CSFF Tours the Lost Genre Guild

This month, one of the book tours I regular decided to review an organization instead: the Lost Genre Guild. The LGG is a group of science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers, most of whom are Christian and most of whom write stuff that glorifies the Lord, that banded together to market and promote the genres that rarely show up on the shelves at Christian bookstores, unless of course your name is Ted Dekker or Frank Peretti.  The spiffy term the guild uses, besides the Lost Genre, is Biblical Speculative Fiction. Since it’s not linked to the top level of the domain, the LGG’s site also has a spiffy new bulletin board with a gold mine’s worth of goodies for writers, including marketing tips.

Now, you won’t get an actual review from me because it would violate my personal ethics on grounds of conflict of interests as I am way too intimately acquainted with this group. I’m actually a founding member and was one of the voices that dreamed this baby into being in the first place. Between my husband Adam and myself, we have four short stories in the Guild’s anthology, Light at the Edge of Darkness. For those who don’t understand, a wife who’s been married any length of time knows her husband better than anyone and has no illusions that he’s perfect. Still, if she’s a wise wife, in public, she’ll sing her husband’s praises rather than airing his dirty laundry. I take my reviews too seriously to show similar wisdom on this tour.

Now for a picture of the guy who made dreams reality:

Okay, now that we’ve got the prerequisite picture of Frank Creed in bunny ears out of the way, here’s a round up of what’s buzzing:

FantasyThyme posts an interview with Frank Creed and discusses Thyme’s experiences with the Guild, including brief comments on Light-Darkness, and Creed’s novel, Flashpoint.

Rebecca LuElla Miller has a brief overview of the history of the guild and has a check list of who’s actually posted on the tour (obviously I wasn’t checked ye t when I visited)

The 160 Acre Woods cuts and pastes the Guild’s mission and vision statements and asks their readers what they’ve heard and what lost genre books they enjoy.

Adventures in Fiction delves into the genre descriptions I mentioned earlier and highlights the services of The Guild Review, the group’s book review arm.

Brandon Barr is excited to be featuring a group he’s a member of with an enthusiastic and far more thorough run down of what the group’s about and writes up a healthy rendition of the famous Uncle Sam Wants You poster. He also links to Grace Bridges’ revamp of the Lost Genre Guild Blog, now covering the buzz and the genre news.

At Virtual Book Tour de ‘Net Karina confesses to posting two weeks early and links to their interview of Frank Creed (who I should warn you is as long winded as yours truly, but covers everything  you could possibly want to know about us.) This week she posts interviews with Terri Main and Grace Bridges, before answering her own questions as she’s also a member.

Mike Lynch’s Literary Musings confesses that Lynch is as biased as the rest of us touring our own writer’s group. Let me bunny rabbit and say no criticism is intended to those who felt comfortable taking a stab at this pie. He also has insightful comments on what makes or breaks any group: the people in it, and tries to take a stab at describing the inner workings of our private mailing list. I illustrated some of what he mentions by dragging out the bunny ears picture. We’re a group that, in general, prays hard, fights hard (in good ways and bad), and laughs hard, much like a family. Sometimes a tad dysfunctional, but I tend to suspect normal’s a myth.

Creative Madness explains what the Guild’s about from an outsider’s perspective.

Steve Rice, also a founding Guild member, but with all the professionalism of a reporter, lets the voices inside his head, er characters from his own sci-fi works, give the LGG the Mystery Science Theatre treatment that he’s too good at.  In a Great Minds Think Alike (GMTA) moment, Rice naturally also has a link to the bunny ears picture.

Seriously, though, much as we all love BunnyMan, as I’m sure he’d be the first to acknowledge, groups like this don’t fly by the efforts or dreams of one man alone. Creed was instrumental and we wouldn’t exist without him, but the Guild is actually the result of the collective efforts and dreams of all my crew at Dan Weaver’s critique group (no longer active, unfortunately, or I’d link it.) In our ADD culture, though, listing off the names of everyone who founded it takes too long, so naturally we usually limit the credits to the big dog (Creed.)

Lastly, to crown off the LGG touring itself (LOL), the Lost Genre Guild’s blog chimes in with sound bites from the guys I rounded up and hog tied (hey, I live in the old west!) Assuming Grace did this one, so it’s another GMTA moment.