Elijah David

Welcome to the first ever ThrowBook Thursday*! This is an idea I've been toying with for a little while. Every so often (I can't say I'll do this once a week right now, but maybe once or twice a month), I'll pull out a book that I've read before that's left some long-term echoes in my heart and mind and (re-)introduce you to it and the reasons it has stayed with me. For this inaugural edition, I'm dusting off... The Horse and His Boy This is my favorite HHB cover. Okay, it might be cheating a bit to pick my favorite Narnian Chronicle , but as I was thinking about what book I might use as the first in this series of posts, this book sprang to mind almost immediately. For those of you unfamiliar with this book, it is different from all the rest of the Narnian book in that it does not follow the adventures of any of the Friends of Narnia (the Pevensies, their cousin Eustace and his friend Jill, and the Professor and his friend Polly). Instead, it be...

Hard on the heels of yesterday's discussion with Mirriam Neal, I have an article on The Crossover Alliance's blog discussing magic in Christian fiction . The Crossover Alliance is a publisher specializing in edgy Christian fiction. My short story, "The Debt-Keeper" was published in their second short story anthology . Check out the article  here .

Today it is my very great pleasure to interview/host Mirriam Neal as part of the blog tour for her newly published novel, Paper Crowns. I had the privilege of beta reading this book last summer and I can't wait to read the final version. Below you can see the beautiful cover and the synopsis of the book. Ginger has lived in seclusion, with only her aunt Malgarel and her blue cat, Halcyon, to keep her company. Her sheltered, idyllic life is turned upside-down when her home is attacked by messengers from the world of fae. Accompanied by Halcyon (who may or may not be more than just a cat), an irascible wysling named Azrael, and a loyal fire elemental named Salazar, Ginger ventures into the world of fae to bring a ruthless Queen to justice. And without further ado, the interview: ED:   Ever since I first read  Paper Crowns , I've only been able to think of it as a fun romp through Faerie. What drew you to writing a story about Faerie in the first place? What...

A.J. Hartley's new novel Steeplejack seems at first to be an issue book about race relations touting itself as a mystery. Within the first five chapters, the protagonist -- a Lani steeplejack named Anglet Sutonga -- faces misogyny, assault, racial stereotyping, poverty, and more from police, her community, her boss, and even her own family. I almost put the book down. It wasn't that these issues were difficult to read about or that the book portrayed them unrealistically; it was the fact that in such a short span the main character seemed to have hit all the talking points available for a poor, teenage woman of color protagonist. It felt like the author was trying too hard to cover "the issues" and not enough to tell the story. But then the mystery aspect of the story kicked into full gear, and the two aspects of the book began to balance each other out, eventually intertwining in a very skillful manner. Race is an issue in this book; it's set in a sor...

When it comes to Christmas specials featuring Santa Claus, Rankin/Bass'  Santa Claus is Comin' to Town  is probably the most well-known, and with good reason. It's classic and the years have been kind to it, much like they have to A Charlie Brown Christmas . But for many years,  Comin' to Town  was not my favorite version of the Santa myth. That honor went to the lesser-known Life and Adventures of Santa Claus , also produced by Rankin/Bass and based on L. Frank Baum's book of the same name. Although I hadn't seen it for many years, I would still tell people that this was my favorite version of Santa's origin story. This last year, I was finally able to sit down and watch the special again, and I found myself comparing it to  Comin' to Town   as I had before, but now the scales of my favor were tipping decidedly toward the earlier special. I've been mulling over why that is, and I've come to the simple conclusion that it's all about myth an...

Hello, everyone! I'm sorry I all but disappeared last month. NaNoWriMo took up a lot of my spare time. To sum up: I won NaNo with about 52,000 words, but didn't finish There's No Place Like Home? by about 10,000-15,000 words. So December's goal is to finish that up and maybe get a couple other small writing projects off the ground. While working on NaNo, I've also been preparing for Christmas dramas at church. Really, I've been preparing for them since some time in August or September (I've slept since then, so the exact details are a bit fuzzy), but we are now in crunch time, with the next two Sundays taken up with adult drama (written by yours truly) and a children's musical (which I will only be participating in as a character). Not THAT character, but the show does have a Whoville-type setting. And in the last few months of preparation for these productions, along with an Advent-starting service this past Sunday, God has been teaching ...

I've talked before about stories being more than "just" fiction. The topic came up again recently in a couple of conversations with some friends of mine, and I thought of another angle for the Christian who enjoys stories in all their forms. There's a spectrum of responses to the idea that stories have the power to affect us. On one extreme lie the folks who say that stories are dangerous and should be avoided at all costs unless they are safe and uplifting, free of all the bits that might make us uncomfortable or indicate anything beyond surface-level sin. On the other end sit the folks who say stories don't affect us in any way, so let's all just enjoy the show, you bunch of kill-joys. (Incidentally, there's a third group which occupies a place at either end of this; this group acknowledges the power of stories, but believes stories can only affect us positively and therefore should be enjoyed without thought or worry.)* The best stance, from my expe...

Recently, a friend of mine posted on Facebook about Neil Gaiman's script for the film Beowulf . Personally, I avoided the film as soon as I heard about the changes, specifically that Grendel was Hrothgar's bastard child with Grendel's mother and the dragon was the same for Beowulf. Furthermore, Beowulf is portrayed as a lying, boasting fraud. I'm just not okay with that. This friend (to return to my opening point) said: " Didn't have to read more than a few pages into Neil Gaiman's script of Beowulf to conclude it's a rotter - but then it completely violates the very thing Tolkien believed made Beowulf powerful. Bad form, dude. Bad form." I had to agree with her, but then, I also felt I needed to read Tolkien's essay on Beowulf , which I had been interested in since I first read the long poem in high school (yes, I was one of those freaks who liked it in high school). Inevitably, the conversation (through another of her friends) led to wh...

Current Reads:  Orsinian Tales by Ursula K. Le Guin                          Attack of the Copula Spiders by Douglas Glover                          Sabriel by Garth Nix Current writing projects: Same as last time This weekend I watched the film The Legend of Zorro  with Antonio Banderas for the first time. I have not seen the first film with Banderas as Zorro, but I enjoyed watching the old black-and-white Disney series Zorro  in reruns when I was a kid and I thought I would give this newer version of Zorro a try. What I found was unsurprisingly a fun action movie with lots of sword fighting and acrobatics and a decent storyline. My issue with the film was its secondary villain, the one who opens the film: Jacob McGivens (whose name I had to look up because I don't ever remember hearing it in the film itself). This man appears at...