Is where we introduce listeners to people who have found their way out of the dark shadows of life and back to light and those who lead others on their journey from darkness to light.
STEP INTO THE LIGHT
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Patti’s Blogs; Patti’s Porch & The Over Fifty Writer; Podcast Step Into the Light
Meet seasoned authors, learn about new books and find inspiration to help you along your journey. No matter how far you’ve come or where you are going, I’d be honored to travel with you. If you like what you see, please subscribe to avoid missing updates.
WELCOME AUTHOR BARBARA ELLIN FOX 3/20/2019 11:10:00 AM BY Patti Shene
IT IS MY PLEASURE TO WELCOME AUTHOR BARBARA ELLIN FOX TO THE OVER 50 WRITER. BARBARA SHARES REASONS WHY WRITING CONTESTS ARE A VALUABLE STEP IN THE WRITING JOURNEY.
THE VALUE IN ENTERING WRITING CONTESTS
by
Barbara Ellin Fox
In January, Patti shared advice from the judges viewpoint for entering writing contests. I’ll share with you a few benefits of contests from the writer’s side of the fence.
Deadlines
Unless you’re a controversial head of state or have done something remarkable such as landing a plane on the Hudson, each of us begins unpublished, and without an agent, editor, or deadline.
Contests provide practice for deadlines. Get your chapters written, polished and uploaded by the entry closing date. With certain contests, when you final you can edit using the judges’ comments, then resubmit. The time frame could range from as little as forty-eight hours to a week. Your final entry will go before the big guns, an agent or editor who works in your genre. No pressure, right?
Feedback
In most contests you’ll know if judges are readers, unpublished writers, published writers, agents, or editors. Judges, published or not, are readers, and knowledge of how any reader reacts to my story benefits me. I consider judges before I enter.
Feedback can be controversial, and it’s the primary reason I enter contests. Contests are an inexpensive way to receive critiques from a variety of people. By the time I enter a portion of my ms, it has gone through at least one critique group and a first reader. My computer has read it, and I have read it to myself so many times I’m deeply invested and cannot see the proverbial forest for the trees. Getting my story’s beginning in front of new readers, reveals my story’s impact on someone who doesn’t know me.
It’s a rare person who receives feedback without emotion. You may be thrilled a judge loved your entry, down when the judge says you told your way through the entire twenty pages, or angry because someone didn’t get you, or they plain didn’t like what you wrote. This is okay. Reactions are necessary, and we need to recognize how long we take to recover, because a smart writer will go back later to see what they can glean, even from negative feedback. Feedback teaches you to sort truth from opinion and helps you make choices.
You’ve heard that writers need to develop rhino’s hide. Rhino’s hide implies you should toughen up and be indifferent to what readers say. I prefer to think of feedback as opportunities to strengthen yourself to control emotions when someone doesn’t agree with you. Strength serves a Christian better than does indifference. Think of feedback, both positive and negative, as practice for handling reviews once you’re published or when you receive comments from an agent or editor.
Beginning writers receive feedback that relates to a beginning level of writing. As you move up in your scores by improving your writing and become a finalist, feedback becomes appropriate for that level. Receiving a request for a full manuscript is exciting. Receiving a compliment or one tiny thing you can improve from an agent or editor makes those hours of contest preparation worthwhile.
Our industry
Keyword: Patience
Waiting for contest results is an exercise in patience. Contests you enter during February may not reveal winners until September. Sometimes it seems silly to enter five contests before you’ve even received the comments from one, but all feedback helps. Even negative comments are helpful if you view them through a reader’s eyes.
I gained a better understanding of how busy editors and agents are when I received comments on a winning entry almost a year after I entered. Knowing it took that long to have a small piece of my ms reviewed by agents and editors as a contest win, helped me better understand the long wait to have a full submission reviewed.
Supporting the Industry
It takes work to enter a contest. Not only do I go through my writing, editing and critiquing stages, sometimes I must adjust my entry to fit a particular contest’s word or page count. Or I adjust content. It’s disappointing to receive notice that a contest cancelled my category for lack of entries. This has taught me to support contests with inspirational romance categories. Often I’ll send multiple entries. If we don’t support the inspirational category, especially in secular romance contests, we will lose an important venue for upcoming writers.
Contests need judges and they usually provide training. Judging helps the contest and other readers. Judging helps you as a writer when you learn to critique kindly the writing of another who has poured their heart into their entry.
Thank-you notes
Finally, I love to send a thank-you note to everyone who judged my entry and the contest or category coordinator. Judges and coordinators donate their valuable time to us. A thank-you note, even when you didn’t like the feedback, is the least the writer can do.
All of Barbara Ellin Fox’s firsts in the fiction writing life occurred after she was fifty years old, and this month she celebrated her seventieth birthday. Barbara writes inspirational romance usually with an equestrian twist. In 2018 Barbara’s entry placed first in long contemporary in the Touched by Love writing contest, first in inspirational romance in the Orange Rose, and was a finalist in multiple other writing contests. Barbara has two blogs. Barbara Ellin Fox is her developing author’s site. Her blog, TheRidingInstructor, has been devoted for more than ten years to helping people who teach horseback riding. Barbara would love to hear from you, whether you want to talk horses, writing, or about the Lord.
WELCOME AUTHOR DAPHNE SELF 3/16/2019 12:20:00 PM BY Patti Shene
FEATURED BOOK: The Case of the Missing Firehouse Dog
AUTHOR: Daphne Self
PUBLISHER: Ambassador International
GENRE: Early Reader
SERIES OR STAND ALONE: Book 1 of a 5-book Series
TARGET AGE: 5 to 9 (K to 4th grade)
IT IS MY PLEASURE TO WELCOME AUTHOR DAPHNE SELF TO PATTI’S PORCH. DAPHNE EXPLAINS HOW SHE DERIVED NEW MEANING FROM A WELL-KNOWN BIBLE VERSE.
DAPHNE IS OFFERING A GIVEAWAY! SIMPLY LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW TO ENTER THE DRAWING FOR WINNER’S CHOICE OF A PRINT OR EBOOK COPY OF EITHER THE CASE OF THE MISSING FIREHOUSE DOG or MISSISSIPPI NIGHTS.(see blurb below).
JUST GIVE ME JESUS
by
Daphne Self
“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” (NKJV)
John 16:33 is a verse that many people turn to for comfort and to fortify their soul. Not too long ago, I found a newer meaning to this verse. It wasn't a verse I sought; it wasn't a verse that I was led to; it wasn't a verse that was sent to me.
It was only after what happened that I found this verse and a new meaning came to me. Read the last part: "I have overcome the world." The world.... not a country, not the sea, not even people. But the World. And the world isn't just the planet. It is everything within it. The World.
How is that possible? It is possible because of who Jesus is. I didn't say "who Jesus was". I said "who Jesus is". He is alive!
Back to the verse and its new meaning. It started when I came across a band I used to listen to. I enjoyed this band. Not all the songs, because being a hard rock, secular band there were some with explicit lyrics. Then there were the ones that I listened to and this was many years ago, during a time of extreme emotional distress. I was alone. Not physically, but emotionally and spiritually (in my belief, that is).
Fourteen years ago, I was a 31-year-old widow. Lost my husband in the line-of-duty and then two months later my father died in my arms from a massive heart attack. I had failed to save him. During this time, my mother and I grew apart. Grief will do that when there are no mentors or others there to help someone through the grief. We were alone. Our church wasn't there with us. Our extended family left us. And I struggled to balance work, raising two young sons, and dealing with all that was spiraling around me. I could not allow myself to break or fall.
Looking back, it came to no surprise that I was attracted to the songs by Godsmack. They were angry. They were hard. But they were poetic and lyrical. The raspy smoothness of the lead singer caused me to gravitate to their music. I felt soothed. And it drove me down a path that led to more heartache, more helplessness, and destitution. It took years to pull myself away from all that. To pull myself away from that music.
Fast forward to a several weeks ago, I came across their YouTube channel. One of those flukes in advertising while watching another video. New song? Really? New album? Interesting. Out of curiosity I clicked on it. Two songs in and I was captivated, again. But the song that spoke to me was When Legends Rise.
For days that song played in my head. No other song could drown it out. No other song could erase the melody and words from my mind. I would wake up and, in my head, that song played. I would read the Bible and, in my head, that song played.
I could not travel that dark road again. And Godsmack would lead me down it. That is the dark part of me that is drawn to that style of music. And I wanted it. But I didn't desire it!
Even after asking people for something that was like Godsmack, there wasn't anything out there remotely similar that would erase them from my mind....until one sponsored Facebook post did. And I followed the link and watched the video. And now I had a new song in my head. And relief had been found.
So how does this tie in with the verse? The power of Jesus. He overcame the world. And all we must do is seek Him. All we must do is cry out, "Just give me Jesus!".
And that is what the song by Unspoken has done. Their song Just Give Me Jesus shows the power in Jesus' name. He erased a song from my head and replaced it with something that glorifies Him. He took a temptation and gave me freedom. He took the darkness and the anger and gave me light and happiness.
He has overcome the world, even if that world is inside someone's head. We matter to Him. And nothing is too small for Him and nothing is too large. We just need to cry out and say, "Just give me Jesus".
Book Blurb: for The Case of the Missing Firehouse Dog
Beautiful Majesty has been dognapped!
Majesty, the firehouse dog, is missing.
Willie and Jax are on the case to discover who is the dognapping culprit. Could it be their neighbor, Mr. Applebee? Or maybe it is Ms. Thornton?
Join the Pintail Duo, Wilhelmina van der Coup and Jackson Barnaby, as they follow the clues to rescue Majesty in The Case of the Missing Firehouse Dog.
Book blurb for Mississippi Nights
Two brothers, one death–the bond of brotherhood faces its greatest challenge against resentment and guilt.
Can the love between two brothers eventually win against pain and guilt?
When Firefighter David Boyette’s fiancée perishes in a car fire, he blames his brother, Sgt. Jeremy Boyette, for her death. Three years later, David returns home with a dark and devastating secret. With the help of family, a woman’s love, and a small child’s devotion, can David overcome insurmountable odds as he and Jeremy face the bitterness that enslaves him? Together the brothers must decide if the bond of brotherhood is stronger than resentment and hate.
DON’T FORGET TO LEAVE A COMMENT TO BE PLACED IN THE DRAWING TO WIN A PRINT OR EBOOK COPY OF EITHER THE CASE OF THE MISSING FIREHOUSE DOG OR MISSISSIPPI NIGHTS BETWEEN NOW AND TUESDAY, MARCH 26TH AT MIDNIGHT MDT. (US residents only eligible for print copy)
BY LEAVING A COMMENT, YOU GRANT PERMISSION FOR YOUR EMAIL TO BE REVEALED TO THE AUTHOR IF YOU ARE THE WINNER TO FACILITATE RECEIPT OF YOUR BOOK.
Daphne Self, formerly published under the name D.M. Webb, resides in Iowa. A transplant from Mississippi who fell in love with the Midwest state, she spends her days writing, editing, hiking, antiquing, and planning adventures with her husband and sons. Having always dreamed of being a writer she pursues this dream with only one goal in mind: to glorify His Name. Daphne is also an avid reader who devours books in many genres. As a long-time member of ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers), she volunteers her time judging contests for unpublished and published authors. She also helps upcoming authors polish their manuscripts. Find Daphne online:
WELCOME AUTHOR SHERRI WILSON JOHNSON 3/13/2019 1:20:00 AM BY Patti Shene
FEATURED BOOK: The Erie Canal Brides Collection
AUTHOR: Sherri Wilson Johnson
(alsoJohnnie Alexander, Lauralee Bliss, Rose Allen McCauley,
Rita Gerlach, Ramona K. Cecil, Christina Miller)
PUBLISHER:Barbour Publishing
GENRE: Historical Romance
SERIES OR STAND ALONE:Stand Alone
TARGET AGE:Women 18+
IT IS MY PLEASURE TO WELCOME AUTHOR SHERRI WILSON JOHNSON TO THE OVER 50 WRITER. SHERRI SHARES HOW HER WRITING JOURNEY TOOK FLIGHT AFTER SHE REACHED AGE FIFTY.
IT’S NEVER TOO LATE!
by
Sherri Wilson Johnson
I turned fifty in 2016, and my writing journey took a turn for the better! I attended my very first ACFW conference in September 2016 in Nashville. I flew from Atlanta and this was my first flight since 2002. I flew by myself for the first time and had quite the adventure, which started with accidentally driving into the rental car drop-off instead of the correct parking deck and the attendant trying to force me out of my elderly van because he thought I was dropping off a rental car! Really?
ACFW afforded me the opportunity to meet with agents and publishers but, more importantly, to meet my Facebook friends face-to-face, make new friends and hang out with people that I already knew. I'm an extrovert, so I absolutely loved the conference. I returned home completely inspired to continue the quest for traditional publication as well as continuing as an Indie published author.
Fast forward to 2017, and I received my very first traditional contract with Barbour Books for a novella collection! The Erie Canal Brides Collection released March 1st. This was not only my first traditional contract but it was also my first novella. I've always written full-length fiction and hadn't considered writing a novella until I was invited into the collection. The process was exciting and taught me a lot about choosing my words carefully. When you only have 25,000 words to tell your story, you have to be very intentional with each word you use. I encourage you to try your hand at it!
I don’t know if more contracts are in my future (I sure hope so!), but I do know that more stories are! How do I know? Because when you’re a writer, you’re a writer. Have you ever tried to stop writing? I have. I’ve asked God to take it away from me if I wasn’t ever going to see a book in print. Know what happened? Stories flooded my mind. Literally. So many stories that I don’t know if I’ll ever have time to write them.
My goal is to write at least fifty books. I’ve written seven now. Even though I’m “over the hill” (haha!), I feel like I’m just getting started and like the firsts I’ve experienced in recent years are just the firsts of many firsts to come.
If you feel like giving up, don’t! If you quit, you’ll never get there.
Blurb for The Erie Canal Brides Collection
Seven romance stories take you back to the building of the Erie Canal and the opening of the Midwest to greater development.
Completed in 1825, the Erie Canal connected the Great Lakes to the Hudson River, and soon other states like Ohio created canals linking Lake Erie to the Ohio River. Suddenly the Midwest was open to migration, the harvesting of resources, and even tourism. Join seven couples who live through the rise of the canals and the problems the waterways brought to each community, including land grabs, disease, tourists, racism, and competition. Can these couples hang on to their faith and develop love during times of intense change?
Blurb for The Bridge Between Us by Sherri Wilson Johnson
Albion, New York, 1859
John Hawkins steps back into Susannah Higley’s life just in time to save it. Despite her father’s longstanding disdain for John’s family, can Susannah and John settle the family feud and save her father’s struggling sawmill—and their chance for love? Or will the feud continue?
Click here to enter the drawing found on Sherri’s website for a FREE print copy of The Erie Canal Brides Collection between now and Friday, March 15th. :
Sherri Wilson Johnson is a multi-published Inspirational Romance novelist, speaker, and virtual assistant. Sherri has been published in The Erie Canal Brides (Barbour Books), 101 Simple Ways to Show Your Husband You Love Him by Kathi Lipp (Harvest House), Open Hearts Family: Connecting with One Anotherby Jane Seymour (Running Press, Hachette Book Group), and The Writing Academy’s Daily Devotions for Writers. She is the author of six inspirational romances which she independently published.
She lives in Georgia with her husband and her spoiled dog Sawyer. She loves spending time with her adult children and friends or curling up with a good book or her current work-in-progress. Sherri enjoys doing jigsaw puzzles in the winter and counts the days every year until she can take another trip to the beach.
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IT IS MY PLEASURE TO WELCOME AUTHOR BARBARA ELLIN FOX TO THE OVER 50 WRITER. BARBARA SHARES REASONS WHY WRITING CONTESTS ARE A VALUABLE STEP IN THE WRITING JOURNEY.
THE VALUE IN ENTERING WRITING CONTESTS
by
Barbara Ellin Fox
In January, Patti shared advice from the judges viewpoint for entering writing contests. I’ll share with you a few benefits of contests from the writer’s side of the fence.
Deadlines
Unless you’re a controversial head of state or have done something remarkable such as landing a plane on the Hudson, each of us begins unpublished, and without an agent, editor, or deadline.
Contests provide practice for deadlines. Get your chapters written, polished and uploaded by the entry closing date. With certain contests, when you final you can edit using the judges’ comments, then resubmit. The time frame could range from as little as forty-eight hours to a week. Your final entry will go before the big guns, an agent or editor who works in your genre. No pressure, right?
Feedback
In most contests you’ll know if judges are readers, unpublished writers, published writers, agents, or editors. Judges, published or not, are readers, and knowledge of how any reader reacts to my story benefits me. I consider judges before I enter.
Feedback can be controversial, and it’s the primary reason I enter contests. Contests are an inexpensive way to receive critiques from a variety of people. By the time I enter a portion of my ms, it has gone through at least one critique group and a first reader. My computer has read it, and I have read it to myself so many times I’m deeply invested and cannot see the proverbial forest for the trees. Getting my story’s beginning in front of new readers, reveals my story’s impact on someone who doesn’t know me.
It’s a rare person who receives feedback without emotion. You may be thrilled a judge loved your entry, down when the judge says you told your way through the entire twenty pages, or angry because someone didn’t get you, or they plain didn’t like what you wrote. This is okay. Reactions are necessary, and we need to recognize how long we take to recover, because a smart writer will go back later to see what they can glean, even from negative feedback. Feedback teaches you to sort truth from opinion and helps you make choices.
You’ve heard that writers need to develop rhino’s hide. Rhino’s hide implies you should toughen up and be indifferent to what readers say. I prefer to think of feedback as opportunities to strengthen yourself to control emotions when someone doesn’t agree with you. Strength serves a Christian better than does indifference. Think of feedback, both positive and negative, as practice for handling reviews once you’re published or when you receive comments from an agent or editor.
Beginning writers receive feedback that relates to a beginning level of writing. As you move up in your scores by improving your writing and become a finalist, feedback becomes appropriate for that level. Receiving a request for a full manuscript is exciting. Receiving a compliment or one tiny thing you can improve from an agent or editor makes those hours of contest preparation worthwhile.
Our industry
Keyword: Patience
Waiting for contest results is an exercise in patience. Contests you enter during February may not reveal winners until September. Sometimes it seems silly to enter five contests before you’ve even received the comments from one, but all feedback helps. Even negative comments are helpful if you view them through a reader’s eyes.
I gained a better understanding of how busy editors and agents are when I received comments on a winning entry almost a year after I entered. Knowing it took that long to have a small piece of my ms reviewed by agents and editors as a contest win, helped me better understand the long wait to have a full submission reviewed.
Supporting the Industry
It takes work to enter a contest. Not only do I go through my writing, editing and critiquing stages, sometimes I must adjust my entry to fit a particular contest’s word or page count. Or I adjust content. It’s disappointing to receive notice that a contest cancelled my category for lack of entries. This has taught me to support contests with inspirational romance categories. Often I’ll send multiple entries. If we don’t support the inspirational category, especially in secular romance contests, we will lose an important venue for upcoming writers.
Contests need judges and they usually provide training. Judging helps the contest and other readers. Judging helps you as a writer when you learn to critique kindly the writing of another who has poured their heart into their entry.
Thank-you notes
Finally, I love to send a thank-you note to everyone who judged my entry and the contest or category coordinator. Judges and coordinators donate their valuable time to us. A thank-you note, even when you didn’t like the feedback, is the least the writer can do.
All of Barbara Ellin Fox’s firsts in the fiction writing life occurred after she was fifty years old, and this month she celebrated her seventieth birthday. Barbara writes inspirational romance usually with an equestrian twist. In 2018 Barbara’s entry placed first in long contemporary in the Touched by Love writing contest, first in inspirational romance in the Orange Rose, and was a finalist in multiple other writing contests. Barbara has two blogs. Barbara Ellin Fox is her developing author’s site. Her blog, TheRidingInstructor, has been devoted for more than ten years to helping people who teach horseback riding. Barbara would love to hear from you, whether you want to talk horses, writing, or about the Lord.
Connect with Barbara online:
Blog BarbaraEllinFox.com
Blog TheRidingInstructor.net
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest