In my new book, Wearer of the Gold, a new Christian sci-fi novel, I wanted to set up a scene that clearly let the reader know this was another world. The objective is to go off-world immediately with the reader. I also wanted the reader to feel the tension and develop an interest in continuing with the story. (It is essential that you draw the reader into the story.) The scene opens like this…
In my new Christian Sci-fi book, Wearer of the Gold, I tried out some techniques that I’d never employed before in my writing. First of all, I had to have some exotic words. These words needed to be nearly impossible to speak, but not entirely. They had to be words that did not exist, or needed to exist for a meaning we do not have a word to describe. That was not an easy task, but I reasoned that if humans speaking English had a word, a very strange word not found in their language, what would we do? Well, we’d adjust it somewhat to enable us to pronounce the word, and we might even use the phonetic sound of the word to create the word in our language; or, in some instances, we may just render a word that we cannot say, into something we can say that has nothing to do with phonetics, but just meaning.
In later portions of the book, Wearer of the Gold, the main character, Cubal, meets an alien race. They are strange in many ways (including their love for human flesh). I had to have an unusual name for them, so I invented the name A’rkji. This would be a name that could have come from the complete inability to say the real name of this species, phonetically speaking, “Abjt-ssha-katta-malibk-jlissi.” Thus, the shorthand version, A’rkji.
Here is a short scene from that section of the book Read the rest of this entry »
Does the Bible say anything about space travel? Indeed, it does. Several years ago, I stumbled on a passage of Scripture that was stunning. I found this: Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD. - Ancient Book of Obadiah, chapter 1, verse 4.
Immediately, I dug out an old manuscript that I’d started some time ago and had put aside, unsure of where to go with it, and began writing furiously. I now knew where I was headed with it: Straight out into the galaxies!
Thus began a book I’ve tenatively titled “Wearer of the Gold: The Ancient Ones.”
It is a science fiction book unlike anything I’ve seen on the market today, yet it contains much of the ingredients that fascinate all of us who loved Star Wars. It is a book about a man who was bred for one purpose: fighting. He does not believe in gods or devils, only superior beings, of which, he is one.
This blog begins an exploration of that book and some of the concepts within it, discussion of portions of it, and even some excepts. From time to time, I’ll have some podcasts in which I’ll do some readings from the book
A release date is not yet scheduled, but expectations are January 2010.
