Tuesday 19 June 2007

The Restorer by Sharon Hinck - the very best in fantasy


This book reached me at a time when I badly needed a break from my own life. Instead of running away, I ran into its pages and met people – and a woman like me – dealing with tougher things than I’ve ever had to face. I huddled on my sofa, glancing out at the thunderstorm beyond my window, and relished this balm for the soul – words to comfort and empower.

Susan, prime-aged mother of four, happily married, has struck a crisis and gotten bogged down in a housewife’s daily slog. Her thoughtful husband provides a possibility for her to take time-out, but before she can catch her breath, a mysterious portal whisks her into a strange and terrifying place – a land where she has a task she knows nothing of.

Randomly memorized Bible verses often provide precise help when she most needs it along her journey of discovery – what it means to be this peculiar land’s prophesied Restorer. This story will keep you panting as you follow its jagged, twisting path, and a constant stream of breathtaking surprises are coiled around every corner.

The characters are rough-edged and realistic, carrying their weaknesses with courage, no matter how severely dysfunctional they are. One object lesson stuck particularly in my mind: as Restorer, Susan is given the ability to heal quickly from any injuries she receives. To prove she really is the Restorer, various locals frequently use their knives on her so they can watch the miracle healing take place within seconds. Thus, the proof of one’s strength is seen in how your wounds heal. Isn’t that true of real life, too?

Susan sees it all with the eyes of a mother, her feelings mirroring what you or I would go through if we were suddenly transformed into another world’s heroines. The impossible odds she faced and conquered tell me that although this is a fantasy, God’s faithfulness and love are no fairytale and remain the same – in any world.

The only other book I can even remotely compare this to is Karen Hancock’s Arena, although it’s actually completely different. They share the theme of an ordinary woman being dumped into a hostile fantasy world, so if you enjoyed Arena, you’ll love Restorer too. It’s a rich feast for the senses, earthy and inspiring. It left me with lots of questions, but of the kind that open a horizon of hope. I ponder: If I trust God to patch me up and make me whole, maybe I can be a Restorer, too. And that’s something our own world can sure use plenty of.

Click here to see The Restorer at Amazon

Other tour participants: Trish Anderson - Brandon Barr - Jim Black- Justin Boyer - Amy Browning - Jackie Castle - Valerie Comer - Karri Compton - Frank Creed - Lisa Cromwell - CSFF Blog Tour - Gene Curtis - D. G. D. Davidson - Chris Deanne - Jeff Draper - April Erwin - Linda Gilmore - Beth Goddard - Marcus Goodyear - Andrea Graham - Russell Griffith - Jill Hart - Katie Hart - Sherrie Hibbs - Holly - Heather R. Hunt - Becca Johnson - Jason Joyner - Kait - Karen - Dawn King - Tina Kulesa - Lost Genre Guild - Rachel Marks - Rebecca LuElla Miller - Eve Nielsen - John W. Otte - John Ottinger - Robin Parrish - Rachelle - Cheryl Russell -Hanna Sandvig - Chawna Schroeder - Mirtika Schultz - Steve Trower - Speculative Faith - Jason Waguespac - Daniel I. Weaver

Friday 8 June 2007

FabChat Presents David Brollier

This is a live chat transcript. Karina and Grace have done some editing to make it more readable...

Welcome to FabChat, where you can meet authors live and on-line. I'm Karina Fabian, your host. This is a moderated chat.

David Brollier is a retired corrections officer, a minister at Soar Like an Eagle Ministries, and a long-time writer. He’s been writing since the 70’s—poetry, editorials, songs and articles. He has an SF trilogy that he says “is not ready” and is working on a second mystery, but right now, his published work is The 3rd Covenant.

In the meantime, please welcome David Brollier, hereafter known as "sonburst".

karinafabian:
David, tell us about your current Work In Progress.

sonburst:
Deliverance? It's coming along fantastic. Not a murder, but I deal with the rape and abduction of a teenager.

Joyce_A:
I remember my grandmother's bookshelves being full of Pollyannaish type Christian books where nobody did anything different or "bad"

sonburst:
Not a chance of "Pollyannaish" stuff here ;-)

Joyce_A:
I was wondering if you think the deeper subject matter in Christian fiction is more appealing to mainstream readers?

sonburst:
I think that most important thing is getting the Gospel out. There are so many kinds of readers, but most of them are readers of fiction. Those readers don't want to skirt issues. They want the cold hard facts, well, wrapped around a really good story. I did that in 3rd Covenant.

Joyce_A:
so you think it helps

sonburst:
I think telling the story helps, yes. Keep it as real as possible. And for goodness sakes, let Jesus give you some help, k?

Joyce_A:
Ty :-)

sonburst:
The best Christian fiction I've read is sharp, cutting, but provides a balm to those who want to accept it rather than force it upon the reader.

Joyce_A:
I like that idea :-)

sonburst:
Thank God, He just gave me the words.

karinafabian:
Tell us about this award you're up for.

sonburst:
Deadly Ink has nominated me for the David G. Sasher, Sr. Award for Best Mystery Novel of 2006.

sent sound: applause

sonburst:
David Sasher was a member of Deadly Ink who had volunteered much of his time getting them off the ground. "The David" is in honor of him.

Joyce_A:
:-0

Joyce_A:
Congratulations!!

sonburst:
Thank you.

karinafabian:
What is Deadly Ink? Is there a website?

sonburst: Deadly Ink can be found at http://www.deadlyink.com It's a secular group devoted to writing mysteries.

sonburst:
Thank you. I was wondering if CFRB might come up with a similar award in the future.

karinafabian:
that would be cool--best of the 12 toured that year? or let folks nominate books?

sonburst:
Best of the Twelve? I like that, Karina.

karinafabian:
anyways, talk about that later. Cyn's been typing--did you have a question?

cynmacmor:
Mysteries are reportedly the most difficult type of fiction to write effectively. I thought you did a superb job of keeping the elements of mystery alive until the very end. How did you manage to do this? a special technique? outline?

sonburst:
I didn't work with an outline Cyn. I had an idea, a few characters, then I let the story unfold all by itself. It's amazing how much the characters know that can help the author with the story. Btw I was told I broke about every rule of telling a mystery story, but made it work ;-)

cynmacmor:
Well I didn't notice and I am an avid mystery reader. I just know that I was kept in suspense!

sonburst:
I didn't go in to break any rules. I just wanted to tell a story. I knew my characters (and got to know them much better) that helped greatly. I had an event to start off with. I had an idea for the bad guy. Then the end surprised me too.

Joyce_A:
Did any character end up totally surprising you--if so, how?

sonburst:
Yes, Hattie surprised me. She very much surprised me. Even I didn't know how great her love for her son had caused her to rebel.

cynmacmor:
The "whodunnit" reminded me of a Agatha Christie, you think, hmm it could be this person, no this one, no probably this one -- but one is never sure until you read it! Hattie totally took me by surprise also! Well done!

sonburst:
That was one of the challenges. In the beginning or very near, the reader is told that the Bishop was the "bad guy"...and he is, but I didn’t' want to leave it like that. I wanted to show how the poison of his hatred had infected others. That pulled in the Bishop's sister.
sonburst: I didn't know whodunit until 2 weeks before ending my rough draft. That's how loose I write.

cynmacmor:
He is a bad guy, no doubt, but there was so much we didn't know about him . . . what made him tick, why he was the way he was . . . I like how you doled that info out s l o w l y --kept me wanting to read on!

Joyce_A:
sounds like me :-)

sonburst:
The Bishop is special. He's like that part of us that no one wants to admit exists. The "us" that wants to kill the guy who cut us off...but I came to know more about him as I wrote. I knew he was a convict, so what kind of convict was he? That's where creating him came in.

karinafabian:
who was hardest to write?

sonburst:
That's a hard one. Probably Mr. Sung. Although I know lots about him, his style of speaking had to be different.

karinafabian:
which character is your favorite and why?

sonburst:
Nat's my favorite. He's who I'd like to be.

cynmacmor:
Did you learn anything from looking back on The 3rd Cov that you will apply to your next novel?

sonburst:
Yeah. Re-write more, get it critiqued by different people and Listen to what they say. Gosh, I was reading part today and I can't believe how poorly some of it is written.

karinafabian:
I think a lot of us have that reaction with our first novels

sonburst:
:-)

karinafabian:
what do you love about 3rd Cov? what do you re-read and think "Oh, yes!"

sonburst:
The story about God's love conquers all. Justice is served, but not without the context of love. We see that in Susan's tears. I also like the tit-for-tat conversations between Nat and May.

karinafabian: lol
karinafabian: I got an off-the-wall character question: If May hates her name so much, why not insist on being called by her middle name? I know why you didn't do it, but why doesn't she?

sonburst:
Oh, May? I think somewhere in the back of her mind she realizes that the odd name is making her strong, and she needs to be strong. May's rape, something only the readers and May know at this point, force her to take a harder road than most people would take.

karinafabian:
what’s one thing you'd like folks to know about your work that no one has asked you before?

sonburst:
I want them to see the love between husband and wife. Most focus on the rest of the book, but I wanted romance. What better romance could there be than a loving husband and loving wife in a Christian marriage?

karinafabian:
you've been married 33 years, right?

sonburst:
34 come July 7, a month from today.

karinafabian:
plenty of material to draw upon--are there similarities between you and Barbara Ann and Nat and Susan?

sonburst:
Some. That deep, soulful kiss, we've kissed like that many times. It's not just the lips folks, it's the blending of 2 hearts.

cynmacmor:
Ah, that is so sweet!

sonburst:
There's also this, Susan is Nat's "backup". When he's afraid he can lean on her. Barb is just like that for me.

sonburst:
There's also this, Susan is Nat's "backup". When he's afraid he can lean on her. Barb is just like that for me.

cynmacmor:
"sweet" sounds trite . . . I didn't mean it that way! Sorry

karinafabian:
nuthin’ trite in 33 years of soulful kisses--we knew what you meant, Cyn

sonburst:
Hey, we're just 2 "kid's in love. Oh, Cyn, I didn't take it as being trite. I took it for the wonderful comment it was meant to be.

cynmacmor:
phew!

sonburst:
Hey, if I can't be "sweet" on my wife, something's wrong. :-)

Adrienne_Ray:
I think there is something special about Christian love. there is a special trust there I think

sonburst:
There is. Love and trust are never far apart. Lose trust and loss of love isn't far behind. If you truly love, however, you'll extend grace so trust can be restored.

karinafabian:
how've promotions been going? what's been most effective so far?
sonburst:
Okay. I mean I'm not a self-promoter, but ... most effective has been one on one. My dad took me to a men's breakfast and I ended up selling there.

karinafabian:
the walking book tour. Did one last week...

sonburst:
CFRB was supposed to be my big "marketing tool. Then I fell back into letting God have control. When you think of it I have people who don't really know me reading my book now in almost every state, not to mention Grace reading it overseas.

cynmacmor:
that's a really cool thing! The power of the internet

sonburst:
I'd like to take a moment and that you guys for helping me. CFRB could have been a bust, but LGG (by God's direction) breathed life into it. Also, LGG has shown me how to tighten my writing, make things even more suspenseful. There's even a little spec-fic in my WIP ;-)

karinafabian:
cool. Before the chat, Joyce and I were talking about how much our lives as writers have changed this past year. Have you seen a lot of changes, and if so in what way?

sonburst:
Oh, wow. Where do I begin? In many ways I've grown as a Christian, not just a writer. The needs of CFRB members have become important to me. I've been working on getting my POV settled in. I don't want to lose any readers. It was the contributors to Light at the Edge of Darkness that really showed me how to write right. I was able to use some of that stark, edgy stuff in my writing.

cynmacmor:
What a wonderful compliment, David: I'll be sure to pass it along!

Adrienne_Ray:
I was wondering if the book caused you to discover anything about yourself?

sonburst:
The book helped me discover that I'm not as mealy-mousy as I thought I was ;-) I actually have the heart of a hero. I have the heart of Jesus. What greater hero could there be. And then it showed me how much I still needed to learn. Like when to shut up and listen ;-)

karinafabian:
wow--that's a lot. 3rd Covenant will always have a special place in your heart, won't it?

sonburst:
Oh yeah. I've been asked if I was going to correct it for my reprint when the rights came back to me. The answer is "no". I need to see and be reminded of just where I came from. I need to be reminded that without Jesus, this book wouldn't even exist, much less new ones coming out. And for those interested, outside of not knowing a whole lot about kung fu, being more writer than fighter, Nat is me. You get inside his head, and you've pretty much gotten inside mine.


Tuesday 5 June 2007

Blog Tour: The 3rd Covenant by David Brollier

(This is a re-post of Caprice Hokstad's review at Shoutlife. Thanks, Caprice!)


Before I get to the book, I must talk about ignorance. Not the author's. Mine. This ignorance has a very important bearing on the story, so perhaps my enlightenment will save you the confusion I suffered.

See the book cover? See how the word "covenant" has a knife forming the letter 't'? If you were to ask me before I read this book what kind of knife it was, I would probably have said, "a hunting knife". You see, I am female and really detest weapons. My dad was a cop and though he kept guns in the house, I always felt it was a necessary evil for his job. I was not the least bit tempted to touch them or to learn how to shoot them. I affirm the constitutional right for citizens to bear arms, but I personally would rather never see any weapons. At all. Ever. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. No thanks, I pass.

However, I do watch movies on occasion, and I saw a very similar knife (to the one on the book cover) in the movie "Crocodile Dundee". You might remember the scene. In the New York subway, some gang-type pulls a switchblade on Dundee and his New Yorker host/girlfriend. The girl is appropriately scared and says, "Give him whatever he wants. He's got a knife." Then Dundee laughs and says, "That's not a knife. This..." and here he displays his massive hunting knife which he has used to slay crocodiles, "is a knife." Would-be mugger turns tail and runs. Audience laughs.

Okay, so what's the problem? Well, at the very beginning of this book, we have a murder of a priest and the murder weapon is left in the victim. The weapon? A bayonet. All right. I know what a bayonet is. I have read history books. Bayonets were invented in the French town Bayonne. They were long spikes added to the ends of muskets because early firearms required so much time to load that the enemy could overrun you while you were loading your next shot. Bayonets were weapons of last resort, for use in hand-to-hand combat when you couldn't shoot.

I even knew what bayonets looked like. Illustrations from the American Revolution are positively brimming with these because the point is to show how mismatched the Patriots were to the much-better armed Redcoats. So this is what I picture when I read the word "bayonet":



But fairly early in The 3rd Covenant, they start talking about the handle of the bayonet having fingerprints. Wait a minute. Handle? I'm thinking they must mean a rifle of some type, but that doesn't seem to fit. Furthermore, the blade is stuck and the rib bones won't let go until it is twisted. But aren't bayonets more or less like an ice pick? How could one lodge between two ribs in such a way that twisting would make it release?

Well, to make a long story only slightly shorter, I finally had to look up the word. Evidently, English has expanded bayonet to mean just about every kind of military blade ranging from what I would call a "saber" to what I would call a "hunting knife". No firearm required. Great. Why didn't I get the memo? That t-substitute on the book cover is actually called a bayonet. It isn't the author's nor the cover artist's fault that I didn't know what that knife was called. But you, dear reader, may now be spared the embarrassment of suffering the same ignorance, because I have educated you. Forget history. Forget French towns and American Revolutions. In this book, a bayonet is a honkin' big knife with a wide, thick blade and a handle. Now that I have labelled the cover illustration so you don't have to consult "Knife Names for Dummies", we can get on with the review.

First of all, The 3rd Covenant by David Brollier is not a typical mystery. We know whodunit from the very beginning. The main characters know whodunit very, very early in the story too. And despite there being a CSI character in the book and the setting being New York City and environs, this is not a CSI: New York type of story either. If I had to relate this to something known, I would say this was like Columbo's Memoirs.

Remember the trenchcoat-clad Peter Falk from the old ABC Mystery of the Week series? Lt. Columbo almost always knew who committed the crime right from the start, but knowing and proving are two different things. Unlike Columbo, who spent every episode asking suspects the hard questions, investigating, and then going back to ask more, The 3rd Covenant's CSI and cop team have the disadvantage of not being able to find all the people they would like to question. So it's not a "whodunit" or even a "howdunit", but more of a "where-are-these-dastardly-culprits" and "how-can-we-prove-they-did-it-so-we-can-put-them-away" kind of mystery.

I say it reads like a memoir because The 3rd Covenant is written in first person, told from the point of view of the cop character, Nathan Adams. But the narrator is omniscient and tells us details Det. Adams couldn't possibly know. It is as if Adams asked his buddies over the years, and then guessed the thoughts, motivations, and actions of the criminals to put together this story at some point after the fact. This wouldn't be my choice for point-of-view, but who am I to talk when I myself decline to use commercial fiction's darling, i.e. Deep Limited POV. Non-authors probably wouldn't notice. Deadly Ink sure didn't care. They nominated The 3rd Covenant for the David G. Sasher, Sr. Award for the Best Mystery Novel of 2006.

So what is the story about? A cult leader who calls himself "the bishop" is using his "congregation" of ex-cons and miscreants to commit serial killings with big honkin' knives (aka bayonets). During the investigation, Nathan's wife gets kidnapped and the cop's kung fu buddies volunteer to find and rescue her. Having a member of a cop's family stalked and kidnapped sure pushed all my "worst nightmare" buttons. Being a cop's daughter, I lived a good portion of my life in fear of that very scenario. I don't want to ruin the book's ending, so I won't tell any more of the plot. Suffice it to say, there are plenty of surprises, all the way to the end.




Read a professional review
from the Times Herald-Record.
View the book trailer.

Buy The 3rd Covenant at:
Publish America
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books A Million
Direct from the author

See more reviews on the Christian Fiction Review Blog tour, running June 3-9.
Visit David Brollier's
ShoutLife profile and his website.

Sunday 3 June 2007

How to review books - Grace Bridges style!


Here's a little something I wrote on book reviewing recently. You can also use this method to review movies, and at a stretch, music CDs too. Why not give it a try?

Now I don’t claim to be an expert, and this is no highly professional technique. Still, as a hobby reviewer, it’s worked again and again for me, even when I think I’m not at all in the mood to write a decent review.

Get a piece of paper and fold it in half. This makes two sections on each side, four in all. You can also use four pieces of telephone notepad, or whatever you have on hand – as long as there are four sections of paper with room enough to write a few sentences on each.

Each section has a heading to help you get started. You’ll need to take the headings out of your final review text, but it shows what you need to begin. Here are the titles:

  • The Intro is your prelude to having a chat about the book. I like to set the scene and tell where I was when I picked it up, perhaps how I was doing that day, or the situation I read it in. More important perhaps is what you had already heard about the book. What have others said about it, what did you already know, about the author or genre or publisher, etc? What were your expectations on picking it up? Did other books or articles by this author affect your expectation? What did you think of the cover design?

  • Describing the story can be a short synopsis or your paraphrase of the back-cover copy or other promotional materials. Outline what happens, particularly as the tale begins. Don’t give away too much of the ending, but it’s good to mention whether you were satisfied with it and why/why not. Try and do all this in your own words.

  • Go into details where there was something you particularly noticed. You can also note this while you’re reading if you like. This can be anything from characters to plot twists to writing style to evocative imagery. Whatever seizes you in the story, try and describe it a bit. This is also the place to mention aspects you were perhaps disappointed with, if any. Try to balance criticism with comments on something that did work well, e.g. if you found the writing style was lacking, perhaps the plot was really clever, or vice versa.

  • The wrap-up is your arena to pull all the strands of your comments together. Sum up your overall impression. If you found it not to your liking, it’s often helpful to compare it to something similar, e.g. “If you liked X, you might/will enjoy this.” This makes it possible to deliver a professional recommendation even if your opinion tends towards negative – and that happens to all of us sometimes.

If you write a couple of sentences for each of the four points, you should be able to get at least 200 words total, which is a perfectly respectable review length. Longer is good too!

The fun part is that you don’t have to write the four parts in order. I often write the third point first, since that’s the first thing that comes into my mind – that special something this novel touched me with. With the four titled sections of paper, this is no problem – just start writing at the point where your first ideas come, and filling in the rest is then pretty easy. Of course, you can also write the four headings on your computer and just start typing – that’ll save extra work. However, I often find it easier to do it on paper first, also because I like to read outdoors when at all possible, and paper and pencil are easier to shove in my pocket than a computer.

Using this method has changed my own book-reviewing from a drudge at times, to something fun and easy. Have your papers at hand, and you’ll be amazed at what you can scribble down in the course of a busy day, just a sentence or a half sentence here and there. The headings are not rules to be followed, but prompts to help you get started – feel free to leave them by the wayside if another structure shows up in your essay.

Don’t forget – this will be easier if you do it fairly soon after reading the book. A week is too long for me, because by then I’ve probably forgotten what made it special for me – and that is the single most important thing in a review. That’s what both the author and the reading public are wanting to know from you.

If you'd like to go into more depth, Terri Main has written a great article on book reviewing, and you can read it here:
http://www.wayfarersjournal.com/2007/03/more-than-opinion-writing-and-effective.html

Have fun!

Superhero Sews Own Suit!

Get ready for some fun!

Being in the Lost Genre Guild means I know A.P. first and foremost as a horror writer. Now I'm not into horror at all, so I hesitated a while before finally deciding to read Axiom-man. After all, a caped crusader must be pretty harmless, right? So to be honest, I didn't know what to expect - but the cover looks pretty cool!

As it turned out, I needn't have worried about A.P.'s horror spilling into this book. It's totally harmless, yet anything but gutless! Easy reading, light-hearted and fun, I bet this will be a hit with the kids.

The superhero scenario may be fairly standard, but there are some new twists on it here. Gabriel receives his gift of power from a mysterious messenger who gives him a task to do - but he doesn't give him the suit and cape. Our intrepid hero has to trot off to fabric stores and learn to operate a sewing machine before he can show himself to the world at large. Meanwhile, he continues in his job at the call center and longs to get to know the girl in the opposite cubicle.

Winnipeg's emergencies often cause him to be late for work, which of course causes headaches with the boss. Gabriel is still learning to hide his powers, and rides the bus to work rather than flying. I found the sewing machine a nice touch, and also the backpack worn under the cape to carry his normal clothes for when he has to change again. Makes me wonder - why don't any other flying rescuers carry handbags? I mean, don't they need any stuff? ID and all that? Axiom-man is certainly the cleverest of all superheroes in this respect.

Another nice sideline is the bad guy's online marketing strategy. How to get rich via Internet in the 21st century. Read carefully - you might just learn something really useful! When the two opposing superheroes get in a fist fight, things get a bit messy and the action is a little rough. But I guess that's to be expected in a clash of superhuman powers. There's only a little blood and gore.

You'll find plenty of surprising twists and turns in this highly enjoyable story, and it'll leave you wanting more. The story is far from over, but the end of this book is very satisfying in and of itself. Axiom-man is a delightfully human superhero with true depth and spirituality. I look forward to seeing what A.P. and Axiom-man get up to next!