I saw this photo and created the following poster for your “edification.”
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How to be a Woman?
This will be our last trip down Memory Lane for a while. I hope you have fun with today’s post and think about how your female characters live. We’re bombarded with ads today and we were yesterday, too. How to be a woman? I was trying to figure all of this out as I was growing up. I knew I wanted to be a Proverbs 31 woman, but she was really embodied in my grandmother Bagley, Precious. (She …
Writing through the Fog
You may have noticed I haven’t had a blog posted here since losing my dear dad a few weeks ago. I want to thank all of you for your kind expressions of sympathy and your encouragement. You blessed me a great deal. God has held me close, granting me wondrous touches of His kindness and peace. Though grief hits me at unexpected times—such as last night, while I was clearing off the kitchen counter …
Book Publishing Before the Internet
When I first started working in book publishing, Amazon was a river in Brazil and social media was a radio DJ holding a dance party at the local mall. The word “internet” either didn’t exist or was possibly some sort of technical term known only to commercial fishermen. Did the publishing industry actually exist in any meaningful form before 1995? Cringe. Certainly, the publishing landscape has …
Prayer is Not a Transaction
Recently I was teaching on Luke 18:1-5 (verses are below) about the parable of the persistent widow and developed some thoughts that might be pertinent for you today. In our world, commerce is based on the idea of a transaction. I give you something (like money) and you give me something in return (like a service or a product). We are immersed in this concept. Give=Get. The world treats prayer in …
Marketing to Him and Her
How do you market your books? Do you tend to market them to men or women? Obviously we want everyone to read our books, but many naturally fall into a female/male divide. With the exception of books with “Women” or “Men” in the title, I don’t see today’s book marketing to be especially drawn by these lines. Rather, the book is presented and the reader chooses what to buy. As with last week, let’s …
The Writer’s Prayer
Mainly because he isn’t around to defend himself, I am going to take issue today with the great Saint Augustine of Hippo.* Intellectually and spiritually I know he would eat my lunch, so I waited sixteen hundred years after his death to be sure it was safe. Also, since Augustine didn’t speak and write in English, but Latin, I assume his writing lost something in the translation. If he were to come …
The Unintentionally Funny Headline
I came across the following headline in a recent publisher-related newsletter: “Speculative Authors Fight Mental Illness” I thought to myself “I know what they meant by the headline, but could it also be interpreted that authors who write speculative fiction are mentally ill?” There are some who call science fiction and fantasy writers “weird” but this headline …
Fun Fridays – September 30, 2016
Watch this incredible impressionist perform Shakespeare in celebrity voices. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8PGBnNmPgk