By Tammie Fickas Are there writing opportunities you regret not taking? How about dreams you’ve put aside? Do you ever wish your life was different? What’s holding you back from taking chances and fulfilling your God-given purpose? For me, the answer is fear and more questions. What if I fail? Or look like a fool? Sometimes I let the “what …
Writing & Researching Historical Fiction
By Carol Buchanan, PhD In 1962, the first graduate school class at the University of Kansas required of English majors was called “Bibliography and Methods of Literary Research.” Literary research in that class meant historical research. The professor gave each of us a name from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries and told us to compile a bibliography of everything we …
January 2022 New Releases
January 2022 New Releases More in-depth descriptions of these books can be found on the ACFW Fiction Finder website General Contemporary: Grace Across the Miles by Christine Dillon — How can you belong when you don’t know who you are? Gina Reid is surrounded by people getting married or having babies. She’s under pressure to settle down but how can …
Christmas Stories
By Lisa Loraine Baker It’s December, which reminds me how much I love Christmas stories, both reading and writing them. All our favorite seasonal books have been brought up from storage and I placed them on a shelf above the one holding our manger scene. One by one I hope to pour through them and re-live the wonder of each …
What About Those Innkeepers?
By Donna Wichelman Most of us have heard the Christmas story. Even if you don’t subscribe to the whole message of a Christ child who was born to redeem and save a lost world, you most likely have some knowledge of the characters in the story—shepherds abiding in the fields, angel choirs in the heavens singing glory to God, a …
How Culture, Heritage, and Geographic Region Influence Our Stories
By Cynthia Herron Rich in heritage and unique in culture, The Ozarks region is a place like no other. Amidst a lush backdrop of rolling hills and hidden hollows, stories abound. Some remain elusive while others beg to be shared. In Her Faith Restored, book three of the Welcome to Ruby series, Mel’s and Matt’s story takes center stage as they attempt to …
Lessons Along the Road to Publication
By: JPC Allen Thirty-two years. That’s how long it’s taken me to see my first novel in print. Thirty-two years since I was a freshman in college and recovering from an emergency appendectomy over Christmas break. To ward off boredom, I began writing. I’d written in bits and pieces, fits and starts, since second grade. But, for the first time, …
December 2021 New Releases
December 2021 New Releases More in-depth descriptions of these books can be found on the ACFW Fiction Finder website Contemporary – General: Broken Together by Brenda S. Anderson — Jennifer and Chad Taylor had dreamed of opening a coffee and cocoa shop since before they said, “I do.” When Chad is sent to prison for murder despite claiming innocence, that …
Mother and the Chair
By Nancy Ellen Hird Writing a novel is daunting. Not the beginning. That’s all flash and magic and excitement. It’s the middles and the middles and the endings and the endings and THE endings. It’s the hundred thousand times you quit—had enough—it’s a disaster—I’m taking up kayaking. Then God breathes on you, whispers to your heart or pokes you with …
What Makes a Mystery a Cozy?
By JPC Allen Mystery or crime fiction covers many subgenres, cozy mysteries being a very popular one. What makes a mystery a cozy? Below are the four most prominent features of cozy mysteries, ones that I incorporated into my YA mystery, A Shadow on the Snow. COZY MYSTERIES ALWAYS HAVE AMATEUR SLEUTHS. One reason I think cozy mysteries are so popular …