Word wars, pages, and a thought about writing

Most people following my blog know what a Word War is, but just to make sure, I'm going to explain it.  A Word War is when a group of people get together for one hour(standard) or more, or less, so pretty much any amount of time to have a competition to see who can get the most points in the set time.  Whoever wins, well, is the fastest writer.  So, why have I mentioned this?  I will be hosting some Word Wars every once in a while, hopefully frequently, for you guys and for myself.  Also if you have noticed, one of my pages(explained a little later in this post) is titled "Word War Archives", on those pages I will be posting the winners of past Word Wars winners and their totals. 

Secondly, I have recently discovered the way to put more pages on the blog.  If you see directly below my banner, it should have about four links to 'The Narrowing Road', 'Word War Archives', 'Writing Excerpts and Poems', and ' Book Reviews'.  They are pretty self explanatory and The Narrowing Road is just a link to the main blog.  To do this, go to http://draft.blogger.com/home then go to 'new post', and then, on the right, next to 'edit posts' should say, 'edit pages', after that, I think you can figure it out.  So yeah, that's a useful tool methinks.

And, lastly, a writing thought, I say thought because I myself am still just a beginning writer and I'm curious to know your thoughts as well.  So this is simply a thought about writing.  According to some statistics from a website(I forget which) Christian Fantasy is not a top genre on the market.  As in, the general public of buying readers are not purchasing Christian Fantasy(or secular fantasy for that matter), which is pretty sad I think.  Because that means that it will be harder to get my book accepted by publishers.  So that is disheartening.  But I believe that if the Lord has called you to write Christian Fantasy you will, by whatever means He has set in motion, get your book into the hands of the public, because the Lord is in control, nothing changes that.  So, those are my thoughts on the market right now, feel free to comment on what you think. 

Blog Kick-Off!

Well, I now have a blog.  So, to kick it off, I'm going to give some of my book away, well, not copyright wise, but a sneak peek with the prologue.  I'm also going to give a quick overview of the book I'm writing, and finally, I'm going to post the prologue of my book.  I know, quite a bit about my book right?  Well, yeah, it is lol, but I'm hoping it won't always be that way, however I will keep y'all up to date.

So, now on to the overview of my book.  In my book, Legends(working title) it is about a world that has forgotten their Creator.  They haven't lost all their history, just anything relating to the One that was once their God.  So, when they're lives are threatened by this ancient, incredible evil, they look to an ancient Book of Legend that has been told to have ancient power, but the book has been lost over time, so they must embark on a quest to save their world, putting all their faith in one small book.  So a group of dignitaries start out on an epic quest while the kingdoms of their realm prepare for all out war with an evil they cannot defeat.

So that's the premise of my book!  And to finish off this post I'm going to post a sample of my book, the prologue.

Prologue

It was the dead of night and in the middle of wild land, miles away from civilization. The dark of the woods fading behind him, Zach galloped into the night unaware of any followers. Zach shivered; the fate of all of Alsta was in his hands. They had told him to bring it and hide it here, in hopes that it would never be found. He settled into a light sleep, trying not to think of what was happening. Nearing the Kaz Mountains, Zach veered right to the sea of Sanza, where a small boat awaited his arrival. As the morning breeze from the sea rustled through Zach’s hair, he saw the bright burning sun begin to rise.
Zach was dismounting drowsily when he heard the crushing of crisp leaves under hard boots. Zach slowly turned around, as he heard a snap of a twig, then another, then some more leaves being crushed behind and all around him. It was hard to see in the still darkness of night, but after a few long seconds, he made out nearly fifteen foes. He saw at least five archers and at most ten swordsmen.
He was disgusted at the figures before him. They were covered in grimy filth, they smelt suffocating, so much so he actually found it hard to breath. They were Gruks. A shriek sounded in the wind “Give us the package, useless human. Give it to us and we will show you mercy,” said the leader.
“I will never give it to you! You cannot take it from me!” yelled Zach, as the Gruk closed in.
“We far outnumber you” the leader raised his hand and the archers drew their bows. “Give up now, or you will be pierced with five arrows before you can scream,” threatened the leader. Grunts and war cries sounded from the Gruk.
“No!” Zach in a smooth motion grabbed the horse’s neck, pulled himself up, and swung his legs around the horse’s body. He kicked the horse with his heel and the horse galloped to the towering Kaz Mountains. The scenery around him began to change as he entered the mountains. Stony path, cliffs abounded, peaks above the eyes reach were all around.
Looking behind, Zach found that the leader was following on his warhorse. Zach heard an arrow fly in the wind, then another, they both went to the left of him. Zach turned around and saw a large fire, but his vision blurred as he found himself falling with his horse. There were three arrows in the horses belly and one in the neck. As he gradually got his vision back, he also got up and started blindly running, mistakenly towards the fire.
When he got his vision restored completely, he looked around and found that many Gruk surrounded him and one masked person. The masked man walked near Zach, and spoke in a mystifying voice that only Zach could hear “Welcome noble human to my humble abode. I hope you find everything to your liking”.
Zach kept quiet. “Where is it?” now speaking loud enough for everyone to hear, the masked man was clearly losing patience, “I know you have it, give it to me.”
Zach was now feeling a little nervous, this masked man obviously knew about his mission “I don’t know what you’re talking about” replied Zach
“I’m losing patience! Give it to me now!” said the masked man.  I have three choices now, thought Zach, I can make a run for it, which I have a one percent chance of making, I can give the package to him however, that would does not guarantee my survival, but guarantees me unleashing the most dangerous weapon the world has ever seen, or I can let myself be killed - “Ughh!” Screamed Zach in agony as he felt the masked man’s sword drive through his torso.
“You are no use to me,” the masked man said as he pulled back the sword and cleaned it. And everything went black.

I've still got some work to do in editing it, but that's it right now. 

Review Policy

Review Policy

Welcome to The Narrowing Road!  I’m always happy to review books and am always very excited to get the chance to read a new book.  I would be thrilled to accept a review copy from authors or publishers alike.

If you are interested in having me review a book, interview an author, or hold a contest for a book giveaway you can email me at smr411[at]gmail[dot]com.

Genres I am interested in reviewing:

1. Young Adult Christian Fantasy
2. Fantasy (Christian or secular)
3. Science Fiction (Christian or secular)
4. Speculative Fiction of any sort

Process of reviewing:

It generally takes me a month at most to read a book and write a review.  Often it can take as little as one week but some books take as long as a month to two months depending on the circumstances.  I cannot guarantee a positive review as I try to give the most honest review as I can.  As a courtesy to the author and the publisher of the book I also put my review on such sites as Amazon, Goodreads, Borders and other book-sites.

My reviews are usually five hundred to seven hundred words, but if I don’t have very much to say about the book I reserve the right to write a much smaller review.

In the review I include links of places where to buy, the author's personal site and the book trailer if available.

Author interviews and guest posts:

If you would like me to conduct an author interview either in addition to a book review or by itself please let me know.  I usually like to do a review with the author interview as to give the reader both sides of the author.

My Personal View:

I am a Christian and I don’t mind saying it.  Following my Lord Jesus with all my heart I cannot help if my reviews or interviews are biased to any extent.  On secular titles I like to give my readers a warning if the book is not Christian or if it contains objectionable content to Christians.  For Christian titles I will do the same as even if a book is called ‘Christian’ doesn’t automatically make it suitable for all readers.

Note:  The only problem as of right now, is I don't accept digital copies.  I do not yet own an e-Reader and cannot spend such amount of time on the computer as to read an entire book.

Blog Policy

This policy is valid from 23 August 2010


This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. For questions about this blog, please contact smr411 At gmail Dot com.


This blog does not accept any form of cash advertising, sponsorship, or paid topic insertions. However, we will and do accept and keep free products, services, travel, event tickets, and other forms of compensation from companies and organizations.

The compensation received will never influence the content, topics or posts made in this blog. All advertising is in the form of advertisements generated by a third party ad network. Those advertisements will be identified as paid advertisements.

The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

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Test Post, and a little bit of a blogger hack

I'm testing the theory that I explain below.  If it works then this post will appear as if I wrote it a few years ago, when, in reality my blog has only existed for half a year.
The reason behind it is that you can only create 10 pages in blogger-including the main page.  So, what you do is after clicking down the advanced post options you can schedule the date you created the post.  By doing this no one will know that the page is just a regular blogpost, and you can put it down as a 'contact me' page or 'about us' or whatever you need.