What’s Happening

A little housekeeping today—news and announcements.

First, if you haven’t already taken a peek at the items in the sidebar, I invite you to do so. Most recently I’ve added the May/June edition of my newsletter. Guess I should run a contest for a name for that publication—I’ll give details about that later.

The Christian fantasy tour will commence May 15. The inaugural leg of the tour will feature Tim Frankovich’s site, Christian Fiction Review, especially highlighting his Focus on Christian Fantasy.

By the way, I noticed that Mr. Frankovich has recently posted another fantasy review, this one on Jonathan Rogers’s concluding novel of the Wilderking Trilogy, The Way of the Wilderking. Obviously Mr. Frankovich is not limiting his fantasy reviews to a single month-long focus. But I suppose I should be saving such discussion for the tour.

Last week the Christy Award nominations were announced. I don’t think this particular award as yet has a huge following or a lot of notoriety, but it is a start toward making both readers and writers (and hopefully bookstore buyers) aware that there are some Christian novelists operating a cut above the rest.

Of special interest to me as a fantasy writer is the category classified as Visionary. This includes science fiction, fantasy, allegory, futuristic, and spiritual warfare novels. The nominees in this category are:
Legend of the Emerald Rose
by Linda Wichman (Kregel Publications)
The Presence
by Bill Myers (Zondervan)
Shadow Over Kiriath
by Karen Hancock (Bethany House Publishers).

I might mention that Karen Hancock has taken home three Christy Awards for her previous three novels. That’s batting a thousand, folks, though I suppose the competition is tightening up some.

Enough of this fun stuff. A return to the discussion on theme tomorrow—at least that’s the plan.