Gillian Bronte Adams

YA Epic Fantasy Author

Wanted: Burglar To Share In Great Adventure – Middle Earth Ramblings

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“As they sang, the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking stick.” ~ The Hobbit

I expect most of us, like Bilbo, have a bit of a Tookish side. The part of us that loves adventure and the thrill of peril and the glory of great deeds. The part that loves reading Tolkien or leafing through ancient epics, watching action and adventure movies, the sight of the road going ever on and on.

The part that wants to wear a sword instead of a walking stick.

“I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.” ~ Gandalf

If only he had stopped by at my house on the way to the Shire. The Tookish part of me is jumping up and down at the moment, “Pick me! Pick me! I’ll sign up!”

And I would in a heart beat.

If The Hobbit were set in modern times, I could see Gandalf writing up this ad and posting it on facebook, or craigslist, or somewhere online.

WANTED: Burglar to share in Great Adventure.

Requirements: small, stealthy, clever.

Destination: the Lonely Mountain.

Object: Gold.

Remuneration: treasures beyond imagining.

Employers: Thorin and Company.

Expected enemies: trolls, goblins, wargs, dragons, and other nefarious creatures that inhabit the dark places of Middle Earth.

Danger: High.

Chance of return: Slim.

Apply at the Prancing Pony in Bree, ask for Gandalf.

Note: Thorin and Company are not liable for any injuries to employees, including (but not limited to) loss of life, limb, or sanity, dismemberment by wargs, enslavement by goblins, or barbecuing by dragons.

As Gimli would say, “Certainty of death . . . small chance of success . . . what are we waiting for?”

Song of the Saddle

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If you have spent any length of time wandering the dust-ridden halls of this blog, then you might just know that I spend a decent amount of my time in the saddle. Especially during the summer months – odd considering that I live in Texas where the summer months are known for the blazing sun, triple digits, and mud cracks large enough to be portals to distant lands . . .  or at least, the center of the earth.

Having spent so many hours in the saddle, I’ve come to realize that riding is like music.

Each horse has a distinct rhythm. The beat of their hooves, the varying pace, the distinct walk, jog, lope, and run that is all their own, contributes to their unique melody.

Each saddle sings its own song. An old saddle with its well worn leather skirt, wooden tree, and metal pieces frosted with rust creaks a different ballad, a tale of miles already traveled, than the squeak of a new saddle with leather stiff and unbroken, and metal pieces still jangling to find their proper place.

Each landscape offers a different harmony. The drum of hooves over hard packed earth differs from the harsh scuffling through dead leaves lining the forest floor or the soft thudding through the arena sand.

For me, part of the joy in riding is discovering the beautiful melody that each different horse, saddle, and landscape affords. Finding the horse’s rhythm so that horse and rider can move as one. Hearkening to the ballad of the saddle and listening to the tale it unfolds.

There is a sort of grand symphony present in the world around us, if we just have ears to hear it. The whisper of a turning page. The orchestral chirping of crickets in the night. The blazing glory of a sunrise. Each is a song in itself, an offering to the praise of the One who created it all, the Singer who set the song in place.

So, when I weary of writing and the formerly pleasant clacking of the keys as I type becomes only slightly less grating than the scraping of nails across a chalkboard (one of the worst sounds in the world!), then I take to the saddle once more, lose myself in the rhythm of hooves, and allow the cares and worries of the world to fall from my shoulders, borne away upon a fleeing wind.

Are there any sounds that seem to bear more melody than others to you? Have any others become enchanted, as I, by the song of the saddle?

Evoking Memory in Writing

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Insects chirped in the background and a faint breeze filtered through the screened windows, cooling my cheeks and lifting the hair plastered to my scalp. I settled back in my chair and closed my eyes with a contented sigh, resting my hands palms up on the table to keep from aggravating the raw blisters I had earned while mowing Haitian style – with a machete. It had been a long day full of hard work, but much had been accomplished and we now sat around the table to eat and fellowship.


The pungent aroma of spicy chicken wafted across the table, but before I could eat, I had to participate in the ritual sanitizing of everything in sight. There was a cholera outbreak in Haiti and we were being more than usually cautious about sanitizing everything with purell or antibacterial wipes – our hands, plates, eating utensils, water bottles… 

I poured a dollop on my hand and it seeped into my palms, setting the raw skin aflame. But even more than the sting, I remember the smell. The sharp clean fumes of the sanitizer covering everything in the dinning hall…

This was about my first trip to Haiti in early 2011. We used hand sanitizer to an extreme, but it worked! No one got sick that trip. To this day, the slightest whiff of purell brings me back to those wonderful meals we shared in the cramped dining hall, all squished around the table, sharing stories and exciting moments, talking about what the Lord was doing. I can’t even think about purell without thinking about those trips to Haiti.
It struck me the other day, that smell is a powerful tool for evoking memory, especially for writers. 
We try to write with all five senses – sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell – to truly transport the reader from the words on the page into the middle of the scene itself. We want them to be able to feel the icy raindrops trickling down their cheeks, to smell the musty damp of a forest after a rain, to see the mountainous waves towering over a tiny craft, to hear the howling of a midnight storm, and to taste the chill freshness of a snowflake on their tongue.
But all of these things are not only powerful in the here and now of the story-world, but also as tools for resurrecting images of the past. When your character walks onto the page in the first scene, that is not the moment he is born. Your character has lived and fought and won and lost and run away many times before he ever shows up in the story. Knowing this is what will give your character that important third dimension so that he will stand out rather than blend into the flat page.
Our pasts define who we become and the same is true of characters in novels. But rather than giving the backstory download where you as the narrator outline your character’s entire history, you can drop snippets of backstory along the way, just enough to allow the reader to know who the character is today. One  method for doing this is through memory.
But memory doesn’t spring out of nowhere. You need something to evoke the memory and that is where you can utilize your five senses to transport your character’s thoughts to the past.
Perhaps your character smells something that they smelled before when (insert important event) happened. Perhaps it is a taste that summons the memory, or a certain feeling, or the sight of something familiar.
Out of all of the five senses, the ones I tend to use the least are taste and smell. I’m not sure why. The other three senses appear so vividly to me while I’m writing. I can picture what the scene looks like, can hear the sounds, even feel the surroundings, but often I have to force myself to taste and smell. But taste and smell are no less powerful than the others and I’m going to continue looking for ways to better employ them in my writing.
For me, the smell of hand sanitizer evokes fond and extremely vivid memories of Haiti. Are there any scents, tastes, feels, sights, sounds that evoke fond (or otherwise) memories in you?

Out of Darkness Rising Book Trailer is here!

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Out of Darkness Rising poster

Alright folks!  You finally get to see it.  Here is the official trailer for Out of Darkness Rising!  If you enjoyed watching it, like the video on youtube or leave a comment! :)

Thanks to Adam Terrell at ngvideoproductions for filming and editing the trailer, and to Jon Maiocco  for composing the awesome music! And thanks to all the wonderful actors and people who helped out behind scenes. Couldn’t have done it without any of y’all.

Spelunking

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I apologize for the silence on the blog lately.  I just got back from an amazing spring break in the mountains of Arkansas!  Plenty of hiking, spelunking, family time, and relaxing by the fire in the cabin made it an overall tremendous trip.  
We were walking through one cavern on a guided tour (prior to the actual spelunking), when my Mom turned to me and asked if I was storing away inspiration for future stories.  Yep!  You know you’re a writer when the family vacation becomes a “research” trip!  :)  I can’t help thinking about what my main character would do in such and such situation, or thinking about the perfect way to describe such and such setting for a new scene. 
Stalagmite
Giant column in the Cathedral Room.
It’s about 60 feet high.

Spelunking offered plenty of new discoveries to be tucked away for later use.  I’d been underground before, but this was my first time to venture into a cave in coveralls, boots (mine were borrowed and looked like they were from the Vietnam war!), and helmet.  

I was amazed to discover that many of the cliches about being underground were actually true.  We stopped at one point and turned all of our head lamps off, and it was quite literally pitch black.  You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, much less your neighbor’s face.  And good luck trying to feel your way out without falling off the Death Ledge.  :)  Shutting your eyes to wait for them to adjust doesn’t work when there’s absolutely no light for them to adjust to!  
The rhythmical drip drip you always read about hearing in caves was there, though perhaps not so loud or so rhythmical.  I discovered also that your distance and depth perception is often off under ground.  After passing hundred foot drops that I would have guessed were nearer forty, a pool of water that looked to be about two feet deep (it was actually about eight), and gigantic columns that I would never have imagined could be eighty feet tall, I gave up and just asked the guide!
While we did not get attacked by bats, giant cave salamanders, or gargan rockroaches, nor did we stumble through a portal into Narnia or other any world (I wish), the excursion was more than exciting.  It was thrilling!  It also helped with the few underground scenes I have in my current novel, and whetted my appetite for future cave diving scenes in later works…  Hmmm, the wheels are turning!  :)

A Good Story

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An Echoes of Eternity post – seeking the Echoes of Eternity in fantasy and speculative fiction.

A Good Story

A good story.

This simple phrase means something entirely different to each reader.  Perhaps for you it’s a book that you can’t put down, where the riveting action or the chair-arm gripping suspense keeps you captivated until the final sentence.  Perhaps its a beautifully written book, where heart warming characters and vivid prose cause your world to disappear and transport you into the pages of the story.

Whenever I think of the phrase “a good story,” I can’t help thinking of a scene from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Lucy is flipping through the magic book in Coriakin’s house, trying to find the spell to make hidden things visible.  Before she finds it, she stumbles upon a spell “for the refreshment of the spirit.”

The pictures were fewer here but very beautiful.  And what Lucy found herself reading was more like a story than a spell.  It went on for three pages and before she had read to the bottom of the page she had forgotten that she was reading at all.  She was living in the story as if it were real, and all the pictures were real too.  When she had got to the third page and come to the end, she said, “That is the loveliest story I’ve ever read or ever shall read in my whole life.  Oh, I wish I could have gone on reading it for ten years.  At least I’ll read it over again.”  

But here part of the magic of the Book came into play.  You couldn’t turn back.  The right-hand pages, the ones ahead, could be turned; the left-hand pages could not. 

“Oh, what a shame!” said Lucy.  “I did so want to read it again.  Well, at least I must remember it.  Let’s see… it was about… about… oh dear, it’s all fading away again.  And even this last page is going blank.  This is a very strange book.  How can I have forgotten?  It was about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill, I know that much.  But I can’t remember, and what shall I do?” 

And she never could remember; and ever since that day, what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician’s Book.  

(The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis)

That passage has always captivated me.  I have always wanted to read that forgotten story for the refreshment of the soul.  Nowadays, I imagine Lewis’ publishers would have given him a hard time over that scene.  I can hear them saying, “Readers don’t want you to tell them about this good story, they want you to show them!”

And part of me really wishes that he had showed us the story.  But I can’t help thinking that Lewis did this on purpose.  Perhaps he meant to show us that this was what he desired his stories to be.  To reflect that good forgotten story that Lucy had fallen in love with.  Lewis was a Christian.  Perhaps, he meant to point to the Greatest Story as the good story that all good stories should reflect.

Perhaps I’m speculating too much! :)

But this passage always sets me thinking.  What do I consider a good story?  My favorite books come from many different writing styles, genres, and authors.  There are many books that I consider good and that I love to read.  But when it comes down to those really good stories, those books that stick with me long after I close the cover, the tales that resonate within my soul, I would have to say that they all have one thing in common.

Those books all hearken back to the Greatest Story in some way, shape, or form.  They aren’t necessarily an allegory, they’re not trying to preach a sermon, there may not even be an obvious reference to God or the Bible in so many words.  But there is a sense of something deeper.  A hint of something greater.  An awareness that this life is not all there is, that truth is absolute and eternal.  A story that reflects the glory and wonder of God.  The echoes of eternity.

What do you consider a good story?  What are some books that you place in that category?

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