her talking about the heroes made her husband feel like he had to meet those expectations.

3. Learn to compromise. Each of us has limitations that are more bendable than others. Maybe your husband likes horror and WWII war movies. Although you’ll have nightmares if you watch that latest horror flick, you’re simply not fond of the violence of war movies. So compromise. Offer to watch with him that war film he wants to see as part of a special gift, or ask for your favorite musical comedy in return.

4. Use fiction to spur you toward each other. While sexually explicit movies are off-limits to me, I know a married couple who occasionally watches together a movie rated R for some of the sexual content. The wife emphasizes, however, that they must always watch together and that they do it only on a rare occasion. But she says that it can also spur them toward each other.

And ultimately that seems to be the key for married couples. Fiction that tears apart becomes off-limits while fiction that spurs the husband and wife toward each other is to be enjoyed.

The Muse

“When do you write—when the muse strikes you?”

Today I want to laugh at the question so many people have asked. When the muse strikes me? I wish.

For if I wrote only when it struck me, I would never finish a novel. I’d rather brainstorm ideas. At that point the story is full of possibility and potential, without the weight of clunky words that can never fully capture the vision in my mind.

If I wrote only when the muse struck me, I would have enough time on my hands to paint my toes, become a spider solitaire champion, and count the hairs on my head. For like lightning, those moments of brilliant inspiration rarely strikes the same place twice.

And if I wrote only when the muse struck me, I wouldn’t be working today on a manuscript whose words I hate the moment I set them on paper. Instead, the only thing keeping me in my chair is the determination to treat this like the work of any other professional: I rise and write, whether I feel like it or not.

In short, if I wrote only when the muse struck, I would be out of a job.

Personal Limitations: Marital Status Part 2

A life of singleness can often be lonely.

Sure, work consumes many hours every week. Church, volunteer work, and other social activities blacken your calendar. A close-knit family can fill a lot of holes. Friends are plentiful.

Still, there comes those quiet moments, the dead air that no one and nothing disrupts. At those times fiction, whether in the form of a well-worn book or a brand-new DVD, can provide much companionship.

Not that this is bad, for quiet moments can also create an unusually receptive heart. But at the same time, story can become a crutch or even an addiction, serving in the stead of flesh-and-blood relationships—especially romantic ones.

So how do you guard yourself from these substitution relationships?

No straight-forward answer exists, at least that I have found. Being a single—and a writer one at that—I struggle daily with the balance between reality and imagination. It’s so easy to say, “I have to get this novel read for a review,” or “I need to produce more words every day on my story.” Sometimes those claims are legit; sometimes, though, they serve to escape the reality of my position.

But in attempt to balance my life, I have found three things that help:

1. Monitor and limit the intake. I keep a log of how much time I spend watching television/movies every week. Even though no one else sees that record, the numbers themselves help keep me accountable as they climb. I have done similar things in the past to track how much time I spend reading and writing as well.

2. Chose reality over imaginary. Sometimes after a long day of work or when I’m under a deadline, the last thing I want to do is to crawl out of my hole to interact with people. However, I often find that taking the time to attend a guild meeting or see a friend is well worth the effort, refreshing my mind and spirit, and I’m glad I went afterward.

3. Avoid the sexually explicit. This rule helps me especially in the area of romance. While this can be difficult to maintain with current trends in media, I see no reason to spark a craving for what I cannot have; I have plenty of those longings as it is. Rather, I prefer books and movies that rely on suggestion, which allows me to fill in the blanks according to personal taste and experience. For example, a paragraph that I read over in a book without a second thought caused my married sister to blush and call me about this very intense scene that I’d “forgotten” to tell her about.

Do these suggestions solve all the dangers for everyone? No. That’s why this is personal limitations; everyone will have different tolerances and experiences. Nonetheless, they provide a good place to start.