More than 60 Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy writers showed up for the Realm Makers Conference in St. Louis at the University of Missouri St. Louis (note: this is different from St. Louis University as I learned after spending an hour wandering around the dormitories of the wrong campus in the dark.)

The conference was organized by Becky Minor who did a very good job. She organized this conference in St. Louis mostly from her home in Pennsylvania.

No conference is without its issues. I took part in planning three conferences in Boise from my home in Boise and I ran into enough issues to know what a task it is on that level. On the level that Becky did it, it's a great achievement, with few snags along the way.

I hope this becomes an annual event and I was honored to be there for the first one.

What we had was two very full days of writing and fellowship. We heard from industry leaders in the Christian Sci Fi/Fantasy industry.

Some highlights:

1) No Indie/Small Publisher is Writing the Breakaway Christian Speculative Best Seller: Our conference featured the very talented and prolific Bryan Davis, as well as Kathy Tyers who has written for the Star Wars franchise and had some successful Christian books for Bethany.

However, the bulk of the authors were from smaller presses and indie authors. The results mentioned were cause for thought. On average, book sales for small publishers like Marcher Lord Press and Splashdown books were in the hundreds per title, with a few books reaching the high number of the low thousands.

On one hand, the numbers are sobering suggesting that by and large, Indie Christian Speculative Authors aren't finding their market. On the other hand, it does mean that just because you're not selling thousands of Christian speculative book doesn't meant that you're doing something wrong within the genre.

Hard work was identified as the key. One indie author said it was her practice to keep writing books and because of that she was averaging sales of 150 titles per month. Even Davis has enjoyed his success to his tireless promotional schedule. The key is hard work. Of course, those of us with full time jobs are looking for a "smarter not harder" way, but it may just be more time, more work, and more study. But the positive take away was that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with where I was as a Small press/Indie author of Christian Speculative fiction.

2) Worldviews Matter: One of my favorite sessions was
L.B. Graham's class on worldviews in fiction. I thought this was so helpful as he went through examined how the worldsviews of men like Asimov and Ray Bradbury came out their fiction.It served as a good reminder to be sure of our own worldview and the message we're communicating with our fiction which can be as important as some of the content issues that people address if not more so.

3) Comics Are Cool: Matt Yocum who has written for the Avengers, Wolverine, and for Indie Comics gave a presentation on comics and then we had a 1-on-1 where I talked with him about my ideas for a Tales of the Dim Knight graphic novel/comic series. Also, during the Saturday night book signing, his table had to be one of the most popular, as people were intrigued by comics.

There is huge potential in the comic book world. I think there are many things about it that are done poorly in mainstream comics that hurt the medium. Having to know 50 years of comic book history to know what the heck is going on is probably a disincentive, as are many of the plot choices, but I think that are small group had an interest that could be made greater with the right writers and creators.

4)Just Write It: One of the least productive "debates" among Christians is whether Christians should only be authors of Christian Fiction or Christians who Write Fiction.

Jeff Gerke, an author of several books on writing and the publisher of Marcher Lord Press took this on his closing remarks saying that Christians who write were called either to write to challenge the Church or to write to the broader world, and that rather than fighting among ourselves, we should, "Let Peter go to the Jews and Paul go to the Gentiles." and bless each other in our callings. Amen to that.

More than that though, Gerke suggested that we needed to get some liberty just as authors when it came to all "the rules" that fiction writing experts place on writers as absolutes that really are just opinions. He described how writers could be frustrated, discouraged, and confused when giving conflicting rules by different experts. One expert demands that description be cut while another demands copious amounts of it so that they can see the scene. An author changes his work for expert #1 only to get slapped down for the changes he made by expert #2. This is a real life scenario that just drives writers nuts.

Gerke talked about writing a book that would take a look at all of these rules, examine the various opinions on questions like description and the use of prologues as to why different experts come down on different sides of these debates so that writers can find their own voice and write their books the way they want to.

To me, this is a book concept I'm very excited about and I think its really needed so that authors can focus on writing their books in a way that engages readers rather than impossibly trying to please every single writing expert.

Once again, this was a great conference and I look forward to more.