A Different Genre and Belief System In Book 2...

(As compared to book 1).

 
To my dearest friends and followers,

I am quite happy to say that I have started writing my novel again this week and I am choosing to celebrate that fact, rather than beating myself up over having started writing much later than I had originally planned to.

I decided to make myself a small goal: write for 1 hour every day, or write a minimum of 500 words a day. I can do that. And I feel better now that I'm writing again. I don't feel the constant nag in my head, "You should be writing.", "Why aren't you writing?", "You know, you could be writing right now." It's amazing what setting a small achievable goal for yourself can do. XD

I am really excited about the second book in the Tales from Beyond the Veil series that I'm writing. It is, however, a bit different from the first book, The Story of Hollyhocks (which you can buy from my Ko-fi shop). The idea in the first book is that a child from the fairy realm is looking "beyond the veil" from her world into the human world. It was a coming of age story, told through the lens of a fantasy setting, while also containing a large historical fiction aspect.
Book 2, The Death of Jack, gets away completely from the historical aspects, and instead invites the reader (from the human world) to take a look into the world beyond the veil (a.k.a., the fairy realm). Really, the world "beyond the veil" can be any world, depending on the one you (or the character) come from.

Book 1 contains Christian values and beliefs, such as good and evil, Michael the archangel and the dragon (or devil), the characters reading the Bible together, and together trying to understand what it says and what they can learn from it.
Book 2, while it contains values that Christians would also agree with, is a lot more focused on magic and mythology than the first book ever came close to. I'm tying in my love for folklore and Greek mythology into many aspects of the story.

In the first book, I used the words "Earth" and "earth" and "world" a lot. To me, the upper case "Earth" referred to a being, someone or something like Mother Nature. The lower case "earth" was talking about the physical earth, such as the ground or the dirt, or the physical place in which they (the characters) lived. When I used the word "world", I was talking about an idea or an unseen force, such as the idea that the earth is a physical place, but the world is what you make of it, or what you do with it. The "earth" is not good or bad, it just is, but some would say that the "world" is a bad place.

In the novel I am currently writing, I am exploring the idea of the "Earth" more and exactly what the fairy realm is like. The Earth, in the time of the second book, is referred to as the Earth Mother. She is possibly the most ancient and powerful of the gods. Asides from her, the only other named major god is Hypnos or Hypnosis, who was responsible for much of how the world as Hollyhocks knows it came to be. Some of the minor gods who appear are Cenarious, the Great White Stag, and even the dryads. It is through these characters, we will learn just exactly where it is that Anlon, the unicorn, came from, as no one in the first book seems to know or remember where he came from originally.

In general, there are a lot more spiritual ideas in the second book, such as the ideas of being in tune with nature and one's surroundings, and the idea of everything being interconnected, represented by the tree of life.

I would say there are definitely good values in this book as well, such as the difference between right and wrong, laying down your life for your home and those you care about, love and family, etc. 

In The Story of Hollyhocks, we, as the reader, got to see Hollyhocks learning about the God of the Bible, since her world has different beliefs, though both are intertwined throughout the story. Since Jack's story does not really take place in the human world, we get to learn more about the belief system of the fairies. I love the idea that, even though both worlds worship different a "God" or "gods" (the "God" that Hollyhocks learns about in the first book, vs. the "gods" and afterlife from the fairy realm), there's the definite possibility that both sides are worshipping the same entity, but have different understandings of it. I think without this thought, the books could be very confusing to the reader when it comes to understanding the world views presented by the fairy realm vs. the human world. One could ask, "Well, how do we know which is correct?" The answer is, both! One doesn't have to be right, making the other one, by default, wrong. They are simply 2 ideas looking to a bigger picture, each understanding it to the best of their ability, each possibly believing that they are right.

I suppose I should clarify something for anyone wondering. I consider myself a Christian author. That does not mean I write "Christian" books, or books about my faith. A lot of the content and inner dialogue of my characters, the doubts they have, the questions they have, and the obstacles they face, are drawn from my own experiences and my own thoughts, and some of those you may not find "suitable" for yourself or someone you know to read, or you may not agree with the ideas presented.  I guess, I hope that you would not think my book will be filled with only "Christian" characters or themes - because it probably will disappoint in that area. My intention in labeling myself the way I do, simply means there will be some values Christians also agree with, and that the book will be "clean" (no sexual content or foul language). You can trust I'll keep my stories clean, and I'll put some of my own beliefs and values into the book. Again I say, some of those things you may not agree with. And that's ok.

Thank you so much for reading!!

Yours truly,

Me

Additional:

- Click here to buy yourself a copy of my novel, The Story of Hollyhocks

- Check out the fairy journals from my Ko-fi shop!!