Why I love workshops

By far the most popular part of the Catholic Writers Conference Online has been the chats. We have experts from all areas of publishing come and chat for an hour, giving mini-lessons and taking questions. I usually end up transcribing them for our e-book. (BTW--If you couldn't make the conference and want to purchase the e-book, it's available for a $20 donation to the CWCO. CWCO is part of CWG, a non-profit, so you can count it as a charity or as a business expense!)

For me, however, the week-long workshops are far more useful. I love being able to put the learning into practice, and I always come away with great stuff. Monday, I shared a scene I came up with in Devon Ellington's Dialog class. Today, I want to show you the difference a few tips from Kim Richards made to a scene in Discovery that I truly hated:

OLD: James managed to make it to the auditorium as the last of the stragglers were coming in. About half of the researchers had decided to come to the briefing. Some wanted to see the images of the alien ship again. Some were curious to see the miner's reactions. He noticed that they all took spots opposite the Rocky Flat's team, who had taken position in a lopsided semi-circle around Hayden and his senior staff, forming their own island of humanity among the dark, empty seats.

Hayden sat in the front row, Captain Addiman to his left and Andy to his right; then Sister Ann, Sister Thomas, and Rita. After Rita, the row sat empty, as did the seats behind her. He watched as she gave the empty seats a seemingly incurious look. He knew she recognized the barrier.

She knows all about barriers, he thought, surprised at the bitterness of his inner voice. Then again, she'd put a barrier between them half the size of the solar system. Why couldn't she just tell me?


NEW: James managed to make it to the auditorium as the last of the stragglers were coming in. The fifteen or so researchers that crowded together at one side. Some leaned forward, hungry eyes on the blank viewscreen. More were nudging each other and looking at the Rocky Flats mining team. The miners had created their own island of humanity on the opposite side of the auditorium, chattering amongst themselves, ignoring the researchers. Hayden, his senior staff and the Rescue Sisters stretched between the groups like an incomplete bridge.

Rita formed the last bit of that bridge. She gave the empty seats around her an incurious look, but James knew she recognized the invisible barrier they formed.

She knows all about barriers, he thought, surprised at the bitterness of his inner voice. Then again, she'd put a barrier between them half the size of the solar system. Why couldn't she just tell me?

I hope some of you will be able to make it to an writers conference, on- or off-line. They really are worth the time. Incidentally, I hear there's an LGG con, LostCon, being planned for the Fall in SecondLife. Maybe I'll see you there?

Hard Sci-Fi & Time Travel in Leaps of Faith

In this, the final installment of our feature on Leaps of Faith, we focus on two more types of science fiction: time travel and hard SF.

Click on the links to take you to excerpts from some great science fiction stories that are respectful of Christian beliefs.

Hard Science Fiction:

An astrophysicist finds the face of God in the stars of the universe in “The Smile.” (Greg Beatty)

God is a proven fact in “The Faith Equation,” leaving the question of the role of belief. (Peter Bell)

“The Relics of Venice” combines genetic engineering and love to create a miracle. (Leslie Brown)


Time travel:

In “Tampering with God’s Time,” time travelers find they cannot change the timeline, but are themselves changed as they encounter Christ personally. (Karina Fabian)

In “Moses Disposes,” King Solomon deliberately uses time travelers to bring the Bible to future generations in an idiom they can understand. (Frank C. Gunderloy)

Space Exploration: Leaps of Faith

In both Christian and mainstream science fiction, either religion or science always seems to take a back seat.

In mainstream SF, religion may be portrayed as something mankind has outgrown or that has become as alien as the worlds visited; or only one faith is represented, as if the great tapestry of Judeo-Christian faiths has been bleached into a colorless whole. By the same token, in Christian fiction, accurate, plausible science may be downplayed to the point of device rather than vital story element.

Yet, in reality, faith and science have always nurtured each other.

Mendel, the father of genetics, was a monk, and some physicists have said the more they delve into quantum mechanics, the more they are convinced in a higher power as Creator.

Where is the SF to reflect the truer relationship between faith and science?

Here, in Leaps of Faith.

The stories in Leaps of Faith cover the entire spectrum of the SF genre, showing the positive relationship between science and religion.

Beginning this week, TWCP Authors site will be featuring excerpts from the anthology Leaps of Faith.

Today we start with the space exploration stories.

In "High Hopes for The Dead" we see Christian evangelism though the faithful example of Luke "High Hopes" Kittery, a member of a band of space explorers for whom every trip is potential suicide. (author: Alex Lobdell)

"Quantum Express" examines the status of one's soul when the body is destroyed and reassembled through teleportation. (author: Vincent Malzahn)

"God's Gift:" faith is the key to preventing insanity brought on by a new method of interstellar travel. (author: Greg Beatty)

"Leap of Faith" highlights the new industry of space search and rescue though the intrepid nuns of Our Lady of the Rescue. (Karina & Robert Fabian)

In "Confirmation" harvesters of an exotic space fuel suspect they're harvesting intelligent life—or perhaps the angels themselves. (author: Michael S. Poteet)

Karina's Take on Newsletters and Her Experiment

One thing I'm hearing more and more about as a publicity tool is to have a newsletter. I think this can be both good and bad--I've seen newsletters that are little more than organized blogs; some that are All About Me; and some the pretend to be useful but are all a big ad. (They give you a tease of a topic then tell you to buy the book, buy the class, etc. in order to get real information.)

It's also harder for the fiction writer. I really don't think a newsletter is useful unless you are either wildly popular--in which case, why are you putting that work into a newsletter instead of your next novel?--or you don't have enough material to sustain a newsletter; in which case it's the All About Me/Ads thing again.

However, I have a universe that I call DragonEye, PI. the main characters are a dragon detective, Vern, and his mage/nun partner, Sister Grace. They solve mysteries, battle evil, save the universes... It's a ton of fun to write in, so I have several stories and two novels coming out so far. However, I am working with a small press, so the chances of my being "discovered" and becoming a smash hit without a lot of effort are slim to none. I'll need to develop my following, and I have a well-established enduring world to pull from. I think I have the right ingredients for a newsletter.

Thus, I've started a newsletter about my DragonEye, PI universe that I love to write about. A Dragon's Eye View comes out bi-monthly and includes a short article from me, a rant from Vern, Faerie Facts and special offers. It's available to DragonEye, PI members, so sign up today.

In the inaugural issue:

* How Karina came up with the idea for DragonEye, PI
* Vern rants about human misconceptions regarding dragons
* Vern's explanation of the Faerie World (from Magic, Mensa and Mayhem, coming March 2009 from Swimming Kangaroo)
* Special offers and events

Sneak Peak:

* I am not a fire hazard. I can control my fire better than you can control your bowels, thank you very much. Also, it took me over 800 years of service to earn my fire back--I am not going to lose it because you annoyed me, forgot the title of my book, called me a dinosaur, whatever. I can deal with you in other ways.

I'll try to let you know how successful the newsletter is in drawing readers, generating feedback, etc. In the meantime, I hope you'll check it out.

Review of League of Superheroes by Stephen Rice

When it comes to Christian superheroes, I'm really more of a Larryboy fangirl, myself. It's very hard to make a Bible-quoting superhero work, in my humble opinion. Bibleman, for example--could anyone take that show seriously? Batman meets a revival of stereotypical proportions. I wouldn't even bother showing that to my kids--they'd laugh and not for good reasons like with Veggie Tales cartoons.

Well, if you'd like your kids to read about Christian superheroes they can identify with, I recommend Steven Rice's League of Superheroes. Here's a fun easy read about a band of teenage kids (plus one little sister) who meet a cyborg supergenius online. Genie gifts them with supersuits based on their favorite comic book heroes, setting them up for trouble with the mega-corporation who created Genie and intend to keep her--and any of her inventions--for their own nefarious purposes.

Oh, did that read like a comic book plot? It should. Steve was very obviously having fun with the comic book stereotypes, as well as the unbelievably intelligent-yet-doomed-to-endure-high-school cast of teens. He nonetheless crafts an enjoyable read and keptt he characters from becoming perfect geniuses, a la Wesley Crusher. I especially liked Rod's misadventures with his suit. The heroes at times strayed into unbelievable goodness, yet still had some of the common foibles of teenage boys--a certain disdain for little sisters, a penchant for getting into trouble, and the like--that kept them from becoming caricatures rather than characters.

If you like plausible technobabble, you'll love this book. Steve is very careful to give scientifically possible methods for each one of the supersuit's capabilities--and does a good job of explaining them. Makes me want to go back and check out a quantum physics book. He also gave each suit a limitation, which I appreciate. Can you imagine how insufferable a teenage boy with the perfect supersuit could be?

Steve also does his best to represent a tapestry of Christian beliefs, as the characters are Catholic, Baptist, Assembly of God and non-denominational, and he does a fair job of representing all the beliefs in a valid and positive light. Since the story is told from Tom's point of view, it has a decidedly Protestant angle. I found some of the religious dialogue and events a little heavy-handed for my taste, especially toward the end, but not enough to call it sermon-in-a-story. (One of my pet peeves.)

Steve has a nice, straightforward writing style that's good for the middle reader--I'd recommend this book for 4th or 5th grade and up. Plus, Steven, on occasion, comes up with a killer line: I felt like a Biblical character who had just received a patriarchal blessing—honored, mature, strong, and above all, so scared that I needed to use the bathroom. He also has a lot of skill with ending a chapter in such a way that you want to turn the next page, so watch out if you read this as a bedtime story to your kids.

Review by Karina Fabian, www.fabianspace.com

Editors Karina and Robert Fabian Talk About Leaps of Faith

Leaps of Faith is not skepticism of Theology, but rather a new Christian sci-fi anthology of short fiction, edited by close personal friends Karina and Robert Fabian. Here, in this six minute Grace Bridges video (from Graces video blog across the US), the Fabians talk about the project:



If you want to learn more about Leaps of Faith, go to the official website
To purchase the book, you can go to the publisher's site The Writers Cafe Press, or Barnes & Noble (or amazon, if you must!).

Christian Faiths and NOT Writing Just What You Know

I've had some interesting comments on Rob's and my latest anthology, Leaps of Faith. This is a collection of 14 stories of Christian science fiction. While I didn't fully itemize each faith represented, there are Anglican, Catholic and Christian stories and one Old Testament Biblical.

However, I've gotten a couple of comments to the effect that Leaps is a Catholic exclusive book. "written by Catholic writers" "a Catholic anthology" "I'm not Catholic but I enjoyed it." And the one that, frankly, insults the non-Catholic Christian contributors, the Christian publisher and my husband and me: "My only problem with this anthology is that uncomfortable feeling that the Catholics are the only people of God."

I'm not going to argue that here--you can check out the reviews on Amazon to see what people think about the mix of Christian and Catholic themes. What I want to talk about today is the ironic fact that many of the "Catholic" stories in Leaps--and some in Infinite Space, Infinite God, for that matter--were written by non-Catholics. In fact, we never asked anyone their denomination when we read the stories, and sometimes have been surprised ourselves to find out who practices what faith.

I'm always ticked at how that amazes and even scandalizes some people, even fellow writers. We think nothing of a housewife writing a detective novel or a computer technician writing a chick lit. Guys write romance with female protagonists while women write military sci-fi with predominantly male characters. Yet a person writes honestly about a particular faith, and people immediately assume the author practices that faith. Why is that?

I'm sure some people believe that to do anything different is to blaspheme in some way. I don't agree. To me, writing the faith that is right for the story is staying true to the creative talent God gave me. As long as I'm not glorifying a heresy or encouraging a sin, I feel safe in exploring other ideas, whether it's an atheist being pursued by a vampire or nuns living in outer space.

So what about writing what you know? I think writers that limit themselves to that do not go very far. There's such a wealth of adventure out there, some of which we will never know about first-hand. But we learn. I don't know asteroid mining--but I'm learning about it as I write Discovery. I didn't know Norse mythology until I started writing Live and Let Fly--and as I learned more, I had to change the story. That's what I love about writing. That's why I do it, even when I don't make the big bucks or get yet another rejection letter.

One person e-mailed me that he believed I preferred Catholic stories because that's what I'm more "comfortable" with. That's not true, not for me, not for a lot of writers I know. I'll stick with me, however. First off, I don't read a lot of Catholic fiction. (Yes, my fellow Guildies, I have not yet read Chesterson or Flannery O'Connor. They're on my list.) I read about wizards and aliens and serial killers and all kinds of non-comfortable things. I've written a story about a psychic teen who was mentally tortured. I've tortured one of my favorite characters while her best friend was forced to watch, and I have a scene for an upcoming book where the main character has to fight off a rapist. Think these were comfortable? Not at all, but they were disturbingly interesting to write and necessary to the story.

If I were to write what I "know" and what is "comfortable," I'd be putting out stories about how my kid didn't want to wear his jacket in the blizzard. That's about as much angst as I get in my life and believe me, I like it that way!

So it is with writing faith--not all my stories are Catholic. In one trilogy, the alien planet is Deist, and the other has its own odd mix of faith. They each had their own salvation stories, too. My Faerie world has what is called a Catholic Church, but "catholic" means "universal" and while it's similar to the Roman Catholic, there are enough differences that it is a unique religious organization. I could have (and maybe should have) called it the Faerie Church; I'm betting I take some heat from both Catholics and non-Catholics for it as time goes on. But if I do, I know it's because I've written a convincing world.

I'm starting to ramble here, but my point is that writers with real talent do not need to be limited by their current knowledge or beliefs. Imagination can take us to many exciting--and sometimes uncomfortable--worlds, and writing talent can help us share those worlds convincingly with others.

That's what the writers of Leaps of Faith and Infinite Space, Infinite God did. That's why I'm proud to have edited these anthologies.

Leaps of Faith on a virtual book tour

Leaps of Faith is on a virtual book tour for the month of November! Find out what folks are saying about this new anthology of Christian sci-fi from The Writers Cafe Press.


For more information, check out www.leapsoffaithsf.com.

1( Book Info and Interview with Editors) Free Spirit http://inspiritandtruths.blogspot.com/
1 (Author's Interview and Book Info) Time with Tannia http://timewithtannia.tripod.com
3-9 (information, reviews, interviews) Christian Fiction Review Blog Roll www.cfrblog.blogspot.com
2 (Book Information) Tree-lady http://tree-lady.livejournal.com/
2 (synopsis of some of stories) Cathi's Chatter http://cathischatter.blogspot.com
3 (Interview with Karina) Bibliophile's Retreat http://bibliophilesretreat.com
3 (book trailer) Cathi's Chatter http://cathischatter.blogspot.com
4 (Interview with Susanne) Bibliophile's Retreat http://bibliophilesretreat.com
5 (review) Cathi's Chatter http://cathischatter.blogspot.com
5 (Information, Interview) Joy in the Journey www.teresaslack.blogspot.com
7 (Review) Bibliophile's Retreat http://bibliophilesretreat.com
12 (Interviews) Review Hutch http://reviewhutch.blogspot.com
13 (Interviews) The Book Connection http://www.thebookconnectionccm.blogspot.com/
14 (Interviews) The Book Connection http://www.thebookconnectionccm.blogspot.com/