by Janice Hanna Thompson What if I told you that your whole life could change in a week? You would sit up and take notice, right? The truth is, it can. If you’re a writer, all you need is one dedicated week to turn your career around. • DAY ONE: Spend a full day thinking about the topics that make …
The ROY G BIV Approach
by Cynthia Ruchti Do they still teach elementary school children the colors of refracted light, rainbow-style, via the ROY G BIV method? Memorizing seven colors in a specific order is tough…until you learn the odd but hard to forget name ROY G BIV: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Got it. Forever. Some common misspellings and punctuation glitches that …
Writing … Interrupted
by Beth K. Vogt I had another post written for today. The opening line? There’s always a reason – or two or three – not to write. I intended to blog about writing through the interruptions of life – and then the Waldo Canyon Fire erupted in the Foothills several miles from my neighborhood and my family evacuated our home. …
Be Your Agent’s Dream Client
by Greg Johnson WordServe Literary Group One thing authors wonder about is how to “behave” once they have a working relationship with a literary agent. Especially if it’s your first agent, you want to be the kind of author an agent wants to keep as a client. Agents understand that—and we want to be the kind of agent you want …
ACFW New Releases: July 2012
More in-depth descriptions of these books can be found on the ACFW Fiction Finder website. Tidewater Inn by Colleen Coble — Welcome to Hope Beach Where the sea breeze is fresh, sun sparkles on sand . . . and trouble appears with the force of a hurricane. Inheriting a beautiful old hotel on the seaward shore of Hope Island could …
Book Review: Polar Bear Plunge
Title: Polar Bear Plunge Author: Linda S. Glaz Publisher: White Rose Publishing Date: November 2011 ASIN: B006G40ZZE Genre: Romance Reviewed by: Lisa J Lickel Angry with God over the death of her active-duty military husband, nurse Aleni Callan finds herself even angrier when war hero, Brice Taylor, arrives in the emergency room with a concussion and hypothermia after participating in …
Woolworth or Tiffany’s?
by Janelle James Simplicity is beautiful. When I was a little girl, my mother and I walked by a Tiffany’s display window. We stopped and stared in appreciation. My mother placed her hand on my back and lowered her voice. “Janelle, think of a dime store display window that is so cluttered you can’t even take it all in. Now …
Learning By Teaching
by Rachel Hauck At the ACFW conference in Houston ’03, I watched the bubbly and newly published Susan May Warren dash off to teach a writing workshop one afternoon. I remember thinking, “How does she know what to teach? She’s only been published a year.” As a newly contracted author four months from my first print publication with an e-book …
Platform, Presence and the ACFW Journal
by Cheryl Wyatt Building platform and name recognition are as crucial to publishing as quotation marks to a killer line of dialogue. You may have an engaging hook and stellar book, but if you’re not on readers’ radars, low sales can impede future contracts. Even if you write as worship, marketing matters. If you’re pre-published, now is a good time …
Three Steps to Creating an Occupation for Your Characters
by Cara C. Putman As writers, one of our tasks is finding the right career for your characters. Not only do your characters populate your story, they fill roles and hold jobs. Finding the right career can be a key piece to getting the character to fit. Sometimes when I pick up a novel, it feels like the character’s job …