Comment RE: Curse of the Spider King blog tour

name: Wayne Thomas Batson

comment: Hi, Emmalyn! Thanks for three wonderful days of Spider King hoopla! It was very kind and skillful of you to post such interesting stuff.

URL: www,enterthedoorwithin.blogspot.com


--Always a delight to hear from the author! Thank you for following up on the tour! With many blogs posting commentary, I know it must be quite a challenge to post comments! --EnE

I started to draft a blog on salt and its use in our family and it became an essay on ways to reduce salt intake for our health so I posted it with my food essays on the Homeworld tab. It was so odd. Usually I have to set out to do an essay piece on purpose, and haven't bothered much lately as my attempts have rather fizzled. I'm not used to it just spilling out--imperfect to be sure, but still, an essay structure and substances rather than the chatty bit I expected. I suppose partly because its a topic I am well familiar with. I've tried a wide range of diets and regardless of the purpose (health, green/organic, weight), they all say reduce salt. Some suggested ways and means, others just why, but either way, a long lits of odd tidbits cluttering my brain were ready to hand once I started writing on the topic. I guess that's where the "write what you know" comes in.

The hard part of that sage advice is knowing what you know. Until I started writing, I never considered salt a topic I was notably knowledgeable about. And how does anyone know anything about distance times and far flung worlds? It only when I start to describe/invent some element of that alien life that I realize I know a fair amount about some elements, not enough about others. Qiri's bureaucracy, for example. It's simplified, of course, but elements of it and her role within it are based on briefly studying Byzantium's extensive bureaucracy, and nineteenth century Russia's, where most of the educated of the country worked for the government, and presented their real intellectual work through journal articles, their opinions through book reviews that nothing like the tame reviews of today.

I guess you just never know what will be useful tidbits.

Writer's challenge: Read a chapter of some book, any book. consider which of your stories might benefit from a little more on that topic, or write a scene where that bit of information might play a role.

"She heard the words of a familiar Bible verse in her mind and recited it aloud: "For I am not persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, not paricipalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor hieght, nor depth, nor any other craeture, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is Christ Jesus our Lord."

Wayne Thomas Batson and Christopher Hopper's Curse of the Spider King is my kind of Christian novel: the above passage and its associated scene are probably the most blatantly religious element of the book: all else (Christian values, concepts of doubt and faith, and lessons for life in Biblical stories) are all clear but light, and integrally part of the story, never taking the reader out of the tale in order to offer a sermon or redundant explanation, yet the messages were clear. I recognized at least one Bible story along the way, and it too, was integral to the story as a whole, not an insert, not a step away from the flow of the words and the action of the tale, and that is as it should be. That is the kind of message that will reach out and touch a broad audience, and I look forward to more of the same in the sequels to come.

If I have a quibble, it is that Kiri's knowledge of a Bible passage seems to come entirely out of the blue, whereas I think I would have offered a hint that Kiri's family was a church going family, that she had perhaps played music in church as well as concerts, something to explain her knowledge. (There may have been a hint, but if so I missed it). And really, it is the most minor quibble, something I would do that they didn't seem to, but certainly not an issue than detracts from the success of the story.

For more views and opinions on all the elements of Curse of the Spider King, see the blog tour list on my favorite links tab.

The History of Berinfell

The book that the teens are encouraged to read/experience, is a great story in itself and will help the Curse of the Spider King, by Batson and Hopper, appeal to adults and to traditional medieval-culture, Tolkeinesque fantasy while being sufficiently background not to offend those who prefer the contemporary story that dominates the first book. If only our own historians could write history texts so artfully, even if they can't literally make the lives of the past take form around us like the magical tome! Introduced with hints of sketchy formatting appropriate to an ink-and-pen book, the historical sections make a great way to introduce the background without the sometimes pace-slowing effect of memories and past-perfect backflashes.

The "Principle Cast" list was also an effective and unusual way to introduce not only the characters, but some of the terminology, with just enough about the story to awaken interest if the back blurb or cover art wasn't quite enough. (See some of the other tour participants on the Favorite Links tab for comments on art, blurbs, and other elements of the book that I haven't chosen to focus on.)

For those among my readers that are wanna-be authors like myself, I'll point out a writing technique that the delightful author duo used and that I found intriguing: the thoughts of the characters were sometime out of alignment with the action around them. I thought that would be a distraction to the reader, but the difference between thought and present action was always clear. The thoughts provided character depth with their thoughts and plans for the future, foreshadowing, and gave added texture to the ongoing scene.

Not so unusual, but always intriguing, is the use of chapter titles, and a table of contents with same. Curse of the Spider King has LOTS of short chapters, adding to the challenge of creating effective titles that are appropriate but that, with a table of contents, can't give away too much. I haven't chosen that route for any of my books, yet, knowing how hard it is to come up with one title, much less 46! The author partnership (or whichever of them came up with the titles) did a great job and I can only hope I do half so well with my book titles.

Writer challenge: draft or outline a chapter and come up with several chapter titles: what works? what doesn't?

Curse of the Spider King by Wayne Thomas Batson and Christopher Hopper, is the start of a new series and has already won well-deserved recognition and soon will be familiar to every fan of contemporary fantasy. Batson and Hopper make a powerful combination and together have written a delightful tale that will entertain adults as well as the tweens it's aimed at.

The central characters of the tale are seven twelve-thirteen year-olds, finding the transition to teen-dom more than usually interesting, as they discover that they are not only the royalty of a foreign world but the targets of the evil Spider King, ready to finish the long-delayed job of ending their reign before it can begin.

The teens are each given copies of a very magical book, the History of Berinfell, that bring the world of Berinfell alive around them when they touch its pages. Batson and Hopper may not have the spell to make a three-D world wtih a touch, but their words come close to achieving the same effect with Curse of the Spider King. The imaginative adult as well as the preteen and teen will find themselves caught up in the lives of the teens as each faces new enemies and old, brave choices, and a life they never could have guessed awaited them.

More opinions can be found on the blogs under the listing on Favorites for Blog Tour

You can get your own copy of the book at:

Curse of the Spider King - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400315050

Also check out:

Wayne Thomas Batson’s blog - http://enterthedoorwithin.blogspot.com/

Christopher Hopper’s Web site - http://www.christopherhopper.com/

The Berinfell Prophecies Web site - http://www.heedtheprophcies.com


Aside: Another episode of Qiri's life has been posted on the Space Explorations tab.

Another chapter of Qiri's tale begins. (No, she doesn't have a tail).

Blogging is a curious thing, I know this one isn't quite the intent. Except in as much as writing IS my day-to-day life, this one isn’t about my life as many are. If ever I'm tempted, I think of Lola and other comics and related commentary: It's easy to say too much that really shouldn't be public. And even if I was willing to reveal so much of myself, the trivia of my existence, or thought anyone would be interested, our lives are seldom just about us. We don't go through life without interacting with others, and we don't have the right to make their lives public just because we make ours so.

I know its done. From all I've heard, that's what Facebook and Myspace and many family blogs are all about. I read somewhere that the average readership of such blogs is about a dozen, the million-hitters aside. It's all out there for anyone with a computer, but so are millions of other sites and the plethora makes one particular one, a serious end to privacy, hard to attain. Who could see them all? What could they find without knoweldge from some other source to guide the endless search? Is privacy lost if no one looks (like the classic falling tree)?

I'm a srrong believer in privacy as a right too often and too easily deprived, as those who have read some of the Homeworld posts can probably guess. These days, some 80n or 90 percent of creative nonfiction is personal essays, tales of private life, often tragic and triumphant, health and dying, personal and soul-tearing.

You won’t find that in mind. Mine rarely has an "I". Most are not even about humans though if I have done my job well, the reader will see humans in the spirit of the words, and messages of life. Even the herbs are inspired by people that come and go into our lives in a general sense if not individuals who inspired me and provided fuel for the thoughts, the words, the mood. (Gray Spring was intended as a cheerful piece when I sat down to write, a spring day of flowers and good cheer, but I let my thoughts loose and they were not as cheerful as I hoped. The writer is there, but I cling to privacy, and finding me in my blog will take a closer look.