by Dani Pettrey I often hear people say they don’t read Christian fiction because it doesn’t deal with real issues. I take issue with that. I’ve read phenomenal Christian novels dealing with issues like adultery (Dry as Rain by Gina Holmes), drug addiction (Terri Blackstock’s Intervention series), and most recently, I read a novel dealing with a very prevalent issue …
Where Do Ideas Come From?
by Lisa Lickel The journey of The Map Quilt started when I was in fifth grade, learning about the Underground Railroad, watching my grandmother sew quilts, and discovering the astonishing fact that not all black people in the United States came here on slave ships. That was long before I was silly enough, about the age of forty, to start …
Quick Reference Guide to Research Methods
by Laurie Alice Eakes Recently, I enjoyed the privilege of giving an ACFW chapter a short workshop on research methods. Others have found this helpful, so I am hopeful you all will, too. Although I have more historical romances than Regency romances in print, I am known as a Regency author. And if anyone knows anything about readers of the …
A Writers’ Budget – Surviving on Two Paychecks a Year
by Mary Ellis Ahhh, a writer’s budget…rather sounds like an oxymoron, no? Plenty of writers will tell you they have no budget. Money flies out just as fast as it flies in, and it doesn’t fly in often enough or in sufficient quantity. But readers of this blog are Christians, by and large, and we’ve heard the Scripture that the …
The Green-Eyed Monster
by Lisa Karon Richardson Jealousy is a vicious taskmaster. More tyrannical than poor George III ever dreamed of, it extracts the joy from our days and leaves us only with burning want. What’s worse, outside of romantic attachments we don’t always recognize it. I tend to be competitive. A quality which western society promotes. After all, who likes to lose? …
The Writer’s Tool Chest
by Aaron McCarver What is in your tool chest? Your writer’s tool chest that is. Tools are wonderful things. We are able to accomplish things with them we could not do otherwise. When thinking about it, we have conquered the world through the use of tools. However, tools used incorrectly are very dangerous things. Only when we learn to use …
Personality and Writing Style
by Martha Rogers I’ve read a lot of discussion about organization and writing. For those of us who are SOTP (seat of the pants) writers, writing an outline or any of the other myriad organizational strategies boggles our minds. However as I have progressed, I’ve found that a little bit of both is necessary to get a story done in …
A Rose By Any Other Name …
by Maureen Lang The more books an author writes, the greater the struggle to find the right character name-ones they haven’t used before. Like everything else, names are subject to taste. Take Homer, for example. Not your unusual choice for a hero. Why? Does it strike the ear as too close to “homely?” Or does it have that old-fashioned, slightly …
Know What You’re Entitled to as a Writer
By Cynthia Ruchti As you make progress on this journey of writing, it’s important you know your rights. What are you entitled to? 1. Have a contest judge evaluate your entry according to how hard you worked and how long you’ve been writing rather than on the product alone. 2. Present your work to agents and editors the way that …
No More Mrs. Nice Guy
by Keli Gwyn Are you too nice to your characters? I was. I used to ache for the characters in the stories I read as the authors forced them to endure one trial after another. When I began writing, I couldn’t do that to my beloved heroes and heroines. I made things easy on them-too easy. I wised up when …