ACFW Book Club

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Have you heard about our ACFW Bookclub? Each month the club chooses two ACFW members’ books that have been submitted by the authors. I run the giveaway where the chosen authors (from our monthly poll) donate 4 copies of their books to Bookclub members. Then, we have announcements on upcoming discussions with blurbs about each chosen book. We do our …

Ten Tips For Better Characterization

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by Maureen Lang 1) Realistic, natural dialogue. Like a musician with an ear for notes, be a writer with an ear for conversational rhythm. Read your dialogue aloud to be sure it sounds like what you hear around you-only better! Real life might afford extraneous “ums,” repetitions, and unclear meaning but the written word allows only clarity and tight communication. …

Conflicted Hearts

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by Laurie Alice Eakes Recently, a writer asked why conflict so often seemed to be understood as sniping and snarky comments between the hero and heroine. She knew that conflict had to arise from something more than attitudes verging on hostility, but how? I promised her a blog post on the subject. Mind you, this is targeted at romance-oriented stories, …

Book Review: Maggie’s Journey

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Title: Maggie’s Journey (McKenna’s Daughters, Book 1) Author: Lena Nelson Dooley Publisher: Realms Date: October 2011 ISBN: 978161638589 Genre: Historical Fiction Reviewed by: Cara Putman With Maggie’s Journey, Lena Nelson Dooley crafts an engaging first book in a story of triplets separated at birth. Maggie Caine is approaching her 18th birthday, living under the stress of a mother who can’t …

Writing in the Now

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by Jill Elizabeth Nelson When teaching the techniques of Deep Point of View that will virtually squash issues with show/don’t tell, I emphasize the importance of writing lively, linear prose. In other words, every sentence must remain in the Now-not darting ahead or lagging behind in the sequence of events. This does not mean our characters can’t consider past or …

Counting Reasons to Attend Writers’ Conferences

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By Becky Jacoby Five years ago, if anyone would have asked me about attending a writers’ conference, I would have advised against it. Even though I dreamed bigger dreams and was working steadily, I thought, “Why spend money to learn things already available in a plethora of online resources or books? Just do some homework, keep working on writing skills …

When the Words Won’t Come

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by Mary Ellis Every writer whether our contemporaries or long gone has wrestled for hours when they can’t string seven words together into a concise sentence. We doubt ourselves, our mentors, the process we thought we’d perfected, even the quality of beans that went into our cup of java. It happens to the best of us. And it will happen …

A Writer’s Good Friend: Kindle Notes & Highlights

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by Robin Lee Hatcher Recently, a number of writer friends have switched from the use of Kindles to the Nook or stated they are thinking of doing so. They’ve had different reasons for buying a new Nook. Always wanting to stay informed, I decided to do a little research about features and pros and cons to the different devices. No …

Subsidiary Rights

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by Natasha Kern Natasha Kern Literary Agency I’ve been thinking recently about subsidiary rights because I’m going to Anaheim for the RWA conference. Attending RWA includes meeting with clients, editors and new writers and arranging a private lunch for my clients to meet with Amazon execs to discuss ebooks. I’ll also be meeting with film folks. With several films optioned, …

Book Review: Cooking the Books

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Title: Cooking the Books (Sloane Templeton Mystery. Book 1) Author: Bonnie Calhoun Publisher: Abingdon Press Date: April 2012 ISBN: 978-1426733888 Genre: Contemporary Fiction Reviewed by: Cara Putman Sloane Templeton’s life is chaos in Cooking the Books. Her mom’s died, she’s running a business she doesn’t want, and she longs to get back to computer forensics. Instead, she’s trying to avoid …