By Renee Hodges Enough. I’ve said it to the server at our favorite Italian place as she grated a gracious amount of Parmesan cheese on my meal. I’ve growled it through gritted teeth at a child testing my patience. I’ve asked it of a friend to find out if I’ve given advice that helps her with a difficult decision. I’ve …
ACFW New Releases: July 2020
July 2020 New Releases More in-depth descriptions of these books can be found on the ACFW Fiction Finder website. Contemporary Romance: How Sweet It Is by Robin Lee Hatcher — A businessman trying to reconnect with his brother returns to his hometown and rents the apartment where his great-great-grandparents lived during the late 1920s. He never suspects his attractive landlady, …
Cooking Up Story Ideas
by Ann H. Gabhart Where do you get your ideas? That’s a question most writers are asked at one time or another. Here’s an answer one writer, Sarah Zette, gave that might make you smile. My joking answer to this question is that I leave a bowl of milk out on the back porch every night for the Idea Fairy. …
What If All We Had Was Dialogue?
By Cynthia Ruchti For three decades, I wrote scripts for a daily 15-minute radio broadcast. The first portion of the broadcast was a slice-of-life scene by two women walking through the kinds of things life can throw at any of us. Following that scene, a musical interlude segued into devotional thoughts related to that day’s theme. The scenes were all …
Our Family of God
By Christine Sunderland Our cities are burning. Some say civilization is collapsing. And today is the Feast of St. John Baptist. Our world needs some baptizing, some holy waters to put out the fires. My recently released novel, Angel Mountain (Wipf and Stock), is set in the midst of this cultural chaos. It is about another baptist, a hermit living …
The Power of Being Seen
By Tara Johnson One of my favorite stories in the Bible is God’s encounter with Hagar. This slave girl was mistreated and unloved, forced to play a role she didn’t ask for. She had no rights and no one to speak on her behalf. She was invisible to those around her…until she met El Roi. After running away from Sarai, …
Changing Perspectives
By Kathleen Denly In 2017, my husband and I adopted a beautiful, miraculous little girl from China that—despite her young age—taught me a lot about perspective. According to her paperwork, she should have had spastic dyplegic cerebral palsy in addition to a large number of scars from a traumatic event she’d endured as an infant. Our understanding was that she …
Books that Empower Writers to Excel
By Frank DiBianca I have a recurring nightmare in which I walk onto the stage of a packed symphony hall. I hold a violin and bow in my hands. The conductor turns to me and smiles. Suddenly, I realize I have not memorized my part. Even worse, I don’t know how to play the violin! Sound familiar? That’s probably not …
Ensuring Your Deadline Doesn’t Kill You
By DiAnn Mills Writers value deadlines. Well, maybe not. But the looming dates do help to keep us focused, on task, and writing, our favorite activity on the planet. Sometimes though we think those deadlines are out to kill us. What’s the balance? How can we end the love/hate relationship and turn our writing process into a positive one? The …
Distractions or Disruptions
by Loretta Eidson Are you struggling with relentless distractions? If you’re like me, your calendar fills with deadlines, projects, and commitments. Finding the time to complete each task weighs on our minds. At times, we have so much going on we give in to the distractions around us and avoid facing the workload. Distraction (Google definition)–a thing that prevents someone …