I read an interesting meme on Face Book this morning, originally posted by Jennifer Powell. Fiction is fake!? How often have you heard that, or something like it? “I only read true stories.” “Fiction stories are lies.” “I don’t read fiction, I only read the Bible.” I’ve heard all of these at one time or …
Continue reading “Writers Life | Learning Through Imagination”
Members of the Beyond the Borders zone of American Christian Fiction Writers have been busy writing and publishing over the last few months … Contest Winners Calor by JJ Fischer won Best Fantasy and Book of the Year at the 2023 Realm Awards. Amy Bryant won The Oxford / Pushkin Children’s Fantasy Prize, for her …
My first two non-fiction books were published by traditional publishers: one a smaller Scottish press, and another, a mid-range US publisher. Since those first two books, I’ve self-published eight novels across two series, and two more non-fiction. Why did I switch to self-published? The initial reason was that it was becoming harder and harder to …
Continue reading “Advantages and Disadvantages of Self-Publishing”
Apart from being knee-deep in essays over the past few weeks and in the throes of writing my next book, I have been geeking out on the book of Nehemiah. The evidence in my Bible of this obsession is found in my multicoloured highlighter graffitied doodles and inked scribbling over every single page of Nehemiah’s …
Do you ever go through stages where you read several books in the same genre in a row? I do. It won’t surprise anyone to know I often read a lot of Christian romances in a row. But I’ve recently been working my way through some nonfiction titles that have been on my want-to-read pile …
Still. Something God has been working on teaching me is around the word, still. It has long been a word that I have associated with being still before God; sitting at his feet and waiting on him to speak or move. Being still and trusting that He will do something in the current season. But …
Earlier this year I read a collection of short stories based on Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. Now I’m not normally a short story gal, but reading these different stories by different authors all paying homage to a beloved fictional heroine, proved to be the perfect amount of reading before I dropped off to sleep. So …
What is success? It’s a question we often ask ourselves as Christians, as writers, and as Christian writers. As with many important questions, there is no easy answer.
“Do you want the shadow to advance ten degrees on the sundial or go back ten degrees? You choose” asks the prophet, Isaiah, to Hezekiah, as he needed a sign from God in the story found in 2 Kings chapter 20. Which way would the king choose? He chose for the sundial to go backwards …
Walking causes a repetitive, spontaneous poetry to rise naturally to the lips, words as simple as the sound of footsteps on the road. L.M. Browning Creativity thrives when we break out of our same old routine. Even the smallest changes can help get us out of a rut and encourage creative thinking. Part of my …
