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 …
Category Archives: Writers Life
Advantages and Disadvantages of Self-Publishing
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 …
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Devotional | Resolute Resolve
By Wendy Parker 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 …
A Nonfiction Reading Binge
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 …
DEVOTIONS: Still
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 …
Short Story Fun
By Carolyn Miller 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 …
What is Success? (as shared at the 2023 Omega Writers Retreat)
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.
Ten Degrees
By Wendy Parker “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 …
Take Your Ideas For a Walk
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 …
Love in Action
By Meredith Resce Romans 12:9-21 This passage in Romans (New International Version) is marked as ‘Love in action’. What an intriguing idea. I’d like to pull out a few of the pieces of advice to focus on them in context of how we serve the Kingdom of God in our writing. V9. Love must be …