Enjoy this brother and sister piano duet…with some great twists throughout!
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Tamela’s 2015 ICRS Report
As Steve Laube reported on Monday, ICRS was enlightening, entertaining, energetic, and frenetic. (I ran out of “e” words.) One “s” word I looked forward to upon my return home? Sleep! As a member of AWSA (Advanced Writers and Speakers Association), I entered ICRS infused with a great amount of love and support from many sisters in Christ because the AWSA conference takes …
The How-To of Legacy
Wonderful thoughts last week. Thanks so much for sharing your experiences, honesty, and wisdom. Just one of the many reasons I so admire you folks. So here are my thoughts on this topic. As Connie Almony wrote, it’s not about the big things we do, it’s the small, everyday things. In fact, it’s about one specific thing: Choices. Legacy stems from the multitude of choices we make every day. It’s …
How to Know When to Stop Writing
At one time or another every person in the world must make a similar decision. We all need to decide when it is time to quit doing something. It is a metaphor-rich moment. Put your foot down. Put a fork in it. Walk away and don’t look back. The end of the road. Pack it in. Stop playing the game. Not going to take it any more. Close the book. Uncle. How do you know when it is time to stop …
ICRS 2015 – Observations
Last week the industry gathered in Orlando for the annual booksellers convention (I.C.R.S. – International Christian Retail Show). This was my 34th consecutive event and this year had some new benefits. I’ll run through some of the highlights and then make some observations. 1) Like last year, Tamela Hancock Murray and Dan Balow attended as well. We tried to do our meetings with publishers as a …
Fun Fridays – July 3, 2015
Sheer delight at the FAO Schwarz store in New York city. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lA9yBrnFyI
Rejection Hurts Us, Too
My office receives many submissions every week and we must send out many rejections right away. Those aren’t so painful. Rejected manuscripts include: 1.) Game plans on how to pick up more and hotter women. 2.) Horror novels. 3.) Stream of consciousness meanderings. Others are near misses. The near misses are by far the most painful. They include: 1.) The talented fiction author missing the …
Are You Leaving a Legacy Now?
Two weeks ago I wrote about a video made to honor Paul Lee, a student at Seattle Pacific University whose life was ended too soon in the shooting a year ago. The video mourned his loss, but it also celebrated his life and showed the impact he’d had on those he met in his few years of life. When I first watched the video, it inspired and challenged me. Paul’s legacy is one of joy and dance and …
Bestsellers Twenty Years Ago
Twice each year, I take this space on the agency blog and make a trip down memory lane to see what books were selling many years ago. If you understand from where books have come, you can understand where books are going. Below is the New York Times bestseller list from July 2, 1995 and the Christian Booksellers Association list from July, 1995. A lot has happened in twenty years. NOTE: Check out …
Does Genre Matter?
Earlier this month two literary heavyweights discussed the issue of “Genre” and whether or not it should exist in its current form. Read Neil Gaiman and Kazuo Ishiguro’s discussion in the New Statesman. It all started because Ishiguro’s new novel Buried Giant is not presented as a Fantasy novel despite having a number of elements in it that would brand it as a Fantasy (like ogres). The argument is …