What is Christian Speculative Fiction?

When I started writing this story I didn’t know what genre it would fall under. In fact it wasn’t until it was written that I found out.

I went to a Writers Guild of Texas meeting, where a Christian author and Agent was conducting a lecture. After doing his best to dismay us, and tell us how impossible it would be for us to get published, he opened the floor to questions.

Don’t get me wrong, he was doing what he thought would be best: telling us how it is. He was right about a lot of things, but I found his well rehearsed bubble popping session a little condescending.

Look, I know, getting published through a BIG publishing house is very hard, impossible even. Getting an Agent is equally hard and time consuming. But I’m the kind of person who believes that when there is a will, there is a way—paved that is, with hard work and patience.

This agent did one thing though, that I am very grateful to him for; he gave my book a Genre. After the meeting was over, I approached him and briefly described my book to him. He irrevocably pronounced it “Christian Speculative Fiction”.



So what is this mysterious genre that I had never heard of?
Commonly called CSF, this genre is fast growing in popularity among those who want fast pased, action packed, yet clean fiction. The themes are biblical and morally uplifting. The settings vary between science fiction, futuristic, superhero, time travel, supernatural, end-of-the world “Armageddon” type and alternate realities to list a few.

The best known examples that fall under these categories are “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “The Lord of the Rings”. We have in fact C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien to thank for the renaissance of this genre. They, in my opinion, did in the twentieth century what poets like Dante and Milton have done in their time.
Now days a slew of new authors are bringing this old genre back to life.



Most of us are however still in the fringes of the Christian market—not for lack of demand—but rather due to an inability for large publishers to change old set in traditions.

Another reason why CSF writers are opting to get published through smaller publishing houses, like TreasureLine Books, is because these publishers offer Print on Demand (POD) services.

This is a low cost, no middle man (agent) way to get your book into the reader’s hands. These books will most likely never hit a “Big Bookstore” shelf, but it will be online at popular booksellers like Amazon, Amazon's Kindle, Smashwords and the Publisher’s and Author’s web site. The benefits of POD for the readers are obvious—low cost.

For me and many other authors that choose to go this route, the benefits are that we get to live our dreams of writing good, clean stories, and keep our current lives. No traveling, no life altering careers, just our life and our dreams!
Reading is a great form of entertainment and a powerful way to shape our world and CSF writers are doing both!

Pictures by Gustave Dore'

Everything Creative: Group Dis. 7 - Programs - Mormon Channel

Everything Creative: Group Dis. 7 - Programs - Mormon Channel

This is perhaps a bit long, but well worth listening to. As four authors sit and talk about the creative aspect of writing, family life and religion.

Vote Here!

Take your pick of the best hook line for the book cover and get your name in the acknowledgement page!


#1 “Can love withstand the forgetting effects of the Veil?”
#2 “Will love survive the forgetting effects of the Veil?”
#3 “Will their love be strong enough to overcome the forgetting effects of the Veil?”

What Lies Within.

I am sure many of you have seen this many times before, I personally never get tired of watching it. The callousness of the judges and the people toward this frumpy looking woman, then the change once she sings that first note.

What I see when I watch this clip is not just a social problem, but a metaphor for the soul.

To me this proves that we are not just our crust. We are much much more! Inside each and every one of us lies a soul with infinite talent, beauty and worth. A soul that has the capacity to change the world, to influence people and shine so brightly at times that others can't help but notice.

Susan Boyle brought more than cheers to that audience, she brought change. She made us look inward for a moment and helped us see the beauty that lies within each of us.

Never doubt we are Divine! Never.

Silvina harvested her first Love Potato on Framville today

Blogging is not the only way I shamelessly promote my book. Facebook, Twitter, and a slew of other networking things are great ways of promotion. Not just for books, but for everything!
I know some of you get annoyed when someone tries to push their business on you while you are trying to shoot the breeze with your long lost elementary school friends, and your second cousin twice removed—but it happens.
It smells a little bit of telemarketing, you may say. But such is life, you find a way to reach a large number of people for free and WHAM! You get someone trying to sell you something or…in my case, trying to promote something. 
Bragging, promoting and even selling on Facebook, I get. What I don’t get is Farmville and Fronteerville (I didn’t even know about the latter until a few days ago). Perhaps someone should educate me on those things and their obscure messages.
I’m inclined to bet that half the people that post from Farmville have no idea what’s going on, or that they are doing it.
Just the other day I was in a hurry. I was checking my e-mail right before starting school (always a bad idea), and I made the mistake of leaving my Facebook page open on the desktop. I walked away and got my kids started on their math, and forgot all about the computer and leaving that page open.
Later I saw my three year old banging on the computer keyboard and all kinds of things popping up on Facebook as she did so. One of those things was an invitation to Fronteerville. Time seemed to slow down as her little hand was suspended above the keyboard and she smiled at me knowingly.
I told her to “Step away from that computer”, but that only seemed to confirm to her what her next move should be. I ran to the computer as her hand lowered one more time, but it was too late!
I desperately tried undo the damage, but there seemed to be no way out. There was no decline button, no escape at all from Fronteerville. There were only two choices, accept or enter. I clicked the X and got out of Dodge—hopefully for good.
So now, you should thank me. Because you will not be seeing any cryptic Fronteerville entries from me—only my shameless book promoting!

Judge tenderly of me.

I don't want to wake up at six every morning! I've always been a night owl, not an early bird. But my children have turned me into an early bird because they are night owls, and they sleep in until 7 or 8 am. This gives me exactly two hours to write!

This time is precious for me, not only do I get to unload this story on to my computer's memory, but I also get to be alone...all alone. I don't even turn on the lights! I just sit here and write by the light of my screen.

While I wait and wait and wait for the next step in the publishing world to take place, I have been writing the second book in my series, called "LIVING SOUL".

This story--I thought--would be easier to write, since I had to pretty much figure out what happened in this part of the story, before I finished the first one. Oh... it was hard to focus on the first novel and get that done, before I jumped into this one. I wrote bits and pieces of it here and there, when I couldn't restrain myself.

But now, that VEILED is done and third in line (I'm told) to be published, I am having a hard time with Living Soul. Inspiration is not really a problem, I make sure I wake up and inspire myself by drinking a hot sip of mate.




The trouble seems to be rooted more in that innate insecurity that we all feel at times. Emily Dickinson said it best, when she wrote:


"THIS is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,—
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.

Her message is committed 5
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!"

Parallel Story

There is a whole other side to the story behind the story. And that is the story of Mack and our Homeschooling journey. We do a type of homeschool called "Thomas Jefferson Education" (TJED). It is based on the premise of Classics and Mentors, just like the education of Thomas Jefferson.

I've always known that educating my oldest would not be as easy as loading him on a school bus every morning and sitting him down to homework every evening after soccer.
He has ADHD and Aspberger's, making it virtually impossible for him to focus in a public school environment. So while he was still in first grade I started looking of other options. A friend suggested I read "A Thomas Jefferson Education" by Oliver DeMille, and after I did, I realized that that would be the only way to give Mack an education.

I've always been a great fan of reading the "Classics" in literature, I myself have had the privilege of learning from the classics, so I knew that it would work.
There's a saying in Spanish, "Del dicho al hecho hay largo trecho", which translated means: From saying to doing, there is a long road.
Homeschooling is not easy, especially when you have to shed so many preconceived notions about how schooling should be done. Here I had to trust the process, that if you "inspire and not require" your child will willingly learn to love learning.

As you can imagine, this is not something that happens in a week or a month--it takes years and it's been a bumpy ride. But I've learned a few things along the way.
One, you need mentors. So if you can't be a mentor, find one.
My sister-in-law Heidi, came to my rescue when we were just getting started. She took Mack on Fridays and played Math games with Mack and her kids. She loves math, so she was the perfect mentor for him.
Heidi got him out of his mental math block and freed up the way for me to do math again with him.

Then we had to tackle reading. This I could mentor him in, because I love to read.
I started to read to him out loud every day, from a children's classic. We read "Black Beauty" first, because he was taking Horseback riding lessons. Then we read "The Chronicles of Narnia" all of them!
He started reading on his own, books like "Ready Freddy" and "The Magic Tree House" and from there he jumped into "The Lightning Thief" and "Fablehaven". We still read books out loud, and we are currently reading "Johnny Tremain".

The last issue with school that I had to address was his complete refusal to write, and this is where my book comes in. As you can imagine a lot of these things have happened simultaneously for us, and writing has been one of the these things.
It was incomprehensible to me how he could hate to write, because I've always enjoyed writing. Right at the same time I started reading Oliver and Rachael DeMille's follow up book called "Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning". Here they give those trying to educate a recipe, their recipe. They say "you, not them" meaning if you want them to do something, you do it. If you want them to play the piano--you play the piano every day. In short, model the behaviour that you want them to have.

This gave me the courage to work on a dream of mine, that elusive dream "that one day I'll write a book". I always thought that I would have to put that dream on hold until I was retired or had all my kids in school! Well... that was not going to happen now, so I decided to start.
Every time I sat down to work on my book I would tell Mack, "I love working on my book! It's so much fun to make up stuff and write it down.". Yea...I laid it on really thick, but it worked!

A few months ago he came up to me and said: "Mom, I want to write a book too. Will you publish me, if I write a book?"
I told him that I most certainly would, and he has been writing on his own; full sentences at a time! I know that this might not sound too miraculous for you, but it is for me.

For him to sit down and willingly and happily to pick up a pencil and write is nothing short of a miracle! It is a thing of beauty that brings tears to my eyes.
If nothing else, this alone makes this journey worth it.