Please Welcome...Frank Creed
What a joy to have Christian novelist
and speculative fiction pioneer Frank
Creed as
our interview guest at WhereTheMapEnds.com.
Frank is one of
those guys you need to get to know if you're serious about Christian
speculative fiction fandom. Not only is he a novelist himself, he is the
founder of The Lost
Genre Guild, one of the premier nexus points on the
Internet for all things pertaining to the genres we
love.
Frank
is also the head literary critic for thefinishers.biz, and a
Biblical cyberpunk artist.
His near-future, high-tech, dystopian science fiction
may be found between the covers of the Light at the Edge of Darkness
anthology, and Flashpoint: Book One of the Underground. War of
Attrition: Book Two of the Underground, and Into the Underground:
the Role-Playing Game will be released in the autumn of 2008. Frank's literary art is
published by The
Writer's Café Press.
Frank says he would
love to be known as a
guy who's touched lives. "This has to be at least part of any writer's
motivation," he says, "and it's blown me away how the Boss has
allowed me to do this through both the Lost Genre Guild, and my own
fiction. To glorify Him by helping others, entertaining, affecting
spiritual sojourns, and inspiring people to live their faith—to be able to
pay the mortgage while doing that full-time would be
stunning."
So
without further ado, here's the interview with one of the primary movers
and shakers working to promote Christian speculative fiction
today.
WhereTheMapEnds: Catch us up with what's
going on in your life.
Frank Creed:
My
BOCHOK (butt on chair, hands on keyboard) time has been spent on War
of Attrition: Book Two of the Underground, and keeping up with
clients’ manuscripts from thefinishers.biz—a manuscript evaluation
service.
Like
most Christian speculative fiction novelists, I have another job. Health
problems have kept me from it until last month, and now we're putting in
overtime at Subaru of Indiana—with these gasoline prices, big SUV people
are downsizing. My handicapped body is still adjusting to
that.
WhereTheMapEnds:
What is your favorite speculative novel of all time (Christian or secular)
and why is that your favorite?
Frank Creed: George
Orwell's 1984. I've never found another novel that gave such a
complete visionary warning about how humanity's dark side could oppress
with technology. It's said that cultural trends in the
United
States
follow Europe’s
by many years. In our post-9/11 age, we are at the point of flirting with
fascism, as Europe
did in the 1930s. I hope my own fiction carries shades of an Orwellian
warning.
WhereTheMapEnds:
Indeed, I believe it does. I'm fascinated by how authors' favorite fiction
tends to influence their own writing. Your writing, in turn, will
influence other writers down the line. It's as if one of our jobs as
novelists is to keep voicing the themes that connected with us, that they
may connect with a new generation of
readers.
So,
Frank, tell us a bit about the Lost Genre Guild: what it is, how it got
started, your vision for it, etc.
Frank
Creed: It
started a long time ago in my childhood. My mother would take us kids into
Christian bookstores and I would search the fiction shelves for science
fiction and fantasy. The only titles that were ever there were C.S. Lewis’
Chronicles of Narnia and Space Trilogy. I finally gave
up looking, and found my favorite fiction on general market shelves.
After
learning the craft and researching the business end of being a Christian
speculative fiction novelist, I discovered how little was out there for
us. I would have founded the Lost Genre Guild the few months earlier, but
got involved with the Light at the Edge of Darkness
anthology, and put it off until my three cyberpunk short-stories
had been submitted.
My vision for the guild back then was to become the Web’s go-to-place for
Christian speculative fiction.
Since
then I've discovered a few of us who all had the same idea. We’re all
listed on the lostgenreguild.com resource tab. For each of us our
focus is a little bit different, but helping promote our lost genre as
best we can is what we all
do.
WhereTheMapEnds: Thank you for the work
you've done to promote the genres we love. What
made you want to write Christian speculative
fiction?
Frank Creed: I
knew I wanted to write fiction since a program at our public library when
I was seven or eight years old. I discovered fantasy and science fiction,
then role-playing games a little later in my youth. It wasn't until I was
saved in 1992 after reading The God Who Is There, by Dr. Francis
Schaeffer, that I knew I wanted to write Christian sci-fi.
The
answers to all the great philosophical questions are found in the Bible.
Men like Schaeffer and Lewis presented these answers in both fiction and
nonfiction, but not in a language easily understood by regular folks.
Beyond 12th grade I’m self educated, so there's no way anyone would
publish any of my nonfiction until I gained respect as a writer.
Science
fiction has been called the handmaiden of worldview, and is definitely the
fiction genre for the presentation of such
answers.
WhereTheMapEnds:
What is your favorite speculative genre to read? To write? If they're
different, talk about that.
Frank Creed:
Definitely
cyberpunk on both counts. I usually have to define that sci-fi subgenre
for people. Cyberpunk is not aliens and spacecraft, but near-future sci-fi
in a dystopian setting (dystopian is the opposite of
Utopian) featuring lots of high-tech toys that focus on the
melding of human flesh with technology. Because the setting is such a dark
place, the good guys are usually underdogs bucking the
system.
WhereTheMapEnds: A great early example of
cyberpunk is William Gibson's Neuromancer. Frank, how would you
characterize the current state of Christian speculative fiction writing
and/or publishing?
Frank Creed: Blossoming.
Publishers of Christian speculative fiction have put off writers for so
long that there is a lot of talent out there. While the major publishing
houses have yet to sink their teeth into serious adult spec-fic, the young
adult market is opening up. At least by the time these same readers
mature, I hope publishers will have fully embraced the
genre.
WhereTheMapEnds:
Yes, I like to say that's the generation that's
going to save us.
So
what have you seen that encourages you about Christian speculative fiction
writing and/or publishing?
Frank Creed:
Two
years ago Writers Digest magazine predicted that religious
fiction would be among the biggest growth markets over the next five
years. In that same amount of time even the Christian publishing houses
have signed a few speculative fiction authors. Interest on the Web is
gathering steam, and I am hopeful that it manifests in the real
world.
WhereTheMapEnds:
What have you seen that
discourages or frustrates you about Christian speculative fiction writing
and/or publishing?
Frank Creed:
How
the business of selling books has trumped one of the two strongest genres
(speculative fiction; the Western is the other), for tales of good and
evil. Other worldviews have used speculative fiction for their own ends
for decades, but as usual Christendom has been slow. In this case, slow to
recognize the value of a great fiction
ministry.
WhereTheMapEnds:
What
would you like to see changed regarding Christian speculative fiction
writing and/or
publishing?
Frank Creed:
I'll
be happy when speculative fiction outsells romance and historical genres
in Christian bookstores. :-)
WhereTheMapEnds: Ha! Why prolong your
happiness so
long? [grin] What
do you think Christian speculative fiction writing and/or publishing will
look like in three years? Five years? Ten
years?
Frank Creed:
In
reality we have nowhere to go but up. If I can mix a metaphor, our little
snowball is gathering steam. Ten years is enough time to have a generation
raised on computer games growing up and looking on fiction shelves. If the
major publishing houses of the CBA have not awoken by then, the free
market will have passed them by and they will have completely missed
out.
WhereTheMapEnds: And that's where Marcher Lord
Press comes in. Small indie presses can step into meet a need the big
publishers don't seem willing or able to meet. So, Frank, what
advice would you give to someone who aspires to write and publish
Christian speculative
fiction?
Frank Creed: A housecat glorifies God
simply by being a housecat: by being what God made it to be. Every
individual Christian, however, has free will, and must choose to glorify
God by using the gifts He's given. It doesn't matter whether a Christian
is a writer, a pro golfer, or a janitor, the chief end of man is to
glorify God with one’s best effort.
If
you have a story to tell, it's your job to learn the craft and be the best
you can be for His glory. Use online critique groups. Find the good
critiquers, crit a piece, then look at their comments and see what you
missed. You’ll be amazed how quickly you
learn.
WhereTheMapEnds:
Good advice, Frank.
What’s the best part about writing and publishing Christian speculative
fiction?
Frank Creed:
"Fortune
and glory, kid; fortune and glory." (Indiana
Jones and the Temple
of Doom)
Seriously,
touching lives for His glory by writing what you love... How can you beat
that?
WhereTheMapEnds:
What’s
the best speculative story (Christian or secular, book or otherwise)
you’ve encountered lately?
Frank
Creed: While
you'll find it shelved under the historical romance label, mark me down
for M. L. Tyndall's Legacy of the King’s Pirates trilogy. The
main characters are Christian privateers hired by the British to raid the
Spanish
Main
in the Caribbean.
Christian
pirates? I call that alternative history. I have a very difficult time
finding a book so well written that it takes me away and I stop
critiquing. Ms. Tyndall's fiction can do that. She's my favorite living
novelist.
WhereTheMapEnds: Well, Frank, what else
would you like to say to the readers of WhereTheMapEnds.com?
Frank
Creed:
In
our cultural history, the Pprotestant work ethic has Christians, and
particularly men in our subculture, completely ignoring the arts. Unless
it’s church choir or band, the arts are perceived as a silly, frivolous
waste of time. A creator made us in His own image, so why do we lag behind
the rest of our culture in everything?
In
our free market that runs on supply and demand, we obviously must not, as
a psychographic, pursue serious art that glorifies our Creator. It smacks
of a dead soul to me.
Logically,
if we believe what we say we believe, we ought to be blazing artistic
trails for the rest of North
America
rather than following, and following only after others have proven that
there’s money to be made. Our priorities are
askew.
Don’t
be afraid to live your faith, no matter where He
leads.
That's
all for this time
What a wonderful interview, huh? Thanks again to Frank
Creed. Be sure to visit Frank online.
As a
special gift Frank has let us get a glimpse at an unpublished story of
his: it's cyberpunk with an Irish Catholic twist. It's posted in the Special Features
section. If you like what you see there, be sure to check out Frank's
published fiction, too.
If
you missed the previous months' interviews with other speculative authors,
including Frank Peretti, Jerry Jenkins, Karen
Hancock, Tosca Lee, and Ted
Dekker, you can read them here.
And be sure to come back next month for an interview
with another mover and shaker in the world of Christian speculative
fiction.