Benediction
Denied
A
Labyrinth of Souls Novel
by
Elizabeth Engstrom
Genre:
Epic Fantasy
While hydrologist
Adam Swan is engaged in humanitarian efforts to bring water to a
small, isolated village in the Congo, he is kidnapped by rebel thugs
and thrown into a makeshift prison. He is left to die—or worse—if
his ransom is not paid. In a surprising series of events, Adam
escapes his brutal captors into an underground labyrinth where
reality and sanity no longer rule.
Armed with a limited
amount of magic which he does not understand, he survives by
employing it boldly, recklessly, desperate to return to the village
above, homesick for Minnesota and normal life with his wife and
daughters.
Tested to the
extreme limits of his endurance, Adam navigates the labyrinth with
only the company of his past behavior, the baffling magic, and the
seductive temptation to succumb to the mysterious and merciless gods
of the underworld. The consequences of his actions, past present, and
future, take him to the brink of death—and beyond.
A fun, fast,
thrilling ride by veteran author Elizabeth Engstrom, inspired
by Matthew Lowes’ Dungeon Solitaire: Labyrinth of Souls card
game.
--If
you buy the paperback, you will receive the ebook free!--
Elizabeth
Engstrom is the author of fourteen books and has over 250 short
stories, articles, and essays in print. She is a sought-after teacher
and keynote speaker at writing conferences, conventions, and seminars
around the world. She has a BA in Literature/Creative Writing, and
an MA in Applied
Theology, both from Marylhurst University. Her
most recent nonfiction book is How to Write a Sizzling Sex
Scene, and her most recent novel is Baggage Check, a thriller.
She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her fisherman-husband and
their dog where she is on the board of directors for Wordcrafters in
Eugene. She teaches the occasional writing class, puts her pen to use
for social justice, and is always working on her next book.
Guest Post:
My process for writing a book is a
simple one. I’ve refined it over the years, and as I always tell my students:
If you don’t have a process, adopt mine and then massage it until it works for
you. There are as many ways to write a book as there are writers.
The first thing I know is the
ending. Seriously. I hear writers say they never know where the book ends until
they get there. I find that highly suspicious. I’m not going to get on an
airplane without knowing where it is going to land, and I am certainly not
going to devote 9-12 months of my life on a story that has no discernible
ending. I might change my mind midway, but at least I have a point toward which
I write. This ending is not set in stone, as the characters will have a say in
it once they get their personalities revved into action. But I have a basic
understanding of how the book ends.
Then I start at the beginning. Good
fiction is circular in nature; the ending echoes the beginning. So if you don’t
know your ending, look for it in the beginning. By the same token, if you know
your ending, you can find your beginning therein.
Then write it. My daily process is
to write 5, 7, 10 pages and then go do something quiet while I think about what
I’ve just written. The next day I do a little light editing on yesterday’s work
and then get on with the day’s pages. That procedure continues all the way to
the end. I never go back and fix something once it has been written, except for
that next day. I keep a legal pad of notes of things that need to be fixed, but
that happens in the second draft.
My first drafts are ugly, messy,
hairy, misshapen things, but that’s where all the hard work is. When the first
draft is finished, I let it cool for two weeks, and then tackle the second
draft, rearranging chapters, changing characters, making sure the story works.
My whole purpose for a first draft is story. My whole purpose of the second
draft is also story. By the end of the second draft, I am confident in my
story, and then after a cooling period, the third draft is about fixing all the
little things that make a reader stumble. I want the end result to read like
the wind.
And then it goes out to agent
and/or editor, and I try to forget it and get on with the next project.
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