Writing Humorous Fantasy

Jim C. Hines has a great guest post at Writer's Plot on humoring right fantasies, or something like that.

[P.S. - Jim's other ramblings can be found at his livejournal site.]

Killing Time - A Murder/Suicide

If you kill enough time, you kill yourself, the saying goes.* But do you really kill time, or do you bank it? What, exactly, is history, and why do we fight so hard over it?

I still think that Tyrell's niece's memories, at some point, did become Rachael's, too. Those memories, blended with her true experience since incept become their own: an old story retold in new way. Rachael remembered piano lessons she never had.

Yet she could play.

*Troll saying. Don't think too hard about it.

Christocentric Vampiralooza II: La Shawn Barber Chimes In

I'm amazed how this announcement of an idea by an author has stirred such conversation.

La Shawn Barber chimes in.

Christocentric Vampiralooza: Sue Dent on Anne Rice

Sue Dent flips out spectacularly over at the Lost Genre Guild again. This time, about Anne Rice.

Man, every time humans start to bore me to tears, here comes Sue with a kleenex and ninja moves.

I never realized that Rice's rather dramatic conversion (on the literary side - on the personal/biographical side it was more progressive) did not have a massive impact on reading Christians at the time.

Funny, I first read Interview with A Vampire in my God-hating days, but still appreciated her work after He brought me to heel in brutal liberty. Then, years after my somewhat abrupt conversion, Rice came back around to the Jesus gypsy wagon.

I just assumed that one of the foremost supernatural writers of the day turning to her Lord, and, therefore, turning countless eyes toward Him was probably the Christian writing story of the decade. Apparently, Sue would beg to differ. It seems that all the important Christ-following outlets barely note the dramatic shift.

But then she starts listing as important Christ-following outlets as the CBA and ECPA and ASPCA and some other letters that confuse me/sound vaguely like late-seventies power synthesizer-driven rock groups. Then I get hungry for alphabet soup.

Just to be clear: Rice has not committed to a final Lestat-confronting-the-Redeemer book. She has only admitted that it would be possible, and that the concept intrigues her.

Have I now confounded you? Go to Anne's site to get the details. I'm going back to sleep. But, first, I need to satisfy my hankering for some ELO:



Darn you Sue Dent! Darn you to heck!

Character Creation: A Man in Third Heaven

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago (whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows) was caught up to the third heaven. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise and heard things too sacred to be put into words, things that a person is not permitted to speak. On behalf of such an individual I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except about my weaknesses.

Paul writes this to the Corinthians, almost as an aside.

"Oh, by the way, I know this guy who went to heaven. So, how's life going? Did you see the big game?"

This is a great example of introducing the supernatural to a story. Paul isn't writing fiction, but relaying a history, of course, but the principle he employs applies to storytelling.

Heaven is separate, real, experiential and unique, and Paul nails all four qualities in a short passage. Third heaven is a state wherein the witness was "caught up" (separate), either in the body or out of it (real), heard things too sacred for words (experiential), and whose experience was worthy of boasting (unique.)

Readers of the supernatural who have no real interest in spiritual things will be drawn to the realness and the experience, but have little thirst for separateness or uniqueness. Both Stephen King and Neil Gaiman are masters of the first two qualities. Their strange gods/heroes will have dirt under their nails, and can navigate a fistfight or a brothel with all too humen acumen. They have little use for separateness, for a uniqueness that might be considered pure or holy.

On the other hand, writers like Peretti have a hammer lock on the more subtle qualities. They get separateness. The understand uniqueness. Their strange gods/heroes may lack in a physical reality, but they are endowed with a special sort of clarity - a defined, clean isolation that should be unique to mythic figures.

Then, you've got the rare few who are able to bring forth all four effects into one good character. When a writer can do this, he (or she, although, I've got to admit, all you humans look the same to me) has achieved a glorious thing.

Shelley does it with Frankenstein's monster. C.S. Lewis accomplishes it several times, as does O'Connor (Lewis' best example can be found in the Unman Weston in Perelandra, and I'll just take a stab at O'Connor's iconic Misfit). Lee does it in Demon: A Memoir with Lucian and his ilk. Rice strangely achieves this in Interview with A Vampire and then "over-realizes" Lestat in the Vampire Lestat. Stoker does it with Count Dracula in the abstract.

Somehow, all four cylinders have to hit in rhythm. St. Paul does it here with ease. I haven't done it yet.

Down Payment on Your Soul

From 2 Corinthians 1:22-23 -- But it is God who establishes us together with you in Christ and who anointed us, who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a down payment.

There are a few other epistles that mention the Holy Spirit providing a guarantee or a down payment on future promises, including eternal life.

I'm a greedy sort. Couldn't Paul have thrown in "90 Days Same as Cash?"



It is probably a good thing he didn't. I don't know that I'd survive living 90 minutes same as Cash.

A Writer's Plague: E.E. Knight's Formula for Madness

First three sentences.

That sounds about right.

Yes!

John met Yoko through one of her art shows. He recalled one of her exhibits. It was a step ladder with something very tiny on the ceiling.

John climbed the ladder and got really close to the tiny thing. It was a word. It said, "Yes."

Now, I'm not saying that one word was what caused John to fall in love with her, but I do think it was an incredible moment in his life, by his own account. Yes is an extremely powerful, emotional word.

We crave the "yes." While only one well-placed no can cast a net of disappointment, one yes can launch a rocket, and a million yesses will not overstuff you.

I wonder why we skip the yesses of Scripture so readily. I could list 70 pretty easily, I think given a decent concordance, from "Yes, and the Lord has forgiven your sin. You are not going to die." (2 Sa 12:13) to "Yes! God is great beyond our knowledge" (Job 36:26) to the "Yes! His loyal love endures" repeated in Psalm 118.

There are tons of yesses, but my favorite yes comes from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians:

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ...was not "Yes" and "No," but in him it has always been "Yes."

Puritans in Space

As the only surviving puritan troll on earth, I've been waiting for the culture to examine my existence in its literature, artwork or these newfangled talking motion pictures.



Nothing yet, so for now, I am kindred with Puritans in Outer Space!



[doffing cap and gently waving it in the direction of Toad House Happenings...]

Got Uplift?

The Christian life is transformational. When God bathes you in His Son's blood, its hard not to get emotional. Following Christ is also intellectual. It is physical, in that the Spirit's internal changing of His followers is made manifest in our actions, our love.

Yet, the soul can, and does, go dry. Mother Theresa allegedly admitted to 50 years of feeling nothing from Our Lord. Though there is a promise to buy us back from sin, there's no promise that the fount of freedom that the Spirit plants will grant us experiential joy.

The Christian life, however, does hold experiences that do surpass anything else attainable in this world. So, even though daily happiness isn't guaranteed, an otherworldly joy does blow right through a lot of the little personal floodgates we set up.

So, whether your well is dry, our you've got a joy you can't explain, let these words help raise you just a little higher:

The angels thank you
for the water.
You forgot
you gave it.

Christ crunched
Numbers in your skull
Multiplied your heartbeats
Extended your fingers for a starving darkhound to lick the salt
Lengthened your days to a sideways eight
while you slept.

Paul wrote a book about it in Code
and someone called it an
Epistle to the Romans.

It is your biography,
Like it or not. (but you like it)

Can the Damned Be Redeemed?

Tosca Lee points out a really fascinating complexity about the state of demonic salvation.

She quotes Augustine quoting the philosopher Plotinus* (and I quote Lee quoting them!):

"…that the very fact of man’s corporal mortality is due to the compassion of God, who would not have us kept for ever in the misery of this life. The wickedness of demons was not judged worthy of this compassion, and in the misery of their condition, with a soul subject to passions, they have not been granted the mortal body, which man had received, but an eternal body."

Plotinus is right. By association, so are St. Augustine and St. Tosca.

"Damned" isn't soft terminology. I think it is easier for those who have not faced a direct confrontation with evil to believe that it can be redeemed or reformed. It doesn't work like that. You don't purify Tianenman Square by celebrating the Olympics there: you only spoil the torch.

Keep in mind that demons, before demonhood, had been granted the one thing we really wish we had: immortal bodies. How many times have we thought that everything would be just fine if we only didn't have to deal with death in all its forms (breakdowns, breakups, breakouts, brokenness).

Well, so did the angels. But immortality turned out to be insufficient for a huge number of them.

So the demons are blessed with the one thing we covet: eternal existence. But it still isn't enough for them. They were built for community with God, but they used their immortality as a wedge against their own design!

Theoretically, physically, God could redeem a demon, but His just and righteous -- and loving -- character dictates that he not redeem a demon.

I know you humans think you are smarter than He is. You think you are more loving than He is. You, given the omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence of the Lord, would devise a delightful means by which the whisperers of Auschwitz might find redemption, even if they don't want the redemption you offer.

Instead of casting them to outer darkness, you'd be better than our father Abraham, who would not even send a dead man to witness to five lost brothers. Instead of separating yourself from the absence of good, you people, in your infinite justice, would marry yourselves to it.

Oh, wait, you** already have.

Why do we have such compassion for the devil? Isn't a demon a sort of tarbaby for misplaced sympathy?

Sincerely,


St. Grumpy



*Plotinus' efforts, by the way, should rightly be seen as an attempt to clarify Plato. His philosophical influence stretched from neopagans of the day to Christians. It is also worth noting that his philosophy is as overtly hostile to gnosticism at the intellectual level as Christianity is at the spiritual.

**(we)

Powerful Words for Good Little Authors to Avoid at All Costs

CBA authors and pretenders to the throne: ever wonder exactly which word it was that got your manuscript sent back for revisions?

Wonder no more: Seven angels, three kids, one family has a behind the scenes look at the infamous CBA word committee.

[And to The Writer's Cafe Press, my hat is tipping your direction. I assure you it is an accident.]

Faeries Who Could Cut You - Rachel Marks Originals for Sale

Rachel Marks is selling some original artwork.

I love her urbanesque thrash-faeries. They look like real faeries that you see everyday, not the half-baked fruitloop stylized demi-angels that so many of you humans are into these days.

Rack and O-pinion Steering Me Wrong

Core beliefs lived out and publicly expressed?

What is this nonsense?

Don't these people know that opinions are for keeping to oneself and living quite contrary to without reflection?

This underscores the problem I have with modern humans. In the old days, I'd clamber through the woods, sniffing for Christian blood. When I caught wind of the little juicy buggers, they'd pray and fight (thus, the God and axe scars running down my face) as they went down.

Simple.

Today, however they get into a debate with me over my existence, telling me flat to my face that I don't exist, as if they don't believe in me! They feel my hot rancid breath* in their face, bear bruises from my battering, and insist that I'm not there.

The whole thing degenerates into a debate...a debate(!)...over things that neither my victim nor I believe for a minute. It is exhausting. I fall for it so frequently that I come home, more often than not, hungry, though I had easy spoils in my grasp not an hour before.

These humans, they entertain opinions. They do not hold them.

We beasts are forced, by our very nature, to live the beliefs we express (which is why we do not express them.) How did these humans figure out how to goof the system and invent duplicitousness?

Hrmph. The kicker is that they seem to miss fewer meals than I do.

*Yes, I've been reduced to Italian submarine sandwiches with onions, the people have been so elusive lately.

Pirates and Mr. Blue Sky on a Savage Winter Freya's* Day

I love the winter. Adore it. It meets my soul in a dark corner of a buried cavern and gives me a secret handshake.

But a little sunshine is acceptable. Especially when pirates are involved.



And you can't have sunshine without a little Mr. Blue Sky, courtesy of the Electric Light Orchestra. I'm keeping it Lazy Town, because I say so. Besides, Kirk Douglas always told me that I'm Sportacus.



Now, back to gristle mining with my scarred and bloody fists. In Christ...

*Or Frigga's. We Norse are not an accurate people.