Happy Birthday to a Wonderful Friend!

My dear and very good friend, Kate, is seventeen today, so I thought I would write a bit about her and my friendship with her :)
We met through FanFiction.net, which at first thought might not seem a very likely place for a friendship to spring up. But, if you think about it, it's actually a very good place. If you can find just one person who writes well, and shares your interests (in this case, everything to do with Narnia), and also happens to be homeschooled and near your age, and Christian, then you have the makings of a friendship.
Which is exactly what happened with Kate and myself.
I don't remember if she read and reviewed a story of mine first, or if it was the other way around, but we started PMing each other on FF, and I was soon beta-reading for one of her stories, at which time we began to email back and forth, and then IM on Gmail and Skype.
Before I met Kate, I'd never had a friend who shared my keen love of Narnia. But from Narnia it branched out into discussions on Bible versions, Moby Dick and the definition of worship, and a bit about feminism, and a whole lot of other things. I've learned a lot about Arthur and some about ancient Britain from her, and I've even read a bit of Herodotus.
We've done huge amounts of brainstorming, ranted about the new Narnia movies, discussed our favorite fanfictions and edited each other's stories. We've been serious and silly; talked in LOLkitteh and told stories in high courtly speech, and generally had really wonderful times. We even got to visit each other last week for a few hours, and we had a great deal of fun just talking and laughing in a Barnes & Noble the whole time.
So, dear Kate, I hope you have a wonderful and very happy birthday, and I hope you have many more as well. Thank you for being my friend. I love you!
Philippians 1:3
I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.

Some Quick Updates

Well, I've been gone for a while! At least, it seems that way. My computer was out of commission for a week, needing new cords. On Tuesday, my dad and I took James to the hospital in Iowa City, which is three and a half  hours away. On Wednesday he had corrective jaw surgery, and when he woke up from the anesthesia, he was just so pitiful. His cheeks were really swollen, and he was miserable for the rest of that day and the next. He went home Thursday afternoon, and since Saturday the swelling has been going down, and he's happy and cheerful for the most part. He now has what are called 'distractors' in his jaw, and a screw on each side of his face, just below and behind his ears. 

I tried taking a picture of the screws, but it came out blurry. Anyways, each morning an each evening, we have to give both screws one full turn with a special screwdriver. This slowly lengthens his jaw. We will do this for 14-20 days, after which we will let the jaw solidify for about three months. Then, the distractors will be removed, and not long after that (hopefully) his trach will be able to come out, and they will do his cleft palate surgery. So please be praying for him that there will be no infections or complications. ```  

 

As you can see, his cheeks are pretty swollen, which you can see if you compare this to an earlier picture: 

In other news, I'm thinking I may have to completely re-write and restructure Red Sea Rising. I've been realizing more and more that it basically has no plot. I mean, I can't even write a summary of it because, unfortunately, there's no real point. The main characters (all four of them) don't really even have a goal until 40,000 words have gone by. Before that they are either avoiding the villain (and sometimes escaping from him), one of them is drafted into a foreign military and has no hope of getting back to his own country, and... there's really no real point. This is going to be a hard one to figure out, so I doubt I'll be able to enter it into the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest as I was hoping to do, but... maybe next year? I think the characters and a lot of the ideas are great, I just need a structure.

Mary, over at the Writer's Lair is going to be hosting a Writer's Exposition. Submit your Christmas-themed story and she will post all the qualifying entries on a brand new page in her blog! I am definitely entering, and I already have the idea for a story in my mind, a sort of reverse-Christmas celebration for one of the countries in my world. What do I mean by reverse? Well, you'll have to wait and read it to find out!

Oh, yes! And I'm writing a Narnia fan fiction. For all of you Narnia lovers out there, it's right here.

Also, I've noticed that ApricotPie has been kind of slow lately. Probably because of NaNoWriMo. Well, I'm working on a humorous fantasy story called The Dagger Maiden, which hopefully I can get back into and finish soon, then start posting.

Well, this turned out to be a bit longer than I had intended, but those are the updates on my life at the moment. Starting tomorrow, I will begin doing Christmas posts, for the twelve days of Christmas, with a favorite Christmas song embedded and maybe other things as well :)

I hope you all have a wonderful December, and a Merry Christmas!

They'll Try Anything!

Phillip Pullman is the author of a trilogy of fantasy books which have been described by Christians as the exact opposite of the Chronicles of Narnia. His books, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, are quite popular and the first was made into a movie. Pullman absolutely detests Narnia and all that it stands for, and accuses it of many different things, including racism and sexism. I found a very good article on this by Michael Ward, who is very well versed, not only in Narnia, but in everything Lewis wrote.
Here is the article.
The thing that I find funny is how people are always trying to pin accusations of racism on everyone and everything. I once had a rather lively discussion on the Amazon comments with a lady who thought that The Horse and His Boy is racist. I attempted to show her that racism does not mean what she thinks it means. Nowadays, racism is thought to mean a negative portrayal of a colored person (usually black). However, that's ridiculous. Black people aren't perfect, and to portray one of them negatively is not racist.
The proper meaning of racist is someone who dislikes all blacks (or Hispanics, or Asians) merely and only because of their skin color and wishes that they did not exist. In this definition, it is impossible that Lewis was a racist, because he portrays dark skinned people (the Calormenes) as having both their good (Aravis and Emeth) and their bad (Rabadash and the Grand Vizier). This is something which Mr. Ward doesn't really touch on: that the definition of racist has been twisted, and no longer means what it's supposed to mean. That's why I've written this. However, the article itself is excellent.
They'll try anything to discredit Narnia. And while there are some legitimate criticisms of the series, because Lewis obviously wasn't perfect, the books are a testimony to (in my humble opinion) perhaps the greatest writer ever. And Phillip Pullman, with his anti-Narnia books, will probably (or at least, hopefully) be forgotten in a decade or so, while Narnia will continue it's popularity for hundreds of years.