And the winner is...

MommaBear!

This morning my lovely wife picked MommaBear's name out of the people who won, so I'll be contacting her shortly to find out where to send her book.

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest and all who stopped by the past couple of days!

CSFF June Blog Tour Day Three: The Restorer

We're winding up the Restorer blog tour and the interview with Sharon Hinck by talking about Christian speculative fiction.

John: How would you characterize the current Christian speculative fiction market from where you’re sitting?

Sharon: I still think really unusual stories aren’t readily embraced. I totally understand why. I don’t feel bitter or angry about that. I understand where the publishers are coming from, trying to meet the requests and needs of their readership and the kind of stories they tend to buy. It still baffles me, because I see that whole area of speculative fiction exploding in ABA and I see some hope in the younger readership in CBA, but I don’t understand what’s keeping it from being more widely embraced. I’m hopeful but still a little bewildered.

It also depends on what you count as "speculative fiction." If you factor in Frank Peretti, Ted Dekker, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, then the top selling fiction in CBA is speculative fiction. When you go more specifically to fantasy or science fiction then it’s still a very narrow market and I’m not quite sure why that is.

John: What themes do you think can be best explored by speculative fiction? What can speculative fiction do that other genres can’t?

Sharon: I think it’s one of the best genres ever at conveying the whole metaphor for the Christian life as a battle, as spiritual warfare, as a heroic epic journey, not only God’s epic journey but ours as well. There’s no other genre that does it as powerfully.

Speculative fiction can give us a fresh look at things we already know too well. When I taught dance I used to teach a movement prayer to the Lord’s Prayer. People would say afterward, "I pray that prayer so many times it stopped meaning anything to me. And now seeing it in this new way, certain portions of it mean more because I’ve acted it out." Fantasy can do that. It can take the story of God stepping into the human condition and redeeming us and look at it from a completely fresh angle.

John: Do you think there are any "taboo" elements of secular speculative fiction that can’t be sanctified by Christian fiction?

Sharon: I think Christians have the art first. Satan corrupts it. We don’t even have to think about taking back things and sanctifying them for our use again. I think everything is up for our use as we’re writing stories about God.

I think each writer as they’re serving God will find what elements to use.

It is a hard decision to make about what to include and not include. I don’t want my stories to make sinful look choices come across as looking okay or desirable. I want God to be more interesting than evil. That’s one of the tricky things because evil is more fun to write and more interesting in stories. To make God more interesting in His purity than evil is can be a very tricky thing.

John: What can those of us who enjoy speculative Christian fiction do to help the genre?

Buy books. Seriously. It makes such a difference if people buy them. It sounds simplistic, but that’s a huge thing. If people don’t buy the books, the publishers won’t contract for more of that genre no matter what it is.

Also be viral. Spread the word if you read a book you love. That can really make a difference. Like Lord of the Rings’ popularity. It was a viral thing. I read it in college and had been a fan from way back. For a modern audiences to embrace it the way they did when the movies came out, that was viral. That was people telling their friends, "You’ll like this movie."

It just happens naturally. If you love something, you tend to talk about it. But sometimes, I don’t think people realize what an impact that can have. Especially when it’s something that people are hesitant about like speculative fiction.

For example, all the gals in my Beth Moore Bible study had read the manuscript for The Restorer because I was looking for feedback when I first wrote it. My friend Vikki said, "Well, I don’t read fantasy." And my other friends said, "You have to read this one. It’s different. You’ll like it." Finally they talked her into it. She loved it so much she started passing this manuscript around to all these other people she said had to read it. She became this avid fan of the series. Her husband read it, her daughter read it, and she just kept giving it to people. But it was because friends said, "No really, read this book."

That personal word of mouth and voting with your pocket book are two great ways to support the genre. And prayer. At Mount Hermon, a session leader wisely said she believes that there are powerful stories God can tell in this genre through His people, both in the general market as well as the Christian market. For those doors to open, we need to pray. It’s a walls of Jericho kind of thing. It’s not something we can do with our own power and just make it happen. We have to be prayerful and patient and do the part of the work God gives us.

John: What advice can you give to hopeful Christian speculative fiction authors?

Sharon: Continue to seek God in every stage in the process: what kind of stories to tell, how to tell them, how to grow in the craft, who to listen to. You’re going to get all kinds of advice, you’re going to read things, and some of it will conflict and really make your brain hurt. It sounds simplistic to say, "Seek God," but it’s so difficult to quiet all the other voices and say, "Okay, Lord, I’m here."

When I teach about writing, I talk about my "A-As of writing," which are to be available and authentic. Available means showing up and saying, "I’m here, Lord, if You want to use me to write today. What do You want me to write? Articles, short stories, novels? What kinds of stories?" That sounds so easy but it’s not. There’re a million things to pull me away from it. Our own self doubt makes it difficult to show up and be available.

To be authentic, means to not write from a place of strength where you say, "I have all the answers," but from that place of brokenness, you know, "I’ve gone through these times of questioning and here’s how God responded in my life," and weaving those things into my writing.

The cool thing is, if you’re doing this in fellowship with God, it’s not wasted, even if nothing reaches publication. I like to be a good steward of my time so I really wrestled with this. It’s a very lavish art form in terms of how long it takes. Writing novels eats many, many hours and then growing in your craft, many, many hours of study trying and failing and rough drafts. You don’t want to spend that if you think it’s going to be for nothing. But I remember one time praying and seeking God about all that. I figured there were other things I could be doing like volunteering at my church rather than writing. And I asked Him if my doing this brought Him pleasure. You know, like in Chariots of Fire – "When I run, I feel His pleasure." If it does, then it has value. Maybe not on Earth, but if it brings God joy, it’s worth it. If it’s where God calls you, it’s where you need to be.

John: What’s coming up for Sharon Hinck?

Sharon: A nap. The three Restorer books release May, September, and January. The revision process, all the different stages, it has been a really intense year. Then I have two more coming out with Bethany House in 2008. I’m working on the rewrites for my fourth book from Bethany House, my seventh novel. After I’m done with that, I need a nap.

+++++

And thus concluded the interview. Sharon insisted that we take a picture to commemorate the occasion (also so I could prove to Isaiah that he met Sharon if he didn't believe me):

So that's it. I hope you enjoyed the interview as much as I enjoyed bringing it to you.

Don't forget, the give-away ends at midnight. If you haven't signed up by then, it'll be too late!

And be sure to visit the other blog tour participants!

Trish Anderson
Brandon Barr
Jim Black
Justin Boyer
Grace Bridges
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
Beth Goddard
Marcus Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Russell Griffith
Jill Hart
Katie Hart
Sherrie Hibbs
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
Rachelle
Cheryl Russel
Hanna Sandvig
Chawna Schroeder
Mirtika Schultz
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespac
Daniel I. Weaver

CSFF June Blog Tour Day Two: The Restorer

We're in day two of The Restorer and in part two of my interview with author Sharon Hinck. As I promised yesterday, it's all about writing and The Restorer...

John: What made you want to write Christian fiction?

Sharon: Fiction tells the truth in ways that non-fiction can’t. When I read a powerful novel, I experience what the character is experiencing. That’s different than reading a non-fiction book that tells me "10 Tips to Have a Better Marriage" or "20 Ways to Get Closer to God." When I read a story, then I live with that character and it has such an impact. I felt that from the novels that I’ve read. I wanted to provide that kind of experience.

John: What is the "Sharon Hinck" writing process? Outline first? Fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants?

Sharon: Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method? It gave me nightmares! I kept waking up with nightmares of blizzards.

I’m a discovery writer. I have a scene, a character, a concept that makes me curious and makes me wonder, "what next?" I begin to write to uncover it. It’s fun and thrilling and also kind of dumb because when you work that way, you can paint yourself into a corner that you don’t know you can get out of. I know where it’s aiming but I really don’t know how I’m going to get there. It’s kind of exhilarating and kind of terrifying.

I read a quote by Steven King that went something like this: "It’s like you’ve got this dark hole and some writers like to shine the light into the hole and make sure they see everything. He just reaches down in there and doesn’t know what he’s going to grab and pulls it out ."

I would love to use Randy’s approach. It would feel much safer to have it outlined and laid out. But then it feels like work. It’s like writing a research paper! My characters never do what I expect them to. I learn secrets about them about halfway through the book that colors everything.

John: What books and/or courses influenced your writing the most?

Sharon: There’re the standard writing books, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. Writing the Break-Out Novel. Those are all helpful. As far as courses, I had a professor, John Lawing in my grad school classes. I learned so much from him. I also took a poetry class that influenced me a lot. You learn to focus on every syllable. I recently heard David Mamet on Charlie Rose. He said his job as a playwright is to shave syllables. I loved that.

I don’t normally admit this publicly, I do write a little bit of poetry. That actually comes into the style or the flavor of the writing in how I approach it. Some of the poetry classes and the grad school writing classes had more of an impact than the writing books. Some of the conferences I’ve gone to like Mount Hermon and the writing critique groups I’ve belonged to have had a big impact as well.

John: I've heard that Kathy Tyers, when she wrote Firebird, worked on it for a long time. Karen Hancock did the same with Legends of the Guardian King. How long have you been working on "The Restorer?"

Sharon: The seed of the idea came when I was working with the dance company about 20 years ago. The concept was for a theatrical work, so more of a script than a novel. It involved a mom trying to get away from the craziness of her day-to-day life for quiet time with God by sneaking up into attic. Then the characters of the stories in her Bible study would come out of the rafters to interact with her. And that actually formed the seed that germinated for years.

Then I played with some scenes for other things that ended up coming together. The actual novel was started four and a half years ago. I joined a writers group and I was listening to the fun they were having adding on to their novels. I took those concepts that had been kind of mulling in my head and started putting it together.

John: Did publishing a book in another genre (Becky Miller) help sell "The Restorer?"

Sharon: Yes. It absolutely did. The Restorer was the first book I had written and passed around. I kept hearing publishing houses saying they’d look at every genre except sci-fi and fantasy. I continued to write those books because I cared about them so much and hoped one day a door would open.

Then I decided to move on and try some other things. I think the fact that I had begun to build a readership helped overcome those objections that all publishing houses are nervous about sci-fi and fantasy just because it doesn’t pay off. I don’t want a publishing house to lose money.

The other thing I did with The Restorer was target it to core CBA readers. A lot of sci-fi/fantasy isn’t read by the core readership, the women age 20 to 60 in Middle America who go to the Christian bookstores. Mine is purposefully targeted towards those readers because I think those are a lot of women who would love the genre if they got over thinking of it as nerdy Star Trek convention people. The popularity of Lord of the Rings shows that. People love this kind of story if it’s presented in a way that they can identify with.

John: What kind of audience do you hope to gain by having a "soccer mom" as the hero of "The Restorer?"

Sharon: That was very deliberate. I really hoped to woo some readers who might not have tried the genre before. I think it’s such a rich genre but I know a lot of my friends don’t read fantasy. If you say, "This book is a fantasy," they say, "No. I’ll read Karen Kingsbury, I’ll read Francine Rivers, I won’t read fantasy."

After I wrote the manuscript, I passed it around to the gals in my Beth Moore Bible study. And they loved it. That was an important test, to see if I could break through that barrier. Whether that will work in a wider audience, I don’t know. There’s the core fantasy readership, that niche, and then there’s the younger readership that seem to love fantasy. Those will be nice secondary audiences. But I hope the primary audience will be the same women who read Becky Miller books.

+++++

We'll put a bookmark in there and save the rest for tomorrow. That's when we'll see what Sharon has to say about speculative Christian fiction.

Make sure you enter the contest if you haven't already. As of the time I'm posting this, we only have two entries! If you're one of the two, enter again today and double your chances!

And be sure to check out what the other participants are up to:

Trish Anderson
Brandon Barr
Jim Black
Justin Boyer
Grace Bridges
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
Beth Goddard
Marcus Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Russell Griffith
Jill Hart
Katie Hart
Sherrie Hibbs
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
Rachelle
Cheryl Russel
Hanna Sandvig
Chawna Schroeder
Mirtika Schultz
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespac
Daniel I. Weaver

CSFF June Blog Tour Day One: The Restorer

We're continuing with The Restorer today. So what's the "something special" I've been holding on to? Just this: back in April, I had the privilege of meeting Sharon Hinck and interviewing her for the blog tour. She graciously invited my wife, my son, and me to her Minneapolis home and we had a great two hour chat.

Actually, the beginning of the interview was a definite Becky Miller moment. I hoped to interview Sharon for the blog tour, figuring that I had an "in" since we're both members of the same denomination. I even tried to sweeten the pot by offering to bring my very adorable son, Isaiah, with me.

It worked. Sharon graciously invited my wife, my son, and me to her suburban Minneapolis home. Now, let me tell you, I was extremely nervous about this. I was meeting a published author and conducting an interview for the first time. I wanted to be cool, calm, professional.

So we got to her house, we settled into her living room, and the first thing Isaiah did was spit up on her hardwood floor.

Thankfully, Sharon laughed it off and, like I said, we had a great interview.

Over the next three days, I'll be posting that interview ... starting now:

John: What’s your background? What did you do before you started writing?

Sharon: I’ve done all kinds of things. I started writing when I was in grad school. The prof would send me my papers with red marks which told me everything I needed to fix, but then he’d write at the bottom of the paper "Submit this to Christianity Today or Partnership." So he got me to break through that barrier of being scared of being published.

My passion for many years was using the art of dance in Christian worship and theatre. I taught ballet for twenty years and spoke about Christian arts to various conferences. I was the director of a Christian dance company made of professional dancers for ten years. We wanted to use the art of dance in theatrical settings to bring in people that could see works about faith themes.
I was also busy raising kids and got back into writing four or five years ago.

John: What’s your all-time favorite book? Speculative fiction book? Christian fiction?

Sharon: Perelandra by C. S. Lewis. That book absolutely captivated me and gave me an understanding of creation and the fall and redemption in ways that I had never grasped before.

John: What’s your favorite speculative genre to write? To read?

Sharon: I enjoy reading fantasy with a contemporary voice -- general fiction with fantasy woven in. I just read Stolen Child by Keith Donohue. It’s a contemporary novel but it has changelings in it. As you read the whole mythology of these changelings, you start to believe that if you look out into the woods, you’ll see these little creatures out there. It makes them seem real. It’s written in a contemporary voice. There aren’t pages and pages of history and description. You know how a lot of fantasy is fairy-tale-ish? I like writing with a contemporary fiction voice but with fantastical elements.

I’ll read everything. I’ll even confess I have a shelf full of Star Trek novels. I love Diana Gabaldon who wrote Outlander and a whole series of time travel. I love time travel stories. I love the Anne McCaffrey books, which are very sociological views of creating a story world. What she does with that is beautiful. When I was in college I read Heinlein and some of the harder edge sci-fi writers. Of course I love Karen Hancock, Randy Ingermanson, Kathy Tyers, Kathryn Mackel. I just loved all their stuff. There are some really strong CBA speculative fiction authors.

John: What does being Lutheran bring to the world of Christian fiction?

Sharon: Go Lutherans! I was talking to someone at Mount Hermon about being Missouri Synod Lutheran. Her husband is Missouri Synod although she grew up Baptist. She said, "You gotta hand it to those Missouri Synod Lutherans. You really have a firm theological foundation."

I think that’s so valuable. I try to bring that into my fiction writing. Theology colors everything. For example, in the Becky Miller books, I address the whole issue of "If you’re really following God, then you’re going to have wealth and then you’ll have health. If something’s going wrong, you must be sinning." These are just totally non-Biblical concepts.

I cherish every theology class I had in college. I cherish my background: Scripture alone, faith alone, Christ alone. That does influence the way I write and what I try to bring to the story.

John: If you could collaborate on a story with any author, who would it be and why?

Sharon: That’s too hard. So many ideas are buzzing through my head now. Maybe Mark Twain? Wouldn’t it be fun to co-author something with him? I grew up reading Mark Twain and Jack London. Some of those authors and the way they write adventure ... That would be really fun.

But I have to say Madeline L’Engel. I would love to collaborate on a project so I could learn from her. I love her non-fiction books about the artist’s life and the writer’s life and of course The Wrinkle in Time and all those books. That would be really cool. She would be my top choice.

+++++

So is that it? Nope. I've got two more parts to go. Tomorrow see what Sharon had to say about writing in general and The Restorer. And be sure to enter the contest. You still have some time!

Also, be sure to check out the other blog tour participants:

Trish Anderson
Brandon Barr
Jim Black
Justin Boyer
Grace Bridges
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
Beth Goddard
Marcus Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Russell Griffith
Jill Hart
Katie Hart
Sherrie Hibbs
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
Rachelle
Cheryl Russel
Hanna Sandvig
Chawna Schroeder
Mirtika Schultz
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespac
Daniel I. Weaver

The Restorer

I'm getting a jump on the blog tour this month by posting my review of Sharon Hinck's latest book The Restorer a day early. Why would I do that? Am I trying to show up the other people on the tour? Not at all! Instead, I have something special in store for the few people who wander into the Least Read Blog that will start tomorrow. I've been looking forward to reading this book for quite a while (as you can tell from this post) and it didn't disappoint.

The Restorer is the tale of Susan Mitchell, a harried mom of four. Susan desperately needs some time to herself for devotion but she simply can't find any quiet time. Her husband, Mark, stumbles on what he thinks is a good idea: he converts part of their attic into a retreat of sorts. Susan can go up there, pull up the ladder, and concentrate on her devotions.

And that's what Susan does. But the first time she uses it, she somehow manages to stumble into an alternate world. In this world, a hard-pressed and surrounded people are waiting for the Restorer, a person sent by the One to rescue them from their enemies. Some of them believe that Susan is that Restorer. But how can a mom be a military hero? Is Susan really the one they were waiting for? And if she is, how is she going to help these people?

Sharon creates an interesting alternate world. It's not quite fantasy, it's not quite sci-fi, but it's a blend of the two. There are just enough twists and turns in the book to keep you guessing and reading. One of them, in the middle of the book, knocked me for a loop. I was sure I had things figured out but it turned out I was completely off. I love it when that happens.

Like in her previous books, Sharon also makes a valid point about what faith in God actually means. I don't want to spoil what it is, but it got me thinking. Especially of the end of Luke 9. Go figure it out.

This is perhaps one of the reasons why I enjoy Hinck's writings so much: she is clearly targeting mature Christians and isn't "writing down" to them. One of the things I've never understood is why Christian fiction is usually centered around a conversion experience for one of the characters. Maybe it's a feel good thing; I don't know. I do know that it's nice to see a story with a message for people who have been Christian for a while.

So go out and get this book. Hey, I'll even make it easy for you!

For this month's blog tour, I will be giving away a copy of The Restorer. Starting tomorrow, you can enter the contest simply by leaving me a comment on any post over the next few days that says, in essence, "Sign me up for the contest." You'll have until midnight CST on June 20th to enter. If you want, you can increase your odds by leaving one entry comment a day (no more than that, please). On June 21st, I will gather up all the entries and put them in a hat or some other kind of handy recepticle and have someone (maybe my wife, maybe my son ... although a nine month old might not understand what's going on) draw a name. Then I'll drop the book in the mail to you and you can see how wonderful this story is for yourself.

So is that the "something special" I have in store? Nope. It's not. Be sure to come back tomorrow and see what it is. I'm excited about it. I really am.

Bloodlines

So I finished the next book in the Legacy of the Force series, namely Bloodlines by Karen Traviss. And I have to say, at this point, I'm debating if I want to continue reading this series.

I don't think that reaction is entirely related to Traviss's work. Traviss does an admirable job portraying the characters. She also does a pretty decent job untangling some of the twisted backstory of Boba Fett.

I guess my problem with this series stems from the fact that it all seems a little forced. The conflict, the story, all of it seems a little off to me. Especially one character's journey to the Dark Side. I mean, I get where he's coming from but it just doesn't seem natural.

So at this point, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I might keep reading, but I think I'll be visiting my local library to get the rest of the books.

My Sister's Keeper

Late last night, I finished reading My Sister's Keeper by JodiPiccoult and, I'm man enough to admit, I was weeping like a baby. This was an extremely powerful book, one that I had trouble putting down.

On one level, it would seem to be a book about a bio-ethics dilemma. Kate Fitzgerald was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of leukemia at an early age. Her parents, desperate to treat her, are told that her best hope is if a sibling is available for donations. The problem is Kate's older brother, Jesse, isn't a match.

So Sara and Brian utilize the latest technology and have a matching sibling made. A few months later, Anna is born.

All her life, Anna has been used as a donor to treat Anna's disease. She's been poked, prodded, had blood and bone marrow taken from her. Finally, Kate suffers from kidney failure and her parents, her mother especially, believes that Anna will just naturally donate the kidney.

So Anna sues her parents for medical emancipation. The book tells the story of the week leading up to the emancipation hearing, what happens at the hearing, and beyond.

But this is more than just a bio-ethics book. Piccoult creates a rich tapestry in the Fitzegerald family, making each member of the family a unique character with their own problems. The dynamics of this family in perpetual crisis is fascinating and completely believable. I often found myself wondering what would happen if I were in their shoes.

It all builds up to an ending that literally left me crying for half an hour. It's that powerful and incredible. And best of all, I never saw it coming.

Pick up this book. You need to read it.

From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain

I've always been sort of a closet comic book geek. It started when I was a kid. Our neighborhood library had piles of comics you could check out. I think I read every single one of them several times.

In recent years, though, I've been more interested in people who are willing to take comic conventions and stand them on their head. For example, I love Watchmen. I devoured 1602. It's part of the reason why I'm so enamored with Heroes (although I think it's obvious that some of the writers cribbed from Watchmen, but what do I know?). That's why I was so eager to read Minister Faust's From the Notebook of Dr. Brain.

The premise was interesting enough. A group of superheroes are sent to Dr. Eva Brain-Silverman for counselling. It seems that the "Fantastic Order of Justice," to which our heroes belong, are worried about their job performance and the issues that seem to be simmering in their relationships. If they want to keep their positions in the F*O*O*J, they need to complete therapy with Dr. Brain.

The world that Faust creates is interesting as well. This is a world where superheroes are increasingly unnecessary. All of the supervillains have been either imprisoned or killed. So what direction will the F*O*O*J go in? Who will lead it into this new era? And how will Dr. Brain's "sanity supplicants" handle a new threat that threatens to tear them apart?

Faust created an intricate plot that kept me guessing. Every time I thought I had a handle on what was happening, he would veer off in an unexpected direction. When I finally understood how everything fit together, I have to admit I was a little disappointed; it was a bit too obvious for my liking, but it was still a satisfying end.

I only have two real complaints about this book.

First of all, there's the fact that some of the characters are a bit too "transparent." What I mean is that it's obvious who Faust is lampooning when it comes to Omnipotent Man (the last survivor of the planet Argon) and Flying Squirrel (an aging billionaire with tons of high-tech toys at his disposal). Given the creativity that Faust showed in creating his other heroes, you would think he could have come up with truly original characters who could still fit into the story as Omnipotent Man and Flying Squirrel did.

Second, there's the matter of voice. This one is kind of tough for me to judge. Faust has a unique voice and employed it very well in this book but it wore on me after a while. Let me explain: the book itself is presented as a self-help book, written by Dr. Brain to superheroes in need of her help. As such, you could argue that it's not Faust's voice that I have a problem with but his portrayal of Dr. Brain's voice.

The problem I had is that "Dr. Brain" had a love for over-the-top similes and metaphors. It got to be too much after a while. There were a few times when I had to grit my teeth and just slog through them to find out what was going to happen next.

Don't get me wrong. This was a great book and gave me a lot of food for thought (a great thing for any book to do, especially one that's supposed to be a comedy). I would highly recommend this one, whether you're a closet comic book geek like me or not.

The Apocalypse Code

Just looking at the cover for this book, you might be tempted to think that this is somehow related to a certain series of Christian books that have been dominating best-seller charts for the past ten years. It's possible that someone would pick this up, thinking that it's going to talk about the beliefs behind the Left Behind series.

And they would be right. And wonderfully wrong at the same time.

The Apocalypse Code by Hank Hanegraaff is indeed about the end of the world and, in some ways, deals with the Left Behind books. But this isn't an exposition about how Tim LaHaye got things right. Instead, it's a rather scathing rebuttal to LaHaye's dispensational premillennialism and it's long overdue.

Hanegraaff presents what he's dubbed "exegetical eschatology." He has this to say about his method:

I coined the phrase Exegetical Eschatology to underscore that above all else
I am deeply committed to a proper method of biblical interpretation
rather than to any particular model of eschatology. The plain and
proper meaning of a biblical passage must always take precedence over a
particular eschatological presupposition or paradigm. (p. 2)

Hanegraaff then begins to pick apart the dispensational premillennial belief system, showing how that, with a proper understanding of how to read Scripture, belief in things like a secret rapture, a literal millennial reign, and so on, can't be supported by Scripture.

I really appreciated this book, but I only have two small gripes:

First of all, Hanegraaff repeated himself a bit too much for my tastes. It seemed like every other chapter, he would repeat an argument he made verbatim, quoting the same Scriptural passages and statements. Toward the end of the book, I felt like I was being talked-down-to, like I couldn't remember the points he made a few pages ago. That bugged me a little.

Second, there's Hanegraaff's arguments that the book of Revelation was written in the 60s and not the 90s. Hanegraaff makes it sound like only dispensational premillennialists or liberal Biblical scholars believe in the 90s date and that anyone who thinks Revelation was written that late falls into one of those two camps. Quite frankly, that's a little insulting, because I'm not a dispensational premillennialist or a liberal Biblical scholar and I believe that John wrote Revelation in the 90s.

Related to that is the fact that there are some historical problems I have with Hanegraaff's dating of Revelation. I won't go into that right now; I'm checking some facts so I don't go off half-cocked.

Aside from those two sticking points, anyone who is interested in the end times would do well to read this book. I think it will help us read the Bible for all it's worth.

Stories from a Moron

This is a book that every writer should read if they need a pick-me-up. It's Stories from a Moron by Ed Broth.

Mr. Broth set out to make a nuisance of himself to various magazine editors. He would write short "stories" (I use the term loosely) and then just send them out indiscriminately. In other words, he would do no careful market analysis, trying to fit the story to the magazine. Half the time, he sent his stories to magazines that didn't even accept fiction.

In this book, he shares with us the fruits of his labor and the rejection slips that he accumulated. I should warn you, some of the stories are pretty out there in terms of content. Vague (and not so vague) sexual references, a cussing Harry S Truman, that sort of thing.

What kind of disappoints me (and impresses me at the same time) is the restraint that most of the editors showed. You would think that they would eventually tell Broth off for wasting their time (one of them does and is the best exchange of letters in the whole book). But most of the time, they are very polite, very cordial as they explain that they can't use what he's sent in. The funniest (and least honest) has to be Ambassador Magazine, a publication for Italian Americans. The editor writes a glowing review for Ed's story and compliments him on how he tries to capture "their" heritage ... and Ed said not one word about Italians in his story. It was plainly obvious that the editor hadn't read the story at all.

It's kind of a surreal read, but it's a fun one too. If you're ever feeling blue about a pile of rejections, this is the place to laugh some of your troubles away because, while your work may not deserve it, Ed Broth's most certainly does.