Shadow is back!

Copied from Shadow - Monsters, Machines and Mad Scientists.

Good afternoon (if you happen to be living in a time zone where that is an accurate description of the time of day, and you're reading this not long after I post it, or, by coincidence, happen to be reading it in the afternoon, during a lunchbreak, for example, or after a brief siesta, or if you, perhaps, subscribe to the belief that all times of day are really after some noon and so, by extension any time of day or night might be described as such), dear readers,

It's been a while; much longer than I had intended, in fact.  When I posted my previous news post about my intention to take a break from writing Shadow whilst I prepared for the imminent arrival of my offspring and then dealt with the chaotic aftermath of the miracle of new life, I had not, in fact, planned to be away for more than a few weeks.  It has, instead, been over two months since I last posted an episode of Shadow and I have very much felt it's absence from  my life in that time.  The truth is, however, I had neither the time, nor the energy to commit to it in any way and even when I returned to work and thought that, at last, I might begin writing again, I found that I didn't have the energy, most days, to do much more on my lunch breaks but sleep.

Still, as time has passed I have found it easier and easier to fit writing back into my life and so I am pleased to be posting this today to tell you that Shadow has returned to the internets and, God-willing, I will have the energy and enthusiasm to resume my weekly updates (although I'm not 100% committing to that just yet).

But enough about Shadow.  You probably want to know about the baby, amiright?

Her name is Elizabeth Aria George.  She was born at 3.10 on Sunday 13th October, weighting just 7lb 1/4oz (or 3.2kg) and she is the most beautiful baby ever.  Despite the lack of time, the lack of sleep and, often, the lack of any functioning brain cells whatsoever, I am loving being a father and am looking forward to the day when, perhaps, Lily (as we are calling her) will be able to write her own stories and help me with mine.  Until then, I had better start coming up with some I am happy for her to be told (and then to read).  She'll be a bit young for Shadow, yet.

Thank you for your patience over the last two months.  I hope I haven't lost any of you to the capricious whims of the internet and that you'll enjoy reading Shadow once more.

Regards,

Chris George (Daddy).

Grace and Glory

So, this is another short talk I wrote for a Sunday service I was asked to do, this time at Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen earlier in the year.  I meant to upload it ages ago and somehow never got around to it, but it's interesting to note that discussions of the topic of grace have characterized much of the rest of the year and the talk I gave at an English-teaching bible camp in Hungary had a very similar theme - one I felt much more confident to talk on having looked at this passage.

As Christians, no matter how sound we may think our doctrine is, we always need to be reminded of God's grace, so I hope this will be of benefit to you.  If you're not a Christian, then my hope for you is doubly strong.  This is the greatest gift on offer in the universe and I implore anyone to whom the message is given, please, accept it.

The reading for this talk is Ephesians 2:1-10.  If you can turn to it now, that would help, then click on the jump!

Commanded to be Strong

The following is another talk which I was asked to make at a sheltered housing complex this week.  The passage it was on is Joshua 1, at one time my favourite chapter in the whole Bible, and certainly still a contender.

            Joshua is a significant book in many ways.  It can be read as a coda to the Pentateuch; God demonstrating his faithfulness by fulfilling the promises he made to the patriarchs: leading the Israelites into the Promised Land despite all of their unfaithfulness.  This is a particularly helpful way of looking at the book as a whole when we then choose to narrow it down to chapter one, because the beginning of any story is always an uncertain place, it’s the part where events are set up, plans are made and we don’t know how they are going to turn out, even if we already do because we’ve read the story a thousand times before. 

            And that, surely, is how the Israelites felt at this point.  They had faced much to reach the Jordan: forty years of wandering, the loss of an entire generation, the battles against Sihon and Og, the death of Moses.  They were finally on the threshold of the Promised Land, but there was much still to do and all the things which had made them turn away at Kadesh forty years before were still true.  I’m not sure how I’d have felt if I were one of them - a mixture of emotions, most likely - but I imagine that chief amongst them would have been anxiety, a fear of the unknown.

            God knew this.  He knew that despite all that the Israelites had witnessed, despite the miraculous interventions time and again, his people would need a pep talk before they faced the land of Canaan.  I know that I would have.  Despite the numerous times that God has proven himself faithful in our lives, don’t we find, from time to time, that we need to be reminded?

When I first became a Christian I was not a strong person at all.  I was a shy, scared eleven year old who didn’t have much in common with the other boys at school and who was pathologically afraid of drawing too much attention to myself.  I was prone to worry about everything and would panic easily.  I was not, in short, the ideal candidate for sharing the gospel.

            There were two things I prayed for more than anything else in my teenage years: for more faith, that I would believe and act accordingly in all situations and for courage, that I would be able to live and work like a normal human being and serve God faithfully along the way.  In the midst of such prayer, I first discovered Joshua chapter one and it quickly became my favourite passage in the whole Bible: a reminder that God is always with me;  an encouragement to be strong and courageous!  It was exactly what I was looking for.

            Eighteen years later and I am still sometimes shy, often scared, still easily worried and I can stress for Britain if given half a chance.  I still pray regularly for more faith and I still ask God for the courage and confidence to meet everyday tasks, let alone the big stuff.  Does this mean God has failed?  Has he answered all my prayers with a hollow ‘No’?  I don’t think so, after all, here I am standing up and talking about the word of God to you fine people.

            In fact, God has called me often to step outside of my comfort zone and to do something I would never think of doing myself.  He delights in making me stand up in front of people to sing, to talk, to act, to give testimony and even, on one occasion, to dance.  These things which would have terrified me in other situations have enabled me to grow and develop as a human being, pushing my boundaries and helping me to pass on learned skills into other areas of my life -  a blessing in and of itself - but, more than that, they have enabled me to serve in the Kingdom of God despite all my weaknesses.  It’s just that I keep needing God’s pep talks, those little reminders of all the times I’ve stepped forward before at his urging and found that, yes, God is faithful.

So, it’s interesting, then, that God doesn’t merely remind Joshua of all of his past deeds and say, ‘see, you can trust me!’  He is much more direct.  Joshua isn’t simply reminded here, he’s commanded.

            ‘Be strong and courageous’, God says in verse 6 and again in verse 7, ‘be strong and very courageous’.  Indeed, God gives Joshua this command four times in this chapter and it is not until the third time in verse 9 that he adds those famous words of encouragement and consolation, ‘Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go’, and even that was prefaced with ‘Have I not commanded you?’

‘Have I not commanded you?  Be strong and courageous.’

What does this tell us about God?

Yes, it tells us that he is a God of comfort and consolation; yes, it tells us he knows when we need to be encouraged and spurred on; yes, it tells us he really is with us always, through all circumstances, but there is more to this than that.  God isn’t simply being comforting, he is commanding!  This is the almighty God, creator and sustainer of heaven and earth, commander of armies of angels, the one to whom the vastness of the universe is as a speck of dust – This is  that God, meeting with the leader of his people, giving the necessary orders for battle.  The first order he gives? ‘Be strong and courageous’ and by adding ‘Have I not commanded you?’ later he’s making it clear that the command alone really ought to have been enough - of course it should be, it’s coming from God – but despite this he adds the consolation anyway, because he knows his creatures better than we know ourselves.

So,  God commands us to be bold.  He commands us to have confidence in ourselves and in him when we are doing his work and the command itself should be enough.  God knows we are weak, so the consolation will always be there, but the command comes first.  We must be strong and courageous for God!

I always read this passage as a comfort for socially awkward me, a word God whispered in the back of my mind when I needed a little lift, when the pressures of peers, school, work, life were getting me down.  Now I realise that the emphasis here is very different from what I had thought and the result is, astonishingly, all the more glorious.  Rather than God comforting me to help me achieve my goals, which may or may not happen to line up with his, this is God commanding me to be bold so that I might achieve his goals, which are better for me than anything I might want for myself anyway!

Is this still encouraging?  Is this still a boost to faith and confidence for those struggling?  Of course it is!  God is reminding us here that we should have faith and confidence simply because he is!  God does not just give us consolation and encouragement, he is our consolation and our encouragement.  He does not just give us strength but he is our strength. Isn’t that so much better than a mere quiet word at a tough time?

But we must remember the context, the eve of invasion.  As well as being a comfort, it’s also a call to arms to meet God’s mission head on.

For Joshua that mission was to see the fulfilment of God’s promises to the Israelites and we can see throughout the rest of the book of Joshua just how that works out and how God continues to be faithful at every step of the way – often in surprising ways!

For us that mission it is to see the fulfilment of God’s promises to the whole world, through Christ’s work on the cross and the commission he gave us to spread the word.  There are many ways we can do that, as I have found in my relatively short Christian life, and indeed there are many ways we are each working towards that goal in our everyday lives. If we’re struggling, however, if the command to go forth and tell seems a hard one, then remember the God who gave the command, who is with us wherever we go and who will strengthen us as and when we need it.   And remember that it is a command from the Lord of Hosts and that before he told us to go forth he first commanded:

‘Be strong and courageous!’

Memetic Makeup

Following on from last week's article about all the stuff I'm (technically) working on at the moment, I have been tagged by the lovely Eruntane (my wife) over at her blog, Josephine Must Write, in a writer's meme of sorts.  Duty and some kind of memetic addiction compel me to complete it.  For what it's worth, it is reproduced below.

What is the working title of your book?

Well, as I said last week, I’m working on at least two things right now, so the novel is called The Dream and the web fiction series is called Shadow.

Where did the idea for the book come from?

Well, The Dream came to me in a dream… I’m kidding.  I came up with the idea for that novel in 2001 or 2002, when I was trying to find a clever twist for a fantasy novel (I was struggling with the traditional fantasy genre at the time).  I found a premise I really liked and thought I could work with, but then when I tried to write it I kept getting bored.  I’ve come back to it several times over the last decade or so and only recently have I found the right voice and the right sense of setting to really feel comfortable with it.

Shadow on the other hand came to me originally as an idea for a piece of chain fiction to write with friends.  I wanted to explore the idea of a city on another world which would be humanity’s true origin, wild and dark.  It never happened.  Then, when I was bored in work one day I started writing this story for a friend and the setting of the city of Shadow seemed perfect for what I wanted to do.  The city has turned out very differently from what I had originally intended, of course, but the base ideas are still there and keep growing all the time.

What genre does your book fall into?

An easy one this!  The Dream is a traditional fantasy novel (or trilogy) with, what I hope is, a fairly unique twist (no spoilers here!)  Shadow on the other hand is a mostly light-hearted Steampunk-lite fantasy tale.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

You know, for all that I love the idea of my stories being turned into films (in contrast to my wife) I am rubbish at thinking of actors in connection to my characters.  I can see them and they don’t look like people I know, mostly.  Having said that, Siren from Shadow was always supposed to look a bit like Kaley Cuoco with her hair dyed black and  Gulliver was inspired by Mackenzie Crook’s Ragetti from Pirates of the Caribbean.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

The Dream:  The world of Erinëa is falling apart: people vanish without a trace, wars and plagues are rife, a darkness spreads across the lands that is more than the mere absence of light and for four young friends - a bard, a priest, a mountain guide and a soldier – there will be a personal journey that will change the way they think about the world and themselves.

Shadow:  Ellis Graves is a normal English lad with his fair share of relationship troubles and identity issues, but when he finds himself inexplicably sucked into the world of Shadow - a world of monsters, machines and mad scientists – he finds himself a pawn in a much larger game; the goal: Earth.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Shadow is already being published weekly online.  I have vague plans to release each volume of it in eBook form as well.

The Dream is really too early in development (yes, even after a decade) to say what will become of it.  I’m not sure I’m really good enough a writer to attempt anything beyond self-publishing anyway, but who knows?

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

This question is really non-applicable, I think. The Dream is unfinished and Shadow is an ongoing serial publication.  Still, the former has been worked on, on and off, for around a decade and the latter for about five years.

To what other books in your genre would you compare this story?

Again, this is another tricky question.  The Dream is, ostensibly, at least, a traditional fantasy and that means it carries a lot of that baggage of that genre with it.  Part of the reason it’s taken me so long to get going well with it is because I was unhappy with the clichés I was trotting out with every page.  The current version plays about with the setting a bit more even before the twist which, I hope, makes it a lot more unique in its genre.  I could compare it to some well-known sci-fi properties instead, but, I’m afraid, that would constitute a spoiler.

As for Shadow, I’m actually woefully under-read in the Steampunk genre and am not sure what it might be like.  It’s really my own take on it and it’s a lot more light-hearted and frivolous (with far less attention to detail) than many would be.  It certainly doesn’t aspire to be good literature, just an entertaining weekly read and an exploration of a crazy and, I hope, fairly original world.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I’ve discussed inspiration already, I think, but I will say that The Dream was partly inspired by a famous Science Fiction film, which led me, eventually, to ask the question, ‘What would a fantasy version of this be like?’.  Shadow was inspired by not enough work to do in a Call Centre, ha ha!

What else about your book might pique your reader’s interest?

As I’ve said before, The Dream is a hopefully fairly original twist on the traditional fantasy genre and I hope it’s premise will intrigue and entertain.  Shadow is like an ongoing Steampunk fantasy TV series, only written down and with a bigger special effects budget.  If either of these things sound like your thing then, chances are, you’d find reading them worth your while.

Here endeth the meme.  I know I'm supposed to tag someone else now but (sad admission) I don't have anyone else to tag and not just because I don't know anyone else working on any writing right now.  Oh well.  If you're reading this and this applies to you, consider yourself tagged and please post a link to your completed meme in the comments!

Words, Words and More Words.

I'm a very undisciplined writer, aren't I?

The reason there have been no new posts for a while (or any regular posts, ever) on this blog is that I am poor at making the time to write.  The reason Shadow continues as it does is mainly because I have a deadline built in to writing it, which encourages me to hurry up a little, and because I do most of m y writing for it during my breaks at work as part of the necessary process of escapism.

Murkland fairs less well.  I was writing that in the mornings before breakfast and then winter hit and all I wanted to do was sleep.  I resolved this year that I would finish it before Easter, but apart from that New Year entry, I have not managed to work on it since.

Why am I recounting this tale of slovenly writing?

Well, the reason is that my wife, the beautiful Eruntane, whose own blog can be found here, has just finished writing her first full attempt at a novel and it has put me in that itchy typing finger kinda mood, indeed, the last few weeks of increasingly fervent writing from her part has meant that I've been keen to get something more serious done for a while.

Well, what have I achieved?

To be honest, not a lot.  What I have done is to unearth the novel I began writing as part of 2011's NaNoWriMo, The Dream and try to sort out some of the formatting issues it developed when I downloaded it from the free online writing software I had been using to keep working on it during breaks at work (recurring theme?).  I have thus far managed to reformat about six chapters and have made some of them available for friends to read, which will hopefully result in a little feedback and thus the encouragement I need to continue working on it.

I'm dreadful.  You think those pleas for comments on Shadow are because I want feedback?  Well, yes, they are a little, but mostly they are because I just want proof that people are reading my stuff.  If you read it, I will write it, otherwise I'm likely to loose interest...

Anyway, this seems like as good a time as any to survey my current list of writing projects, either ongoing, or merely in a holding pattern in my head.  It looks something like this:

Shadow - The ongoing Steampunk fantasy web fiction series.

Murkland - A Supernatural horror web fiction  novella, currently on hiatus.

The Dream - A fantasy novel or trilogy of novels with what I hope to be an interesting twist.  It has been attempted to be written about four or five times since 2001 when the idea first occured to me. Currently sitting at about 53,000 words thanks to NaNoWriMo 2011.

DARKSYDE - A Gothic fantasy/Noir novel and set of short stories totaling around 100,000 words,  The novel has been untouched for about eight years now and the last short story was finished about five years ago.  It may, one day, be suitable for web fiction, or as a novel, but much of it would need to be rewritten either way.

Chronicles of Dust and Air - An anime-inspired wild-west/steampunk fantasy story intended to be made up of several different POV character stories which would intertwine with a strong allegorical element.  It currently exists in only two chapters.  It could be suitable as web fiction or as a novel, although I'm veering more towards the former, despite the lack of money in it.

Kemet - A fantasy tale inspired by Egyptian mythology and the works of C.S. Lewis, which I original orchestrated as a fairly successful piece of roleplaying/chain fiction with some friends and which I one day hope to re-write, probably as web fiction.

Music of the Gears - A very roughly sketched out science fiction story most probably inspired by George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels.  It would involve some Steampunk elements as well as some elements of medieval history and Imperial Rome to conjure up a decadent future empire rife with schemes and intrigues.

It would seem that my mind is a busy place to be some times.  Remember that the next time I just stare vacantly into space...