Sheer delight at the FAO Schwarz store in New York city.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lA9yBrnFyI
Blog
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 …
Setting Yourself Apart
Unfortunately, even though I’d love to represent each writer I’m fond of and enjoy hanging out with, I can’t represent everyone for a variety of reasons. That’s okay. CBA has many agents and authors, and God has a plan for all of us. But let”s say you hope your proposal rises to the top of my stack. Here are a few tips when submitting: 1.) Please follow our …
Nuance: A Key to Real-Life Characters
I love watching movies and TV. Love being transported by the stories and entertained by the characters. Lately, I’ve been keying in on something, though, that is helping me with building characters in my fiction. Nuance. It’s defined by good ol’ Webster’s as “a subtle or small distinction,” but I’m finding that it could be defined as “the difference between real-life and stereotypical characters.” …
The Accidental Theologian
I’m stepping far outside my theological pay grade today so you will need to test and weigh the words of this post. After forty years of knowing Jesus, I find myself challenging my assumptions about many things on a regular basis, attempting to see myself as God sees me. What attitudes do I have that should change? What comfortable positions do I have that are more self-deception than God’s truth? …
The Sale of Family Christian Stores Halted
In case you missed the news, late last week the judge presiding over the bankruptcy case of the Family Christian Stores (FCS), voided the auction results on which I reported three weeks ago (see that story here). There were a number of reasons for the judge’s decision. On page eleven of his 48 page ruling the judge called the auction process “nothing short of chaotic” and said that some mistakes …