Faith and Speculative Fiction

Science Fiction

There are typically two types of books that I lean towards when populating my reading list: Sci-fi/Fantasy books or books on theology and Christian living. It’s a strange combination, I suppose, but says a lot about the things I ponder, when I’m not thinking about Batman or cheeseburgers. As an aspiring author, these are actually the two types of writing that I’d like to delve into some day, and there is usually a stark separation between the two (although I’ve shared before how I think this should not always be so).

Over the weekend, there were some interesting discussions going on in a few Christian blogs about the absence of speculative fiction (sci-fi/fantasy/horror, etc.) from the world of Christian publishing. This all seemed to start over at ReveLife with a post about how Science Fiction Goes with the Christian Life, which discusses the myriad of thematic elements that are relevant for Christians in the realm of sci-fi. Personally, I think it raises some good points, especially considering that science fiction’s most powerful ability is to turn the magnifying glass on present culture by way of the future or the seemingly impossible. For reference material, see: Battlestar Galactica, the series. Continue reading →

My Former Musical Aspirations

Martin Guitar

Something that a few of you might not know about me is that I used to consider myself a musician of sorts. In college, I fancied myself as the singer/songwriter type, with a heavier emphasis on the latter portion of that. Truth be told, I wasn’t a half bad guitar player or singer, I just gravitated more towards the writing of songs and stories in them. Although I wasn’t especially great at any of those things, I did enjoy it. Continue reading →

Bad First, Then Good

The trickiest part of writing for me has never been starting it. Or finishing it, even. That was a hurdle that I eventually cleared, though it took me some time to negotiate. The hardest part of writing isn’t even making it a daily discipline or doing something that you think people will like.

No, the toughest part of this thing I do is letting something suck. Continue reading →

The Creative Bog

Brays Bayou

Lately, I’ve been getting into riding my bike along the Brays Bayou here in Houston several times a week. It’s a nice stretch near our neighborhood with a path for biking and running. The only problem is that it’s so open, there’s always one direction where the wind buffets you like a whip, and keeps you from getting up to full speed. So basically, there’s a portion of the ride that’s a bit of a chore.

I’m finding out that writing is kind of the same way. My biggest problem throughout college and my early adult life was that I had a terrible habit of starting new projects without finishing them. Getting started on something new wasn’t a problem at all — it’s actually the easiest part. But once that initial rush of doing something creative is gone, you’re left trying to ride against the wind or run up hill. It’s what I refer to as the Creative Bog. Continue reading →

Why I Write: The Power of Story in the Human Narrative

Years ago, when I was traveling to different churches and seeking a job as a youth pastor, I ended up at a fairly conservative Baptist church. I don’t mean to pick on that denomination, but while there on my interview, I was put into a bit of a bind by a particular question I was asked in front of a group of parents and students. “Do you think it’s OK to watch rated R movies?”

The reason this question proved to be so awkward was that it’s loaded with assumptions, and implications for the wrong answer. It also is the kind of question that makes people look at Christians all goofy. Continue reading →

Seven Sons Prologue

When this site got up and running finally, I promised a small glimpse at the opening section of my novel, Seven Sons. So, I figured I’d make good on that. Here is a (very) rough version of what I have in mind for the prologue. If you need a primer on Sons, I’d suggest you go read up on that first.

Something I feel that I should point out: once again, this is a rough draft, so nothing here is final. That includes characters, titles, etc. Anything is fair game to change. At the moment, I’m writing for quantity over quality. This hasn’t been edited much, because the idea is that the heavy revising will happen in the next draft. The main goal right now is simply to get to the end. That’s the hard part. Going back and making it sound pretty is the simple stuff. So, I would appreciate it if you could keep it easy on grammatical critiques, as it’s not the thing I’m concerned with at the moment. I’m sure there are a great many. Also, it should be noted that this opening POV is from Jonas, a thieving, conning, all around rotten dude.

So, now that those caveats are out of the way, feel free to read and tell me what you think. Continue reading →

Seven Sons, That Book I’m Writing

Every time someone asks me what my dream job is, I always say a sci-fi/fantasy author. If I could make money writing cheesy books for the rest of my life, I’d be a terribly happy man. The only thing better would be getting paid to play video games, but even that would lose some of its enjoyment after a time. And this is coming from a video game nut.

At the end of last year, I decided to finally try my hand at writing a novel. I’ve had ideas of doing it for the longest time, big ideas that I’ve been keeping in my backpocket until they were developed enough. I decided to finally go for it because I accidentally caught that my word count of blog posts on GamerSushi and SmoothFewFilms combined came out to a total of 250,000. This was with just 2 years of posting. If you’re unaware of just how many words that is, imagine one of the later Harry Potter books, or anything in the Wheel of Time series. That roughly translates to around 800 pages or more of sheer nerdy prose, and I had done it by accident, accumulating volumes of words by posting a few hundred each night. I figured, well, if I can do that, I can do the same thing towards an original story for an entire year and see what happens.

Enter my novel, whose working title at the moment is Seven Sons. Continue reading →

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