Laura, you are the lucky reader who has posted Comment No. 8,000, and you’ve won an autographed copy of one of my books. All I need is your address so I can send it. You can either provide it in a comment, which I’ll delete after I write it down, or you can email it to me at leeduigon@verizon.net
The next winner will be whoever posts No. 9,000. I wonder how long that will take.
Meanwhile, Laura, I hope you enjoy your winnings.
I’ve been kind of knocking myself out this week, working on The Silver Trumpet (No. 10 in the Bell Mountain series). I didn’t really mean to, but that’s what happens when I get on a roll.
Because I rely on God to give me the story He wants me to tell, I must grope my way forward and see what He’ll reveal to me each day. And so the story’s taking shape, but as yet I have no idea how or where it will end. I used to plan out my books from start to finish, every detail thought out in advance. But this way it’s more exciting.
Meanwhile, Book No. 9, The Throne, is still waiting for its cover art. I hope it’ll be published in time for Christmas.
P.S.–We ought to see a winner in the Comment Contest sometime in the next day or two. If you’ve never posted a comment here before, please jump right in! Whoever posts Comment No. 8,000 will win an autographed copy of one of my books.
Just a reminder that there’s a comment contest going, and if you’re the lucky reader to post Comment No. 8,000 on this blog, you’ll win an autographed copy of one of my books.
Anyone can play. Just scroll down on any post and leave a comment.
Ineligible will be comments abusive to me or any fellow reader, comments featuring the f-bomb or any other profanity, blasphemy, commercials thinly disguised as comments, or anything just too jejune to bother with. Other than that, pretty much anything goes.
Can we generate a little excitement here? If you’ve never commented before–well, come on in!
I was very glad today–after again zooming up that hill that had defeated me for so many weeks–to get back to work on my new book, The Silver Trumpet. Meanwhile, we’re waiting for the cover art for Book No. 9, The Throne. And I’ve got to write a cover blurb for it.
God always blesses me with surprises, as I tell these stories. The new and not entirely legitimate First Prester, Lord Otvar, has the makings of a genuinely resourceful villain who might beat the reigning villain, Lord Chutt, at his own game. And, if I may hint at it without committing a spoiler, we may find out why the people of Obann are so afraid of the sea.
Please join me in prayer that my work will be fruitful and profitable to Christ’s Kingdom. There’s no way I can accomplish this without God’s help.
![The Glass Bridge (Bell Mountain #7) by [Duigon, Lee]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/618jW2HsDUL.jpg)
Fantasy fiction is awash with “heroes” who make everything look easy–especially the writing of fantasy. The Clever Thief With the Heart of Gold, The Roistering Barbarian, and the ubiquitous Invincible Female Warrior: please, No mas, no mas! I mean, what kind of a chucklehead do you have to be, to believe in such protagonists?
I would rather pattern my heroes after the heroes of the Bible, like Moses and Abraham, Peter and Paul–heroes who had to accomplish some exceedingly difficult things, and who keenly felt the difficulty, but nevertheless did what they had to do because they had faith in God and tried their level best to obey Him, whatever the cost.
They weren’t supermen. They couldn’t rely on really great kung-fu, powerful magic, super-powers, or any other kind of unlikely boons the writer might bestow on them. And their own personal flaws created more difficulties for them. Think of Moses pleading with God to get someone else to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, and losing his temper when God had him strike the rock to bring out water. No, these weren’t supermen at all. But they got the job done in the end.
When I had the girl, Gurun, in the opening chapter of The Last Banquet, swept down from the north by a storm, to land in a country that was very strange to her, I had no idea that she would go on to be a queen–and a most reluctant one, at that. She can’t even ride a horse without the fear of falling off in front of everybody. None of this was her idea. She wants to go home, but can’t. But what she does is to follow the path upon which God has placed her, in spite of homesickness, and fear, and the very strangeness of it all–without the slightest idea of what her faithfulness and perseverance have come to mean to those around her.
It’s not what Gurun does, but what she is, that matters.
So if you’re writing fantasy, lay off the cliches and let your heroes and heroines be ordinary, believable people who aren’t showing off, aren’t acting like caped super-heroes in a comic book, but are just doing what they do because they have to.
Let your heroes be what we should be–and would be, and will be, if we only keep the faith.
![The Last Banquet (Bell Mountain Book 4) by [Duigon, Lee]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/518K2jLcIUL.jpg)
Every story needs a villain, unless you’re writing Serious Mainstream Literature that’s just plain boring. But how bad should your villain be?
A lot of it depends on what motivates the character. My No. 1 villain in the first four Bell Mountain books, Lord Reesh, First Prester of the Temple, justified everything he did, including murder, in terms of a lifelong mission to preserve the Temple, no matter what, so that it could lead humanity back to the great heights of culture and science and power which God had destroyed in the Day of Fire. It was sort of like Saving the Planet from Man-Made Climate Change–a wonderful excuse for just about anything he wished to do. This made Lord Reesh a really cool villain.
Succeeding Lord Reesh in the later books, Goryk Gillow betrays his country because he covets wealth and power for himself; Lord Chutt commits crimes–all under cover of the law–because he wishes to restore the old regime, with himself in charge; and Ysbott the Snake does evil because he’s very much a degenerate whose close contact with the Thunder King’s mask has driven him insane. And Lord Orth’s crimes arose from his moral and personal shallowness: but God regenerated him.
Different motivations give rise to different sorts of crime. The more powerful, and the more seductive, the motivation, the bigger (and more creative) the crimes.
The only kind of villain I don’t like reading about is of a type which, I regret to say, is all too common in fantasy literature: the hopelessly stupid villain who’s just plugged in to let the hero show off by defeating him repeatedly.
And I do try to stay away from writing about the ordinary villains in Washington, D.C., who make the news of our real world such depressing reading.
I’d better throttle back on my own comments a little, so that I don’t wind up winning my own contest.
With fewer than 100 comments to go, whoever posts Comment No. 7,000 on this blog will win an autographed copy of one of my books. Anyone can play! Just scroll to the bottom of any post and “Leave a Comment.” (Note: if you’ve already won, don’t be mad if I pass you over and award the prize to the next closest reader who hasn’t won yet. My personal supply of books is limited, so I have to do that.)
Just about any kind of comment is eligible, with the following exceptions: abusive remarks directed at me or any other reader; comments employing the f-bomb or other cuss words, comments that are really thinly-disguised commercials (stealing space on my blog in an effort to sell something), or comments that are just too inane to bother with.
Comment as often as you like: no restrictions here. Well, not that kind of restriction, at any rate.
Well, I’ve hand-written four chapters of my new book and today begun to type them. I send them to my editor in bunches as the book comes along, three or four at a time.
Believe it or not, although this will be Book No. 10 in the Bell Mountain series, and I ought to be used to it by now, I do have a little bit of, well, stage fright. This is my baby. I’ll be carrying it for six to nine months, and won’t know until I’m finished whether it’s a worthy sequel to the others. I ask the Lord to give me the story, and do my best to write it. Instead of mapping it out beforehand, I write it piece by piece as I receive it. This is fun, but it’s also something of a dare. I’m still not used to this kind of writing.
Anyhow, they’re all on board and the train has left the siding–for an unknown destination. Heroes, villains, and innocent bystanders alike–none of them know where the train is going, and neither do I.
Please pray for me to do my very best.
My doctor asked me about this because he was interested. He got me interested, too. How can I explain what I actually do, and what it’s like to do it?
My task is a simple one. I make up a world that doesn’t exist and persuade readers to imagine they are there. I invent fictitious characters and get readers to respond to them as if they were real people. I make up events, based on real events I’ve found in the Bible or studied in history, and persuade readers that these events occurred.
Well, all right–not really! No one actually believes the stories that I write. But they can believe them for a little while: like the way you can let go when you’re watching a movie, and let the audio and the visuals just carry you along.
I try to make reading my book to be like watching a movie, to make the experience for the reader as effortless as possible. To do this, I choose every word based on how it interacts with other words and makes the sentence flow. Too much of that can be annoying; not enough, and it reminds the reader that he’s only reading words on a page. I know I’ve succeeded when a reader tells me, “Reading your books is like watching movies.”
For the story to work, I have to get myself into a frame of mind that’s not always easy to achieve. Sometimes it can only be achieved while I’m asleep. You’d be surprised how many scenes and incidents in my books started out as dreams. Some of the characters, too. Sometimes it can be achieved when I’m doing something else. The whole climax to The Fugitive Prince came to me as I was walking down the street to the Chinese restaurant. Just pow! There it was. All I had to do was write it.
This is a little hard to explain, but I feel–not ideate, but feel–that I have actually been to the world of Obann and seen it with my own eyes. How else can I write about it? If I don’t see it, I won’t be able to make the reader see it. I’ve been to Lintum Forest, with my feet rustling in the leaves. I’ve been in the labyrinth of tunnels under Obann City. Again, not really. But I don’t see how you can write fantasy at all, without ramping up your imagination to a certain high level–although I have read, alas, all too many fantasies in which no imagination was employed at all.
I may return to this subject later, if any of you out there are interested. I hope it’s good weather tomorrow, so I can take up my legal pad, out there with the birds and breezes, and ask the Lord to give me more of the story, and to help me tell it.
The famous “surgeon’s photograph” of the Loch Ness monster: posted here solely for your enjoyment.
No, not this month. Ran out of gas today, and won’t quite reach 4,800–although that does set a new monthly high for this blog.
Six months ago I would’ve thought 4,000 hits a month just about impossible. So the next plateau is 5,000, and I’ve come close.
This blog is just about the only advertising I’ve got for my books.
Please, if you haven’t heard about my books, take a moment to click “Books” at the top of the page and have a look. No harm in looking!