Jonathan’s Shield By Channing Turner Guest Post!

It is Celticlady's Reviews pleasure to have Channing Turner, author of Jonathan's Shield here today! Scroll down to read the guest post!

Jonathan’s Shield

By Channing Turner

Genre: Biblical Historical

Beral's only goal is to serve loyally as Jonathan's shield bearer and protect his prince through whatever battles may come.  But Jonathan needs a friend as well, a man he can trust while navigating the precarious footing of his father's court. Being that friend puts Beral's life in danger and stretches his loyalty to the breaking point.  For what Jonathan wants is to do Yahweh's will, whether that be through defying his increasingly paranoid father, King Saul, or supporting the aspirations of young David, whom Jonathan believes is the rightful heir to the throne.

As he competes with David for the hand of the king's daughter, Beral struggles to hold true to his loyalties, even while he watches King Saul descend into madness.

If Yahweh withdraws his protective hand, Beral, and his men will be all that stand before their gathering enemies.  Only one thing is certain: Beral's fate, as well as the future of Israel, is tied to the virtue of their king, and Saul's honor has long since fled.

Author Bio

A son of the South, Channing Turner grew up in Arkansas and Louisiana before graduating from Louisiana State University in Psychology. He did graduate work in marine biology and became an estuarine biologist along the Texas coast. After retiring from the petrochemical industry where he worked in Louisiana and Montana as a laboratory analyst, he managed the 2010 US Census in Montana and northern Wyoming. He now lives in eastern Washington with his wife, Barb.

Channing served in the army and was discharged as an Armor captain. Reading and writing are his sedentary pursuits, but he also enjoys riding his Tennessee Walker in the Blue Mountains of Washington and Oregon.

Website: www.channingtbooks.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/channingturnerbooks

On Red Adept: http://bit.ly/RAPJShield 

On Amazon: http://amzn.to/1WlCAo9

I suppose that in an unstructured post like this I can ramble along in the manner of a James Joyce stream of consciousness. Some folks might call it a rant, but, since I get to pick the topic(s), I thought I’d go into some observations about being a first-time author. I now have a published novel so I qualify as an expert example.

First of all, I’ve discovered there are scads of books and magazines out there with advice about writing a book—POV, “show, don’t tell”, settings, plots, voice, how much sex, how much profanity, timelines, outlines, etc, etc. I’ve bought them all and read those pieces with great interest. In the end, however, I don’t think I followed many of their suggestions except for “show, don’t tell”. That was the one piece of instruction that jerked me up short. You don’t realize you’re doing a “telling, not showing” yourself until you have some examples pointed out to you. But, once you do see it, you’ll find it everywhere in your first draft. That one nugget of advice turned out to be the biggest gold find for me in a heap big pile of slag. Otherwise, it seemed better to just write in whatever style I felt comfortable doing without trying to remember all those conflicting opinions. I know I did draw heavily on the styles of writers I admire and like to read, except maybe Shakespeare.

Secondly. So what did I find helpful rather than a few “How to” readings?  Easy. My writers critique group. Once a week, more or less, I meet with a small collection of people who have varying experience at writing, from published author to never-finished-anything-yet novice. It’s a beta reader ensemble without your family and friends. We each submit a piece of our work, such as a chapter or short story, via the internet. You do that a few days beforehand to give everyone time. Then it is dissected by the others when we gather face to face. It gives almost instant feedback on whatever you’re working on, and then you get to help--I hope--someone else with their project. Remember my saying that I had to have my own “showing, not telling” put up in my face before I could see it? Where do you think that happened? That’s right, the critique group. It has been, hands down, the most useful and, for the most part, enjoyable help that I’ve had in writing. It also keeps you accountable to someone else for those times when you feel like slacking off. Find a group yourself, and join it if you can.

For the third observation, I’ll impart, let's talk a little bit about what happens after you get a book published.( I know, I know. I’m leaving out the part about getting an agent or publisher. That’s hard, I admit, but I don’t want to cover that topic now, and remember, this is my rant.) As you probably already realize, writing a novel or almost anything else, is mostly done alone. Even with the support of that writer's group that welcomed you with open arms, it’s still basically just you and a laptop in a room somewhere. Then, after months or a year or so, you get it done and present your creation to the world. Let me tell you, it’s like someone turned over the rotten log you were hiding under. Suddenly you’re exposed, blinking and stinking, in bright sunlight. Your pasty white (in some cases) skin will redden, and you get uncomfortable. You start having to tell strangers about your writing and about yourself. Those wriggly critters you always see trying to scatter when their log is upended are doing so because they didn’t expect any of this. They may have been dreaming once about coming out into the daylight, but they didn’t know it would be like this. Some of them thought it would never happen anyway. That’s what my coming out party has been like. It surprised me just how much self-marketing is involved with being an author. Don’t get me wrong. This blog tour with its posts and reviews has actually been a lot of fun. After all, everybody’s favorite topic is themselves.  I just didn’t see all this post-writing work coming.

All right, I just reread everything I wrote so far, and I see it’s pretty vague and really doesn’t explain a thing to any great degree so I’m truly not that much of an expert on being a novice. However, if you’d like, drop me a comment. I can always make up some more stuff. I would be pleased to hear from you.