Guest Blog - Azalea Dabill

Why would any reader use a study guide journal companion book for a fiction adventure story?

First let me ask a couple questions. Do you love historical or YA fantasy similar to Outlander and Lisa Bergrin’s River of Time series? Warning: If you do, you may be about to embark on another adventure.

The Falcon Chronicle Adventure Guide Journal was a challenge to write. But you’re not here to hear about that. You want to know what the guide is and what it’s for, right? 

The guide journal is a companion book to Falcon Heart, a historical medieval fantasy which Joey Paul kindly reviewed here.

This adventure guide journal goes with Falcon Heart and I may create guides for the rest of the Falcon Chronicle series. If you haven’t got Falcon Heart yet, you can get it for free on Barnes and Noble. (I’m sorry, Amazon hasn’t cottoned on that it’s perma-free and price-matched it yet.) You can also sign up for my blog letter on my website and in one of my emails I give away the Falcon Chronicle Adventure Journal Guide free. 

But why is the guide important, you ask? I reply: Isn’t it vital to overcome your life’s challenges? To grow in heart, body, and spirit? To learn through fun? And to become the fearless, strong person you are meant to be? Courage and fearlessness is not only a feeling, in fact, it’s not much about feelings at all. Stories show us how to live bravely and how to overcome our challenges with grace—or sometimes stumble through them. LOL

I studied Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander companion book, and Gene Veith’s guide to The Soul of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as well as several other study guides and companion books to create the Falcon Chronicle Adventure Guide Journal. I made it for my readers, and then I decided I had better take up my own challenge. 

So I journaled my own adventure and ways to overcome my challenges through the questions in its pages. 

Questions like: 

A) What kind of animal, bird, or creature has inspired or helped you in your life? I’m not talking about false animal spirit guides. I mean what creature has given you joy, strength, or comfort because of how God made them, glorious and beautiful and strong? 

B) What do you love about that creature? What does it mean to you? What is its name?

C) What does Kyrin feel about falcons in general? 

If you’re curious about my thoughts as I follow Kyrin chapter by chapter, from her enslavement to victory over fear and her master’s vengeance, you’ll see my journey soon after as you sign up to get my blog letter.

I know Falcon Heart is my own book, (you’d think I’d have everything down pat), but I learned things through the guide that I hadn’t even thought of while I was creating the novel Falcon Heart. Besides, I had a lot of constructive fun answering the questions that grew out of Kyrin’s struggles. They led me to adventures of the heart with Kyrin, our heroine, a stronghold first daughter in dire straits from rivals in love, from raiders, her master, and a hidden prince of the sands.

Often our inner journey is more important than the outer. Whenever I read books this is the case. The inner landscape of my imagination and the stories played out there are what matters. They impact the rest of my life more than you might think. They set mood, and thought, and actions in motion. Isn’t it so for you?

I know people often ask the author of a book what they meant their story, scene, or theme to mean, but when we’re talking about you reading a story, none of that is nearly as important as what you got out of the book. So in this adventure guide I’m going to help you to unearth the meaning you have found in Kyrin’s adventures. And point you toward what you might do with your new knowledge of yourself and the world. And in the thirteen journal entries you have free rein to write whatever you have found of value and beauty. 

So read Falcon Heart and the Adventure Guide Journal, interact with other hearts through words, and become the strong, compassionate person you are meant to be. Live your journey to the full. Become a first daughter or first son in your own stronghold, wherever you live. Enjoy the adventure of life as you follow Kyrin’s battle to rise above slavery and fear to freedom and the brave heart of the falcon.

Fierce cry

in the sky

wild and high

Your keen amber eye on the first and the last

feathers sun-kissed and vast

you kept to your cast

despite enemies amassed . . .

– Falcon’s Ode excerpt

Thank you, and enjoy the journey 

Azalea Dabill

Editor and Author

PS. (For bottom readers.) If you’re interested in The Falcon Chronicle Adventure Guide Journal, sign up at my website here. You’ll get a couple of stories and things, and in one of my emails I’ll send the free guide. And if you haven’t gotten the first adventure of the Falcon Chronicle series, you can get Falcon Heart free on Barnes and Noble, or for $0.99 cents on Amazon.

Crossover: Find the Eternal, the Adventure

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