Tag Archives: challenge

Stormpoint Feb 2024 – The Anti-hero’s Weakness

In the wide world of ideas the anti-hero is gaining ground.

I find stories that admire anti-heroes repellent, unless the anti-hero grows beyond their selfishness. Anti-heroes have a major weakness, namely, that they never grow stronger. Instead they fail, make themselves victims, and revel in their failure. (Anti-hero and anti-heroine is synonymous here.)

After they are knocked down, they don’t get up again, not in any true sense. That is repellent in any person, and most of all in a story, which most readers go to for encouragement, enjoyment, and a guiding ethos. (I had to look that word up. Ethos is a Greek word that refers to the character of ideals and beliefs of a community or ideology. It includes the idea of alignment of passion and caution. –Loosely paraphrased from Google.)

Great fantasy books show us the beauty of justified self-sacrifice and the ugliness of it’s opposite, the unjustified anti-hero. How fantasy explores what is worth dying for and what is worth living for opens worlds of choice and myriad possibilities before our eyes.

In The Fourth Scroll, Karen Grunst takes the lead character down the path of a true heroine. When she refuses the path of the anti-heroine, Sarah discovers that the life she expected to live must die (figuratively). And she grieves that loss. Suddenly she is forced down a completely different path with only the vaguest notion of what her new life will entail as the novel ends. Though I have not read this book, this is a great point. This is true of many things in our lives, as it is of Sarah in this clean fantasy.

Amy Earls in Forbidden Reign gives us another truth in this quote. “Elohim walked with me in those frightening places, and maybe the darkness as well as the light is a part of His plan. Sometimes things must die before the world sees the life they can bring.”

Dying and living can both be dangerous and deadly. That is the nature of choice in life. For whenever we live to one thing, we always die to another. Dying for the sake of hope often brings life. As it does in [the above books]. Paths divide and hearts choose. It is odd that it is often necessary to die, sometimes literally, in order to truly live. —Fantastic Journey pg. 197

Freedom from the tyranny of self is freedom indeed. Doing what is right brings freedom, even if it brings the death of something dear to us.

The weakness of the anti-hero, and his very real despair, propagates a lack of strength and whining, to put it bluntly. We are all weak and complain at times. The anti-hero stays there. See the end of anti-heroes, in more ways than one, and turn from emulating them.

Give your admiration to heroes, to simple people who strive for truth and light and good. Imperfectly striving, but still heroic, still fighting for something far beyond themselves. Follow those who refuse to stay down under the weight of darkness.

Crossover – Find the Eternal, the Adventure
Have a great week!

Azalea

Stormpoint November Nights – Conflict in Fantasy

Why do we need inner strength?

Some may say fantasy combat is very unrealistic. We see their point.

If they mean stories where a sudden miracle out of story context saves the day, or the hero gains an illogical, unstoppable power, or the heroine performs flying martial arts, though beautiful in grace, which would never stop an enemy.

But there is one place where combat is real, always—inside the mind, heart, and spirit where the ground is set for any conflict to be won—or lost. If we lose there, we lose outwardly, no matter our fighting method or weapon. The inner fight determines the results of the outer. –Fantastic Journey pg. 137

Because the inner war in fantasy touches the outer war. Not just of the character, but also the conflicts of the author and the reader. Here is an excerpt from Lance and Quill, that I recently rewrote.

He touched her arm, then dropped his hand. “Each defending the other, we can defeat these gossip-mongers. No matter, that you do not possess the death touch. That is a small thing.” He was laughing at her. Gently. “You are fierce enough without it.”

He bent near, full of heat again. “Alaina, you need to be strong in your strengths, the gifts given you, not in another’s. Not in Kyrin’s—but Alaina’s strengths—gifts from the Master of all. Take his truth to you; take joy in it. You are strong, Alaina. Know it.”

She shivered. Her battle to accept her weaknesses, her struggle to find her place in the world, to be strong—he saw it? Burn him—no, no. But he did see too much.

The place she sought was not completely shaped, nor completely known. She wet her lips. “You could live with one who is a pawn of peace, not born of your sands, whom no other would have? You would have the—the heart of one who is spoiled?”

“Do not call yourself so! I have Tae’s word you are not touched. Even if you had been, it would not be to your blame. That rests on Ali Ben Aidon’s head.”

Alaina’s face burned. She was a healer; she should not blush at such things. She smoothed the paper in her hand.

His voice lowered. “I see your power. I would live with one who speaks truth, though it does not favor her. With one who picks battles that need fought, no matter how many lances oppose her—”

“Battles ill fought, this morn,” she said. “Right words at an ill moment and ill words at the right moment.”

“You do not start a battle with me that you cannot win.” He was laughing at her again. “Unless I must.” A smile tugged at her mouth.

Alaina needed inner strength for her battles, inner and outer. Her willingness to do battle within touched everyone and everything outside her. Her conflict taught me, as I wrote it, how I could better fight to acknowledge my God-given strengths and build the strengths of others.

And, dear reader, I hope her battles strengthen you. How, I cannot tell. You must brave her inner arena and grow in the forge you find there.

May you have a blessed Thanksgiving!

Azalea

Crossover – Find the Eternal, the Adventure

October Stormpoint – Relativity destroys Strength

Saying morals are relative destroys our inner strength. And the strength of story. It unravels the framework, the structure, and the heart of the story, which ought to tell us something about how relativism works – or doesn’t – in us.

If we believe relativism, it’s like trying to fight on dry dunes. The sand is never stable, giving us nothing to rely on. That tyrannical belief begins in us, when we redefine, excuse, and explain what we can about our circumstances in attempts to justify our actions. Relativism is the mark of the bad guys. There is no solid ground to stand on, no reliability. It is false, deceptive ground. We can build no lasting framework, no structure here. There is no place of inner strength to find.
Wyldling Trials and The Shadow Elf’s Mission reveal inner strength in their good characters because they fight on the rock, or a least toward the rock. They are fighting relativistic thinking. That fight between the relativistic villain and the underdog who says, ‘no, the same rules apply to you and everyone,’ is a forge. Often a forge of pain.

As we have said, there is always some kind of pain in training: from that of tearing, expanding muscle, to rigorous trial of spirit, to heart-pain that makes room for compassion or which turns that which is weak inside to steel. … Hence, forging forces are needed in the inner arena. The training arena, the gladiatorial arena, and the liberating arena of ideas where spirits strive through the ages—all have served this purpose. When a fantasy story combines the external elements of training, the contest, and the gaze of witnesses with high inner stakes of the moral war, we have a great story and fly through the pages . . . –Fantastic Journey pg. 145

You can’t have any kind of story that rings true, that has a framework, or structure, or heart without objective morality, which is a rock to us. What inner strength we have comes from what we stand on, from our rock. We must choose, we do choose, relative truth or objective truth in every circumstance. Will we tell ourselves tales or the truth?Oddly enough, the more relativistic a character in a story is, the more we hate them. As I say in Fantastic Journey, “Principles, or their lack, drive the blade in every world.” We use the blade in a right or wrong way. Every moral rock, all reality attests to this, even the reflections of reality we call story.

What ground do you choose to fight from? What is your rock? Or rather “who” is your rock? Yourself or???

Fight well!

Until next time,

Azalea – Crossover, Find the Eternal, the Adventure

May Stormpoint – The Strength of Beauty

Leave a reply

For many of us, beauty has the strength of a Siren call, to put it in common terms. In other words beauty draws us like a lodestone, a powerful thirst, the call of the West, our true North.

This applies to the beauty of good things in the moral sense, the beauty of form in the physical sense, and the beauty of being in the spiritual sense. When one of these is present in a person, a flower, a creature it draws us. We sense by the beauty of its being that it is real. When all three capture our awareness we are a goner. In the best way.

Some things are a blessing to lose ourselves to. Beauty is one of them.

A friend of mine is releasing a book May 30th that shows us one aspect of beauty.

A purple flower swayed in the breeze within reach. I touched the smooth petal as if it might comfort me. I sensed its hearty energy within. So calm. At peace. Doing what it was made to do—use its beauty and invigorating scent to attract. It had no worries. How I envied the plant for that. I wanted what it had. The petal in my fingers stiffened and browned. I released the plant as if I’d killed it and been caught with the murder weapon in hand. –The King’s Curse, by J. F. Rogers

Do you see the context? The attraction of beauty and our ability to destroy it, even unintentionally. What is the cure for our curse? I think you may find some of the answers in my friend’s book.

I challenge the idea in the blanket statement that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Depending, again, on context, this may mean only that people have different beliefs about what constitutes the beauty of form, etc. In that context, of the beauty of form, it may be partially true in the sense of perceived beauty. Still, it is much more true that many things and people and forms are beautiful in their created selves, whether we ever see them or not and despite what we think of them.

This makes my heart sing, that beauty exists. That it exists and thrives outside of me, even despite me. Great stories show us beauties “that pierce like swords” as C. S. Lewis has said.

He says further of The Fellowship of the Ring, “Even now I have left out almost everything–the silvan leafiness, the passions, the high virtues, the remote horizons. Even if I had space I could hardly convey them. And after all the most obvious appeal of the book is perhaps also its deepest: ‘there was sorrow then too, and gathering dark, but great valor, and great deeds that were not wholly vain’. Not wholly vain–it is the cool middle point between illusion and disillusionment.” Isn’t that truth beautiful? About illusion, disillusionment, and our present fight against evil? Are we fighting?

All these beauties are worth fighting for, worth seeing and appreciating. Imaginary worlds are wide places of ideas, where the truths of the unseen can be painted in awestriking colors, such as in The King’s Curse by J F Rogers.

As I mention in Fantastic Journey, “Are we not seeking the beauty we have tasted somewhere, that strength that came to us at some time, that moment when a scent drifted past, as if it were a touch or a thought from another world? That time we were reading and a whole universe opened up, which had never existed for us before?” – pg. 10

Seek beauty in all good ways. As part of that, I encourage you to check out my friend’s books. You can still preorder The King’s Curs e here for $0.99, and it releases the 30th.

Whatever you do, I hope you see beauty everywhere in its strength and pursue it, even defend it.

Until next time,

Azalea

Crossover – Find the Eternal, the Adventure

Spiritual Strength in Story

Strength begins in the spiritual arena. Our Stormpoint for this month is how conflict in fiction spills into battle in the inner arena.

Inner strength draws evil, or pits us against it, as our authors’ books this month attest. C. J. Milacci’s Fugitive of Talionis has a heroine who is top of her class as a kidnapped trainee but who is just at the beginning of her inner journey that will strengthen her or break her. That’s the thing about hard circumstances. They make us more bitter and defeated, or wider of heart, stronger in both spirit and body. For each affects the other, as the inner arena touches, even directly feeds, the outer parts of us.

Paths of fantasy, under water or over wold, take us to interesting places and wondrous spaces, not to mention introducing us to fascinating people where every character is involved in the battle we all fight.
Fantastic Journey – The Soul of Speculative Fiction and Fantasy Adventure Pg. 8

Gaining the skills to survive, the will to conquer, the hope that makes us look up, the courage to fight, all drive us to become strong. And the simple yearning for justice, that evil will not always rule by force and fear, that also strengthens us.

But where are the roots of spiritual strength, and what are the results? The roots of every strength are in truth. The true truth of your circumstances. The truth of what you think. The truth of what you believe. The truth you act on. The truth of what is real, not what you wish were real.

“Call me crazy,” Nika says as we walk around some old rubble, “but I thought you were going to share a little more than that.”

I rub the back of my neck. “Remember Ava?”

“The girl who died in the river?”

I nod.

“Of course I remember her. Not something easily forgotten.”

She goes quiet, and I can tell she’s replaying the scene in her mind same as I am. I can still see Ava slipping from my grasp into the clutches of the river. Her lifeless body washing up on shore hours later.

“What about her?”

“Leddington is her hometown.” I let the words sink in.

“Oh.”

I lick my lips. “I need to tell her family what happened. Tell her sister that with her last words she wanted her to know that she loved her. You get that, right.”

She nods. “Yeah. I’ll back you up.” . . .

“I need to do it, Nika. But how can I face them when I’m the reason she’s dead?”

Nika stops and grabs my arm. “Bria. You’re not the reason Ava’s dead. She drowned because of Commander Ark, because of Colonel Valarius. Not because of you.”

“Maybe.” I shrug. “But I couldn’t save her.” I stare off into the distance.

Nika squeezes my arm that she’s still holding. “But you tried.” . . .

“I just wish I could have done more. Wish I could have held onto her. Kept her alive.”

“It’s not your fault. But I get it.” Nika ducks under a branch. “You’re not the only one with regrets. I have them too.”

I look over at her in time to see a flash of pain sweep over her face.

“But we can’t let those regrets rule our lives. God’s forgiven us both, and He has a path for us to walk in. If we allow ourselves to be hindered by everything we wish we could change or undo we’ll never really be able to walk in the freedom of God’s plan for our lives.”

I let her words sink in, not sure how to respond. Silence stretches between us, but somehow I think we both need it. As we hike the last miles of the forest, I can’t help but wonder what Nika regrets.
Fugitive of Talionis – ARC

Turning from the false and following what is true gives us strength and leads to more strength.

The impact of choice remains to be seen. Candace Kade’s Enhanced demonstrates this.

Don’t miss these good reads, (Enhanced is out, and Fugitive of Talionis goes live on Kickstarter the 22d.) There will be new authors and books and more on choice next month.

Have a great week,

Azalea – Crossover – Find the Eternal, the Adventure

A Christmas Poem

A Christmas Clear

By His Father held more than dear, as a babe He gave Himself here

The full hope of the year, that we may live without fear.

With true food and cheer, God’s great heart without peer

To us, drew near, and sat down without a jeer

To abolish our debts in arrear, and at last every tear.

God Himself from eternity, with second person of the Trinity

In the Spirit gave us abundant life in perpetuity, this, no superfluity.

With full design He created me and thee.

In the light of His heart what will we see?

He sent possession of virtue by decree, and works it out in you and me

Virtue’s riches without fee.

Our hearts by grace rejoice to be

Bringing up jewels from life’s tumultuous sea, before our King, Who did foresee

My life I thought so carefree, my death did guarantee.

But with the evil one He did disagree

And from eternity, the tree

He did oversee.

He came to bend every knee, that our hearts might be free.

It is Christmas indeed, we in Him to be.

The star brought clarity

Here lay deity in humanity.

An oddity in brevity, beauty and charity.

Came that verity, reality

With sweet frankincense of humility, joined by highest majesty.

He banished enmity, and robbed vanity

That we might touch infinity.

Now in heartfelt jollity without banality, what ferocity of vitality.

Gone timidity, now comes tenacity;

In place of iniquity, forgiveness and dignity.

Every soul a city in unity, blessed be He, forever the Trinity.

The master of Creation, in fullness of administration

In innovation for every nation

The Jewish lion of adjuration

Kept not His exalted station, but clothed in incarnation

Took up our litigation, and offered a libation.

Worthy beyond all ovation, our joyful hearts in elation

Kneel in adoration.

Great is His salvation.
By Azalea Dabill, December 9, 2022

Merry Christmas to all!

Azalea

Crossover – Find the Eternal, the Adventure

G K Chesterton – A Wise Word for Our Times

“We are then able to answer in some manner the question, “Why have we no great men?” We have no great men chiefly because we are always looking for them. We are connoisseurs of greatness, and connoisseurs can never be great; we are fastidious, that is, we are small. . . .

“When Diogenes went about with a lantern looking for an honest man, I am afraid he had very little time to be honest himself. And when anybody goes about on his hands and knees looking for a great man to worship, he is making sure that one man at any rate shall not be great.

“Now , the error of Diogenes is evident. The error of Diogenes lay in the fact that he omitted to notice that every man is both an honest man and a dishonest man. Diogenes looked for his honest man inside every crypt and cavern; but he never thought of looking inside the thief. And there is where the Founder of Christianity found the honest man; He found him on a gibbet and promised him Paradise. Just as Christianity looked for the honest man inside the thief, democracy [a Republic] looked for the wise man inside the fool. It encouraged the fool to be wise. We can call this thing sometimes optimism, sometimes equality; the nearest name for it is encouragement. It had its exaggerations – failure to to understand original sin, notions that education would make all men good, the childlike yet pedantic philosophies of human perfectibility. But the whole was full of a faith in the infinity of human souls . . . and this we have lost amid the limitations of a pessimistic science. . . .

“It was a world that expected everything of everybody. It was a world that encouraged anybody to be anything. And in England and literature its living expression was Dickens.

“He was the voice in England of this humane intoxication and expansion, this encouraging of anybody to be anything. His best books are a carnival of liberty, and there is more of the real spirit of the French Revolution in ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ than in ‘A Tale of Two Cities.’ . . .

“Whether we understand it depends upon whether we can understand that exhilaration is not a physical accident, but a mystical fact; that exhilaration can be infinite, like sorrow; that a joke can be so big that it breaks the roof of the stars. By simply going on being absurd, a thing can become godlike; there is but one step from the ridiculous to the sublime.

“Dickens was great because he was immoderately possessed with all this; if we are to understand him at all we must also be moderately possessed with it. We must understand this old limitless hilarity and human confidence, at least enough to be able to endure it when it is pushed a great deal too far. For Dickens did push it too far; he did push the hilarity to the point of incredible character-drawing; he did push the human confidence to the point of an unconvincing sentimentalism. You can trace, if you will, the revolutionary joy till it reaches the incredible Sapsea epitaph; you can trace the revolutionary hope till it reaches the repentance of Dombey. There is plenty to carp at in this man f you are inclined to carp; you may easily find him vulgar if you cannot see that he is divine; and if you cannot laugh with Dickens, undoubtedly you can laugh at him.

“I believe myself that this braver world of his will certainly return; for I believe that it is bound up with realities, like morning and the spring. . . . I put this appeal before any other observations on Dickens. First let us sympathize, if only for an instant, with the hopes of the Dickens period, with that cheerful trouble of change.”

G K Chesterton, from Charles Dickens: The Last of the Great Men, pg 11 – 12, 17

If you have not read the above book, it is well worth reading. It has astonishing correlations to our present time and stirs thought and courage.

Thank you for visiting, I hope you found it worth your while.

Azalea

Crossover: Find the Eternal, the Adventure

Turning Point 2017 New Year Breakthrough

Leave a reply

I decided to be transparent, bite the bullet, and bare my soul.

These are the kinds of books I love: the ones that pull you deep into a a story world you wish didn’t have to end. The poetic painting of a place where you sense loyalty, love, and goodness rising to do battle against deception, despair, and hate. From the little things like the ups and downs between companions on a great journey, to the soul-tearing decisions of romance, or the life-threatening choices before you, as the hero or heroine.

A world where conflicts are fought within and without. In the intricate vales of the human spirit; in the broad ‘scapes of the land, terrible, beautiful, or engagingly homey; and most of all, in the battle between soul and soul, where the conflicting desires of a villain or villaness (if I can coin the word) and the hero or heroine, drive everything from large armies to their companions, sycophants, or honest followers. What they see and how they react decides their impact on their world, whether they spread darkness or light.

Besides the tried and true we all know, like Tolkien and Lewis, Anna Thayer’s The Knight of Eldaran trilogy, CJ Cherryth’s Fortress in the Eye of Time, Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword, Sherwood Smith’s Crown Duel, Dennis McKiernan’s The Iron Tower trilogy and The Silver Call duology, Patrick Carr’s The Shock of Night: these types of stories all draw me like a lodestone. In the good conflict contained within them, I glimpse the Morning Star.

This is the very reason I began to write, for those glimpses of joy, beauty, and adventure. And I have feared letting other people know how very much I like poetic, deep themed, character and conflict driven fantasy: historical fantasy, and every other kind of fantasy. Even to other genres. Except for horror and dark.

Because there is darkness enough in our world, enough emptiness, enough despair. What some call realism–the idea that we exist by chance, (which means we have no purpose, no part to play) is actually despair, not the true state of affairs in our world.

Part of Webster’s dictionary definition of despair is “without hope.” And a definition of hope is “to…hope with the expectation of attainment.” If you have no hope of attainment, (which holds solid meaning in its very definition) why do anything? What’s the point? Or why not do whatever you feel like? Tomorrow we die, with less impact than a grain of sand.

When I was a teen, despair almost ate me alive. Partially it was because I was sick, which tends to make everything look black or grey, and partially it was the horrible things I began to see in myself, in life, and in the books I was reading. Where I looked for joy and beauty I began to see betrayal, which brought unhappiness and ugliness. (Fantasy has a strange way of highlighting whatever it portrays, whether darkness or light.)

Suffice it to say, I was learning. But also absorbing what was around me without perspective. I saw a picture in my mind of dominant, rampant evil smothering good, and of despair, a kind of creeping death drawing its shadow over the world. The younger, happy me I used to be was gone, without return.

Then I began to realize, without knowing it at first, that there was more. All who follow good must fight evil, or we will be overcome. And goodness often exists, apparently overcome, but triumphant in the end.

Yes, there is darkness, and fear, and despair, and hate in us and in our world. There is also beauty and joy and hope. Because we were sent here, particular in every area of our being, of time and place, and our every step resounds through the fabric of time, and beyond.

Does this sound like a sci-fi or fantasy story?

It is. And this story is true. Because it’s true, it’s quite natural we find it reflected in many books, the great conflict between dark and light. Not always portrayed clearly or truthfully, but still glaringly there.

With God, all is hope, however we feel about it, for he works all things (even the things that hurt) to our good when we walk with the great dance of his universe, not following the destructive road of the great rebellion. The difference between books of despairing realism and those of hopeful adventure are created when we who write them see the real world, the true story, reality, as we name it, through what we believe. Here it gets tricky. You have to pay attention.

What is true, is true, whoever sees it. But the person who sees the clearest will see the most truth. God is absolute truth, and in his light, we see light. I don’t mean here that we ever see the complete truth, for we see dimly, but we can point to him, who promises to teach us.

So, what fits the world we see, and our experience, best?

That intricate and full of life as we are and our world is, all is for nothing? And consequently there is no good, and no evil? No purpose? Not even for a grain of sand?

Or that someone made all this, and us, and we can find joy and beauty and adventure in him? That we can fight evil, and it will mean something in the end, we can really save something or someone? We can really be a hero or heroine?

These opposing beliefs determine whether you see a grey world, or a world alight with its true splendor, a glory of golds and blues and greens, silver and brown and white as snow–and blackness, dark as the pit. That is not gone, just because we see the good. In fact, it becomes all the darker, revealed by the light.

As many others have said, truth makes stories possible. Truth shows good and evil as they are, opposed; shows the mixture of good and evil motives we often are, and the two roads we are torn between. Truth reveals, moment to moment, which road we are on.

I write my fantasy adventures, historical and otherwise, for teens and up, for those disillusioned or discouraged with the rampant ugliness in our world, so often showcased in books. I write for people who yearn for hope, joy, and beauty, wrapped in the clarion call of adventure.

I hope this post, my turning point in 2017, helps you. That my breakthrough, that I had a wall of my own to overcome, namely fear of you, gives you courage to cross over whatever life-changing wall looms over you this coming New Year.

Crossover: Find the Eternal, the Adventure

Yes, start this very moment.

Define good and evil, and continue your journey with truth. Make a great impact on your world.

I will feel it from here! Let me know in the comments about your wall, and how you will overcome it.

All the best,

Azalea Dabill

Editor and Author

Crossover: Find the Eternal, the Adventure

A Bit of Soul Baring – Hunting Adventures

Leave a reply

You never know what you’re going to find out in the woods, or see. Hunting is no exception. Here’s my story in pictures. I didn’t get the elk or bear meat I was after, but I got something greater. A glimpse of the vast beauty of our created world.

You never know what you’re going to come across in the woods.

An unusual arrangement of fungi . . .

Last night’s snow . . .

Or a bear crossing your track within ten minutes of you.

Continue reading →

K M Weiland’s Creating Character Arcs: The Masterful Author’s Guide

Leave a reply

Customer Review

This book will stay on my shelf., November 15, 2016

Azalea L. Dabill

This review is from: Creating Character Arcs: The Masterful Author’s Guide to Uniting Story Structure (Helping Writers Become Authors) (Volume 7) (Paperback)

This book is so good. I was given an e-copy for an honest review, and I just bought the print copy.

I’m a real write-by-feel historical fantasy author, but this comprehensive breakdown of how characters and their arcs tie in and support and drive plot is invaluable. I have a feeling I’ll be coming back to this book again and again. And the nice thing is, the author doesn’t give you the impression that “this is the way it is,” but “this is what’s possible,” and “discover greater possibilities.”

Continue reading →