Why I Write Fantasy - Rahima Warren

Amber: Why do you write fantasy?

Rahima: First, I have to say that I didn’t plan to write a fantasy trilogy. The hero, Kyr, took over my life and turned me into a fantasy writer, so he could go on his arduous but healing journey. (See my essay on how this happened on my website, www.rahimawarren.com.) Second, I blame my parents. They left fantasy and sci-fi magazines, such as Galaxy, If, and FandSF, etc., lying around the house. The cover art was fascinating to me as a child and I started reading the stories as soon as I could read. I remember the first story I read, “Lorelei of the Red Mist,” which I thought was wonderful as a third grader. (Later I reread it, and wasn’t so impressed.) Anyway, my parents got me hooked. So, the third reason I write fantasy is because that’s what I have been reading since I could read. You might say my brain is steeped in it. It’s the natural language of my unconscious mind.

More importantly, I love deep fantasy novels that explore the truths of the soul, and magical possibilities beyond the screen of ordinary life. In Western rationalism and scientific thinking, truth is found in provable facts. For the human soul, that is a dry fountain.

What does your soul long for? Something juicy, freeing, or inspiring?  Something that leads you deeper into the mystery of life? That helps you discover more of your own unique truth? That opens your heart and thrills you with wondrous possibilities? The best fantasy novels offer all this, wrapped up in a fascinating story with strong characters and lyrical writing. That’s what I long for, so, of course, when I found myself writing Kyr’s story, I couldn’t help but write it as a fantasy.

Amber: What fantasy subgenre do you prefer?

Rahima: My trilogy—The Star-Seer’s Prophecy— is hard to classify. On the one hand, it starts out very dark, so one might think it is dark fantasy. As Kyr’s journey begins, he knows nothing but evil and pain, both as victim and perpetrator. But his story is about his struggle toward healing, and to learn to forgive others, and even himself. I see my story as visionary fiction, in that it offers a vision of a way beyond inner and outer hatred, revenge and punishment toward love, forgiveness and healing, cleverly disguised as a gripping story of mysteries, challenges and forbidden love.

Amber: What are your favorite fantasy novels?

Rahima: Phew! That’s a hard one. I have an extensive collection of favorites that I keep to reread. Well, I have to start with Ursula K. LeGuin’s novels – almost all of them, especially The Wizard of Earthsea series. Then there’s  Lord of the Rings, of course. All of Patricia McKillip’s stories. Her writing is magic in itself! Carol Berg’s duology: Flesh and Spirit, and Breath and Bone, and her trilogy Transformation, Revelation and Restoration. Most of Charles De Lint’s work, especially The Onion Girl, and Trader. Then there’s C. J. Cherryh’s Fortress series. I could go on and on!

Amber: Why do readers love fantasy?

Rahima: Oddly, not everyone does. Isn’t that strange? Anyway, I’m sure it’s because people love to escape from our rather harsh reality, enter worlds of imagination that speak to the magical, non-linear side of our souls, and go on adventures beyond the confines of so-called reality. In the best fantasies, reader are touched by the struggles and evolution of the characters, learn something about themselves, and may even be inspired to expand their own vision of who they can become.

Rahima Warren

I’m a third-generation native of California and reside there with my husband, where I periodically chase squirrels off the wild bird feeders, and deer away from my roses. For 20 years, I was in private practice as a licensed psychotherapist, but retired in 2006 to focus on my expressive painting, creative writing, and spiritual studies. Dark Innocence is my first novel. I’m currently editing Book Two of The Star-Seer’s Prophecy trilogy, Difficult Blessings. The third book, Dangerous Bliss, awaits revision.

Dark Innocence ~  

Book One of The Star-Seer’s Prophecy 

published by Rose Press

now available on:

www.starseersprophecy.com    

www.rahimawarren.com

Also available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble

Have a Blessed & Creative New Year!

May Your 2012

Burst with Creativity!

Follow 

Relaxing the Writer blog 

to help stay relaxed and creative

throughout the New Year.

Christmas on Wherever Island - Why not?

Fly Off to a Caribbean Island for Christmas?

Christmas on Wherever Island by Amber Polo

A Magic Santa brings Caribbean Christmas Joy!

Marti Bell is facing the prospect of a very unmerry Christmas. Reluctantly, leaving her married lover she travels toward ice, snow, and judgmental family until a magic Santa sends her to a surprise destination in the warm waters of the Caribbean.  

Wherever Island would be a winter paradise except the only place to stay is the beachside cottage of romantic globetrotting photographer Cliff Holmes. Cliff wants to unwind and treat Marti to a little romantic Caribbean Christmas fun but she’s determined to stay in the warm ocean and out of hot water. 

Watch the Christmas on Wherever Island book video 

And check out the Magic Cake Recipe

  “Not only is the setting sensational, the hero will sweep you off your feet…this is one story I can read every Christmas season. …a great happily ever after story.”
A “You Gotta Read” from You Gotta Read Reviews. Reviewed by Roberta

Novella in ebook only

Christmas on Wherever Island

Amazon Kindle

Barnes & Noble

All Romance ebooks

A Review of Donna Boyd's Renegade, at last!

Ten years is a long time to wait, but fans of Donna Boyd's “The Passion” (1998) and “The Promise” (1999) waited not so patiently for the third in the Devoncroix Dynasty series. Now there is “Renegade” - published by the author whose real name is Donna Ball and whose other names include Rebecca Flanders, Donna Carlisle, Leigh Bristol, and Taylor Brady.

I discovered her work when I first shared my fantasy manuscript filled with shifter dogs and a few werewolves. A dog trainer friend told me I must read “The Passion.” I found not the werewolves of scary movies, teens from “Twilight” (2005), or the children’s fantasy world of Harry Potter (1997). Here was a race of creatures living among us - our business leaders, sports stars, and glittering celebrities - like us, but more gloriously beautiful and intelligent. They embodied the best and the worst of humanity. I believed in that possibility as I imagine did many of her fans.

Step into the world of the Devoncroix werewolves and look at the world differently. I loved returning to the castle in Alaska and leaning more about their lives in Italy. “Renegade" like the others is an exciting, well-crafted mix of urban fantasy, suspense, mystery, romance, shapeshifting werewolves, and historical fiction.

 

Writers will want to read her story of why her well-reviewed, popular series was canceled by a major publisher and how “Renegade” is out in print and ebook along with many of her earlier books in eformats. 

And writers will want to read “The Passion” for the shifting often missing in many shifter stories. 

“The Passion” and “The Promise” are, sadly NOT in ebook format. If you want to read it in eformat

Click on “Tell the Publisher! I’d like to read this book on Kindle”  on both Amazon pages to let them know.

More please, Ms. Boyd. Don’t let the lupinotuum keep you from sharing their stories.

 

• Read a great interview with Donna on “Blood Rose Books” 

• And don’t miss "The MillionDollar Deal That Ruined My Career,” her own story of why it took ten years and why she self-published “Renegade.”

For more about Donna Ball and her books visit her website.

   

Dragons Are Forever - Kari Thomas thanks Anne McCaffrey

Anne McCaffrey, The "Dragon Lady," "Mistress of Pern," and the first woman author to win the top two science fiction writing prizes, the Hugo and the Nebula award for Dragonflight, passed at age 85 on November 2st. Her book The White Dragon became one of the first science fiction novels to reach the New York Times Best Seller List.

The first time I picked up Dragonflight I was already devouring books and getting the seed of an idea to write my own. I immediately became happily lost in the world of Pern. No fairy tales here. No fantasy dragon story. Anne McCaffrey immersed me in a complicated science fiction world with more depth than I, at first, comprehended. I have to admit that I skipped over a lot of stuff and concentrated on the dragons' stories.

Ahh, the dragons! Incredible flying creatures of all shapes, sizes and colors. I couldn't get enough of them. I couldn't choose a favorite because I loved them all

I sat down to write my own dragon stories. Lucky for the reading world, those stories were eventually filed away in the garbage (LOL). But they were FUN to write! 

I never lost that fascination with Anne's dragons of Pern. I devoured ---er---read all her books, and still dreamed of writing my own. Years, and eight published books, later, I’ve set aside my cat-shifters (temporarily) and written my own dragon story. Inspired by Anne, in Surrender Her Touch I created a clan of dragon shapeshifters in a mountain compound, who mingle with humans in the city below, but keep their heritage secret.

A heartfelt thanks to Anne McCaffrey who gave readers a world of dragons that will live forever and inspired so many of us.

Happy Reading HUGS!

Kari Thomas

Surrender Her Touch 

(Release date: 
Dec. 7, 2011 - 

Paranormal Romance 
from Eternal Press). 

Sexy dragon-shifter Slade has to convince Summer, the only woman capable of healing dragon-shifters, to save his dragon ruler's life from a mysterious illness. Summer’s horrific memories convince her she would rather see them all dead. 

A sensual love-hate romance filled with dragons, danger and death.

Secrets for Successful Paranormal Writing

Secrets for Successful Paranormal Writing - Kris Neri

Crossing paranormal with other fictional categories — be they romance, mystery or general fiction — couldn’t get any hotter. But there are pitfalls those new to paranormal writing can easily fall into, which can doom a manuscript. Here are some tips to help you avoid those pitfalls:

1. The worst mistake newbies can make is thinking the supernatural elements are just tack-ons. The paranormal aspects must an integral part of the storyline. If you can imagine removing the magical elements, while telling the same story and having it turn out the same way — you’re not using it right.

2. Readers need to understand the rules governing the magical aspects of the world you’re depicting. You can explain those rules — and whatever consequences might result — either explicitly or by allowing the reader to absorb their essence by showing them at work. Most writers use a combination of both. Some can be accomplished by including a character that encounters the paranormal for the first time. The reader can learn how these rules function as the character does, and the reader can share her surprise. That’s what I did in my magical series, by having fake psychic Samantha Brennan encounter the true paranormal for the first time and sharing her shock with the reader.

3. You need to decide whether the magical aspects are known to the general populace of your world, or not. Either way works, but there is a built-in level of conflict if your paranormal beings have to struggle to hide their natures. In the Harry Potter novels, the muggles — non-paranormal beings — are generally unaware of the wizardry being performed in their midst, which provides lots of opportunities for conflict and plot direction, as well as humor.

4. Characters who possess supernatural abilities must be seen using those abilities, or we need to know why not. For instance, Annabelle Haggerty, the Celtic goddess/FBI agent protagonist of my Magical Mystery, MAGICAL ALIENATION, needs to be careful how much magic she performs at the FBI, where she must hide her secret nature. But I once worked with a writing client who described her protagonist as telepathic with animals, yet the character never displayed any telepathy in her frustrating interactions with animals, until the three-quarter point of the novel, for no reason that was ever explained.

5. Magical characters must still be real characters, as richly developed as those not possessing paranormal abilities, yet not be perfect beings, either. Your novel should contain challenging personal growth arcs for these characters, too, even if they also have some extraordinary abilities. Sharing in character growth is why we read fiction.

6. Just as everything comes together in the climax of any other novel, it must in a paranormal work. The solution your protagonist employs to meet her goal must rely on both her natural and supernatural abilities, to bring about a solution that works on both levels. She should also overcome her personal challenges, achieving personal growth as she achieves her story-objective.

7. Most importantly, even magical beings have to earn their successes. If you allow your protagonist to finalize the action in the climax with the effortless waving of a wand, or some solution not inherent within the storyline, you will lose your reader’s respect. If you change the magical rules you’ve already established to allow your character an effortless solution, you’ll also lose that reader. For the reader to continue to suspect disbelief, she must trust in the integrity of your novel. If you want to get around some generally accepted paranormal beliefs, find a realistic way to do it. In the TWILIGHT series, for example, Stephenie Meyer circumvented the belief that vampires can’t go out during the day without burning up by choosing a locale that’s heavily overcast.

Writing paranormal can be extra challenging because so much has to be integrated, and it must work equally well on multiple levels. But it’s great fun to write, and these tips should speed you on your way toward writing paranormal cross-category success.

Kris Neri writes the Samantha Brennan and Annabelle Haggerty Magical Mystery Series, HIGH CRIMES ON THE MAGICAL PLANE and MAGICAL ALIENATION, as well as the Tracy Eaton Mystery Series. She can be reached through her website

Why I Write Fantasy - Vonnie Winslow Crist

Welcome Vonnie Winslow Crist, fantasy author artist, and friend of fairies.

Amber: Why do you write fantasy?

Vonnie: First of all – it's fun to write. Secondly, writing is a form of communication. I send out a message, and hope beyond hope, that there are people out there who read my stories and poems, and say: “Yes! I've felt that way before.” or “Wow! I want to be a part of that world.” or maybe even, “Thank you. Your words were just what I needed on a bleak day.” In my new collection of fantasy stories, The Greener Forest, I hope readers will not only have fun reading the tales, but maybe look around themselves and spot the places where the world of Faerie might leak into their day-to-day lives. Speaking of fun, here's a link to a   FREE Greener Forest maze I drew. 

Amber: How do you find fairies?

Vonnie: Here's a peek at a poem that gives directions on how to findFaerie creatures – it was used to introduce the stories in The Greener Forest:  And here's a link to "Angels," one of the stories in the book.

Amber: What are your favorite fantasy novels?

Vonnie: The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and other books by JRR Tolkien; The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis; Anne McCaffrey's The Dragonriders of Pern books; Neverwhere, Stardust, and other books by Neil Gaiman; the Shannara series by Terry Brooks; JK Rowling's Harry Potter books; The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins... I could list many more. I'm drawn to books where the author has worked hard at world-building and writes compelling characters.

Amber: Why do readers love fantasy?

Vonnie: The easy answer is: because they're fun to read. But I think there's more to it. Fantasy stories have been with us since our ancestors told tales about magical beings and miraculous events around a cooking fire. Humans come from a tradition of fairy stories, folktales, myths, and legends. I think it's because unlike our “real” world, in fantasy stories: decency triumphs over evil, people get their just desserts, everyone can be afraid sometimes without ridicule, there's a reason for bad things and a solution to every problem, things can be beautiful underneath an ugly exterior, complex issues can be fairly resolved, and at the end of the story, the universe is balanced.

Amber: Would you write fantasy even if no one read it?

Vonnie: Of course! It would be a lonelier life, but the need to capture with words the fantastical worlds of my dreams and imaginings wouldn't vanish because no one was listening. For me, writing and drawing fantasy are like breathing.

Vonnie Winslow Crist was born in the Year of the Dragon. Linked to fantastical creatures since then, she's written poetry, fiction, and nonfiction with a mythic or folklore tilt. She's also an award-winning fantasy artist. She enjoys gardening with fairy-friendly plants, feeding wild birds, walking beneath the trees at Wood's Edge, and making a sparkly bit of jewelry every now and again. Her motto: The world is full of mystery and magic. We just need to look, listen, and believe that wondrous things are still possible.

Vonnie's Books

The Greener Forest (Cold Moon Press) 

Sideshow by the Sea, Assassins, and Bells(Echelon Press) 

River of Stars and Essential Fables (LiteCircle Books)

Leprechaun Cake & Other Tales (VegetarianResource Group)  

To find out more about 

Vonnie and her books, Visit:

 Her Website

Whimsical Words Vonnie Winslow Crist's Blog