CSFF Blog Tour

I have just been accepted as a member of the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour and I can’t wait to read the first title, The Skin Map by Stephen R. Lawhead. Fantasy fiction has been a staple in my reading diet for a very long time. There is nothing I find more entertaining than being transported to worlds where dragons, orcs, and elves roam freely. From the first time I read The Hobbit in junior high school until my recent encounter with Donita K. Paul, fantasy fiction has never ceased to provide me with countless hours of enjoyment. When I first read The Hobbit, I had no idea there was even such a thing as Christian fantasy fiction. Later, as I studied the lives of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and discovered the Christian influence in their writing, I was more than just a little intrigued by the concept. It seems to me that there are multiple levels of Christian fiction. At one end of the spectrum there are those that are blatantly Christian (not necessarily a bad thing), and then, at the other end, there are those where the Christian themes are intertwined into the fabric of the story and almost surreptitiously emerge in the mind of the reader before they are even consciously aware of it. The latter is the type of fiction I love to read. Where the Christian themes emerge because they are part of who the author is, not because the author is trying to write them into the plot.