Here are Jack and Ellayne with their donkey, Ham, meeting Obst, the hermit of Lintum Forest. I love these pictures by Katheleen and Kerolyn, our girls from Brazil… and I wonder if we could ever get them into the book someday. But first we’d have to sell out the current edition of Bell Mountain!
I don’t have much to show in the way of sales; but I do have gifted young readers who’ve done honor to my work. I’ll try to live up to it.
A man who has been several times to Mars and back told me yesterday, “Lay off the novel-writin’ and write somethin’ that everybody wants. Write the Bell Mountain Cookbook!”
Well, fan my brow, I never thought of that. Probably because I can’t cook. There’s only so much you can say about heating up a pot of soup. But this guy from Mars has all the answers. People turn into such know-it-alls…
“Look, it’s simple,” he said. “Each recipe goes with a favorite character from the book. So you’ve got, like, Jack and Ellayne’s Rabbit Stew, Obst the Hermit’s Berry Cake, Lord Reesh’s Oysters, Roast Duck a la Baroness Vannett–you get the idea. You can probably leave out the whole Abnak cuisine. And that fermented mare’s milk that the Ghols drink. It makes me depressed just to think of it.”
It’s hard to get fictional characters to write things for you, although on Mars they do it all the time. My wife would love to sip the famous golden wine of Durmurot. But where would she get it?
I wonder, though… If I knew what I was talking about, would a Bell Mountain Cookbook attract readers? What do you think?
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Has it really been ten years since Bell Mountain was first published? (“I’m afraid it has, kid…”) Winner of a bronze medal in the Global E-Book competition; but of course it’s in hardcover, too. I wish I knew how many people have read it.
What to say? It started with a dream I had, of a boy standing on a grassy riverbank and looking up at the mountains; and one of the mountains was singing to him. Ten sequels in print so far, with another due to be published any day now: I would’ve been surprised, ten years ago, had anyone told me I’d still be writing sequels ten years later.
I wanted to write a fantasy/adventure novel grounded on a Biblical worldview. There aren’t many books like that. It turned out to be the beginning of a history, which is why it had to keep going. I hope to start writing another one as soon as the weather warms up. But I rely on the Lord to give me the story, and I can’t start work until He does.
I decided early on that my fantasy would not include hocus-pocus: spells, flying broomsticks, great and terrible wizards, super-powers (I hate super-powers)–it had to be more imaginative than that. So I would allow nothing that couldn’t be found in the Bible. This still left me with a lot of scope. Good and evil. Miracles. Wars, treasons, heroism, villainy, prophesy, exotic animals, exotic peoples, hair-raising adventures.
If I started listing my favorite characters in the series, I’d be doing it all day. Suffice it to say that the main characters in Bell Mountain are still around, twelve books later (No. 13, The Wind from Heaven, is not yet in production): Jack and Ellayne, the children who must climb the mountain and ring the bell placed there in ancient times by King Ozias; their protector, Wytt, a squirrel-sized, manlike creature; the assassin, Martis; the hermit, Obst; and Helki, the wild man of Lintum Forest.
Now, if you’d like to read these books, they’re very easy to obtain. Just click “Books.” You can order them right here from amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or directly from the publisher, Storehouse Press.
You can also get it in Portuguese.
I’m wondering if this is the picture I should have posted as me. After all, this is the great age of “identifying” as something you’re not. I mean, people looking at the real photo that I posted yesterday, and saying I sort of look like Obst–well, gee whiz, Obst would look at me and call me “sonny”!
Of course, if I’m trying to get people to think of me as a Steve Reeves look-alike, I’ll have to avoid TV appearances and celebrity dinners. I’ve successfully done that, so far.
Steve Reeves, by the way, was a great guy. Years ago, Patty mailed him her copy of his book on power-walking, asking for an autograph. He not only signed it for her, but threw in a casual photo out of his own collection–not a publicity shot, but a personal photo. He didn’t have to do that, and it was much appreciated.
Once for her birthday I sent a photo of Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith, one of her favorite players, to Ozzie, care of the St. Louis Cardinals, asking him to autograph it. I allowed several months for that, but he signed the picture and sent it back in just a few days. Ozzie, you, too, are a good guy!