Where’s Auralia Today? Report #5 – Amy Wellborn at CBA

Wow.

You know, so many conversations I’ve had about Auralia’s Colors with my agent and the publishers have occurred via email, that sometimes I suddenly wake up and realize…

THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING.

The characters I love — Auralia, the Ale Boy, Krawg, Warney, Cal-raven, Ark-robin, and yes, even Maugam the Jailer — they’re going out into the real world, and people are going to read about them.

One of my favorite bloggers, Amy Wellborn is at the International Christian Retail Conference, and she’s blogging about what she sees.

And, well… look at what she has seen.

Amy writes:

In case he wasn’t aware of it (and I’m sure he is), this one is for Jeffrey Overstreet, whose first novel, Auralia’s Colors, is being published by Waterbrook this fall. The book, which, from the first chapter seems to be excellent, is getting nice exposure at the show…

In fact, Amy… I didn’t know it was getting exposure like THAT.

Thanks so much for noticing!

I also noticed Auralia’s Colors mentioned in this article.

Which is interesting…

…because most of the things said in this article about “Christian fantasy fiction” have little or nothing to do with Auralia’s Colors.

My mechanic is a Christian. He fixes cars. Is his car-repair “Christian auto repair”? I wouldn’t say so. It’s just good car repair. He glorifies God by doing good work as a mechanic.

Similarly, I’m trying to glorify God by writing a memorably spooky, frightening, enthralling adventure story. I did not try to “work in Christian elements.” If you asked me, “What’s the Christian message?” I wouldn’t know what to say. There are no characters in Auralia’s Colors here that are meant to represent Jesus. (One person who read the book said to me, “It’s strange… the closest thing you have to a ‘Christ figure’ in this story is an inanimate object.” I got a good laugh out of that.)

Hopefully, Auralia’s Colors is just good storytelling. But that’s for you to judge. If it doesn’t measure up to the standards of excellence in the general-market fantasy literature, then it’s not good enough for me.