By Angela D. Shelton Well Done! I’ve heard it said many times. It’s even crossed my own lips. Perhaps these words have slipped off your tongue as well. If I can help only one person with my writing, it will be worth it. There it is—the ultimate selfless act. We struggle through the outline, the muddle in the middle, the …
Find Your People
By Suzie Waltner “Now you are the body of Christ and each one of you has a part in it.” 1 Corinthians 12:27 We were built for relationships. For community. It’s the structure of the church in 1 Corinthians 12:12-27. Jesus surrounded Himself with twelve men during His earthly ministry. Paul and the other apostles established communities of churches to …
Things I Would Tell My Younger Writer Self
By Darlene L. Turner Time travel stories have always fascinated me. Back to the Future, Star Trek’s The Voyage Home, and Kate & Leopold are a few movies that come to mind. There are lots more. I loved seeing how people reacted in times not their own. I realize these are scripted movies, but it makes me wonder how I …
Learning from Reading a Master Novelist
By Carol Buchanan, PhD The best thing fiction writers can do for ourselves is to read fiction. Read any novel you can get your eyeballs on. Read popular novels, novels you wouldn’t write on a bet, novels of all sorts and in as many genres as you can without saying “Yuck” and throwing the book away. (Because we want to …
Love Bomb
By Angela D. Shelton The past month has been disheartening. Multiple problems have snarled up my idyllic life. My first ever published books had anemic sales, even though I invested in advertisements. A drought is decimating the pastures on our ranch, forcing us to buy hay in the spring, a first for us. The trifecta is that my husband now …
How a Book Launch Team Works
By Frank DiBianca Knowing new authors have many questions about the publication process, I am relating my experience with Iron Stream Fiction, an imprint of Iron Stream Media. One of the questions on the forms my publisher asked me to fill out in preparation for the publication of my suspense novel, Laser Trap (LT), was “Do you want to work …
Act On It
By Davalynn Spencer “I’m drawing a blank,” said the caption beneath the girl’s empty cartoon frame. She smiled up at me. “Funny, huh?” I had to admit it was funny, but a cop-out, too. “The assignment is to draw a cartoon: single frame with caption below, or four-frame strip with bubbled dialogue inside.” What a great class, I thought as …
The Long but Happy Path of a Debut Suspense Novelist
By Frank DiBianca I decided to present the history of my debut fiction novel, Laser Trap, because I hope you will find it informative and helpful. My pre-retirement writing career started with a 9,000-word short story entitled The Love Coach about an insecure engineering grad student doing research with lasers and his platonic love coach. During the period 2013-2019, my …
10 Tips for Radio Interview Preparation
By Jill K. Willis It’s amazing how one 30-minute experience can teach so many lessons. Last February, Bob Crittenden, host of the Meeting House on Faith Radio, interviewed me as a debut author at the Christian Products Expo. It was my first radio interview. I have a background in public relations and had a decent idea of what to expect, …
Family History as a Source for Stories
By Glynn Young A single comment by my father nearly six decades ago led to a story idea. “Your great-grandfather was too young to enlist in the Civil War,” he said. “So, he signed up as a messenger boy when he looked old enough to get away with it. And then he had to walk home when the war was …