New "Living Dead Christian" short story: A Vampire in the Church Choir!

This month marks the first anniversary of the release of Night of The Living Dead Christian, a comedy theology novel about what it means to find true transformation in our lives.

I love this book, and I love the characters in it. Of course. I wrote it. One character in particular, Lara, became one of my favorites, and I wanted to write another story with her in it. Then I thought, "Wouldn't it be fun to write her story and then make it available online for free on NLDC's anniversary?"

And that is precisely what I did. 

You can get it any format right here (including Mobi, for Kindle readers, and Epub for Nook, Kobo and so on). 

Here's a quick description of the new story, A Vampire in the Church Choir:

Lara, the newest alto in the struggling church choir, the Sonshine Singers, has a secret. She’s a vampire. Keeping a secret like that – being (sort of) dead – isn’t easy, which is why she came to a Big Box Mega Church in the first place. But now the pastor is preaching on “Monsters In Our Midst” and the congregation is out with pitchforks and torches. Plus, Lara is starting to suspect that the pastor himself is not all he seems, despite the long list of accolades, accomplishments and his slavishly devoted fans. To top it all off, Lara is getting “thirsty” and that long-necked tenor is starting to look like a great big juice box… even worse, the choir's next performance is only three weeks away, and Lara has been “promoted” to soprano. Sounds like a disaster, one way or another, a disaster that Lara is determined to avoid, resist and out-sing. The stakes are high, and the notes are higher, but for the first time in years Lara feels like she has a challenge she can really sink her teeth into.

And hey, if your read and enjoy A Vampire in the Church Choir (or think you're about to read and enjoy it) please consider clicking on the Facebook or Twitter icons at the end of this post and tell a friend about this free ebook!

This book is free. How to download ebooks to e-reading devices and apps. 

Format	Full Book
Online Reading (HTML, good for sampling in web browser)	View
Online Reading (JavaScript, experimental, buggy)	View
Kindle (.mobi for Kindle devices and Kindle apps)	Download
Epub (Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, others)	Download
PDF (good for reading on PC, or for home printing)	Download
RTF (readable on most word processors)	Download
LRF (Use only for older model Sony Readers that don't support .epub)	Download
Palm Doc (PDB) (for Palm reading devices)	Download
Plain Text (download) (flexible, but lacks much formatting)	Download
Plain Text (view) (viewable as web page)	View

Cover art is by M.S. Corley.

Also, for those of you new around here, you can follow me on twitter, check out more about my books, or sign up for my super infrequent e-mail list.

The Traditional Airport Post

Some observations and events at the airport this week:

If only it was a Sopwith Camel.

1. I saw a "therapy dog" getting screened by the TSA. In defense of the TSA, the dog looked a little sketchy to me. I think it was the camouflage. 

2. The Naked Scanner suddenly needed to "recalibrate" when I stepped inside and put my hands over my head. Is this a comment about my weight, Naked Scanner? Fine. I'll just go back to my old friend the Metal Detector. 

Friday Flashback: Mahna mahna

I vividly remember watching this at my grandparents' house when I was staying with them for a couple weeks in the summer. I was laughing like crazy and my grandfather kept saying, "Why does he keep saying phenomena?"

Movement Day, NYC

Today I'm in New York City for Movement Day, where I'll be speaking along with Tim Keller, Luis Palau, Richard Stearns and people like that.

Actually, they are plenary speakers, and I am speaking in an interactive track. So if you want a signed copy of every Tim Keller book, I cannot guarantee that I can provide it.

My topic relates to talking to people in the Millennial generation about Jesus.

I'm certain we will have a fun time during this conversation, and I'm looking forward to the conference. So, if you're in NYC and wishing you had a conference to come hang out at today, drop on by.

P.S. This is pretty much the only context in which I hear the word "plenary" used.

Guest post and giveaway from Morgan Keyes, author of Darkbeast!

Today's guest post comes from Morgan Keyes, author of Darkbeast. Be sure to leave a comment and get entered for a chance to win a free copy of Darkbeast!

Many thanks to Matt for allowing me to visit and tell you about my middle grade fantasy novel, Darkbeast.  Due to the generosity of my publisher, Simon & Schuster, I will give away a copy of Darkbeast to one commenter chosen at random from all the comments made to this post by 11:59 p.m. EDT tonight.

 

In Darkbeast, twelve-year-old Keara runs away from home rather than sacrifice Caw, the raven darkbeast that she has been magically bound to all her life.  Pursued by Inquisitors who would punish her for heresy, Keara joins a performing troupe of Travelers and tries to find a safe haven for herself and her companion.

Even at a glance, Matt's The Sword of Six Worlds and my Darkbeast have something in common:  They both have young heroines who are the focus of the story.  (Okay, they also both have animal companions, but that's the subject of another post.)

I offered to write a blog post about female main characters and how they shape books for young people.  And then, I stared at my computer screen.  I got up and ate a snack.  I stared some more.  I walked around the block.  I stared for a while longer.

I started to write a few different blog posts.  But time after time, I came back to a simple reality:  Keara isn't special in Darkbeast because she's female.

Keara challenges many of her society's basic assumptions.  The first section of the novel is called "Rebellion", and Keara rebels against just about everyone – her mother, the Primate's tax collector, the priest of the god of darkbeasts… 

But Keara's rebellion isn't based on the fact that she has two X chromosomes.  It's not because she likes pink and purple and rainbows and glitter.  (Her favorite color is a strong, true red, and neither rainbows nor glitter make it into the pages of the novel.)  It's not because she primps and preens in front of a mirror, or dreams of the prince she'll marry some day, or idealizes the children she'll eventually give birth to.

Keara doesn't match any stereotype of a girl, at least one from our rather gender-driven society.  (As an aside, there was recently much Web-based merriment over Bic pens "For Her" – pink, glittery pens intended for women, but satirized by all.  Keara would have been first in line to write a snarky review over such a ridiculously gender-defined product.)

If Keara isn't a "girly" girl, then, what is she?  And how does she drive the story of Darkbeast? 

First, she's loyal. 

Second, she's brave.

Third, she's clever.

Loyal, brave, and clever.  Girls can be all those things.  So can boys.  In fact, Keara has friends who are male and friends who are female.  (There are no romantic relationships in my middle grade novel, so many gender-based complications are beyond the scope of my story.)

So.  I'm letting Matt down here.  I'm not really writing a blog post about female characters and how they carry the weight of a story in special ways.  Can you help me out?  What are your favorite middle grade or young adult novels with a female main character?  Bonus points if that character's gender actually matters to the theme and plot of the book!

Morgan can be found online at:

http://www.morgankeyes.com

http://www.facebook.com/morgan.keyes.author

Darkbeast is for sale in bricks-and-mortar and online bookstores, including:  Amazon | B & N | Indiebound

Morgan Keyes grew up in California, Texas, Georgia, and Minnesota, accompanied by parents, a brother, a dog, and a cat.  Also, there were books.  Lots and lots of books.  Morgan now lives near Washington, D.C.  In between trips to the Natural History Museum and the National Gallery of Art, she reads, travels, reads, writes, reads, cooks, reads, wrestles with cats, and reads.  Because there are still books.  Lots and lots of books.

Sometimes people ask me "What's your blog about?"

And I say, well, a lot of things.

Here are the top ten searches that brought people here in the last 24 hours:

funny happy anniversary pic
humantorch
hungry
abraham lincoln talking to jesus
half coyote half wolf
how big is a wolf
matt mikalatos
sad leprechaun
show me something funny
signs from god

ETA: My favorites are Abraham Lincoln talking to Jesus and sad leprechaun.

Undecided voters

I don't usually post about politics, but as an undecided voter I knew I needed to share this with all of you.



I have questions this year, too. Like: how long after the election until NPR starts doing shows I care about again?

How about you? What questions do you have going into this election season?

That's a lot of underwear for such a short trip

Last night I got home from a weekend Men's Retreat in Texas for Cypress Bible Church. I had a great, refreshing time with the men and I taught four times, which was fun.

I came home to a worn out, tired family. Apparently 3-year-old M got up extra early yesterday morning, exhausting everyone, and then she had the temerity to take a two hour nap.
So, by 11 pm she and I were the only ones still awake. She couldn't sleep.

I gave her a bath in the late evening to help her relax, and when I got her out we went into her room to get her some clothes, but when I pulled open her underwear drawer it was empty. I assumed maybe they were all in the laundry, and I said so to M.

She laughed and said, "No, they are in my suitcase."

She hasn't been on any trips lately, so I went into the laundry room but there wasn't any underwear in there. I checked the guest room bed, where clean clothes are occasionally dumped to await folding. But again, no underwear.

M kept laughing and saying they were downstairs in her luggage. So, finally, I went downstairs and gor her Dora the Explorer suitcase, brought it upstairs and lo and behold it was full of underwear. Packed full.

M picked the pair she wanted and I asked her, "Why were you packing all your panties? Where were you going?"

She said, "I packed them for my trip downstairs."

Tolkien Week: One Sword to Rule Them All

In honor of Tolkien week and the release of The Sword of Six Worlds I've been inviting some friends to guest post about J.R.R. Tolkien and his influence on their work. Today's post (our last!) comes from Steve Bein, whose novel Daughter of the Sword comes out October 6th. You'll enjoy his post, in which he talks about using inanimate objects as characters in fiction.

One Sword to Rule Them All?

Sometimes people ask writers and musicians and artists where they get their inspiration.  I’ve learned that if you’ve got a novel coming out soon, you hear that question a lot.  In a sense it’s impossible to answer.  Inspiration for what?  This character?  This conversation?  This scene?  The whole book?  Inspiration isn’t one thing; it’s a gestalt, and usually an unconscious one at that. 

That said, sometimes I can identify kernels of inspiration—not the inspiration for the book, mind you, but a moment or an idea, something that latched onto a hundred other things in the deep recesses of my subconscious to make the story start to crystallize.  In the case of Daughter of the Sword, one of those kernels was the Ring of Power and a haunted sword.

In 2003 I published my first story, “Beautiful Singer,” about a samurai who insists his katana isn’t possessed by a slain geisha.  (It turns out he’s sorely mistaken about that.)  The story was published a few months after the theatrical release of The Two Towers and a few months before the release of The Return of the King, and since it takes me a long time to turn a story idea into a story, that means I was thinking about it well before The Fellowship of the Ring hit theaters—which means some twenty-odd years after I’d first read The Lord of the Rings, one of my all-time favorite books as a kid and one that remains in my top ten list today.

Seeing the movies and re-reading the book (I now read it about once a year) got me thinking about how on earth Tolkien managed to make the One Ring such a compelling character.  The word “character” doesn’t usually stick to inanimate objects very well, but the ring has a will of its own.  It has desires, and it exerts its will, and other characters have to react to that.  We even have a strong sense of its personality.  So there you have it: it’s a character.

Then “Beautiful Singer” came out, and I did some public readings, and it struck me that Beautiful Singer (the eponymous haunted katana) is also a character.  She has a goal and she tries to bring it about, and other characters ignore that fact at their peril.  So I started thinking: how cool would it be to write a whole book where the swords were the characters that drove the plot forward?  Call it naïve audacity, but I thought I’d try to do with samurai and swords what Tolkien did with hobbits and rings.

Daughter of the Sword is the result of that.  Beautiful Singer already existed, and I knew she was going to be very easy to characterize as the evil sword.  As much as I love Tolkien’s idealism, I prefer to push beyond good-and-evil, black-and-white, cowboy movie ethics.  So there isn’t “the good guy sword” and “the bad guy sword” in this book; there are three swords, and any one of them can oppose any other, and all three exert their influence over the characters that wield them.  They’re Saruman-like, fickle, equally capable of defending and backstabbing. 

There are other comparisons to be made between The Lord of the Rings and Daughter of the Sword—Mariko certainly has a bit of Éowyn in her—but it’s the swords that are the real homage.  So in this Tolkien Week, thank you, dear departed master of fantasy, for proving it’s possible to cast objects as characters.  In this as in so many things, he redefined what’s possible in the genre.  The best the rest of us can do is to emulate.

Tolkien Week: Top Ten Hobbit Covers from around the world

As you know, in honor of Tolkien Week and in celebration of my new book, The Sword of Six Worlds, we're talking about all things Tolkien here at BHR. Today I thought it would be fun to take a look at my Top 10 Lord of the Rings covers from around the world.

NUMBER TEN. 

I like how Bilbo looks like a baby in this one, and he's fighting the creepy monster, whatever it is.

NUMBER NINE.

This cover gives me hope that my kids have what it takes to make professional book covers in some countries of the world.

NUMBER EIGHT. 

This is pretty much how I pictured Bilbo when I first read the Hobbit, though the pipe is rather longer than expected.

NUMBER SEVEN.

Weird things to like about this one: It appears to be saying that by far the most important thing in the book is the pipe smoking. Notice the return of the giant pipe, and also that the dragon in the background is about the size of a sparrow. Bilbo doesn't seem to mind the dragon, and why would he? He has a pipe, after all. Also, the moon has managed to get itself stuck in that tree. Notice how it overlaps the branches. 

NUMBER SIX.

We might as well stick with the pipe theme. Apparently, if you live in Europe, the Hobbit is mostly a story about a little hairy guy who really likes to smoke his pipe. In this cover, in addition to being called a "Gnomo," Bilbo gets to lay his head down on a mushroom. Are there lots of mushrooms because the Hobbit is a kids' book and we must use mushrooms to show how small he is? Or is it a reference to the pipe? You decide.

NUMBER FIVE.

I like this French edition, but not because of anything weird. I just enjoy the decorations around the edges, and the fact that it appears to actually have a scene from the book on the cover.

NUMBER FOUR.

I enjoy the comically unconcerned Bilbo on this cover. "Look, I found this diamond in a hole. Isn't that wonderful? Hmmm. What's that I hear above me? A snarling dragon? Ha ha ha ha. Wonderful!" Also, the art appears to be by Pauline Baynes, who did all the illustrations for the Narnia books that I read as a kid. Anyone know if that's actually her?

NUMBER THREE. 

I really enjoy the depiction of Smaug on this cover. He looks so happy, like he's about to fly down and take someone for a joy ride. I also like the tiny guy in the pink robe threatening him with an axe while all the others are running away (?).

NUMBER TWO.

I find the style of this cover absolutely charming. It shows a scene from the book that is pretty much constant: Gandalf sitting Bilbo down to give him a speech. The hats are awesome, and Bilbo's little checkered jacket makes me laugh. This is a winner.

NUMBER ONE. The best cover to "The Hobbit" ever.

Come on. Smaug as mutated butterfly lizard? Bilbo is dancing on his back as if it's a Broadway musical, complete with top hat. This cannot be beaten. I love it forever.

HOW ABOUT YOU? Which cover is your favorite? Or is there another that you prefer that's not listed here?

Let the music play... Ben Folds Five meets Fraggle Rock

Fraggle Rock, to me, is mostly a reminder that I didn't have cable as a child. I loved the muppets and here was this whole television show full of them that I couldn't see. It wasn't available on VHS. There was no Internet. It was maddening.

The Ben Folds Five was a mysterious but beloved rock band who apparently wanted to prove that the piano is more important than the guitar.

And now, at long last, they are rightfully together:



How about you? Any memories of Ben Folds Five, Fraggle Rock or the Muppets you want to share?