You Are More Than Enough Achievement Journal-Judi Moreo

Read more about Judi's Book.


This week's blog tour is a little different. Judi Moreo has asked that instead of just posting a summary of her book, I share a little about myself by discussing this passage from her book: Every step I take brings me closer to the realization of my dreams

My first reaction is: depends on where I'm stepping. If my dream is to have a model's body and my steps keep taking me to the refrigerator, I'm not gonna realize my dreams. So this statement is as much warning as motivation.

Frankly, it's one I do need on occasion. I have a tendency to check my e-mail again and again, hopeing for a distraction when I should be working on the next story. Sometimes, I take on a project, not because it's getting me closer to my dreams but because someone asked. And, well, there is the refrigerator. However, in the long run, I just get frustrated because I know I've stepped away from my dreams. (or the 'fridge is bare, but that's a different issue.)

This statement also reminds me that we seldom just GET our dreams; we have to work for them, move toward them on step at a time. Since I'm a very task-driven person, this makes a lot of sense to me. I'm pretty good at breaking down my dreams into goals and then steps to the goal. Thus, even though a dream seems vast, each step is very doable.

So let's take an example. My dream has been to write fiction. After completing one (rather lame) novel in college, I took a big detour from that dream for several years until one day, I felt the need to return to that dream so strongly I nearly screamed. (Actually, I think I did yell, "If Turtledove can teach college and write books like this, why haven't I even written one story?") I was a mother of toddlers, and a Reservist, so becoming a famous novelist was out--but I could write a few stories, maybe write for some local magazines...

"Cinders" (which recently appeared in Twisted Fayrie Tales by EternalPress) was written in a month.

My next step was to pull my husband in. We always communicate well with kids around, so dinner dates often ended up rehashing work and home. Bleah. Instead, we started collaborating on stories, building an elaborate near-futre universe where an order of Catholic nuns performs space search and rescue operations for "supplies, air and the Love of God."

That step led to several stories; the anthology, Leaps of Faith (coming in print in Summer 2008 from The Writers Cafe Press); and Infinite Space, Infinite God (available from Twilight Times Books.) We're working on Infinite Space, Infinite God II, and I'm writing a Rescue Sisters story, "Snakes on a Spaceship" for it. I've also got a novel planned and perhaps even a TV show.

I've written several novels--again in small steps. My first novel was written by simply promising not to sleep until I had just one sentence down. it was slow going, but it's done and I have two more complete. One, Magic, Mensa and Mayhem, is due out in 2009; the others are still seeking a home. Again, that's a dream I've broken into smaller steps--right now, a set number of submissions to publishers and agents each month. In the meantime, I'm writing other things and dreaming big.

But no matter how big the dream, it all begins with the one step that moves me toward it.

Interview with Billie Williams

-What inspired you to write this story? I am not really sure Karina. I’d like to cook up some profound answer, but really I just had this character in mind that owned a café. I did a character sketch for how I saw Chaneeta Morgan and started writing. The story just came to be. As weird as that sounds, that is how it happened. I knew it would be about small towns but I didn’t know what was going to happen in the small town this time.

What was the most interesting part of the story for you?

Discovering the characters various goals, wants needs or desires. Finding out what the characters really want. Not just their surface wants – I want a million dollars is usually not about the money—it’s about what the money can buy or do for the individual. I want to be loved is okay, but I want to be loved by a certain person is even better.

So the characters’ desires or goals – their deep, story–worth-telling goals is the product of the writing and that I enjoy ferreting out.

Who is your favorite character and why?

In this story it’s Chaneeta. I think be cause I identify with her more than the other characters. I don’t know if it’s an age thing or if I’ve some how become involved in her goal. Is it my goal, or is it hers? I don’t have an illegitimate child, I have never been in a racially mixed relationship, I have never robbed a bank—but there are other similarities between her and me. I just like the way she grew into the type of person I wish I was.

What was the hardest part about writing this book? The easiest?

The hardest part I don’t know that there was a hard part unless it was letting the book end. When you spend so much time with your characters they become like family and you want to keep them close – especially the nice ones. I wanted to watch Hope and Dusty’s relationship develop. I don’t know that it will and I was totally surprised by their instant attraction to each other. I may have to explore that in a subsequent book. The secrets are already a series I’m developing so I may just continue with Chaneeta and Hope and see where it leads me.

The easiest? The easiest part was making the twins roles in the story. I modeled them after my sisters in law (twins) and they are pretty much as I portrayed them in the story. They filled the parts I needed so perfectly I only needed to set them on the page and watch them.

What’s next for you?

I always have a couple more novels in the works. The book club selection I’ve got going now The Capricorn Goat ~ ~ January Flannel is available to anyone who wants to sign up at http://billiewilliams.com/BOOKCLUB.html a chapter a week delivered by Constant Contact to your in box — in rough draft form. The chapters are then archived on my web site so anyone can read them all at their leisure.

I also have a series of writing books, three of which are published, Writing Wide, Exercises in Creative Writing; Characters in Search of an Author; and Spice up Your Writing! Write to Entice. Two are in the development stages – Mystery, Muse and Manuscript and Playing with Plays. The first chapters of these five books are the basis for the free 5-week writing course offered on my Pens in Motion website. If anyone is interested they can go to http://www.pensinmotion.com and read more about it and sign up.

I also am working on the second 3-act play for another novel (My Dear Phebe) of a friend of mine (Janet Elaine Smith).

Small Town Secrets by Billie A Williams

Fires rage across the tiny town of Nettlesville. Someone is bent on burning it down too the ground one building at a time. Can Chaneeta and Olga bury their rivalry long enough to stop the arsonist before the town is nothing but ashes, or will Chaneeta's secret past destroy her and possibly the town?"


Read the first chapter and an interview with excerpts.

Available from Wings ePress, Inc http://www.wings-press.com
or any books store.
ISBN 978-1-59705-766-0 Print
978-1-59705-283-2 electronic download in several formats

Shalom, Mary by Kathleen Culligan Techler

SHALOM, MARY is a series of imaginary letters the Blessed Virgin could have written to her childhood friend, Rebekah. It starts with the Annunciation and ends after Pentecost. In it, I try to include the feelings common to all mothers and also details of everyday life at that time.

It can be ordered at http://www.cafepress.com/diskusbooks.15937225

Interview with Geralyn Beauchamp

1. What inspired you to write this story?

The debate is still on if the whole thing was a result of something I ate before going to bed one night! Or so say my sisters! At any rate, Time Masters became the result of several different things. I had started a story just for fun back in the 1980’s entitled the ‘Door To Muirara’ but had a rough outline at best, and never did really get it going. When I became a book reviewer in 1993 and started reviewing a lot of mystery and romance, not to mention I had an antique book collection and was dabbling in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan books at the time, I thought what quite a few avid readers and reviewers think. “Gee, I bet I could do this!” And so you think to yourself, “How hard can it be? I like to write!” So my inspiration for writing was a challenge to myself to go through the process, the WHOLE process of not just writing a book, but finish it and set up a series. (It’s the business/marketing/natural project manager side of me) and then be able to say I did it! And if I was really serious and wanted to take it all further, those notes were done and a rough outline of a twelve book series was in place. “So oh goodie!” I said when it was all done, or at least a decent draft. “I did it!” And with that, I stuck in the infamous trunk. Which I still have! I got it in 1979 before I went off to college! Another element in this whole thing is I absolutely love history, and wanted some part of history to research. Ok, truth be known I love to be a blood hound and research! So the Glencoe massacre of 1692 became the launch pad point, and of course, it gave me plenty to research! I then had to create a character centered around that particular event in history, and … well … the rest now is history! Pun intended!

2. Who is your favorite character and why?

This is always such a tough question to answer, but I guess if I absolutely had to pick just one, it would be Dallan. Probably because I spent so much time with him in research and creating his back ground. I’d find interesting facts and think, “Oh what fun! I can use that! Isn’t that interesting? Ohhhhh look at this piece of information over here …” and so on and so forth it went. For me it wasn’t work because I wasn’t actually writing with a huge publishing contract in mind. I was just plain ol having FUN! I guess at the time it was an outlet.

I started Dallan in the summer of1993 and didn’t get around to actually writing until 1994. But when I did put him in a setting, one with John Eaton, and let the two characters interact for the first time, he sprang to life so fast it was scary. All the rest of the story began to rapidly fall into place on its own. Dallan being the books life blood.

3. How have your personal faith and beliefs influenced your story?

I was raised with traditional values and by a homicide detective father. Let me tell you that makes for interesting conversations at the dinner table! Though he was never really a church going man, he still made sure we grew up with the golden rule so to speak. Our mother died when she was only fifty from pulmonary lung disease, so dad had to tow the line with all of us and has been doing so ever since. For all four kids, he is our best friend, not just our dad. All in all, it came down to doing what is right in life, even if it hurts a little. It was all about integrity growing up. I became a Christian later on and my upbringing coupled with Christian values, carries into the book.

4. What was the hardest part of writing this book?

Hmmm the book was so fun to write, I’m not sure what was hard, other than finding the time to write. My three children were ages three, seven, and thirteen at the time I wrote it. Now they are seventeen, twenty-one and twenty-seven. So most of TM was written between eleven pm and two am on most days when I was writing! There were of course windows during the day I would write when no one was home. There were also times when everyone was home and doing their own thing, so, I would write. I write to music so a head set took care of the household noise!

5. What was easiest?

Well, just letting the characters do their thing. Being there in the moment with them, watching them, listening … and then just writing it down. There’s a technical name for this when it happens, but I can’t recall what it is.

6. What's next for you?

Little did I know that pulling it out of the trunk would cause such a stir! I pulled it out, entered all the editing notes I had on it from umpteen years ago, then decided if I was going to share it, then I wanted to do so on my terms. So I self-published, and spent a lot of time researching this route. I figured, ok, since folks seem to think this should be in book form, fine, I’ll do that. Then they can stop squawking at me! And they could then access it as they like, and I would have creative control. And besides, it would be fun to start writing again as I knew I had other books outlined and if I wanted to, I could write those books!

I researched and found the company I wanted and went with Cold Tree Press. I didn’t want to mess with forming my own little publishing empire and thus utilized a publishing services company. Little did I know they were a lot more than that and have an entire traditional press sister company. I then found out from Peter Honsberger, Cold Tree’s CEO his vision for, and mission for helping author’s get their works out there. Demanding high quality works from authors and letting them know if their manuscript just wasn’t ready for prime time isn’t a problem for these guys. So it’s not like, oh here’s my book and my money, publish the thing! No, you have to submit your manuscript just as you would with a traditional press. They have award winning designers, Peter Honsberger himself is an award winning designer, and spent about thirty years in the advertising industry. I just thought wowzers! I hit the jackpot! Cold Tree strives to bring as personable attention to each book as they can. And they do! I can attest to that! And authors who really want to be serious about writing and marketing their books can have the chance to flip their books to Cold Tree’s sister company and be traditionally published. I thought that to be a really kewl thing. So the thought of doing more than just write for fun hit, and I pulled all those notes out of the trunk about the Time Master series. Book two is already in the works and will be traditionally published. Book three I’ll go right into and get done as well and have it ready to go. The first three books are kind of like a set. At any rate, I am segueing into the writer’s life. Little did I know that what I put in that trunk in 1994 would result in a career change fourteen years later! I won’t be quitting my day job just yet, but will be having a ton of fun again! Oh boy, more research!

Website: www.geralynbeauchamp.com

CFRB Presents: Time Masters by Geralyn Beauchamp

The year is 3698 and the threat of civil war is not only brewing, but near boiling. Kwaku Awahnee, Time Master of Muirara, must pass on his Time Mastership to his prechosen successor Dallan MacDonald to prevent the inevitable. Councilor John Eaton must tell the unsuspecting Scot of his new office and all it entails. There were, however, a few slight problems. To become a Time Master the High-lander would have to willingly join with a Muiraran Maiden, who stolen as an infant, hidden in another time, and now grown, must mate or die. Dallan’s job of convincing her she was Muiraran, not human, and have her fall in love with him was small com-pared to the impossible race against time they had to see it done. John’s job was to make sure the Scot was ready to listen. And then of course, talk him into it along the way ....

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Witch's Brew by Tabitha Shay

Dare by Abiola Abrams

Dare is the crazy, sexy, smart debut novel by BET host Abiola Abrams of indie film show The Best Shorts. DARE is the sizzling story of a sociologist who goes undercover and winds up in too deep as a racy rapper searching for love in the glam world of entertainment. this chick lit version of Faust, set in the world of Hollyhood is a searing tale of love, music and temptation.

Meet Maya Hope. Double-dipped in cocoa with brick-house curves, she's a lover of jazz, a political poet, and a sociologist. Her best friend and roommate, Athena Jackson, is her opposite in every way- a petite ex-cheerleader who's always blaring rap, grinding out rhymes, and ready to take the next man home. When Maya is forced to pinch-hit in an audition and bust Athena's rhymes, she finds herself on an undercover escapade in the wild world of hip-hop as the raw, sexy, roughneck Jezebel. After striking a deal with her own personal devil, Maya sets off on the tempting roller-coaster ride of a lifetime -- finding music, more fun than she's ever had, and even a man or two...but not without Faustian consequences.

An off the hook cast of colorful characters includes Lucy, the diva deluxe brand-addicted publicist from hell; Shell the Boy Wonder, wunderkind entrepreneurial label mogul party boy and Thug, the gritty handsome hardcore rapper with something to prove.

Brimming with electric sensuality, Dare is an unforgettable, envelope-pushing odyssey of two gutsy women playing by their own rules.

Abiola Abrams is a BET personality and her debut novel DARE is a romantic comedy available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble or wherever you buy books. Find excerpts or more from Abiola and Dare at www.abiolaabrams.com, www.daretogetalife.com or myspace.com/goddessfactory.

Interview with Maggie Ball

What did you enjoy most about writing this book?

The book was, in many ways, a journey for me. Not so much in terms of
the plot, but in terms of the overall theme. I'm not sure enjoy is the
right word, but I got the most value out of exploring the key theme of
how we make meaning in our lives -- how we make our short time as a
person on earth into something valuable, important, permanent. I needed
to create that meaning for myself and in writing the book I was able to
explore and make that concrete.

What was the biggest challenge in writing this book?

I think the biggest challenge for me was in overcoming my sense of being
not up to the task. I read a lot of good books -- not just good books,
but great books, and so I tend to aspire to producing books of a similar
calibre to what I read. That's daunting when you're reading books
written by Umberto Eco, Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood or Julian Barnes.
It's a hard uphill road and keeping that nagging sense of self-doubt
which is always present quiet for long enough to get the job done was my
biggest hurdle.

Who is your favorite character and why?

Well Marianne the protagonist certainly gets the lion's share of my
attention. It's her story and her journey and although the book is
written in third person, it's all her point of view, so I'd have to say
Marianne. But I also like Miles, the antagonist. I didn't want him to
come across as one sided or evil, and although he's not a force for good
in Marianne's life, I can certainly see both the seductive nature of his
gifts, and the little boy lurking under the bravado (that's my maternal
instincts coming out).

What do you enjoy about writing in general?

One thing I enjoy is how writing provides a kind of mandate for
observation which is very useful when you're under duress. In the
middle of an argument, or when everything is going wrong, there's always
a sense of the art I'm going to make out of the pain. I like to observe
the way a person might curl their lips, or hold their head. It helps
provide objectivity in the most subjective of situations!

What's next for you? I'm working on quite a few projects at the moment.
There's a full length poetry book I'm doing titled Impact Enigma
(exploring the usual subjects -- the universe, parenthood, love,
death...). Then there's novel 2, Black Cow, a treechange story moving
between the corporate world and the country. It's like Dilbert meets
The Good Life. After that there's Evie's Song about my grandmother, who
was a singer in the Catskills during WW2, and after that, well I have a
few other projects in mind. The only thing I need is more time!

Sleep Before Evening by Maggie Ball

Marianne is teetering at the edge of reason. A death in the family sends her brilliant academic career and promising future spiraling out of control until resentment towards those who shaped her past leads her on a wild and desperate search for the truth about herself. On the seedy side of New York, she meets Miles, a hip musician busking the streets and playing low-rent venues in a muddled bid to make his own dreams come true. In her new life, she finds anarchic squalor, home grown music and poetry, booze, drugs, sex, violence, love, loss and, above all, exhilarating freedom on her troubled journey from sleep to awakening. This gritty, relentless story unfolds with the same cool detachment that motivates the central character to peel back the layers of her life and expose the painful scalding within.

Purchase on Amazon.

Twisted Fairy Tales, edited by Julie Darcy

I am pleased to announce the release of “Twisted Fairy Tales” by Eternal Press. Familiar children’s stories re-written for adults. Sometimes weird, sometimes sexy. (Warning: some stories are erotica. Eternal Press rates this 3.5 hearts. (Their erotica usually rates in flames.)

Contents

Sindarella by Lisa Logon (Mild Erotica)
Man Hunt by Sally Odgers
The Christmas Present by Lisa Logan (Erotic)
Mirror, Mirror by Rob Rosen
Rapunzel By Yu-Han Chao(Erotica)
How Cats Lost the Power of Speech by Joshua Babcock
It Can’t Be Mine by Jane Toombs
Three Twisted Fairytails By Kandy Phair
Pebbles in the Stream by Richard E Friesen
Cinders By Karina L. Fabian
Angel with an Attitude by D. J. Sylvis
I Holler Hot Dog By Jane Toombs

My own story, “Cinders” is definitely in the weird category.

Check it out at www.eternalpress.com.au.

An Interview With Carole McDonnell

Carole tours this month with the Christian Fiction Review Blog. www.cfrblog.blogspot.com.

1. What inspired you to write this story?

Several things. An old Elizabethan ballad, "He's young but he's daily growing." The story of Hagar in the Bible. We Christians never think of her as a person living her own life whose life was then interrupted. I suspect we never really care about what the lives of slaves were before they became enslaved. Don Richardson's great missionary book, Eternity in their hearts. There was also an interview I saw with Pastor Richard Twiss of Wiconi International www.wiconi.org and World Christian Gathering of Indigenous People. www.wcgip.org These groups work to establish forms of worship that are more connected to the culture. For instance, Pastor Twiss organizes Christian pow-wows. Most Christians are not Europeans, and yet most of the Christian literature is written by European Christians. In addition, many Christians across the globe have had two struggles: They often have had to choose the religion of their oppressor because Christianity and imperialism were so closely-linked. And they had the European ways of worship pushed on them. Although they had their own ways of worshiping the Creator, they had to use the Lutheran or the Roman or the English ways. It was cultural imperialism. So now there is a large movement among Christians across the globe to understand and worship Jesus through their own culture. For instance, Indian Christians who understand Jesus as the one who frees them from karma and their sin debt, as the one who is the divine Guru and the Light, the Truth, and the Way.


2. Who is your favorite character and why?

I think it's Loic, the male protagonist. He lives in a world where there is a lot of hierarchy, especially in the spirit world. And that is something that is very common in shamanistic societies..the idea that God is so far away, holy, and otherwise preoccupied that we humans can't deal directly with him and we need intermediaries. There is so much of that in spirit worshiping societies. Mountains behind mountains, as some of my Haitian friends say. My main character, Loic, is immature and -- as far as he knows and is able-- a kind of good pagan. He's spoiled but kind-hearted. He's ill. (I always make a point to create main characters with an illness -- emotional, psychological, spiritual, developmental.) He's a Christian-figure, as opposed to a Christ figure. His illness has made him spoiled and arrogant. Plus, he's the son of a clan chief. All this makes him the sort of person who would rebel against the spirits and shaman who want to come between humans and the Creator. So it's a kind of divine arrogance.

3. How have your personal faith and beliefs influenced your story?

I wanted to write a Pentecostal Book of Acts kind of novel. So many Christian novels don't include that and for me, Christianity without the charismatic gifts is merely powerless doctrine. Of course many people wouldn't want that kind of natural supernatural stuff in their books, but that -- I believe-- is what Christianity is supposed to be. Full of power, Christ in us, the hope of glory, treasures in vessels of clay.


4. What was the hardest part of writing this book?

Being brave. I had to trust God that a secular publishing company would accept it. I also had to get the storytelling style right. I wanted it to be high fantasy, but high fantasy with a folkloric style. Not the Euro-tradition. I also didn't want it to sound stilted. I read Native American rhetoric, slave narratives, and old Chinese traditional and classical poetry so I could get the style just right.

5. What was easiest?

The battles with the demons. That was fun to write. I knew instinctively what the demons would say.

6. What's next for you?

I have to decide which of three works-in-progress I'm working on. I have to work on getting some sleep. I battle fibromyalgia so it's interesting writing through the fog and the sleeplessness. I keep thinking that I'm always writing stories where my characters have trouble sleeping. I suspect that when I start sleeping again, they'll start sleeping also.

Website: www.juno-books.com/windfollower.html

CFRB Presents: Wind Follower by Carole McDonnell

Although it is not entirely to her liking, grief-stricken Satha, a dark-skinned woman from a poor Theseni clan weds young Loic, the wealthy Doreni son of the king's First Captain. Loic, graced with ability to see into the hearts and minds of others, begins to help Satha overcome her sorrows. Despite coming from different tribes, they begin to forge a life together. But when Satha's own compassion is used against her and a treacherous enemy contrives to dishonor her in Loic's absence, Loic's love turns to anger and disgust. Embittered, Loic must still avenge his honor and Satha's and he sets out on a journey that brings despair as well as spiritual discovery. Battling him are the Arkhai, the spirits of the land who know his quest will lead him toward the God whom they have usurped. After his departure, Satha is kidnapped, sold into slavery and learns, first hand, how cruel the pioneering Angleni tribe can be. Both face great hardship, danger and anguish apart, but with the Creator's aid there remains hope they will be reunited and heal the love the world has torn asunder.

Learn more at the CFRB Blog Tour.

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Losing Kei by Suzanne Kamata

A young American mother living in Japan fights impossible odds to be reunited with her child

Jill Parker is an American expat artist living in a remote town on the southern coast of Japan and making ends meet as a hostess at a seedy waterfront bar when she meets Yusuke, a sensitive art gallery owner who believes in her talent. As their affair leads to marriage, Jill is convinced that her life has finally opened to real love, to a measure of artistic success, and an insider’s connection to her strange and beautiful adopted culture. Instead she is trapped as she had never imagined. Under the demanding oversight of Okasan, Yusuke’s cold and tradition-bound mother, Jill is expected to apprentice herself to the womanly arts, to sacrifice her life to her husband’s pleasure and the family’s honor. The long anticipated birth of Kei, a beautiful baby boy, only serves to increase her failure in the eyes of the family. Divorce is one way out but according to Japan’s rigid laws, a foreigner has no rights to custody and Jill is essentially told to disappear and leave her child behind. Rendered with tenderness, humor, and an insider’s knowledge of contemporary Japan, Losing Kei melds the off-kilter cultural misunderstandings of Lost in Translation with the wrenching family drama of Kramer versus Kramer and marks the debut novel of an exceptional expatriate voice.

Suzanne Kamata's short work has appeared in over 100 publications. She is editor The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan and a forthcoming anthology from Beacon Press Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs. She is a five-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and two-time winner of the Nippon Airways Fiction Contest.

Order on Amazon.com.

Darrell Bain talks about his book, Savage Survival

SAVAGE SURVIVAL is not just another testosterone driven science fiction novel. At the basic level, it explores the personalities and attitudes of men, women and children when stripped of the comforting insulation of organized society. Invulnerable aliens have captured millions of humans and are subjecting them to the most brutal and horrible environments ever encountered, in essence a survival test of a magnitude heretofore undreamed of.

Lyda Brightner is an eleven year old girl when she is suddenly and without warning separated from her parents and thrown into the midst of undisciplined humans in a harsh desert environment. Food and water and clothing are fought over. Those who control it can do as they wish—and their wishes are terrible.

Lyda is weaponless and alone, like almost everyone. Raped at eleven. Forced to kill. Grieving for her parents. All that stands between Lyda and death is her own innate bravery, her quick mind, her unwavering integrity and ultimately, her belief that someday she will find someone to love.

Lyda's strength of character and fighting spirit make her a leader, even at a very young age. Over the next six years she must constantly fight the ever changing and ever more dangerous environments the aliens subject them to. But she must fight other humans as well, those who have survived by brute strength and ruthless plundering of the weak.

But even if she lives through all this, Lyda must still face the final question: What do the aliens have in mind for the few hundred remaining humans, those few left of all the millions who died?

SAVAGE SURVIVAL is a coming of age novel like no other and Lyda Brightner is a character you'll never forget.

An Interview With Darrell Bain

1. What inspired you to write this story?
Probably my own childhood history of adversity had something to do with it and seeing young orphans in Vietnam making a life by themselves when still very young was in the back of my mind, too. But really, one day the whole theme and plot came to mind like a vision, something that happens very seldom to a writer.

2. Who is your favorite character and why?
Lyda, of course is my favorite character for the reasons listed above.

3. How have your personal faith and beliefs influenced your story?
I don't have a religion. I believe a person is responsible for whatever they make of their life.

4. What was the hardest part of writing this book?
There was no hard part. It practically wrote itself. Again, something very rare.

5. What was easiest?
It was all easy. I like this story about as well or better than anything I've ever written.

6. What's next for you?
I'm currently collaborating on a novel and possibly a series with Travis S. Taylor, a well known science fiction author and scientist.

Savage Survival by Darrell Bain

Genre: Science fiction

Publisher: Twilight Times Books, www.twilighttimesbooks.com

Darrell Bain's finest novel to date. Savage Survival is a coming of age novel like no other and Lyda Brightner is a character you'll remember forever. Raped at eleven. Forced to kill. Subjected to suffering in one brutal and horrible environment after another, with no parents or guardian to protect her as she grows up. Millions of earthmen have been captured by invulnerable aliens and are being put through the strangest and most terrifying survival tests ever imagined. Young Lyda Brightner's first experience after being thrown into the midst of undisciplined humans is horrible enough, but she doesn't know that the trials are just beginning. She doesn't know that only a few hundred of the millions of captives will live through the vicious and cruel winnowing process. Again and again as she grows into a young woman, she has to call on the only resources she has available: her own innate bravery, her quick mind, her unwavering belief in the goodness of the majority of humans and ultimately, an enduring hope that one day she will find someone to love. But even if she lives through all this, she will still have to face the final question. What do the aliens have in mind for the few survivors?

Interview with Grace Bridges

What inspired you to write this story?
It kind of came from daydreams I've had since early childhood. They were vague at first, wondering if heaven might be able to include reliving childhood. Later, they solidified into the ideas that became Faith Awakened. I formulated the first story idea when I was 14.

Who is your favorite character and why?
I suppose it's Mariah. Faith is too similar to me, but Mariah is me as I would hope to be if I ever got in as much trouble as she did.

How have your personal faith and beliefs influenced your story?
Faith's journey of faith is much like my own. Both her life and Mariah's leave a lot of unanswered questions, but certainty in the things that matter. I have a lot of questions I'd like to ask God, and I think that's all right. I'm happy I don't have to know all the answers.

What was the hardest part of writing this book?
There were some chapters around the middle where I got quite stuck for a while. The plot was planned out, but between crises there are bits that aren't as exciting as others. That's always difficult.

What was easiest?
The crisis chapters where all the strands are bound together. That was really fun!

What's next for you?
A space-epic Pilgrim's Progress inspired by and vastly different to Frank Creed's Flashpoint.

Review of Faith Awakened by Grace Bridges

There's a saying in literature: There are no new plot lines, just new ways of approaching the same plot lines. Grace Bridges has shown that she is a master at novel approaches with her book Faith Awakened.
Faith Awakened tells the story of two women: Mariah, one of the last survivors of a dystrophic world in which a virulent plague has destroyed 99.9 percent of mankind, and Faith, a woman who has dealt all her life with depression, bizarre memory loss and a struggle to serve the Lord even when she doesn't "feel" His presence.
Familiar plotlines? Sure--until Grace mixes the two so that Faith is Mariah, living out a new life in a virtual reality program while her body is in stasis to wait out the death of the killer virus.
That clever mix caught my interest and kept me reading. Even a month after having read the Faith Awakened, I still find myself pondering the story. Were the memory losses because of the badly connected sensors or faults in the program? Was her depression a natural extension of Mariah's circumstances or difficulties interfacing with the machine? What about her tie to the Lord: did the computer, her misconnected probe or some aspect of her personality prevent her from feeling God's presence in her alternate life? I loved how she persevered despite not having an overwhelming emotional faith experience. It reminded me of the words of a child's father to Jesus: "I believe. Help my unbelief." (Mark 9:24)
I found the Biblical messages a little heavy at times, but that's a personal pet peeve. Besides, it's part of the genre. What I find significant is that Grace wove these so well into her story that I could easily chalk them up to the characters' thoughts rather than an author-induced sermon and go on with my reading--and I wanted to go on. Grace has written a wonderful, unique story and I recommend it to any Christian reader who's looking for something out of the ordinary.

Even a month after having read Faith Awakened, I still find myself pondering the story. Grace has written a wonderful, unique story and I recommend it to any Christian reader who's looking for something out of the ordinary.

Download or buy now:
Faith Awakened at Lulu.com! Free e-book - or the print copy at cost price!
Faith Awakened at Amazon.com Printed copies only

CFRB Presents: Faith Awakened by Grace Bridges

If you could design your own virtual world to live in, what would it look like? If you lived on a dark and empty planet, how far would you go to save your life? Is God a computer programmer? And can he take you to heaven... before you die?

"A fascinating tale of playing God over one's own virtual life, while the real God influences the real one... or both." - Angela Brett, 1995 winner of the Young Writers' Katherine Mansfield Memorial Award