If you’ve hung around My Little World for very long, you probably have noticed that Christian speculative fiction–in particular, fantasy–is dear to my heart. And while the market for it is growing, it’s still a hard sell, both for the authors and the stores that may eventually carry the books.
It’s kind of frustrating, actually. And so it is very cool that I’ve found a bunch of like-minded folk on the internet (many of their blog links are below) and the awareness of this niche market is growing. Without this gang of folks, I’d have missed out on a lot of great reading over the past few years.
Once upon a time a man named Jeff Gerke wrote a series of novels under the pen name of Jefferson Scott. After these were published, Jeff became an editor for a major Christian publishing house. He later switched houses to help spearhead an imprint, Realms, devoted to Christian spec fic. This didn’t take off as well as hoped, so Jeff tried again with another publisher.
By this time Jeff was well known as a champion of Christian novels that were a little off the beaten path (no Amish romances for this guy!). He had also begun to believe that traditional publishing was not likely to ever meet the demand for the kind of novels he believed in. Too many variables, not the least of which is just trying to get the books all the way to the consumer who would buy it if they only knew it existed!
In 2006, Jeff began Where the Map Ends as a way to begin to consolidate information in this genre.
And on October 1, 2008, he will launch Marcher Lord Press, a POD press specifically for Christian speculative fiction. Over the next couple of days I’ll be talking about the upcoming launch, but feel free to pop on over and sign up. He’s giving away some great prizes!
AND last but not least, one of the featured artists in the Virtual Coffee Table Art Book is my daughter Hanna. This ebook is free with the purchase of one of the novels on launch day.
Here’s what the other bloggers are saying:
Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Keanan Brand
Kathy Brasby
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
Courtney
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Kameron M. Franklin
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Timothy Hicks
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Shannon McNear
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Ashley Rutherford
Hanna Sandvig
Mirtika or Mir’s Here
Greg Slade
James Somers
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise
Tina Kulesa
Jason Waguespac
Looks like we have all hands on deck for this blog tour!
pixydust says
Hanna’s your daughter! How cool. I didn’t know that. She’s very talented!
One of my pieces is in there too. 🙂 The book looks really good. Lots of very talented artists in there.