Leave it to Christian publishing’s trailblazer Jeff Gerke (founder of Christian spec-fic imprint Marcher Lord Press) to begin another imprint. But this one is sure to twist a few knickers.
From Christian Retailing’s Marcher Press Launches “More Mature” Christian Imprint:
“The core MLP readership is conservative and Christian, but many who need Christ will never read one of our regular novels,” said Jeff Gerke, MLP publisher. “A Throne of Bones, which we’re pitching as the Christian answer to George R.R. Martin [author of Game of Thrones, now an HBO series], we can engage fans of secular epic fantasy and introduce them to the gospel.”
So how does Gerke intend to “engage fans of secular epic fantasy and introduce them to the gospel”? By scrapping some of the most recognizable elements of Christian fiction — its G / PG-rating.
Which is why, on MLP’s Hinterlands Page, there is a Mature Content Warning:
Hinterlands books may contain vulgarity, profanity, nudity, and/or sexual content, but never for gratuitous purposes. Hinterlands allows us to pursue crossover publishing that will put the word of the gospel before people who would never otherwise pick up a Christian novel. It also allows us to examine mature themes in a realistic manner that some Christians will appreciate. We know that not everyone will want to read these books, so we have set them apart into the Hinterlands imprint.
I totally applaud Gerke in this. But let’s call it for what it is — an experiment. If the objectives of the Hinterlands imprint is to “put the word of the gospel before people who would never otherwise pick up a Christian novel,” is that accomplished simply by allowing “vulgarity, profanity, nudity, and/or sexual content”? I doubt it. Nevertheless, more edgy content, especially as it relates to fans of epic fantasy and spec-fic who are used to edgy content, is a step in the right direction.
However, it would seem to me that the goal of a “cross-over” imprint is addressed mainly through marketing. Advertizing on secular venues and completely stripping the Mature Content Warnings, as well as any references to Christian fiction at all, would be essential. Let’s face it, someone who’s a fan of the HBO “Game of Thrones” adaptation who has to be warned about a few cuss words and some minor skin, would probably laugh. And be tipped off as to how big an issue this is for us Christians. If the marketing strategy is word of mouth, then winning over the conservative Christian demographic will be the issue.
And that’s where Gerke is swimming upstream.
For example, when Christian Retailing posted a link to their article on Hinterlands, one reader commented thus:
Can I just ask you to please be careful about all of this? I can sort of see your point, but also remember the verses in Philippians 4-8 and 9-would Jesus or Paul really go there? Will it be causing someone to stumble? Just something to think about…
And then there’s this one-star review of “A Throne of Bones” over at Amazon:
I read an article from the author on another website about this book. He spoke of the need for better literature than what had been offered lately, such as 50 Shades of Grey, and the Twilight series. I heartily agreed, and knowing that Mr. Day was a Christian, and he compared his work to JRR Tolkein and CS Lewis, I was looking forward to reading it. I was sorely disappointed to find profanity, and vulgarity and a few other things I found objectionable. If you are into Christian fiction, this is not the book for you. (emphasis mine)
Excuse me while I throw up.
This reader tells me nothing about the story, the writing, the plot, the execution — NOTHING. Only what she “found objectionable.” And how those “objections” exclude this book from being good “Christian fiction.” Sadly, this reviewer is representative of the vocal majority who continues to exercise massive sway in the shape of contemporary Christian fiction.
I plan on purchasing “A Throne of Bones” and supporting Hinterlands. But the project faces some important hurdles. The main one being the conservative Christian culture that keeps such “experiments” forever in check. Huge props to Jeff Gerke for taking this step. Godspeed to his endeavors.
Now, if only he can find “mature” Christians to go along with him…
Quoting Philippians 4: 8-9 to oppose certain story elements is bad theology.
I already have the book, Mike, so I’ll be letting you know about it. (And I have little interest in the Game of Thrones books — my created-world quota is full — much less the TV series. Nudity-in-sexual-contexts is the only 100-percent unacceptable element of a visually told story, according to much more solid Biblical theology!)
Slippery slope. Looking forward to watching this experiment unfold.
Agreed, Heather. Slippery indeed.
I think it’s an excellent idea. I am a Christian, who is so far from perfect and totally reliant on and humbled by the blood of Christ. When I first started writing I tried my hand at Christian fiction, but the words wouldn’t come. Mainstream story lines kept floating through my head. I’d pray on it. I want to represent and serve God. My prayers were always answered with the same idea…the people who need Christ most will never pick up Christian fiction. So, I pray each morning before I write and I hope that who I am and who I serve comes through in the end. If I’m wrong, I suppose I’m in for a butt whoopin’ at the Pearly Gates.
My understanding of Christianity is that when Satan tries to give you that butt whoopin’ at the Pearly Gates, Jesus stands up for you and tells Satan where to go.
You and I could be twins! lol I feel the same way about my writing. I get ideas and write them as best I can. I pray all the time about my writing. All I can hope is the same as you: that who I am and what I believe will come forth 🙂
Hmmm. While I understand the idea of reaching out to folks who “would not otherwise read a Christian novel” I think the notion that doing so only requires the insertion of some colorful metaphors and deletion of modest clothing is sort of juvenile. I know a lot of folks who read Game of Thrones (which I hope to eventually pick up myself). None of them have ever said “that book has the best cussing and sex I have ever read!” They tell me it’s a great story, with incredible dialogue and characters, and that this is all good is *spite* of the more colorful content.
On top of that, there are a lot of epic fiction novels with none of this in it at all that draw the same audience as Game of Thrones. This tells me that the common denominator is not all of this “objectionable” material, but amazing storytelling.
While I wouldn’t mind picking up this book, I admit that I am suspicious of it already just because the concept seems off base. My personal fear is that such fiction tells its intended audience that Christians are disconnected rather than the other way around. It says that we think the only reason they are reading a book is because of the “mature” content, when in reality these guys read Narnia books and Harry Potter, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and Lord of the Rings (all of which have NO “mature” content) and build little villages with action figures in their bedrooms. The best, most enduring fantasy engages the child in all of us – not the perv. Sometimes pervs are the ones writing the engaging fantasy story and so their books have this junk in it, but that’s not the core of why they write what they do. They want to fight dragons, and wear armor, and be kids forever and ever.
The fantasies written by Christians who understand this are the ones that have set the standard not just for Christian authors, but all fantasy authors. They are the measure.
Hence, this books intentions have me shaking my head and thinking that they just don’t get it – but all in all, I appreciate the effort.
Melissa, you and I are on the same page…I wrote my comment below before I saw yours. Once the focus gets put on innovation and being industry leaders…not industry coattail-hangers…then I’ll listen.
I agree, Melissa. Well said.
I’m in agreement with that. The content is not the issue. Like you said it not all does the opposite, but I find it for myself also troubling. I’ll pick up a book that sounds like a good story, not based on what the content is. But if it advertises the content, then it’s like “Am I selecting this book BECAUSE of the content?” It’s like your on a news site and there’s a story about a study on porn stars or something, and there’s a part of you that’s interested in what they have to say about it and another part that thinks the only reason you glance there is because the headline is risque.
It seems a better tactic would be to take off the warning and dissassociate it with “Christian” fiction. Because when a secular person picks up a secular book, they don’t think about it, and when a Christian picks up a secular book, they too don’t think about it, and if a Christian or a non-Christian picks up a christian fiction book they are probably doing it to avoid those things so you end up creating a stumbling block for them.
Let it look “secular” and let the buyer make the judgment. Don’t lure them with it.
Melissa, I think it’s inaccurate to suggest that people read a book (other than perhaps erotica) just for the mature content. The issue is more realism, and that’s the rap against a lot of Christian fiction — that it’s overly-sanitized. I agree that the fact that we have to debate whether my mob boss can say “dammit!” w/out offending some brother’s sensibilities, indeed reveals that “Christians are disconnected.” But I would back up on the suggestion that people read some books just for the Mature content. I think the average adult reader — unlike the average Christian fiction reader — reads with the expectation that there may be some mature content. And, unlike the average Christian fiction reader, is not offended when they find it. Thanks for commenting.
This: “So how does Gerke intend to “engage fans of secular epic fantasy and introduce them to the gospel”? By scrapping some of the most recognizable elements of Christian fiction — its G / PG-rating.”
This is what I really took this from, more than the Hinterlands disclaimer. It seemed to suggest that in order to engage this demographic, mature content must be inserted. There IS a big difference between expected/unsurprising content and anticipated content. I can see the reason for what is happening here, and after reading this long discussion, I can see no easy way for MLP to publicize it – not because the book itself is troublesome, but just because the Christian market has created this problem. In the words of C.S. Lewis’ Magician’s Nephew, this is a “dem fine” mess. *gasp*
Honestly, this doesn’t sound like blazing a trail. It sounds like following a trend. This is the same thing as Christian bookstores putting little excerpts of “If you like (insert secular bands), you’ll love…” by all the Christian records. Just like vampires. I appreciate the attempts to find new readers in the mainstream marketplace, but all I ever see is more cursing, more obvious innuendo and double entendres and more violence. Trend-following has been the bane of Christian entertainment for a very, very long time. It’s our Achilles’ heel. I can guarantee you that Martin’s books are popular for reasons that have little to do with violence and sex. Yes, a red-blooded male will appreciate reading sex scenes, but they won’t keep him coming back, book after book. That takes a strong story and characters, which Martin’s work has in spades.
Seriously, why not just go all the way: publish in the secular marketplace. More Christians will point to the Christ allusions in Harry Potter (a secular book) or Lord of the Rings (another secular book) than to any Christian-published novel. These authors who are desperately trying to hold two polar opposites in keeping the love of Christian fiction folks and mainstream folks are, in my opinion, practicing the art of futility. Decide which swimming pool you’d like to swim in and stick with it.
They only point to them because there’s a cottage industry of Christians desperate to find Christ references in them, because they need to justify to themselves that they are reading a secular novel and liking it. Harry Potter has nothing to do with Christianity, and to be honest LOTR doesn’t either. It’s more an elegy for lost, past England than that.
It gets a little frustrating because it seems like people want us to encode our faith, or on the other hand, make it so overt that books become sermons.
See this is where I get frustrated. I keep hearing that LOTR (and Harry Potter for that matter, but that books a different thing all together so I won’t go there) is not actually Christian and especially not evangelistic, etc., from a lot of modern readers. Same readers also like to say that Tolkien would have turned in his grave at the suggestion. Problem is that LOTR is intentionally Christian. Tolkien and Lewis both – but especially Tolkien – used fiction as an apologetic and believed in writing fiction that could be more powerfully utilized this way. In fact, Tolkien drew on the Norse stories of Thor and Asgard to convince Lewis of a God active in all good stories. To say he just wrote a story without evangelistic intention is ignoring his clear goals.
If the modern Christian wants to make fun of “cottage Christians” desperate to find Christian references in literature, he needs to point to those two men, because they’re the ones who started it. They just didn’t kill it. They even reworked old myths into Christian myths, so one can technically blame them for the poser trend (even though we mostly think of the poser junk). As for Rowling, who was heavily influenced by these two, she created a different animal, but to say she wrote books with nothing Christian whatsoever in them is completely inaccurate. Nearly the entire series was born from 1 Corinthians 15:26 – and pretty much the entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 15 tells you where the Potter’s whole story came from.
These stories are Christian – but they aren’t Christian industry material. There’s a difference. To rob them entirely of their Christian purpose is wrong. It’s what scholars did to Beowulf – which almost destroyed it. Nobody understood its signficance. Not until Tolkien brought it back out and reminded them that foremost, Beowulf is a piece of intentional Christian storytelling. Ironically, I know see the same thing happening to his own books.
High-five, Melissa. I was going to keep my mouth shut on the Harry Potter/LotR thing, but since you stood up on the soap box, I will give a cheer! You have said exactly how I feel on the matter :).
I don’t see it as intentionally Christian. There’s debate about what that means in the context of fiction, but I’m thinking themes of redemption, grace, god-awareness, god-activity, sin, and other things. I don’t see those themes in an intentional way in LOTR, as opposed to other Christian works, or even some secular ones. I think the whole Christian aspect is a result of his personal life and friendship with C.S. Lewis, and Christians claimed him due to it.
Leaf by Niggle is intentionally Christian, about the difficulties of a Christian artist, so I think he could have done so. Just not in LOTR.
Really? You must be reading a different “LotR” to me. I see sin, grace and redemption sprinkled throughout. As for god-awareness and god-activity, those themes are left for his Middle-earth histories – “The Silmarillion”.
Yeah, really. No one who is evil, or even harbors temptation of the ring’s power is redeemed. Sin (if we give the ring that aspect) nukes everyone it touches if held long enough, and the only recourse is taking the ring away. That leaves them ennervated and broken rather than whole, and there really isn’t any healing or grace from it. Even when the ring is destroyed, the end result is the magical races leaving Middle Earth. I may be looking at this with an odd eye, no doubt, but that’s what I see.
An interesting contrast is Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry, and comparing Pwyll Twice-born to Gandalf. Both go through the fire in a manner of speaking, but Pwyll, despite The Summer Tree not being a specifically Christian book, deals more with suffering, atonement and forgiveness than Gandalf.
D.M. Dutcher, I thought that part of LoTR was explicitly Christian. I thought it was symbolic of how sin, and the effects of sin, can never be fully overcome on this (Middle) Earth. It is only in Heaven (the Undying Lands) that we are truly free from its power.
Plus, when sin is at last destroyed (the ring), we humans (magical races) will leave this land for a New Earth (Undying Lands).
Just a thought.
Off all the characters in the book, Frodo is a literary type of Christ, who is burdened with carrying an evil thing which his not of his making. It is simply entrusted to him because he is the only one who can carry it. Sam’s brief taking of it from him towards the end is not unlike the man who briefly carried Christ’s own cross for a short time as he walked towards his “doom.”
In that light, of course he was scarred. So was Jesus, who, also like Frodo, was with us for a time before crossing over to the Grey Havens.
LOTR is not a directly allegory from the beginning to the end, but is loaded with small stories within stories which directly reflect the stories we know in Scripture and also draw attention to other stories who hold common (even unintended) Biblical themes. This operation of Literature made up the entirety of Tolkien’s motivations as a writer and teacher. Like Joseph Campbell, he believed in the hero with a thousand faces, only, unlike Joseph Campbell, Tolkien believed that Hero had a name.
He’s not a Christ figure though. He only took the burden because no one else could: the ring was so powerful that sin would corrupt anyone who touched it, and only an “average joe” could handle it for a long enough period of time to throw it into the fire. Which he didn’t do, by the way-Frodo failed, overcome finally by the power of the ring. There’s some parallels with World War One here that can’t be ignored, which to me echo closer to the LOTR themes than a typical Christian allegory. I think people forget how harrowing and how dominant an experience that was, and the magic going away can also refer to the old genteel society being overcome by the dark, ringlike powers of the machinegun and mustard gas.
It’s just too tangled up to really declare it as such. At a basic level, you can read Christ themes into any story about the hero’s journey archetype: a fun one to do so is The Last Unicorn, by Peter Beagle. Especially the film: it pains me a bit that we get so much on Tolkien, but that one has some pretty deep subtext about religious belief that you could unpack in a number of ways. But I think to declare it as intentionally Christian, some things need to be there that just aren’t.
Literary Christ types are not always necessarily identical to Christ. If they’re human or any created being at all, this would be impossible. Hugo’s ValJean, Harry “Potter,” Thor, Dickens’ Sydney Carton in Tale of Two Cities, Gandalf, and Dumbledore, etc., all represent literary “types” of Christ without being exactly like him. Frodo is the same.
Even then, you are right about using the story alone to determine that is intentionally Christian. There is no story with which this is possible. The author is the one who determines his intentions. One knows Tolkien’s intentions by understanding Tolkien, why he created literature, and what he believed. While it may seem to some a stretch to say that the Hobbit and LOTR are intentionally Christian, to know who wrote them and say they are unintentionally Christian is far greater stretch, imho. It’s like saying Richard Dawkins decided to write books about evolution, then accidentally wrote one.
Incidentally, if one applied this same logic to the Biblical Christ “types” such as Joseph, David, and so on, one would find that they aren’t perfect Christ figures either. That doesn’t mean they aren’t intentional types of Christ written by an amazing Author who knew exactly what he was doing.
It was Tolkien who essentially led Lewis to Christ and first infused him with the notions of God speaking to people through all great stories, not just the Biblical story. What Lewis practiced was Tolkien’s invention.
LOTR was intentionally Christian, but it was so before the invention of the Christian marketplace with its lists of dos and don’ts. So his intentions can’t be judged by that standard.
While LOTR is intentionally Christian and has volumes of (good, high, not low) allegory throughout, is not ONLY a Christian tale. Tolkien had numerous intentions while writing it – he was exploring linguistics and the evolution of myth, etc. However, above all, it is a Christian work. His goal was to create a myth that would make it “past watchful dragons” – a phrase he himself coined and Lewis followed. He believed that secular critics and a secular culture represented dragons who guarded men’s hearts the way dragons (Smaug) greedily guards treasure. In order to steal the treasure (like Bilbo Baggins) one must sometimes go in disguise. Then, one can steal men’s hearts before the dragon knows what has happened.
This philosophy got left behind with the birth of Christian industry which preffered blazing horns and banners attached to everything. Now we alert the dragon that we are coming. A bold move, but one that can fail.
By his own apologetic, Tolkien would believe that those who saw Christian themes in his work that even he didn’t intend to be there would be more correct than he, because he believed that all creators were only sub-creators (whether they were Christian or not) working under the influence of the only real, original Creator, the Holy Spirit. It is why Lewis often said that Narnia was never “intentionally” an allegory, but that it just happened. Both Lewis and Tolkien – but Tolkien foremost recognized a symbiotic relationship between all art and the Holy Spirit.
This is why people who try to remove this vital component of Tolkien’s motivations from his work just trouble me. More often, I believe folks say that because they’ve heard someone else say it, or because it’s what makes them feel more comfortable. But if anyone spends any time at all researching this man’s life or works, they’ll find this just doesn’t hold water.
What I’m saying is that these two got it right – but that something came along which made this type of approach (which may be what Vox Day is now attempting) very nearly impossible – and that’s really very sad.
What I’m saying is that these two got it right – but that something came along which made this type of approach (which may be what Vox Day is now attempting) very nearly impossible – and that’s really very sad.
And what came along was CHRISTIAN(TM) this and CHRISTIAN(TM) that, to the point you now have a complete Christianese Bizarro World completely cut off from all those Heathen(TM) outside except for drive-by prosletyzing sallies, Bowdlerized and Completely Safe. Christianese consolation prizes for those not allowed the real thing.
Example: “God’s Favorite TV Shows” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX4y_jn-XXs), especially the painful parts at 0:26-0:34, 1:02-1:30, and 2:16-2:28.
And its reputation has infected all the outside world’s attitude towards anything with the name.
Jayne Cobb: “That’s crazy talk.”
Doc Simon: “Then let’s talk crazy.”
And here’s gorram crazy: Not just Tolkien, Lewis, and Rowling. In the past two years I have read My Little Pony fanfics with more echoes of the Gospel than what you’d find on the Christianese shelves. Let he who has ears to hear, hear, and all that.
“A Cup of Joe” by The Descendant (who made his bones taking one-shot background characters and giving them lives). A retired veteran with PTSD and survivors’ guilt healed by a touch of the Divine.
“And the Temptress Came Unto Her (Twilight Sparkle 4:1-11)”. Temptation and the seduction of evil, as retold via the main mortal character and the pilot episode’s villainess.
“My Little Dashie” and its derivative “Rarity and I”, a sub-pony genre where a pony is encountered on our Earth and the pony’s presence brings healing to the human who encounters them.
“Creeping Darkness” by Pen Stroke. Horror crossover with the Alan Wake PC game, with archetypes of the Devil in the Dark Force (devouring aspect), of Hell in the Dark Place (the crushing Void) and a key Harrowing of Hell scene where the heroine literally Descends into Hell (the Dark Place) to set a captive free. And at the end a god-figure literally offers up her godhood, her magic, and her life to resurrect a beloved mortal.
“Past Sins” by Pen Stroke. The story of a Reluctant Antichrist, brought to the world by a cult’s ritual working. Only she’s had a taste of a normal life and doesn’t want to be the Pony Antichrist — how does she find redemption? Is redemption even possible? Hint: Except as you become as a little foal… According to an author interview, was written specifically to redeem the Ponies’ Antichrist figure from the pilot two-parter, the one whose coming would End the World in Eternal Night.
And one I assisted on, “My Little Balladeer”, a crossover between Manly Wade Wellman’s classic “Silver John” series and MLP. One of the running themes through it is “Magic vs Occult”, and a sense of wonder being despoiled by occult darkness that must be set right. And the deceptiveness of evil.
Wow. Fanfic just got weird. Interesting examples though.
Fanfic has been weird forever.
I’ve been involved in Bronydom for a year and a half, and I have NEVER seen the amount of creative fan output — original music, fiction, comics, even original animation — than I have seen come out of Lauren Faust’s current reboot of MLP. (Both Lewis and Chesterton wrote that the children’s literature with staying power are the ones with all-ages appeal, and MLP:FIM is demonstrating not only all-ages appeal but the ability to inspire passionate creativity.)
The fanfic is especially prone to Sturgeon’s Rule, though. There are even some fanfics (like “Fanfic is Crapsack”, a black-humor novella where bad fanfics start overlaying reality in the ponies’ world) that spoof this.
My exposures to Fanfic have been the more mainstream (if you can call Fanfic mainstream) Sherlock Holmes, Original Recipe Star Trek and Harry Potter. My general rule is that every Fanfic universe will have world class writers and complete oddballs but are mostly peopled by hobbyist writers who are honing plotting skill.
I had no idea that there WAS a reboot of MLP, primarily because I’ve never been drawn to horses. And as a child I wasn’t one to play with gender-designated toys so they were never really on my radar.
Yeah, if I had to name the three top fandoms for fanfic/music/comics/etc, MLP would be at the top followed by Doctor Who and Harry Potter… (After that would probably be Supernatural, Sherlock, and the Avengers – possibly Buffy would be in the running as there are a kajillion crossover fics with the above and Buffy, but it’s so old I can’t find much for art/etc anymore.)
No, this is different weird. I admit I am a weird guy myself, and I can get the appeal of liking something like MLP. It’s a clever, well-animated, earnest cartoon in a sea of pretty mediocre animation that is ironic and often ugly. I can also get liking things that are unusual, or expressing creativity in odd or unusual ways. I can even get mixing up disparate elements in order to deconstruct them.
But man, I cannot get the mindset of someone who thinks Manly Wade Wellman’s John books would be improved by taking John out and putting in a pastel colored pony as the main character. Or god, Alan Wake with ponies. That’s like saying “Hey, I really liked John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, but you know what would really be awesome? If it starred Donald Duck.”
I’m sorry HUG, I mean no offense, but this is weirding out the weird guy here.
D.M. Dutcher, your post is hilarious. I watched the first episode of the rebooted MLP:FiM and it was decent but I don’t know that I’d bother with the rest. That said, the crazy amount of fan-fiction surrounding the series is mind-blowing and the cross-overs are, well… odd.
Okay. I’ll see you and raise you one <a href="http://www.fimfiction.net/story/27032/My-Little-Balladeer"My Little Balladeer. Silver John/MLP:FIM crossover, faithful and fully canonical to both sources, played completely straight. Introduces classic Wellman fans to the current MLP and Bronies to Wellman.
See this is where I get frustrated. I keep hearing that LOTR (and Harry Potter for that matter, but that books a different thing all together so I won’t go there) is not actually Christian and especially not evangelistic, etc., from a lot of modern readers. Same readers also like to say that Tolkien would have turned in his grave at the suggestion. Problem is that LOTR is intentionally Christian. Tolkien and Lewis both – but especially Tolkien – used fiction as an apologetic and believed in writing fiction that could be more powerfully utilized this way. In fact, Tolkien drew on the Norse stories of Thor and Asgard to convince Lewis of a God active in all good stories. To say he just wrote a story without evangelistic intention is ignoring his clear goals.
If the modern Christian wants to make fun of “cottage Christians” desperate to find Christian references in literature, he needs to point to those two men, because they’re the ones who started it. They just didn’t kill it. They even reworked old myths into Christian myths, so one can technically blame them for the poser trend (even though we mostly think of the poser junk). As for Rowling, who was heavily influenced by these two, she created a different animal, but to say she wrote books with nothing Christian whatsoever in them is completely inaccurate. Nearly the entire series was born from 1 Corinthians 15:26 – and pretty much the entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 15 tells you where the Potter’s whole story came from.
These stories are Christian – but they aren’t Christian industry material. There’s a difference. To rob them entirely of their Christian purpose is wrong. It’s what scholars did to Beowulf – which almost destroyed it. Nobody understood its signficance. Not until Tolkien brought it back out and reminded them that foremost, Beowulf is a piece of intentional Christian storytelling. Ironically, I now see the same thing happening to his own books.
I didn’t mean to double post! A double posted man is unstabled in all his neighs!
Melissa, lucky you’re a woman then!
By Tolkein’s own admission, his books were Christian, even more so in the revisions. His approach was very different than many modern Christian writers. He allowed his beliefs to influence, not overwhelm, is works. Many in the secular world may also be surprised to know Tolkein was very influential in his friend C.S. Lewis’ abandonment of atheism. Both were influenced in their writing (especially Lewis) by an earlier Christian fantasy writer, George MacDonald. MacDonald had encouraged his friend Lewis Carroll to publish his Alice in Wonderland. I only write this to show how an entire genre has been shaped by Christian writers. Ironically, they are rarely found in the Christian Fiction section.
I had not heard the Carroll connection to MacDonald. Is there some suggestion that Carroll was a Christian? Because his are some of the fantasty novels out there that, in spite of being highly imaginitive and well written and containing two of my all-time favorite poems, give me the eebie jeebies for being obviously anti-Christian in places.
Lewis was the son of a preacher. I don’t know any more than that though.
IIRC Carroll was pretty much your standard atheistic mathematician.
This is what I thought. The “eat me” “drink me” bits have always seemed a direct jab at the church to me. There’s just something weird going on in those books.
Okay, I apologise. I did NOT recall correctly. Carroll (Dodgson) was one of the Spiritualist fans of the era. He was raised Anglican but changed his view of God to include Universalism and Spiritism.
I’m sorry for putting wrong information out there. I will say, though, that no matter what he believed I find the Alice books to be filled with creeptastically uncomfortable imagery. I cannot stand to read them and had nightmares about them as a child.
I think that his interest in Spiritism and the occult comes through pretty heavily in his fiction. Also, I know what people say about him not being technically a paedophile…but his questionable sexuality with regard to Alice Liddell makes me very VERY disquieted.
I feel stupid for not having recognised these jabs at Christianity. I still don’t see the references to the occult in the Alice books though.
I don’t know what Carroll’s beliefs were, but MacDonald and his kids did encourage Carroll to publish his stories. Suggestions of paedophilia have been largely disputed.
I only write this to show how an entire genre has been shaped by Christian writers. Ironically, they are rarely found in the Christian Fiction section.
…next to the Left Behind knockoffs, Buggies & Bonnets Romances, and “Just like 50 Shades of Grey, Except CHRISTIAN(TM)!” knockoffs.
A pattern I have noticed: Almost all these “Christian writers rarely found in the Christian(TM) Fiction section” came out of Western-Rite Liturgical Church backgrounds. Christianity with liturgy and sacraments and long-standing historical traces. Christianity that celebrates the Unseen in the Seen.
Tolkien was Catholic, Lewis was Anglican, Cordwainer Smith (acknowledged as a Christian SF author by everyone except the Christians) was Episcopalian, Tim Powers (master of the Secret History sub-genre) is Catholic. Even the author of that My Little Pony Reluctant Antichrist fan novel “Past Sins” is a 22-year-old lapsed Lutheran grad student.
There seems to be something in a Liturgical church background that familiarizes you with symbology and storytelling, as opposed to the Gnostically-Pneumatic-yet-Ruthlessly-Practical attitude in the stuff that DOES make it into the Christian(TM) Fiction section.
This isn’t always true. A lot of times those same authors have highly idiosyncratic visions of Christianity and stand even outside those same liturgical traditions. Cordwainer Smith was influenced as much by his Chinese experiences as his faith, and Powers Catholicism is about as latent as Gene Wolfe’s. There’s no Eastern Orthodox modern writer of spec fic at all, to show one failure of a liturgical tradition to be expressed in faith, and if you are going to bring up liturgy as a role in storytelling you also need to talk about Anne Rice, who is the dark side of this: the sensuality of the liturgy and high-church experience, but with none of the spiritual substance.
I have to give you props though for being someone else who even knows who Cordwainer Smith is, or who Tim Powers is too.
“There’s no Eastern Orthodox modern writer of spec fic at all, to show one failure of a liturgical tradition to be expressed in faith…”
There’s at least one I know, R.L. Copple: http://blog.rlcopple.com/
“A Throne of Bones, which we’re pitching as the Christian answer to George R.R. Martin [author of Game of Thrones, now an HBO series], we can engage fans of secular epic fantasy and introduce them to the gospel.”
I think many non-Christian readers will disregard the imprint altogether if they get wind of the above comment, specifically the ‘introduce them to the gospel’ part. “There those Christians go again, trying to push their agenda, but now doing it all the more sneaky-like.”
this.
exactly
ditto, jessica. i told jeff i wish him the very best, and i do. i hope things prosper for him, but frankly i think he’s going at it bass-ackwards.
go crossover/mainstream and keep it relatively clean, sans all preaching (but not necessarily references to a deity or God or whatnot), and forget about “winning” anyone at this point. get readers used to reading excellent material from christians. period.
that’s my goal, anywho, at port yonder. build the respect. gain a platform.
And use capital letters?
no caps. too busy with the other goals. sorry.
You’re too busy to use capital letters? Not the best excuse, if you claim to be a writer. But if it’s a joke – nice!
i.e.
“We are Christians of Borg.
Prepare to be Converted.
Resistance is Futile.”
Heh. That’s funny. 🙂
Sleep deprivation — who needs drugs?
This whole debate is so weird.
Today on the Kill Zone (a thriller blog), they have this article about blending sex and suspense. http://killzoneauthors.blogspot.com/2012/12/blending-sex-and-suspense.html
Over there, sex is handled as one more story element. It’s no big deal–in fact, in the thriller genre, it’s expected. Also, I know there are Christians who (GASP!) read secular novels with sex in them. Heck, there are lots of Christians who … *whispers* … loved Twilight.
So what if Jeff made a “more mature” imprint? So he’s allowing for books with strong crossover appeal. Since when has all Christian writing been G-rated? Karen Kingsbury has been writing sex for years. So has Bodie Thoene. It’s not the big deal Christians make it out to be.
I have to say I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree with Jeff Gerke’s decision to create this imprint. I think it’s high time that Christian fiction seek to relate more to Christians and non-Christians alike. That’s not to say that I think we should be ‘mature’ for the sake of being ‘mature’, or engage in following a trend just to be trendy. But I do think that Christian writers need to start being more open and clever with what it is they are writing if they want to reach both audiences.
Let’s be honest. A good deal of non-Christian fiction is popular because it is successful in telling realistic, gripping stories. Much Christian fiction that I have read can’t do that as well, simply because it seeks to rid itself of the ‘edgy’ or ‘realistic’ content found in most great novels. People can’t relate to some of the characters because those characters don’t react or speak or behave in a way that a ‘real’ person would. They react in the way that a ‘good Christian who never sins’ would. Is that to say that sexual content and vulgarity should be included in Christian fiction just to make that fiction popular? No. But I think it can be included to tell a more gripping story and help non-Christians and Christians relate to the plots and characters more. To be more relevant to both audiences.
A little while ago I created a community called The Crossover Alliance (http://thecrossoveralliance.socialgo.com) that brings together readers and writers of this type of fiction – edgy Christian spec. And I think this ‘crossover’ genre has a place in the market, and I also think it will become more popular with both Christians and non-Christians as word and work of it spreads. I applaud Gerke for venturing out into this territory.
The seminal essay on the subject — Sex, Death, and Christian Fiction by Simon Morden:
http://www.simonmorden.com/about/essays/sex-death-and-christian-fiction/
And his followup, six years later:
http://www.simonmorden.com/2011/08/31/where-are-we-now-sex-death-and-christian-fiction-revisited/
Those articles were pretty good, and strangely enough, relevant. Thanks for sharing.
I’m a George RR Martin fangirl from before the TV series and its endless parade of senseless nipples.
His books are wonderful because they are well-told stories in an amazingly-crafted world. They aren’t wonderful because of the sex or the swearing or the man who skins his enemies alive.
They are wonderful because when Martin writes them he says “I want to tell a story in a world so rich and expansive they’d never be able to film it.” Yes, that was his ACTUAL motivation; after years of writing for TV he wanted to push the craft of fantasy writing to the limit. And he has. He set out to tell marvelous stories and he has.
Those marvelous stories lead the reader to think on several levels about the importance of family and honour and food for the hungry.
I’m not interested in yet another Trick Marketing For Christian Novels. I’m interested in a publisher who says “we are taking the shackles off Christian storytellers.”
Because I want the day to come that Christians can bring their worldview to fiction to tell great stories without constantly having to please the schoolmarm element.
Oh. Wait. Whoops. We have that now! It’s called “mainstream publishing”. It’s called “small press”. _Star of Justice_ by Robynn Tolbert is one of my favourite reads this year. It’s a Splashdown book that aims to tell a good story and does. And the Christian elements are natural to the story; they don’t drive the story nor do they hamper it in any way.
Sorry. Got off track there. My point is this. There is a difference between Christianity and American Cultural Christianity and its high time that storytellers be allowed to be free of American Cultural Christianity and its narrow, extra-biblical strictures.
…I think it’s a good thing that Marcher Lord has a new imprint for the more mature content, as sometimes a story does want it – but to start it off with a ‘similar title’ Game of Thrones knock-off? That feels like cheating… maybe it’s just me though…
No, it’s not just you. My first response to an obvious title hack is to think that the creator is not actually creative and that they’re being tricksy. In short, even as a Christian, my response is that this is a Trojan Horse.
If it was a parody, that would be different. Instead it comes off as being more like the cheap Asian market straight-to-video versions of the latest successful animated film – like Chop-Kick Panda (for Kung Fu Panda). Why do these exist?
The actual word for this is a “Mockbuster”.
A knockoff of a successful blockbuster.
Also–I struggled through Vox Day’s _Summa Elvetica_. He’s not been the best Spec Fic writer in the past. I can’t help but think they’re aiming not only for a Game Of Thrones knockoff audience but also a Vox Day fanboy audience.
I’ve never read Summa Elvetica; all I know of it is its premise. (And it’s a really great premise.) I take it the author didn’t pull it off very well?
I agree. What will the next title be? Fifty Shades of Green?
…starring Kermit and Piggy.
Now THAT sounds like Bad Shipping Fanfic.
Kermit and Miss Piggy is pretty much canon. Do you even know The Muppets?
Mike, I have to agree with those here who are raising an eyebrow. And I join the ranks of those who’ve insisted that it’s the quality of the story/writing that drives the ability to “reach” people, not the inclusion/exclusion of certain elements. Finally, to suggest that having what some Christians would deem questionable content is somehow more “mature” is to miss the primary definition of the word. But I’ll allow Gerke some room and say the jury is still out.
Jim, “the quality of the story/writing” and “mature content” are two different things. let’s not confuse those. A story can be both well-crafted and contain mature content. My issue is that readers / writers of mainstream Christian fiction typically assert that allowing “mature content” is not “good writing.” Which is why using “dammit” instead of “he cursed” is often deemed… lazy writing.
I think Gerke is trying to do something good, by creating a place where Christian writers feel they can write what they really have in their hearts for stories. I’ll admit, I pray over most of the questionable material in my own stories. I’m not eager to put it in there, but it does seem to be what the story needs to be a good story (a story that draws people closer to God).
But I think in a sense it should be a transient thing. An experiement, to broaden the understanding of the traditional Christian audience. Understanding is the key word because if we approach this content as something evil that we’ll dabble in to entice someone to the gospel, that’s just stupid and wrong. Yeshua (Jesus) made a point of driving audiences away with offensive theological content.
If on the other hand we do it because for whatever reason we think this element in this case is necessary to be the story that it’s supposed to be out of a desire to be the best writer for God that we can, then it is not an evil that we tolerate it is something we SHOULD do and others should understand it. Isaiah, Micah, Saul, and the hundreds of other prophets did not walk around naked to broaden their audience (actually . . . you might be able to make the case that they did, but more to the point). They did it because God called them to make a dramatic appeal to the audience that needed it, and those who were Godly eventually came to realize that it was inspired drama, not a dabbling.
I think it should be transient because we need to expand the understanding of believers, but also once those writers are out there, they should be rolled into the mainstream because as many have pointed out, it just means “Look at the Christians who are trying to be like us, but aren’t, so they can sneak in their message.” Behind Isaiah’s nudity was the fact that the audience was headed towards it. It was sensational rehearsal of a very real doom.
I hate it when Christians decide they want to be posers. The descriptors definitely cry poser to me. And don’t get me started on Vox Day. He is such an ass, and that’s to say nothing about his writing.
There’s that issue too. I usually review the book, not the author, because lord knows I’ve acted like an ass many times myself. The book itself is restrained, and Vox really doesn’t inject too many of his views into it, save for a certain scene. It’s not really posing, as it’s set in the same world as his previous book Summa Elvetica, and no one argued that book ripped off another.
Vox as a pundit is controversial though. He’s pretty raw on his main website, but the issue that worries me the most is that he also runs a Game blog at http://alphagameplan.blogspot.com/ Game is sort of the new Freudianism, where people use evolutionary psychology to deal with relationships. There’s a growing amount of Christians who subscribe to it, trying to fuse Game ideas of masculinity and femininity with Christian ones. You can get a sense of what it’s like either at Alpha, or Dalrock’s blog (just search for him,) and it’s a really dangerous belief system for Christians to accept because it’s profoundly materialistic, misogynistic, and reductionist.
The book itself is still good, but the author may overshadow it for some people. Then again, for me Harlan Ellison or Robert Heinlein is the same way.
I’m familiar with Vox Day’s views and, yes, they are controversial, but I really meant his arrogance and deep need to brag. He does go on about being a member of mensa, of such superior intelligence to the rest of us (and especially us soft-headed, childlike women), but his writing is just average to above-average. So, really, he’s done this to himself, and I’m judging his writing by his own high standards.
His “I’m in MENSA and you’re not” crap cracks me up. Like he needs that number to feel good about himself.
I agree with much of his libertarian ideas but have issues with his neonietzchian takes on religion.
I, too, agree with much of his libertarian ideas, although he strikes me as a patriocentrist libertarian. On a scale of things, I prefer a familial patriarchal system to a governmental one (which is what we have). Oh, well, this is completely off topic.
I like and want edgy fiction if it’s the real deal and not a put-on. One could easily say that Vox Day is the real deal, but I feel compelled to judge his books by a very high standard. And that’s all I have to say about that.
I feel compelled to judge his books by a very high standard.
Do so, by all means. A writer doesn’t get any better by people patting him on the back. Read it. Rip it to shreds… so long as you do so honestly.
I want to love your fiction. I do. But man, I had the hardest time with _Summa Elvetica_ because it seemed like it was trying so hard to be thought-provoking that it forgot to be fun. And I love thought-provoking.
Of course now that it’s been a couple years and this book expands upon the universe I should go back and give it another try. I concede that me being in a different place may alter my take on it.
If you recall, I openly admitted that SE was a failure. It was far more intellectually ambitious than most people realize – I’d seriously argue it was the most structurally ambitious novel published in SF/F for the last 20 years – but I just didn’t have the skill to pull it off. It wasn’t a complete disaster and some people thought it was decent enough as high fantasy goes, but it was still a failure.
A Throne of Bones was totally different. It was born out of my disgust for A Dance with Dragons and my suspicion that I might be able to write a better epic than what Martin has produced lately. That turned out to be more challenging than I thought; there is a reason more people write 120k -word books than 300k-word ones. But it all came together coherently in the end, although I now feel considerably less judgmental about the occasional incoherence in the Steven Erikson’s Malazan books.
I decided to utilize Rome’s third Social War in much the same manner that Martin utilized The Wars of the Roses. Unlike my past novels, I focused solely on the story and the characters. Any cleverness or intellectual depth is unintentional; there are no grand themes or defining subtexts that limit the story and are lost on literally everyone. Somewhat to my surprise, although not to my writing mentor’s, the book turned out much better as a result. Live and learn, I suppose.
Personally, I think you sell the book way short by calling it a failure, Vox. Been a couple years since I read it, but I found it quite entertaining. The only flaw I percieved (and this is obviously just opinion) is that the ending wasn’t big enough. Epic novels need epic endings. The ending wasn’t without satisfaction, but it wasn’t as memorable as it might have been.
That’s the thing. SE wasn’t an epic novel. It should, in fact, have been even smaller than it was. I should have either stuck more closely to the philosophical structure or thrown it out altogether. I wish I’d done the former, ATOB is what resulted from the latter. It’s not a bad book, it just falls farther short of its ambitious goal than most.
The problem was that I wanted to do two very different things without realizing that combining the two was impossible for a writer of my talent. It may simply have been impossible, period. That’s a very good object lesson for any writer, though: decide precisely what you are doing and stick to it. I’m going to do that even more ruthlessly in Book Two and I expect it to be better as a result.
As for the ending, I was trying an Umberto Eco device. Lesson learned: if your last name is not Eco, don’t.
Theo, I may not be your target reader, but I tend to agree with Kerry here.
I recall when Jeff announced the earnouts/sales numbers for the first and second list to the MLP newsletter readers, and yours were pretty darn good for the small press scenario at the time. Amazing how things have changed in indie in a few short years–Hocking, Locke, etc–but it seemed you found readers enough who did like it, and quite a number of them.
As to what stories could or should be, there’s always the next book and the next. 🙂 It’s the lessons learned that make each new project better.
Okay. I will.
His “I’m in MENSA and you’re not” crap cracks me up. Like he needs that number to feel good about himself.
“I’m in MENSA and you’re not” is the textbook example of Intellectual Snob.
I’m IQ 160 (estimated) and have encountered MENSAns. I was not impressed. In Old School D&D we had an expression: “Intelligence 18, Wisdom 3”.
Who estimated that number?
I try to not tell my IQ, weight or any other numerical evaluation of facets of my personhood because they just aren’t reliable indicators.
As for MENSA I’d be more impressed if they’d apply all that collective brainpower to realworld problem solving. Don’t brag on your tools. Use them to build something.
I agree, Katherine. IQs have been proven to change over time. And if the number is high, it is hard to mention it without it being a prideful statement.
After children and 10 years in IT, mine is much lower.
LOL. Mine too, I think, even without the IT. Eleven years of programming might’ve squeezed out some, though.
“Who estimated that number?”
I did. Because I could hold my own with those who WERE measured at 160.
I was diagnosed as a Kid Genius(TM) two years after Sputnik and fast-tracked for the next thirteen years. My only official IQ test around second grade was said to score IQ 300, which had to be bogus because I later found the scale tops out at 190.
Wesley Crusher and Doogie Houser are the FANTASY of the kid genius. The reality is more like Dallas Egbert III of U of M steam tunnel fame.
If you need to toot your own horn, you may need to examine yourself and realise self-worth isn’t determined by one’s IQ. Otherwise, it seems more along the lines of “listen to me, I’m smart!” and no one finds that kind of talk to be attractive.
My husband has specialised in statistics and psychometrics for pretty much his entire adult life (25 years). I know just how much IQ testing is dependent upon the evaluations of the psychometrist. Not saying you’re not bright as heckfire, and certainly not saying you’re not pigeonholed by that. Just saying that the number itself isn’t as concrete a unit of measurement as many folks think.
Besides, I’m a fat old broad and I don’t like people judging me by my weight so I figure asking them to judge anyone by another number is arbitrary and inconsistent.
I am sorry, though, that you got stuck on that mill at what was possibly the worst time to be stuck on that mill (the science-obsessed 50s and 60s.)
Dude, I think you need to go on an IQ diet. 300 is seriously obese. I suggest laying off the fan fic for a while.
Not sure why my comment is still in moderation. I didn’t swear or add links.
Trying to rephrase it to get around the s p a m censor I say that through my various studies I’m aware of the tester’s bias as a factor in IQ measurement.
I also said that I’m so sorry that you got stuck in the Kid Genius track at the worst time in our history to be stuck there. I imagine it wasn’t any fun for you at all.
Summa Elvetica — I have no lasting memory of the book. That almost never happens to me. And I have no intention of picking up something advertised as a George RR Martin variant. I can read Martin if I want to read Martin, and based on past experience, it’s guaranteed to have me turning pages more avidly than Theo Beale can.
I have to admit, although I haven’t interacted with him directly, he has alienated me from supporting his endeavours with his online presence, so I’ll be looking for another author to be released before I buy a HL book.
So, I’m in a holding pattern on this experiment so far, but I do have hopes for HL’s future, because MLP’s “core Christian” stuff is great for my kids, but it’s not always what I’m looking for as a reader.
>> great for my kids, but it’s not always what I’m looking for as a reader.
I think I’m offended by that comment! 😉 Or maybe not. Eh, I feel good either way. 🙂
>> I can read Martin if I want to read Martin, and based on past experience, it’s guaranteed to have me turning pages more avidly than Theo Beale can.
I will say that I just finished A Magic Broken and enjoyed it quite a bit. (Needed a quick fantasy fix after seeing The Hobbit.)
>>I think I’m offended by that comment! Or maybe not. Eh, I feel good either way.
Stop whining. You’re one of the ones I read, you know. 🙂 And one of the few writers I would reread.
I find when I connect with the stories Jeff chooses, I really, really connect. In comparison, a book that’s just a “well, okay, that was pretty fun” doesn’t measure up.
So I guess I could blame you and Marc and Stu for spoiling me for other good writers. 🙂
LOL. Very well, whining ceased.
Just thought you had gotten all “literary” on me, or something. 🙂
(And who is keeping Quixote chained up? I’m surprised I haven’t seen him around much.)
“Just thought you had gotten all “literary” on me, or something.”
Ha! 🙂 If I ever do, I’ll call you to kick my butt first. Promise.
Quixote’s the associate pastor at his church and teaches Sunday School, as well as the usual work week, so things are especially busy for him right now. We pretty much ran him ragged in November booking him in to speak various places, so I honestly don’t expect him to surface before like maybe April. 🙂
I can read Martin if I want to read Martin, and based on past experience, it’s guaranteed to have me turning pages more avidly than Theo Beale can.
(laughs). If A Dance with Dragons truly had you avidly turning pages, then by all means, you should not consider reading A Throne of Bones. It doesn’t feature a single river journey, ludicrously perverted sex scene or comedic dwarf routine. It’s true that you can read Martin if you want, the salient point is that if you want to read any NEW Martin, you’ll probably have to wait another five years to do so.
Perhaps he can salvage what he’s done to his series. I hope he can. But if he can’t, it is worth noting that at least one hard-core fan of his has publicly called Arts of Dark and Light “the most promising new series in epic fantasy.”
Well, I love _ADWD_. I know I’m one of the few, but I enjoyed the travelogue aspect of it very much.
Sorry, Theo, but the subtext there was that I don’t want to read Martin either, after reading Game of Thrones. (Note the “if.”) What I’m saying is, the sales angle for TOB is doubly lost on me, since I had already determined I’m not your target reader for a variety of reasons.
“the salient point is that if you want to read any NEW Martin, you’ll probably have to wait another five years to do so.”
(laughs) Dude, ask Jeff what the acronym RUE means. 🙂
It’s a gorgeous product package, and it seems promotions are off to a good start. My congratulations to you, Jeff and the team. Best wishes with your work.
So Throne of Bones has the same selling/talking points as that Christian pro wrestling franchise — “No Cursing or Scantily-Clad Women”?
That’s…disturbing. I found the market-following in the release announcement annoying, but the worldview expressed in the author’s blog is something else again. Your review indicates it doesn’t seem to have influenced this particular story much, but I have to believe a philosophy held so strongly he devotes a blog to it is bound to shape his portrayal of male-female relationships.
Admission: I didn’t know anything about the author, Vox Day, or the potential controversy surrounding him, until this discussion.
Well, I suppose if you dig deep enough into any author’s background, you’re going to run into quirks that rub you the wrong way, political opinions that conflict with your own, or theological beliefs you consider sketchy/wrong/heretical/dangerous. There really aren’t many authors I’d refuse to read because their worldview clashes with mine.
Once you stick the “Christian Fiction” label on a book, literally or conceptually, you’ve entered a writing community and a readership with inconsistent expectations about style, content, and underlying theology. They want clear boundaries defining the genre but can’t come to consensus on that definition. Your intended audience might be seekers, but you still have to deal with the believers who will measure the Christianity of the book *and* author by their individual yardsticks (and I expect you’ll probably end up with more believers than seekers reading any book identified as Christian fiction). I think the best you can hope for is that your advocates will be more vocal than your critics.
I think Jeff deserves credit for trying to expand the fuzzy “box” encompassing Christian fiction, and his reputation as an innovator in Christian publishing is well-deserved. I’ll be watching the progress of this particular venture with interest.
We’re still left with the question of how much expansion the box can handle before it breaks.
When it comes to what independent Christian publishers can do, I feel at liberty to paraphrase Matrix: “There is no box.”
Certainly. To paraphrase Lesley Gore, “It’s your company, and you can print what you want to.” Likewise, Vox has commented elsewhere in this discussion that he doesn’t give a…darn…about what the CBA or anybody else thinks. He just wants to write a good story of the sort he enjoys himself. I applaud that sentiment.
Still, fans of Christian fiction in general and spec-fic in particular will continue to perceive the “box” and debate its boundaries, no matter how many red pills they take. At some point, a work finds itself generally acknowledged as *not* being a work of Christian fiction. It’s something else–not necessarily without merit, but different.
I’ve read it. I’ll link my review rather than repost it: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/472740709
It depends on the reader. If you are a Christian who only reads Christian spec fic, and reads it for comfort and edification, you’ll probably not like it. If your a Christian who reads a lot of fantasy, Christian and secular, you’ll probably wonder what all the fuss is about, since it reads pretty much like a standard, if good, secular fantasy novel with a dash of Christianity. It’s as violent and edgy as they are, although in a way it’s a bit more moral due to its Roman setting. Martial values as pre-Christian ones.
It’s funny that this is the same guy who wrote the Eternal Warriors series a long time ago. I wish I could improve my writing as much.
Have you read _Summa Elvetica_?
Actually couldn’t, because my Kindle version was formatted poorly.
If you have problems with the Kindle version, DM, we’d like to know that. I know that a new version was generated just a couple months ago.
Yeah, the book for some reason changes fonts to Courier monospace right after the first paragraph and has crazy indents. It’s device agnostic, showing up on Kindle, Kindle Fire, and phone. You might have fixed it if a new version was relased, but Amazon changed the way they did push updates:
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2011/01/20/amazon-now-offering-kindle-ebooks-update-as-opt-in/
So it’s no longer automatic, but replying to an email, and there may be a bug that prevents a new version from being sent.
Hmm…now that I think about it, I don’t even know for sure if the one we generated this fall actually went out to Amazon. (It was primarily for the MLP site.) I’ll check into that. Would you prefer to get it that way, or are you interested in me just sending it to you?
(You can reach me at: Kerry [at] Nietz [dot] com)
Thanks!
Vox discussed your review here:
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-goodreads-review.html
I know. I’m glad that I picked up on the things he was aiming to achieve, as many times I worry that my reviews tend to be idiosyncratic and I really wanted to be fair to the book. It’s a good start to the Hinterlands line, and I’ll definitely pick the next book up when it comes out.
As a Christian author who tends to write either secular stories or stories that involve my faith but contain material that some conservatives would find objectionable, I’m of two minds. If you’re a writer who’s a Christian and you want to “reach” non-Christians with your fiction, write good stories that have elements of your faith in them and publish in the mainstream if you can. If you want to target Christians who want “edgier” fiction that works too. But I have to agree, story comes first and if this is just a Game of Thrones with Christian whitewash then bleh.
I do applaud them for trying to bring Christian writing that’s marketed as such out from under the strictures of the CBA.
I think we all have to be real careful. I don’t throw a fuss about some cuss words, insinuations of nudity, or whatnot, but in one novel I did knock them down a star for wince-worthy use of language. It was a struggle for me as I know they were used in relation to the story (demons after all aren’t polite folk), but I didn’t like the images they cast in my mind. In a secular book I once reviewed I knocked them down several stars because it seemed cuss words were every other word (slight exaggeration, but you get my point). We don’t want to look like the world, but we need the world to be able to relate to our stories. My newest novel I am writing has mature content, but I’m being real careful because I don’t want to cause someone to stumble. There are some great secular books with few cuss words and few if any nude scenes. I think we can tell a great story without crossing the line, but we need to remove “christian fiction” from the books, stop not publishing someone because the characters have a drink, etc. Too many of our Christian Fictions are too nice.
This has best been summed up by a commenter at Vox Day’s blog. I think from now on it’s the line I’m going to use because it hits the nail on the head.
“The objection isn’t because of Christianity. It’s because of Christianity + Victorianism.”
Hey, guys, thanks for all the discussion. I’ve actually been scratching my head wondering when the promised furor over this book was going to begin. LOL.
The reason we put the disclaimers and warnings about this book on the MLP page is that our core demographic at the site is conservative and Christian. Lots are homeschoolers and their moms. I didn’t want our core audience blindsided by this book’s content, so we put the disclaimers up and created Hinterlands to house this book and others. But if you look at the Amazon page for the book, there are none of those warnings.
Someone said we should just put this out in the secular market. Well, we did! We put it out for sale on the Internet, which is pretty secular, you know?
We’re walking a tight rope with this book–risking offending Christians by including the mature content and offending non-Christians by including the Christian content. Whether we’ve succeeded in striking that balance or will end up being dismissed by one or both parties is still in doubt.
It’s funny the support I’ve received for the Hinterlands imprint. Authors I’ve admired for years are suddenly thinking that a publishing home for their projects might have just been created. They’re too “edgy” for CBA houses and too Christian for ABA houses.
I think it’s interesting how some Christians will blast me for publishing this book and yet go home and read Game of Thrones or watch some R-rated movie or whatever–cussing as they go. Not every Christian lives the circumspect and even whitewashed lives of the very conservative. Indeed, even the most conservative Christians would admit (if honest) to not being as pristine as they let on. Their family could tell us the real truth.
It’s good that we show the world how Christians ought to behave, I suppose. But it’s not helpful in the end when it’s hypocrisy and simply untrue. Does Christianity consist of the obeying the thou-shalt-nots that someone has made up, or is it about grace? Is it about coming to Christ as we are, not as we pretend to be?
Among other things, Marcher Lord Hinterlands is an effort to allow Christians to be how they are, not how they want to show someone they are.
Because we’ve put up these warnings (for the reason I’ve mentioned), the discussion here has focused on the mature content of this book. But A Throne of Bones is simply an excellent fantasy novel. I appreciate those of you who will pretend you found this book on Amazon and didn’t know anything about it, and will comment on its merits as a novel and not just on how some bits of its content deviates from traditional Christian fiction.
Thank you all!
Jeff
That makes a good deal of sense. Warn your audience that needs the warning where they’re most likely to see it. Best of luck!
Homeschoolers and their moms??? Care to explain this little dig?
Interesting that you took it as a dig, Jill. I love homeschoolers and their moms, and they love MLP fiction.
It kinda sounded like a dig to me. Like saying that “homeschoolers and their moms” (who, BTW, are most often also their primary educators) are not able to stand up to themes and language.
But that could have just been a misinterpretation on my part, based on the several comments made here over the past two or three years writing off “housewives” as anti-intellectual and progress-adverse.
FTR, I’m childfree, so I am not just being a defensive homeschooler’s “mom”.
(if the kid is in homeschool let’s acknowledge the women and men as TEACHERS or at least Teaching Parents)
I didn’t mean to diss the homeschooling crowd. Sorry I came across that way. I have noticed that this group can sometimes be among the most vocal and/or most conservative of our fans. So, as I was explaining the disclaimers, I picked them to be representative of the group I had in mind as being those who might be offended by the content.
I’m a Christian homeschooling mom, and I’m not offended in the least. I agree with and appreciate Jeff’s approach! When we’ve come to expect certain things from a publisher, it’s wonderful when they warn me of deviations from the norm. It’s not a dig, it’s understanding your audience and looking out for their interests.
That said, I’m also a writer of fiction that is “too edgy” for the Christian crowd. The restrictions placed on fiction writing by the Christian publishing industry befuddles and frustrates me. Along with many others, it’s not that I want to “insert mature content” into my Christian stories in order to appeal to anyone. I simply want to write the stories that God has laid on my heart in the way I feel they are to be told.
I suspect that my stories are exactly what someone out there needs to hear, because that’s the way God works. We all have a testimony to share that will touch someone (and likely many someones), if we let it. As writers, we have stories that will do the same. And they aren’t all “clean, neat, tidy” little Christian stories that are “safe” or “tame”. They aren’t meant as meditation material for Christians. They aren’t meant as entertainment for children. But they *do* have a purpose.
Have you ever heard someone rescued out of the sex-slave industry share their testimony? What about someone who came to Jesus in prison after a life of violent crime? It’s not safe. It’s not clean. It’s not kid-friendly.
That’s how I see some of these stories.
Jeff, thank you for your efforts and for doing what you can to amplify the light of the authors within your care!
Aslan is not safe.
Church ladies like safe. They like Aslan of Narnia declawed, castrated, and purring on their laps. A Safe little lap-cat. Which is sure gonna help when (not if) Tash kicks in their door.
Brilliant post. But it’s not just church ladies.
This reminds me of the movie, Machine Gun Preacher. Very much a Christian story, but not your typical sanitized Christian film. Shows “mission” work overseas is not what some may think it is.
Well, great, good to hear you love homeschoolers and their moms, but your assumption that they can’t handle edgy content and must be forewarned is annoying to say the least.
I’m sure they could handle the content just fine. But when they come to the MLP site, they’re often screening our projects for their children, about whom they are understandably protective. It was to warn help steer them from books they might not prefer for their children and toward books they might better prefer that I gave the disclaimers.
I meant no disrespect, Jill, but I fear I have deeply offended you.
You would have to try harder than that to offend me. Being argumentative is what I do for fun. So don’ t worry about it.
She’s right. It is.
Jill: http://www.marcherlordpress.com/for-parents/
You know me…I say bad words on my blog and stuff…but yeah, I do make use of MLP’s offerings the way Jeff is describing. He knows his readers. Now that my kids are a little older, they do so by choice. My 14yo got really mad at the chain bookstore the other day, because the YA fantasy is all horny vampire crap. She specifically asked for Marcher Lord books instead.
I screen by reading the books myself. I don’t think the rating is really useful, because it’s something that’s different for every family.
I think you’re right about the truly fundamentalist moms not even reading SF/F because it’s inherently of the devil…have I told you about the aunt who tore a very loud and vicious strip off my daughter for exposing herself to demonic influences by reading Artemis Fowl? The series was recommended by the other fundamentalist aunt. LOLZ and so not talking to the mean one anymore.
Jeff: Don’t assume that Jill is expressing an emotional response of offense, just because she’s female.
(Ducks and runs away laughing) Sorry, man, but I couldn’t resist getting that in there. 😀 That was so not fair of me. 😀 But we’re being argumentative for the fun of it right now, and that’s like my thing…
Ducking and running isn’t fair, true!
Jeff, as a Brony I would like to warn you that the initials MLP don’t necessarily mean Marcher Lord Press.
Yes, a couple of months after we launched Marcher Lord Press, a young woman in Japan told me about the other major thing that uses the same initials. I thought it was pretty funny. For the most part, very little overlap of audiences, so we haven’t had any real confusion between the two entities yet.
Jeff
Actually, isn’t the point of christian homeschooling shielding the kid from the world’s “edgy content?” I’ve never really seen it said that they don’t need a warning like this, and it’s a bit odd to see this line taken given that Christian homeschoolers often damn normal schooling for immorality and other issues.
Oh, for God’s sake, NO! Yes, there are sheltering homeschooling parents out there, and then there are sheltering parents who send their kids to school. Being sheltering is a personality trait, not a specific trait of homeschool parents. Many homeschoolers educate their children because they’re anarchist libertarians who want to do things for themselves. They are anything but overly protective. And then there are the normal parents who just want to do what’s best for their children. I’ve been in the movement for so long that I can safely say that most homeschool parents fall in between the extremes. I’m kind of an extreme libertarian, do-it-yourselfer, however. 🙂
There are some Christian homeschoolers who shield their kids and keep them out of school because of morality issues. Most of us keep our kids out of school so they can be *taught more effectively*.
And my son, who is 12, is generally allowed exposure to equal and sometimes more edgy content than his best friend, who is in public school and a year older. Parents are different no matter what form of schooling they choose.
That said, I didn’t take Jeff’s comment as a dig. I think he was referring to the conservative group of homeschoolers/moms that do exist, not necessarily us rebellious ones. But I can also see how it would be misread. Kinda like calling a poodle a dog–not all dogs are poodles, eh?
I was once told by a friend that I “don’t look like a homeschooler.” Lots of earrings, Converse high-tops and funky boots, shorts above the knee (gasp!)…And honestly, she’s right. I’m an oddball in my homeschool group, and we’ve got a lot of families. I’ve kinda accepted that the world’s view of homeschoolers is not me because they most often don’t see homeschoolers like me. At least in my neck o’ the woods.
I don’t want to add another offensive stereotype because that would be hypocritical, but the truly conservative homeschool moms I have known won’t read fantasy or sci fi.
It used to be. Not necessarily anymore. It can be because parents think their local education system is just all-round failing to educate their children. I imagine motivations for homeschooling are more varied these days.
All moms/dads are concerned with what their kids read – homeschooled or not. But because Christian industry has produced squeaky clean lit for a number of decades many parents have come to view their adult books as safe for kids too. Now that’s changing. Christian adult lit is actually adult – meaning, it’s finally starting to talk like children aren’t in the room. Kind of important, but the whole marketing thing is already skewed one way, so I kind of get the disclaimer.
“isn’t the point of christian homeschooling shielding the kid from the world’s “edgy content?” ”
Not across the board, no. Not by a longshot. Often the point is to give the children a better developmental experience more keyed into advanced skillsets than they’ll get in a public school. Other times it’s to allow the parent to continue to be the primary educator because the parent is a skilled teacher.
I know a lot of homeschoolers. A LOT. Only TWO Of them fit that stereotype of “hide my kids from the Bad World”. The rest are working solutions for gifted kids; gifted/special needs kids; alternative classroom settings; advanced religious instruction; advanced STEM instruction.
It’s kind of become a sort of left-wing stereotype to write off homeschoolers as gun-toting fundies. Not that you’re left-wing (I’m not sure of your politics and it doesn’t matter to me really). I’m just saying it’s a trend I’ve noticed.
I think there’s some measure of Lake Wobegon effect here, but I am bowing out of this conversation. I’m actually stridently anti-homeschool, and usually whenever I go farther on these conversations, it gets ugly. I should probably put something up on Cacao Put Down the Shovel about it sometime.
I have no idea what a Lake Wobegon effect is, but I’d be curious to know why you’re stridently anti-homeschool. Personally, I’m for parents educating their kids any way they choose, which means I have no strident beliefs for or against the various options–meaning, it doesn’t have to get ugly. I’m always curious as to why some people are very opinionated about education choices. Wide-spread public education is a relatively new experiment, and it works sometimes, but has its negative aspects, just as homeschool and private school settings do. What do you believe to be the best educational method?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon#The_Lake_Wobegon_effect from Garrison Keilor’s novels.
I’m strident because parental involvement in education as a community matters, not just as the individual child. Again, it’s something I’d rather not discuss here, partly due to argument, partly due to length. Pretty big tangent.
Lol, didn’t you know that all homeschool kids are above-average? Actually, that is a problem within the community, to be all full of hot air. But I think that has a lot to do with being put on the defensive all the time. My point is just the opposite. They are mostly just average parents with average children.
If you decide to write something about this elsewhere, will you link to it? I’m interested to know exactly what you mean by parental involvement in the community. I live in a rural area and don’t have many options available to me.
D.M.–I’d like you to link to it if you post on this as well. I agree with Jill. If it seems homeschoolers are over-touting their accomplishments it’s out of defense. Before my decision to homeschool I was stridently against it as well. I saw only the…deviant side of it, and I think that’s what many people think of when they think homeschoolers. The weirdos and conspiracy theorists and hyper-religious. Those exist, yes, but I assure you they are a minority and exist in the public and private schools as well.
Most homeschoolers are normal families, wanting the best for our kids. And what concerns me about the statement, “parental involvement in education as a community matters, not just as the individual child,” is that it sounds like a fancy way of restating the old “what about socialization?” concern. I only point that out because I think you mean more than that, and I’d like that point addressed if you post.
And PS–not to make this reply long–sorry–but my comments above were not meant to be nasty in any way, and I hope you didn’t take them that way. I only meant to point out that most parents aren’t homeschooling to isolate them from society, but are doing so for strictly educational reasons–and in all honesty, to better prepare them to be *an active part* of society.
Yeah, I’ll link it when I write it. It may take a bit though.
My husband and I are considering homeschooling, which I never thought I’d do, but the closer we get to Kindergarten, thanks to the economic downturn, teacher layoffs (including my husband’s), Tony Bennett (good luck Florida) and a host of other things, homeschooling is making more and more sense. We put feelers out, and…it seems homeschooling is not weird to people anymore. At least no locally. Whaddya know? I think this is due to increasing frustration with local and federal politics as well as the Web making it possible for people to be more autonomous yet still interactive. Combine that with a local homeschool coop and why *would* I make my child sit in a classroom every day when he could be learning more efficiently and having way more fun? A one-to-one ratio has got to be better than one-to-forty, and that’s how bad it’s gotten in some places around here. The last few years have been beyond ridiculous for Indiana public school teachers and their students. (“And since you’re under-staffed and over-worked, and you make cr@p pay, why not put your students through major testing every other day (exaggerating) to see how much they are(n’t) learning?”) It’s. Ridiculous. Oh. I just said that.
Link is here:
http://dmdutcher.com/2012/12/22/homeschooling-argument/
It’s a little brief, but if you want to talk about it, better there I think.
Jill, have to admit that some homeschool teacher-parents are overprotective of their children while others like yourself are not and allow edgy content. I’ve met both sides, but unfortunately in our area the overprotective seem to outnumber the ones who allow edgy. Good points, Jeff. Stuff to think on.
Yes. A lot of parents are overprotective, so the odds that some homeschool parents are overprotective is pretty high.
Jeff, thanks for dropping by. Would you agree with me that the biggest hurdle to making cross-over inroads w/ “A Throne of Bones” is overcoming Christian prejudices and cultural conditioning? It seems that the more reviewers / readers publicly discuss / debate the book’s “Christian themes” (or lack of them), the more you scare off the very audience you’re hoping to attract.
Quite a discussion you’ve launched here, Mike! I’m enjoying it.
I was expecting to find exactly what you suggest, Mike. When the piece ran in Christian Retailing, I thought, “Oh, boy, here it comes.” But so far, aside from some comments in this discussion, one negative review on Amazon (vs. 19 positive reviews), and one not very charitable e-mail to me and some of my authors, I’ve heard nothing along those lines.
Certainly if I’d tried to publish this through a traditional Christian publishing house–and especially if I’d gotten it into Christian bookstores–I’d be hearing all sorts of backlash. But since I’m not, maybe people are thinking, “Who cares what Jeff does over in his niche-of-a-niche corner of the Internet?” LOL.
Sometimes it is prudent to not lead with overt Christianity. Walk into a biker bar or a penitentiary and say, “Hey, boys, let’s do church!” and the response might not be as positive as if you’d said that at a men’s ministry retreat. I’m reading the book of Esther right now, and I was struck by how Mordecai advised her not to even let anyone know of her faith (2:10). When we’re speaking with non-Christians about A Throne of Bones, we don’t usually lead with how this is a Christian novel. (Though sometimes I forget!)
So, yes, one of our strategies and goals with this book is to get the gospel before non-Christians in a way that will cause them to read it with an open mind and maybe be struck by the Christian content. I love this comment from what I am guessing is a non-Christian reader who experienced it in exactly that way:
“The dead horse trope of evil religion [in other epic fantasies] is subverted [in ATOB] by making faith an important, positive influence in many characters’ lives. Watching a character drop to his knees and pray at the end of an early chapter was, quite ironically, much more shocking than anything else I’ve read recently. But this fantasy analogue of pseudo-Catholic Christianity is subtle enough that it never feels gratuitous, and has a decidedly different flavor from the familiar allegorical stylings of Lewis.”
So it looks like it’s working, at least among some. Christian authors have said, “If only one person reads it and is moved toward the Lord, I will count my novel a success.” This reader might or might not have read an overtly Christian novel, but he read the one put out by Marcher Lord Hinterlands.
My other goal for publishing this book and for creating this imprint is not evangelistic at all, but selfish. Like many of you, I got into writing fiction because I thought, “No one is writing the kind of book I want to read, so I’d better write it myself.” Likewise, I launched my own publishing house because I thought, “No one is publishing the kind of book I want to read, so I’d better publish them myself.”
Marcher Lord Press is all about publishing the sort of fiction–Christian speculative fiction–that was not getting the sort of chance in the marketplace I thought it deserved.
Kat mentioned one of my authors named Stu. That’s a reference to Stuart Vaughn Stockton, whose Starfire is a non-Earth, non-human military science fiction about computer-using dinosaur people. LOL. It’s awesome! But no CBA house would ever publish that thing. Kat also mentioned Kerry (who wrote about a far future in which Islam reins the earth and beyond–and Jesus is breaking back into the story) and Marc (who wrote about philosophical Nazis fighting mysterious plant people). No traditional Christian house would ever touch these books. So I’m glad I had created MLP.
Hinterlands is just an extension of this idea. There are important stories that, because of the restrictions imposed by CBA, simply can’t be told–at least, can’t be published through a traditional Christian publishing company and put into Christian bookstores. I’m not interested in going over into erotica or snuff-porn or whatever. There are some “important” stories that I just don’t want to support. But if they are Christian speculative fiction, and if I like them, I want to be able to publish them even if they have more mature content.
We knew at the outset that not everyone would agree with what we were contemplating. And I have the responsibility to my existing audience to keep them aware of what we’re doing and, hopefully, coming back to MLP for other books even if they don’t like what we’re doing in Hinterlands. So I have to put up disclaimers. But I didn’t feel that this imprint should not happen simply because I was afraid of offending.
As I said, this decision was somewhat selfish. I published Starfire and the others I mentioned because _I_ liked them. I wanted to read them. I wanted them to get out. They were exactly the kind of book I got into publishing to produce.
So it is with Hinterlands: I selfishly want to read more Christian speculative novels with this sort of freedom of expression. Since not many publishers seemed to be doing that, I thought I’d better do it myself.
Jeff
Cat, we have been mixed up again….
I need to make my online handle officially “Other-Kat”, don’t I?
Hehe.
(But for the record, I did LOVE Kerry’s and Stu’s books.)
Yes, I realized as soon as I’d posted that it should’ve been “Cat,” not “Kat.” And then I realized that Cat showed herself here as C. L., so I was doubly wrong! It’s not a new experience for me. LOL.
No worries. Cat and I are used to it :).
Yes, we are. 🙂 We’re like the unorthodox opinionated homeschool mom writer twins. 🙂
“And I have the responsibility to my existing audience to keep them aware of what we’re doing and, hopefully, coming back to MLP for other books even if they don’t like what we’re doing in Hinterlands. So I have to put up disclaimers. But I didn’t feel that this imprint should not happen simply because I was afraid of offending.”
Yep. This isn’t really unusual, it’s just that it’s a CBA house developing a secular line, rather than an ABA publisher purchasing a CBA line. That, and that it’s SF/F instead of romance and women’s. But hey, if people want to make a big deal about it, the word of mouth is a great thing.
That said, I don’t think Christian readers have too much to complain about, because a large chunk of what they read is put out by subsidiaries of companies whose other imprints would really offend them if they thought about it. *cough*Harlequin* (In fact, those other imprints are the whole reason people are worried about Hinterlands being a bad idea.) I would think it’d be a degree better in the moral consciousness for a Christian CEO to manage a secular line with clear-cut content boundaries.
“I published Starfire and the others I mentioned because _I_ liked them.”
I think we have about 50% correlation in tastes, Jeff, or maybe even more. That almost never happens to me, so yeah, I’m glad you’re going forward with this.
Will there ever be scifi in the Hinterlands? 🙂
Here’s hoping! I’m much more into sci-fi than fantasy.
Arent they the same thing? (**runs for cover**)
Grrr… Libraries still tend to file books like “The Lord of the Rings” under the Science Fiction genre and I’m not sure why. It’s not like there isn’t a Fantasy section across the room!
I don’t agree with this, mostly because in my view, the book’s primary audience is not a specifically Christian one. Speaking only for myself, (iow, not Jeff or MLH), I do not care in the slightest if the CBA readers pay no attention to it for any reason. If someone genuinely believes the Left Behind series is compelling and credible fiction or is a devotee of Christian bonnet novels, that’s perfectly fine, but in that case they are so far from my ideal reader that I may as well have written the book in Italian as far as they’re concerned. I consider the book’s primary audience to be those who appreciate Martin, Abercrombie, Erikson, Feist, and to a lesser extent, Jordan and Bakker, regardless of their religious beliefs. I doubt many of those readers, Christian or otherwise, are likely to be scared off by public debate over the book’s Christian themes.
It may help to know I have lived in Europe for the last 13 years. So, although I am aware of the issues that divide the CBA from the ABA, I really don’t care about them. At all. I leave that sort of thing up to Jeff and trust him, as my publisher, to deal with any such issues that arise. My primary objective was, and is, to tell an epic fantasy tale that engulfs the reader in the way that I found myself swept up in books that I have loved. From my perspective, while the Christian elements are neither the point nor the purpose of the novel, they can no more be reasonably omitted than gravity because they are woven into the fabric of the world itself.
I am happy to see someone trying to bust outside the sanitized box. But if you turn around and slap a “Christian” label on it and, even more so, state outright to be packaging the gospel in it, you are going to turn off the very readers you’re claiming to be trying to reach.
Granted, a huge number of those readers disregard the labels on clearly marked Christian books and cry foul that the author “snuck” in evangelizing. (Why do people not read the descriptions of books they purchase???)
And I hate–hate, hate, hate, hate, hate–the “This is the Christian answer to (fill in the blank with huge secular success)” thing. Hate. It.
OK, since Jeff posted while I was typing my reply, I’m amending. Good to see he’s NOT labeling the books outside the MLP website!
I will say this, though. There will be reviewers who are going to call it out on Amazon. And I’m not talking about the reviewers I mentioned before who will be angered at being slipped a gospel Mickey. I mean Christian readers who are going to go on and on in their reviews about this awesome, edgy *Christian* novel. Christian, Christian, Christian novel. Yep.
That’s okay.
As Theo/Vox (the author) said to me just before the book’s release, a new book’s biggest problem isn’t usually bad publicity or secrets revealed but anonymity.
Coming from a church tradition where “Mary Channeling” is the favorite way to flake out, I am normally very skeptical of claims of “Special Revelation” (i.e. “God Hath Revealed Unto Me…”). However, in a blog comment thread years ago about Jesus Junk movies, I came across a comment that got me thinking.
The commenter claimed Special Revelation that God was withdrawing His mantle from Christianese attempts at fiction and the arts (movies was the specific example being talked about) and was placing it on secular artists, writers, and moviemakers. Since Christian media had dropped the ball so bad, from now on Secular(TM) artists and creators would say what God wanted said. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Uparshim.
It reinforced my longstanding belief to Go Mainstream Whenever Possible. My genre of choice is classic hard-edged semi-space-opera in the mold of Sixties Poul Anderson. My dream was to see my stuff next to Poul Anderson and Beam Piper and Gordy Dickson on the shelves of SF bookstores, not next to Left Behind knockoffs in a Jesus Junk store.
In regards to the issue of how a book should be marketed and the discussion some are bringing up in regards to not labeling a Christian book as Christian so we don’t scare away the non-Christians, I’ve noticed that sometimes the opposite occurs. I know as a writer myself, my work – which I term and market as edgy Christian speculative fiction – was getting slammed in some of its reviews before I marketed my writing as Christian. Reviewers felt slighted when they picked up one of my books that they felt was secular, only to find Christian themes halfway through. My opinion on the matter, especially in terms of marketing, is to leave nothing to the reader’s/consumer’s imagination as to what type of content is in the book. Some Christians are going to whine that there is too much ‘edgy’ content, and non-Christians will whine that there isn’t enough or that there is too much ‘religious’ content. Instead of going around pretending to be either or, I just label my work as a ‘crossover’ and market it as such. I don’t really want non-Christians picking up my work and thinking I’m trying to sneak a sermon to them anyway – I’m simply trying to tell a great story that has Christian themes threaded throughout. I’ve actually come across many secular reviewers who are happy to read/review books with ‘Christian mythology’ as they call it, as long as I – as the author – am upfront about the book having Christian themes in it. Most just don’t like getting blindsided.
The beliefs of all writers influence their works. I tend to think the majority of readers wouldn’t require authors to put disclaimers on their works. People who feel “blindsided” usually have some sort of pre-existing problem with certain beliefs (or maybe the author has just struck a nerve). Those are usually who yell the loudest, however. Most of us, if we read book and find something to disagree within, don’t berate the author for not warning us ahead a time of everything that is their book. There wouldn’t be any reason to read the book. In other words, no matter what one writes, someone won’t like it.
So I don’t think authors should make up special labels for their books. They’re either fantasy or a thriller or sci-fi or whatever. Christian writers shouldn’t have to be held to a different marketing standard. Yes, there are Christain writers who write only for the Christian market, and that’s fine. Many, like yourself (if I understand you), just write the story they have to tell which happens to be influenced by their beliefs (like any other author) for no particular demographic.
David, I read Stephen King’s “The Stand” this year. I don’t know if people complained about the “Christian content,” but there was a lot of it. I’m not sure how much I subscribe to the conspiratorial logic suggesting that the secular market is so averse to religious / Christian themes. In King’s case, he’s got enough of a history so readers know he doesn’t have a “Christian agenda.” (Not to mention, there’s enough cursing in “The Stand” to disarm any notion that it’s “Christian fiction.) On both of these counts, I wonder that we fail: 1.) Most Christian fiction writers DO have an agenda (glorify Christ, edify believers, illustrate the gospel, craft “clean” stories, provide an alternative, etc., etc.) and 2.) Most Christian fiction writers don’t incorporate the language of our culture, meaning “mature content.”
King didn’t have any sort of history when _The Stand_ came out. It was one of his earlier works.
“A Throne of Bones, which we’re pitching as the Christian answer to George R.R. Martin [author of Game of Thrones, now an HBO series]”
“Throne of Bones” sounds like a stupid, derivative rip-off of Game of Thrones, anyway!
Epic Fail!
Christian authors should portray ALL characters, dialogue, events, etc. honestly. ‘Nuff said!
LOL, jed. The title was carefully crafted to basically annoy Martin fans in just the way you seem to have been annoyed. “Who is this guy who’s writing a Martin knock-off? Bet it’s a terrible book! Oh…wait…”
I was just reading about how bad reviews actually sell more books than good reviews. I’m interested to see how fast Throne sells now that people are complaining about it. 😀
An “Annoyance Campaign”? Never heard of that one, LOL!
Well, I hope it works on your target demographic; obviously doesn’t work on me, though.
Well it annoyed me not only as a ripoff of Martin (he doesn’t own the word “Throne”) but more as a reference to that hideous _The Dragonbone Chair_ .
What’s so bad about Tad William’s “The Dragonbone Chair”? I haven’t read the book but I enjoyed his “Otherland” series.
Christian–
It was (IIRC) his first book. It’s got horrid pacing, a dull protagonist who spends too long doing dull things.
The worst thing–well, not the worst, but the funniest–is that at one point early on the hero picks up a cat and tucks it into his coat.
The cat is never mentioned again. He never puts it down. Never. Well, you assume he did because he goes on a long quest. But you are never told he stopped holding onto the cat. It’s especially noticable because it’s a Chekov’s Gun cat who keeps showing up at crucial times in the story and any fantasy reader just assumes based on prior experience that the cat is actually a wizard or the kid’s mother or at least mildly magical. But we have no idea. Because the cat just IS NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN.
That’s probably a silly example but it’s a true one that I find neatly sums up all that is wrong with that book. I’ve been told by everyone I know to read another–any other–Tad Williams novel because they’re excellent. Even Williams admits that _Dragonbone Chair_ is weak sauce. I probably will eventually dive back in but it has to be awhile while the memory of that book fades.
Katherine, thanks for providing a detailed explanation. If he left the cat in his coat that whole time, I imagine it would be dead now – and rather smelly. Chekov’s Gun indeed!
I didn’t mind the title really–Fantasy titles tend to be a [something] of derivitaveness–until you admitted that it was carefully crafted to annoy people like me. I tend to not want to be a customer of someone who goes out of their way to actively anger me.
“Here! I slap you in the face! Buy my book, stupid monkey!”
Not a great selling point.
but to start it off with a ‘similar title’ Game of Thrones knock-off? That feels like cheating… maybe it’s just me though…
(laughs) It’s more than a little amusing to be accused of simultaneously knocking off both George Martin and Brian McNaughton. Given that George Martin himself couldn’t successfully imitate A Game of Thrones, I very much doubt anyone who reads A Throne of Bones will see it as an imitation of any kind.
As I told Jeff, I’m not imitating George Martin. If anything, I’m imitating Joe Abercrombie…. As for the inevitable “what is Christian fiction” debate, I have zero interest in it. My goal is verisimilitude and that can only be accomplished by writing characters who are consistent with their values and beliefs, whatever those happen to be. As for language, if a veteran military officer takes an arrow through his arm, he’s not going to be uttering hosannas of praise no matter what he believes. Again, verisimilitude.
It’s not really posing, as it’s set in the same world as his previous book Summa Elvetica, and no one argued that book ripped off another.
Oh, I shamelessly ripped off Thomas Aquinas there. So much so that a reviewer actually thought the Latin argument was real. Although I do suspect Aquinas would have concluded that elves have souls naturally united to them.
People can’t relate to some of the characters because those characters don’t react or speak or behave in a way that a ‘real’ person would.
Precisely. CBA fiction is hamstrung by its Victorian ideology, just as most modern secular fantasy is hamstrung by its retrophobic ideology and its determination to force modern perspectives into historical settings.
Just so you know – it’s not a personal attack on your writing in any way. I just would never pick up the book if I ran across it in a bookstore/library because titles that look close to but aren’t famous books scream knock-off.
More of a marketing thing, less of an actual creative writing thing.
Do these questions happen outside the U.S.? Does the U.K. have this sort of delineated marketing? Because so much of Brit Lit incorporates Christian themes without such a fuss, one way or the other.
Just curious. Sometimes I feel like this is a completely American (meaning U.S.) culture issue and has very little relevance elsewhere. I also think it’s why very few American novelists have actually suceeded in writing novels that do what this one is trying to do – because they’re trying.
“Throne of Bones” sounds like a stupid, derivative rip-off of Game of Thrones, anyway! Epic Fail!
So, I was thinking of calling Book Two A Smash of Things. Everybody likes that, yeah?
No… “Fifty Shades of Hallelujah”!
Heh. I can get behind Fifty Shades of Hallelujah.
“Fifty Shades of Hallelujah!”
Guys. It’s been done. Not that specific title, but there ARE “50 Shades of Fill-in-the-Blank” Christianese titles. For real. Mostly blogs and self-pub stuff and trendoid sermon titles, but they’re out there.
“Just like ’50 Shades of Grey’, Except CHRISTIAN(TM)!”
Oh, we know. Jed and I know each other on FB and the 50 Shades is a running gag–and I do mean gag–among several of us. I go on periodic rants against self published novels that use “shades” in the title or are about Mr. Darcy.
About two weeks ago, Time magazine had an article about self-publishing and ebooks and indie authors.
Their icons for “Erotica” were (a) a loosely-tied grey necktie and (b) a silhouette of handcuffs.
I vote for an across the board amalgam that hits all the high points marketing-wise:
_The Blade Of The Dark Prince Of Nothing_
_The Clash Of The Wind And The Dragons_
_The Season Of The Dragon Prince’s Fear_
_DiscWorld Sucks And I Don’t Care Who Knows It_
and my alltime favourite
_The Wizard’s First Ring And The Ravens Of Winter_
Katherine Coble:
You have me in stitches!!!!
_DiscWorld Sucks And I Don’t Care Who Knows It_
Wow. That was subtle. Hilarious though.
I want everyone to know that I love reading the comments on this blog, because you guys have such awesome conversations! They’re always a highlight of my day. 😀
Now, to actually contribute… 😉
For my anthology, I decided to self-publish it for a variety of reasons, but one of the big ones was that it would be a hard/impossible sell to Christian publishers, and it could easily be a hard sell to secular publishers. Christian publishers would reject it on the basis of three or four instances of swearing that I would refuse to change because it would weaken the stories they occur in substantially (and they’re full-on swears. One is the f-word). Secular publishers would have issues with the very blatantly Christian stuff in my poems -Bible verses get quoted and everything.
That and self-publishing lets me make my own covers. 😀
But when it comes to the kinds of stuff that Christian publishers generally reject, I know that I’ve got a lot of stories in me that will explore themes and ideas that either directly involve those things, or that require them to be included if I want to be honest in my exploration. The option does exist for me not to write these stories, but I know that what they’ll talk about is too important for me to ignore. So, I’ll write them, and I won’t submit them to Christian publishers.
And if I write something that a Christian publisher would like, and that I intend for the audience they sell to, then I’ll send it to them. It’s really not that big of a deal.