To the Realm of Makers and Back Again

12 Aug 2015 5 Comments

by C.O. Bonham in Random Musing Tags: , , , ,

I am back from another year of Realm Makers, the only place to go if you are a Christian, fantasy and science fiction writer.

But, before I tell you more I’m going to update you on my last post. The Escape anthology contest is over and I can now tell you which story was mine.

I wrote the one titled “Raised in Captivity.” It was number eight on the list. I did not win the readers choice award but thank you to anyone who voted for mine. “Raised in Captivity” will still be published in the anthology so it’s all good. The publishing industry is not for the impatient, however, as the anthology publication date is almost a year from now.

The conference was last weekend, August 7 & 8, 2015, in St. Louis, Mo on the UMSL (University of Missouri at St. Louis) campus. This is the same place it was held in 2013.

The Keynote speaker was Robert Liparulo author of the Dreamhouse Kings series. He gave inspired talks. The first one was about the need to, stop worrying about what others think, and to stop doubting that you’re good enough. The second one was the opposite, GO was the message. Go start writing, go do what you need to do.

I did not have time for any sightseeing this year because the conference tried something new, an extra workshop on Thursday afternoon. The Irresistible Novel: by Jeff Gerke. In this class he talked about the brain chemistry of the reader and literally how to make your writing addictive. All this to plug his new book, of the same title; which naturally, sold out. I loved it, Jeff Gerke is an engaging speaker, and he writes exactly how he talks. Every author should have a collection of his books.

Beyond that though, this Early Bird class really helped to extend the Conference experience. It felt like three days instead of two and a half.

This year continued the tradition of the Splickety critique pre-party. During which I was mortified when my submission was read aloud. Some of the feedback was helpful, but 500 words isn’t really enough to get a good critque.

Another new feature this year was the addition of a third track of classes. Though I like having options I will always miss that first year with only one track, everyone went to the same classes and you didn’t have to worry about missing anything. This year featured three main tracks: World building, Editing, and Marketing. In addition to the main tracks there were also electives that also ran in groups of three and ranged in topics from book cover design to dealing with magic in Christian fantasy.

I feel like Editing is where I am in my writing Journey so I chose this course. David Farland was an entertaining speaker, who was very informed on his topic. He even threw in a lecture on what to do when your book is optioned for a movie. However, his anecdotal teaching style made it hard for me to take notes. This is a course where I think I will benefit from purchasing recordings. (Yes recordings are new this year too.) Also I missed a lot of his talk because I was busy attending mentoring appointments.

The highlight, for me at least, was meeting Donita K Paul the author of The Dragonkeeper Chronicles. I love her books so much, that I spent most of my one on one meeting with her, being star struck. I understand that the mentors set aside time in their schedules to talk to me about my writing, but it’s hard for me to talk about my writing, even with people I’m close to. Put me in front of someone I admire and whose own work has been a big part of my life, I freeze up.

One option I am glad I took advantage of was the opportunity to have a mentor critique the opening of my novel. It was an extra fee but worth every penny to be able to sit down with someone who already had feedback for me. I selected L.B. Graham for my mentor, and I would recommend him to anyone looking to do this next year. He is easy to talk with and his critiques were all very constructive, not to mention, absolutely right.

Every year there is a costume/ awards diner on Friday night. This year I dressed up as a Hogwarts student. I had to stand up front when they announced the winners of the anthology contest. You can imagine how uncomfortable I felt.

Saturday night there was a game room in addition to a Nerf war. I chose the game room. It’s easier to talk over games anyway. This was also the night I went around trying to get the rest of my books signed.

My Realm Makers tradition is to always buy more books than I can afford but never as many as I actually want. Sometimes I just have to say maybe next year to a certain book, or author. But yeah, if the Author is there, why not get it signed? In previous years actual book signings had been held. But this year was a giant game of stalk the author.

Thoughts on the conference experience:

After three years you’d think this would be easy for me, but I am very introverted, and I get crowd anxiety. So the first year was great for me, it was small and easy to navigate. The second year was also good, more people but still manageable. This year, attendance exploded. I am happy for the conference but I felt overwhelmed most of the time. Thank you to everyone who was ok with standing in out of the way corners with me.

I always feel torn, I enjoy the experience and I learn a lot, but honestly I feel better after I get home and start reading all the books I bought. I also like the after conference motivation. I have all this feedback to work with, and ideas to try. The hard part is keeping that drive going. I started my novel after the first conference. I finished the first draft after the second one. ( They were less than a year apart, so it’s not as bad as you might think.) After this one I am going to try for a presentable second maybe third draft before next year. My goal is a book to sell at conference five. Ok, maybe conference six.

Finalist in Ream Makers Short story Contest.

17 Jul 2015 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Uncategorized

Hello,

I am letting everyone know that I’m a finalist in this Short Story contest.

RM Short Story promo

Me and Thirteen others will have our stories published in an anthology published by Brimstone Fiction.

Each story has the theme of Escape.

But there’s more, one lucky author will win the readers choice award. That’s where you come in.

Please go to  https://realmmakers.wordpress.com  and read the thirteen story excerpts. They are not very long, just the first 10% of each story. Then vote for the one that you like, or the one that you most want to read the rest of.

Sadly, I can not tell you which story is mine. This way you have to read them all and actually vote based on the merit of the writing and not who has the biggest social network following.

I’ll find out the winner at this years Realm Makers conference (August 7-8 in St. Louis, Mo.).

I want to thank you in advance for taking the time to read and vote, even if the one you pick isn’t mine.

In the Beginning, there was human cloning

13 May 2015 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Random Musing, Scientific Musing, Theological Musings Tags: , , , ,

Eve was Adam’s clone. Think about it, it really does make sense.

So here’s Adam. He’s perfect. He has all perfect chromosomes, perfect genes, no mutations, no disease, no defects at all. Everything needed to father the entire human race. He just needs one thing. A woman.

The Bible has two accounts of the Creation. In chapter one we get a very fast summery of what was created on each day. This is what it says about humans:

    So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.             Genesis 1:27 (NIV)

 Nothing about cloning you say? Well lucky for me chapter two is more detailed:

    So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and       then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he       brought her to the man. Genesis 2:21-22 (NIV)

 Eve was created from Adam’s flesh. A new biological entity was formed from a single set of genetic information. A clone.

“But Eve is female” you say, “if she was a clone there would have been two Adams.”

Not so. The only difference between men and women is a small piece of information called the Y chromosome. Men have it Women don’t.

Everyone has X Chromosomes. Men have XY, Women have XX. Some people have Turner’s Syndrome in which they only have one X chromosome. These people are noticeably female. Sadly this syndrome is marked by heart problems and infertility. Interestingly there is no syndrome in which someone has only a Y chromosome. It’s X or nothing.

The Mother of all humanity can’t have a Y chromosome, and she can’t populate a planet with Turner’s syndrome either. What’s a creator to do?

Remember those perfect chromosomes that Adam has. His X Chromosome is as perfect as an X Chromosome will ever be. Perfect enough that Eve can have two of them. God just made the Universe; cloning an extra chromosome is nothing.

It mind blowing to realize that every person on the planet is descended, not just from two people, but from one set of Genetic information. The great Geneticist knew what he was doing, because Adam had a truly diverse set of Genes.

I am in no way condoning human cloning. Our genes are not perfect anymore. Plus once God made Eve, reproduction became a viable option. God is the ultimate scientist, science was his creation after all, the best we can do is study his work and try to learn from it. Repeating his work is too far beyond us

Blood is Blood, DNA not Required

19 Mar 2015 2 Comments

by C.O. Bonham in Random Musing, Scientific Musing, Theological Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Sorry for the long wait, but random thoughts come rather sporadically. So to motivate myself I started with a prompt:

 Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood. (Exodus 7:20) NIV

I remember as a young Sunday school student listening to the story of the ten plagues and wondering, “When the Nile turned to blood whose DNA did it have?” When I asked this foolish question aloud, I got a foolish answer. “It must have been God’s DNA.”

This answer may have sufficed, save for a funny fact that I learned while reading Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. I have since confirmed it and now know that human red blood cells have no nucleus. They do not contain DNA. Blood is just blood. It’s the white blood cells and platelets in our blood that allows scientists to collect DNA from a blood sample. This is also why oral swabs are used when a comparison test is preformed. More nuclei to pull DNA from.

It is entirely possible that God turned the Nile river into a river of pure hemoglobin. Thus making it a true river of blood.

But there is the possibility that it wasn’t human blood, it could have been reptile blood or fish blood. There are those who theorize that it wasn’t even blood but rather red algae. To that I say, no. Ancient men might not have had microscopes and computers, but everyone who has ever scraped a knee or bit their tongue knows blood. The smell of the iron, the texture, the color, the way it flows. The thing is all humans have blood. Human blood would have been recognized and understood. They would have known it as human blood. Human blood would have had the most impact for the purpose God intended.

Naturally I can’t expect everyone to be a cellular biologist, but it seems to me that a better understanding of science could go a long way to helping keep the faith strong in this scientific world we live in.

Instead of, “It was God’s DNA.” How about this answer, “It didn’t need to have DNA, because it wasn’t in a body, so there wouldn’t have been any white blood cells for defense or any platelets to induce clotting. So you see it was just red blood cells.” Or the even more simple answer, “Lets look it up,” naturally smart phones were not in production back then but my outdated encyclopedia from that era still has the correct answer.

The point of all this? Well if you were or know of someone who started off strong in the faith and found yourself tempted away by scientific logic, think for a minute. Maybe it wasn’t your faith that was wrong, maybe it’s your science. God is the creator of all. That means he’s the creator of Science too.

The Mortal Deity

25 Dec 2014 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Random Musing, Theological Musings Tags: , , ,

Merry Christmas readers,

This year I want to muse on what makes Christmas so important.

Yes Jesus was born. But think about that – he was born.

Here is what separates Christianity from the many gods and mythologies of our past. None of them were both God and Man. True there are myths of demigods, but those are the offspring of gods and humans. Jesus is the one true creator, God incarnated in flesh.

Odin never went through puberty. Zeus never had to deal with paper cuts or sprained ankles. Jupiter never had to hold boards in the carpentry shop when he’d rather be at the temple arguing philosophy with the teachers.

Can’t you just imagine a gangly teenage Jesus popping a zit saying, “Seriously, ugh puberty, what was I thinking?”

Standing up to a bully, listening to the taunt, “Make me Carpenter’s kid.”

Jesus standing his ground, the power of creation flashing behind his eyes, saying, “I could, but never forget that I won’t.”

Or watching the blood well up after pulling a splinter, the enormity of what he was doing suddenly coming to him and thinking, it’s not time for this to spill yet.

Some people might think it’s blasphemy for me to humanize the savior so much but that is the point of Christmas. God humanizing himself is the reason for the season.

God the Creator in the form of his creation. He must have been a genius. Think about it, Jesus must have been able to look at a glass of water and know each of the individual oxygen and hydrogen atoms. He could look at the night sky and know the ages and the distances of the stars. He must have been spouting numbers all the time. Angles and measurements in the workshop, Distances and times while traveling.

Do you suppose that Man was created in the image of God because God knew that one day he would take on the Image of man?

That is what so many people forget. The religious are worried about the forgiveness of sins and spiritual blessings. The secular are worried about gifts, food and the trappings of this world. But Christmas is about both. The spiritual and the Human becoming one. So rejoice, be merry, and read your Bible. Merry Christmas—God was born.

NaNoWriMo Fail

03 Dec 2014 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Random Musing Tags: , ,

My last post was about how I was going to rewrite my novel during National Novel writing month this past November. Well it’s now the third day of December and I only got 23,369 words written. The goal as you recall was a 50,000 word novel. I failed at just shy of half way.

It gets worse. I also said I was going to cheat. Of the 23,000 odd words, probably only four to five thousand are new writing, the rest are cannibalized from my first draft. I was cheating and I still couldn’t finish it.

My excuse: I work retail and this time of year I work a lot of hours, and when I get home I am worn out physically and emotionally drained from having holiday shoppers blaming me for them not making it to the store in time to get the last eighty dollar tablet or ninety dollar TV.

The truth: I think I may have fallen out of love with the story. I sit down to work on it and I get kind of overwhelmed with the idea of re-structuring a novel that took me so long to work on the first time around. And then I start thinking about what to change and my brain gets flooded with all of these what if’s and then I go through the plot and think well if I change event A then event B can’t happen as is. Which leads to the question of whether I really need event B in the story or if should cut A&B and just skip to event C.

I want to keep working on it, I really would hate for Julian Random to never be published. But maybe I need a break. I need to focus on some short story ideas I had and publish something. It’s been way too long since I’ve had a publishing credit. And I need to get paid this time. Especially since I just solved my biggest problem and quit my job.

NaNoWriMo

01 Nov 2014 1 Comment

by C.O. Bonham in Random Musing Tags: , , ,

For the uninitiated, the really confusing title you just read stands for National Novel Writing Month. I have been contemplating whether I wanted to try this challenge to write a fifty thousand word novel in one month. I have never tried it before. But this might be the year.

Fifty thousand is a lot of words. I would need to write at least 1667 words a day. Almost a thousand words more than my current goal of whatever will fit on two double spaced pages a day. And with the holiday season officially started I will have to do it with forty hour work weeks on top of that. But I think I found a way to do it.

I am going to cheat.

You see I already think of myself as having written a novel. But in retrospect it might just be 300 pages of character development. The truth is I love reading, probably more than I love writing, and even I think my book is boring. So I want to use this challenge to rewrite my book. I want to tighten it up, add more action and define the plot better. And I want to do it in less than the year and a half it took me the first time around. The hardest part is behind me right?

Isn’t that why we have this huge fanfiction market? Because it’s easier to write with an established character than to make up your own. It is, it really is. I confess to being tempted by the siren call of Fan fiction. But I resisted because I realized that even if I had the best plot line ever I could never really know a character I didn’t create. As much as they tell you not to write yourself I think every author puts a piece of themselves into their characters.

So now I have all these characters that have a piece of me. I can write my own fan fiction with my characters and it should be awesome. That wasn’t the most narcissistic sentence ever right?

The best part is that if I get behind on the word count I can just cut and past from what I already have written. 300 pages it can’t all be bad writing, can it?

Anyway that’s the plan. Maybe I can count this post towards my first word count goal. If I can’t today’s word count is zero. Oh well I guess I have to decide what to keep from my current manuscript be cause at this rate I have a lot of cheating to do.

Feel free to leave a comment. Do you think this is a good strategy or is it as bad as cheating on a mid term?

Holding back on the Holy

30 Oct 2014 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Random Musing, Theological Musings Tags: , , , , , , ,

Greetings all, It’s me again with another random musing. I know, it’s been awhile but at least it hasn’t been a year.

This Halloween I would like to talk about my pet peeve. It’s related because it’s about Creepy themed shows; it’s when people use Christian Theology but forget Christ.

First offender: Supernatural. TV show on the CW network.

I thought it was pretty good, about two brothers hunting the supernatural, but then they did this god awful storyline where God was well, not around and the angels were kind of jerks and the devil was there but throughout it all there was no Jesus. Lost my viewer ship after Sam and Dean were possessed by the devil and the archangel Michel.

Second Offender: Sleepy Hollow. TV Show on the FOX network.

I love Man out of time stories. So I thought this would be a cool show. So far all it does is irritate me. In the show Ichabod crane is brought to the twenty-first century to defeat the headless horseman again. Turns out that old headless is actually the first horseman of the apocalypse. Now Ichabod must use George Washington’s Bible to save the world from the end times. There’s a Bible, Bible verses are quoted, but there doesn’t seem to be much God. Come on, If part of the Bible is true then the whole thing is true.

Why is Ichabod Crane not bowing his head in prayer to blast Demons in the name of Christ. Come on Can’t you just see George Washington turning in his grave because modern TV writers have no idea what it means to be a Holy Warrior. This would have been a most awesome story if Frank Perreti had thought of it first.

Lost my viewer ship after the sin eater episode. Jesus Christ is the only sin eater that can absolve you of sin. No mortal can do it. Also Revelation is NOT about a final Supernatural battle between good and evil. ( Emphisis mine because it applies to the above show as well.) It’s about Jesus retuning for his faithful in the church. They don’t understand, you can’t stop Revelation. There will be no more Earth. It’s Heaven or Hell and the characters in these shows are not making the right choices.

Third Offender: Constantine. TV show on the NBC network

This TV show is about a man who fights demons and talks to angels. He is based on a Comic book series in the DC universe and I confess to only watching one episode of the show and reading none of the comics. But It looks like this guy managed to get an innocent sent to hell and now his own soul is forfeit.

The problem is that Jesus is the one who decides if your soul is forfeit or not he will redeem anyone who asks. And just like there is only one way to Heaven there is also only one way to hell. Not accepting Jesus as your savior. You can’t send someone to hell they make the choice. Maybe you can help them choose poorly but that is not what the show was implying. They showed her being physically dragged to hell. I don’t think it works that way.

Also Demons can only be cast out in the name of Christ. I know of no other way that will work.

And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; Mark 16:17 In my Bible these words are in Red. So the “In my Name,” bit refers to Jesus. Just to clarify. Constantine does not use the name Jesus he uses Latin incantations and Symbols.

Sadly it isn’t just TV that does this but literature as well. It’s harder with books because you can be more easily swayed by an author’s words than by a TV shows special effects. But there is a whole Genre built up around my pet peeve. So I will choose two Popular and very addictive instances that penetrated my beloved YA genre.

Book offenders:

Artemis Fowl Book by: Eion Colfer.

I almost let it slide, didn’t think about it too much when I read it the first time but then I read it again. Artemis tries to kill a Fairy using Holy Water. Holy Water. Really. Well boy genius didn’t it occur to you that if a fairy can be killed using Holy Water then there must be something Unholy about them. And if fairies are unholy then there must be a Holy power in the world that decides what is Holy. In a later book Artemis has a side thought, he wonders if saint Peter will let him into Heaven. What? Sorry genius that isn’t Peter’s call.  Artemis needs to decide what he believes. Peter might have the keys but Jesus is the gate.

Interestingly throughout the books there is this consensus among the fairies that Evolution is a fact But they also have this nature goddess that they worship, sometimes it feels like they just worship nature. So that can be confusing.

Also according to book five, Artemis Fowl and the lost Colony, Demons are fairies too. Very suspicious. These are very unholy fairies indeed. Never lost my readership, I cut him some slack, the guy is Irish after all.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp Book by: Rick Yancey

This book is about a boy named Alfred Kropp who has the worst life ever. The first few chapters just make you want to cry. It’s so sad. But exciting with a great Arthurian plot line.

Unfortunately in later books it gets into all of this catholic nonsense about Alfred being the beloved of heaven and the Arch angel Michel basically takes over the role that Jesus should have, kind of like in Supernatural.

I read the whole trilogy just to see how it ended. This guys life is sad you’re practically rooting for him to die just so he can stop suffering. I read the whole series just to see what happens to him it ends kind of how I expected it to but it was defiantly a wild ride getting there.

Interestingly Harry Potter did not upset me that much J.K. Rowling did a good job of making her world unique and separate the only complaint I have is the inclusion of Christmas but that’s a different peeve for a different time.

In conclusion I would like to end not with a Bible verse but with a song verse.

The church’s one foundation

            is Jesus Christ her Lord;

            she is his new creation

            by water and the Word.

            From heaven he came and sought her

            to be his holy bride;

            with his own blood he bought her,

            and for her life he died.

 If that verse is not the heart of your message you have no business Quoting the Bible (Unless you are Jewish quoting from the old testament) or calling on our angels or casting out demons.

Back to Blogging

11 Jul 2014 1 Comment

by C.O. Bonham in Random Musing, Uncategorized Tags: , ,

First I’m sorry for being such an inconsistent blogger. I know I hardly posted anything at all last year. I am so sorry. . .

“I am the worst blogger ever,” she said hanging her head in shame. “I am so unmotivated, and no one ever comments on my stuff,” she said knowing full well that the former had more to do with it than the later. Her real problem is that she keeps sitting around waiting for things to happen and she is also very unfocused. The blog is called Random musings for goodness sake.

Wow, I have no idea who that was, some random third person POV hacker taking over my blog.

Anyway since I haven’t posted anything in forever you probably don’t know that the second Realm Makers conference is over and it was amazing.

She hesitates. “What if someone I met there reads this? They’re going to know what an unmotivated writer I am. I can’t even maintain a blog how will I ever write a novel?” She bites her fingernails in worry.

You don’t know that I am writing a novel. It has the word Random in the title. Make of that what you will.

“Their going to think the wrong thing, I should give more information. No If I over explain it to begin with I won’t feel free to make major revisions later. I should leave it alone. This will build hype for future publication. No it won’t,” she stops typing to continue her internal discussion, “I never finish anything I start. The book is doomed. You don’t know that, if it worries you so much don’t mention it in your blog.” 

 

You don’t know that The Cross and Cosmos is no longer in publication. The web site is still up for now but there aren’t going to be any new issues.

“How am I going to publish my short stories now?” She mutters to herself, knowing in her heart that she fears rejection too much to submit her work to anyplace else.

You probably don’t even remember that my Blogaversary is tomorrow.

She stops typing and saves her post in the draft folder as she scrolls through her older posts to double check the spelling of Blogaversary.

Hey who did all that? You have got to be kidding me, I think I need to update my security settings. I get up for three minuets and the POV hacker strikes again. Just ignore everything in Italics it’s not important.

Anyway don’t feel bad, you didn’t know these things because, I didn’t tell you. Really I didn’t even remember that my Blogaversary was tomorrow until I got a notification from WordPress.

I can’t promise that I will post more often because let’s face it–I’ve broken that promise too many times for anyone to ever believe it.

But I will try not to forget and leave this blog dormant for almost a year again (cross your fingers).

She crosses her fingers and pushes “Publish.” Then waits expectantly for someone, anyone to comment and give her life meaning.

She gets up and watches her computer. As she waits for it to shut down she notices a little sticker on the side that says includes meta-reality POV processor. “I wonder what that does?” she muses. The computer screen goes blank and she closes the laptop.

TC2 Issue 17

02 Oct 2013 Leave a comment

by C.O. Bonham in Uncategorized Tags: , , ,

I Know it’s been a while since my last post. But hasn’t it been even longer since I last had a story published? So I am killing two birds with one stone by posting to let everyone know that I have a Story featured in the newest issue of The Cross and the Cosmos.

My new story is called “May the Stars Sing you Home.” It takes place in a fantasy world in which the Elvish space program is preparing for it’s first interstellar voyage. Though, I take great pride in saying that Humans still won the moon race.

I hope everyone enjoys it because I am working on more from this same story world.

And While you’re at TC2 check out the other stories. Right now I am getting ready for work so I only had time to read “Dark Within.” By: Charles M. Bailey. But it is good. Nice creepy atmosphere. perfect for October. A must read if you like Edgar Allen Poe.

I will read “Knitting Honors” by: K.M. Carroll later. But I have to say that I am intrigued by the title alone. But the fact that this is a Sci-Fi and fantasy E-zine makes the concept of knitting even more interesting. How does it apply I wonder.

Anyway enjoy the Story! Be sure and let me know what you think of it.

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