L.B. Graham — author of the series "The Binding Of The Blade"

This week, our blog tour turns to Jonathan Rogers, author of The Wilderking Trilogy among other things. This short summary comes from wilderking.com, where you can check both Jonathan and his series further: Jonathan Rogers grew up in Georgia, where he spent many happy hours in the swamps and riverbottoms on which the wild places of The Wilderking are based. He received his undergraduate degree from Furman University in South Carolina and holds a Ph.D. in seventeenth-century English literature from Vanderbilt University. The Bark of the Bog Owl has already found a receptive audience among Jonathan’s own six children. The Rogers clan lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where Jonathan makes a living as a freelance writer. The Bark of the Bog Owl is his first novel.

It's a real pleasure for me to blog about Jonathan, as he was one of the writers on the Tour I knew least, going in, but of all the many fine authors I spent time with on the Tour, he was the one I came away feeling that I'd gotten to know the best. In some ways we are very different, as anyone who has read our respective series will be able to attest, but in other ways I think we are kindred spirits, and we enjoyed many fine hours in each others' company. Without further ado then, here are the four questions I posed to Jonathan this week, for an lbgraham.com exclusive.

LBG: I see a lot of advice for aspiring writers that moves toward “mechanics,” steps to take, things to do, etc. I’ve heard you say some interesting things about “how fiction does its work,” that I think is also very helpful for those who want to write it, would you summarize some of your thoughts on that for us?

JR: The short version is simply this: narrative works on us at the level of desire. Narrative is uniquely suited to the task of changing what we want…or, rather, helping us see that what we want isn’t necessarily what we thought we wanted. The truth is that we want a lot of different things—conflicting things—and it takes discipline to see that the thing that’s barking at you the loudest isn’t necessarily the thing you want the most. Or, if you don’t have that kind of discipline (and I suspect most of us don’t) you might need some help from the imagination. So often we pursue the wrong things because we have trouble imagining that the right things are truly desirable. Fiction gives you the opportunity to inhabit another self and say, “Hey, I could get used to pursuing the right and the true,” or “Hey, a life of virtue actually seems like a grand adventure that I want to be a part of,” or “Ooh, selfishness doesn’t actually feel so good when taken to its logical conclusion.” And the author, if he or she trusts the narrative, never has to say, “Hey, kids, remember not to be selfish!”

If I may quote from my (now out of print) book The World According to Narnia, “Instead of giving a lecture on the importance of staying warm, C.S. Lewis builds a fire and says, ‘Here, feel this.’” That’s how good fiction does its work on you. Narrative lets you enter into another experience, to try it on. That’s very different from, say, an expository essay, which has its own charms and uses. I like essays too, but the do their work in a very different way.

The power of narrative, by the way, can be used for ill as well as good. Advertisers use narrative to convince you that you want what they’re selling, whether you need it or not.

[NOTE: Believe it or not, this really is the short version. JR has a lot of good stuff to say on this subject, as you can see!]

LBG: The Wilderking Trilogy might stretch some preconceived notions of what “fantasy” really is, so how would you introduce the series for those who haven’t read it?

JR: I’ve found “frontier fantasy” to be a pretty helpful tag for describing the Wilderking books. The world of the Wilderking is a frontier world, where civilization barely holds its own against the wilderness from which it was carved. That in itself isn’t especially unusual in fantasy. There are plenty of frontierish places in, say, The Lord of the Rings—or, for that matter, in your books. Or think about the frontiers in Star Wars; the cantina is nothing more than a Wild West saloon. The Wilderking books are different in that they play to a distinctly American vision of the frontier. The less civilized characters talk like American swampers and frontiersmen; the hunters in Last Camp wear buckskin; the feechiefolk have a lot in common with Native American tribesmen (though they don’t have quite the same dignity). I figured, if it’s a fantasy world, an American look and feel is no less appropriate than a British/European look and feel.

Then there’s the question of fantastic elements such as magic or fantasy animals, none of which appear in the Wilderking. In the earliest, roughest outlines of the story, I left open the possibility that there would be dragons, giants, goblins, maybe a little magic. But as I entered more fully into a world that looked like Georgia or Florida before the Europeans arrived, “fantasy” elements seemed almost redundant. I think you told me, LB, that you’ve been to the Okefenokee Swamp. Could that place really be more fantastical? As I began to tease out the marvels of pioneer (and pre-pioneer) Georgia and Florida—its landscapes, its peoples, its history—I got less interested in populating that world with the traditional trappings of fantasy. Alligators seemed a good substitute for dragons (can you imagine what Hernando de Soto and friends thought of the first alligators they saw? Probably similar to what they would have thought of dragons). Before long I decided I wasn’t open after all to “fantasy elements.” Aidan faces a giant in Book 1, but actually the giant is only the size of Shaquille O’Neal. Neither the narrator nor Aidan uses the word ‘giant,’ though other characters do. The feechiefolk seem to have the power to appear and disappear, but pretty early in Book 1 the reader realizes that they’re just good at hiding. And the miners, who would be dwarves in many fantasy books, are just miners.

[NOTE: Yes, I have been to the Okefenokee Swamp as a boy, and it did seem a different world from the Maryland of my past or even the Missouri of my present.]

LBG: On tour, you talked a lot about how the books explore “wildness,” and why God has put this “wildness” in us. Any comments you’d like to make about the subject or even if you’re willing, any hints at some of the conclusions you’ve come to on this?

JR: We devote so much energy to getting and/or staying comfortable, but anybody who’s spent ten minutes thinking about it knows that it’s in the discomfort of the wilderness that God does most of his work on us.

LBG: Looking back at the Motiv8 Tour, what events and experiences stand out to you as memorable now that we are some distance removed from it?

JR: 1. The first time I heard Wayne Batson read. I started setting goals for my own read-alouds.
2. Sitting with Sharon Hinck in the coffeeshop of a bookstore in Portland. A young father comes in with his three-year-old son. More to the point, a young father is dragging his three-year-old son by the arm, and the boy is screaming, “NOOOO! I don’t want to go to the bookstore.” I turn to Sharon and say, “This is what we’re up against.”
3. The van rides. It didn’t matter which row you ended up in, or who was sitting with you. There was going to be lively conversation.
4. At a Super 8 in Sacramento, sitting with you and talking by the smallest swimming pool I’ve ever seen. I knew we were laying the foundation for a long, long friendship.
5. The little boy at the children’s hospital in Fresno—do you remember his name?—who, in spite of grave illness, lit the place up with his enthusiasm and joy.
6. Also in Fresno, the housing project where we read and signed books. There was a teenager there who got hold of one of your books and, no matter how much activity swirled around him, didn’t look up from it the rest of the time.
7. A lot of the other Motiv8 tourers have mentioned the night at Calvary Chapel in Huntington Beach, and I have to echo that. What an amazing night!

[NOTE: I don't remember the boy's name, but I bet all of the Motiv8-ers remember the boy! And yes, the pool at the Super 8 was tiny, but the company was incomparable.]

SPECIAL BONUS QUESTION!

LBG: This is a variation of my “special bonus Q” to Eric last week: if Maryland gets matched with Vandy in a bowl game this year, who will win?

JR: Since we’re on the subject of fantasy, I’ll say Vandy wins by two touchdowns.

Fantasy indeed!

At any rate, this has been a brief introduction to Jonathan Rogers, who I sincerely hope you will all check out. From what I've seen of his work, he's a phenomenal writer. In fact, in my humble opinion, and from the bits and pieces I've seen of the 8 authors who went on this year's tour, he's the best of us all.