Biz

POD and Self-Publishing

ECPA Bestsellers

Randy Rooney

Gorilla Marketing

I was staring at my computer, paralyzed by a massive case of writer’s block, when my doorbell rang. And rang. And rang. I knew right away it was my plumber, Sam, because he’s not a guy who goes easy on doorbells.

I went to the door, wondering if my wife had called Sam on some plumbing emergency without telling me. So far as I knew, our pipes were in perfect order.

Sam was wearing a gorilla suit. I am not making this up—a gorilla suit—but without the head. To be quite honest, Sam doesn’t need a gorilla head...

Bookclubs

Book Clubs Across The Ocean

I’m excited to introduce to you a very special and amazing lady from Australia. Rel Mollet is a lawyer, wife, and mother of three young daughters and lives in Melbourne, Australia. Reading has been her passion since childhood. She is a book club co-coordinator and has her own blog—Relz Reviewz—dedicated to reviews and author interviews with the sole aim...

ECPA Bestseller Lists

Notice it says plural lists! That's right...we have ALL of the ECPA lists now, including their Archives. Check out the latest in hot reading across all Christian spectrums.

Agent Column

PLOTS GALORE—Right in Your Bible

Fiction writers faced a major hurdle in writing for the Christian market in the mid-1980s. Those of us who were daring to write and edit fiction primarily for Christians at that point had a particularly hard time “maintaining the fictional dream” as the noted craftsman John Gardner put it. We wanted our stories to reflect our faith, but we didn’t want them to be sermons in disguise. A number of authors wrote biblical fiction (fiction based on biblical events with biblical characters and set in biblical tines) as a way to work creatively within a framework that would be acceptable to both publishers and readers.

Fiction Fixit Shop

The Trusty Stand-In: Part II

If you joined me last month, you know that Meredith is writing on deadline (Lucky Baby is due spring 2010 from Howard/Simon & Schuster), that I am not on deadline and crowing it to the world—neener neener!—and that Meredith and I both like cheese.

So here I am again, your trusty stand-in, bringing you part two of the Down and Dirty of Dialogue.

Having asserted that 1) we need to write like people really talk, 2) dialogue, not being real speech, should exclude some of the real foibles of spoken conversation, and 3) even dialects need to be legible, I give you:

POD And Self-Publishing

Self-Publishing: One Way To Get Your Book Out There

For me, it wasn't about being a published author, it was about getting the stories God had inspired into the hands of hurting people. We see them every day, even in our churches. They’re standing on the fringes, wanting to belong but wondering how. I felt an urgency to make these stories available to help such people step across that invisible line into...