Tips from the Pros: Rebecca Ondov

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Greetings from Sarah Sundin in California! I pray you had a bountiful Thanksgiving with family and friends. Today I have the honor of interviewing Rebecca Ondov, who turned her extensive experience as a horseback guide and Ranger into the book Horse Tales from Heaven. Rebecca, how did you get into writing? For years I’d been working from the saddle in the Bob Marshall Wilderness of Montana, taking people on horse pack trips. During the winter of 1992 when I was “out of the hills” and working an off-season job, I reached in my mailbox and pulled out a Guideposts magazine….

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Decorating for the Holidays

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Sherry Kyle here, writing to you from my laptop in central California. Can you believe it’s almost December? Now that Thanksgiving is over for 2011, it’s time to decorate our homes for Christmas. I don’t know what it’s like at your house, but my kids can’t wait for the tree to go up and the decorating to begin.  Like embellishing our homes for the holidays, our manuscripts need that something special in order to capture a reader’s attention.

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Reasons to be Thankful for Books

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Aloha from Karen It’s already Thanksgiving Day. I am thankful today for family (especially my husband who continues to battle breast cancer) and many friends. My family keeps growing-five children and now eight grandchildren. But I also want to express thanks babout books, including thanks for past rejections and current contracts and for books in general. I’m an avid reader and books opened my mind to many possibilities.

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Writing and the Red Sea

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                              HI! Grace Fox here, newest member of the Monday blogging team.  As a writer, I believe God has given me the assignment of communicating truth through the written word. Some days I feel confident of my call. Ideas flow, and fingers fly across the keyboard. An editor accepts an article. A royalty check arrives. And a reader emails, “Your book changed my life. Please keep writing.” Other days…well, other days the computer screen stares at me in silence. My fingers hover over the keyboard awaiting…

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Basics in Poetry Writing: Figurative Language I

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    Hello. I'm DonnTaylor, writing again about the basic elements of poetry writing. In previous blog sessions we've mentioned the late Lawrence Perrine's statement that poetry speaks "in higher voltage" with greater compression of meaning than most prose. We've also spoken of placing strong words in the emphatic positions of the poetic line, and we've discussed the necessity of using strong images. Now we move to one of the most important elements that achieve compression of meaning, often with striking effect: figurative language. In this session we'll look at personification, simile, and metaphor. We'll cover other figures later.  

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Tips from the Pros: Darlene Franklin

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Hello from Sarah Sundin on a crisp November day! Today I have the privilege of interviewing multi-published author Darlene Franklin. Darlene, how did you get into writing? I started writing daily in the wake of my divorce, twenty years ago. My first book was published in 2005. How many books do you have published? What are a few of your latest titles? I have fifteen books in print and five more in process. This fall I’ve had three books published: Lone Star Trail, book 1 in the Texas Trails Series; Christmas at Barncastle Inn, a contemporary Christmas anthology; and Knight…

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Bound By Grace By Amber Stockton – A New Release

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Bound By Grace by Amber Stockton A letter from a gentleman in Claymont who is seeking books Charlotte Pringle carries in her book shop piques her interest. The desire to provide his niece, Grace, with more classic titles keeps Richard Baxton returning to see Charlotte again and again. Charlotte is attracted to his sweet spot for his niece, as well as the niece’s recent leg injury that has her wheelchair bound, awaiting an expensive operation. But Charlotte’s father disrupts their idyllic relationship by announcing he’s been working on a marriage arrangement to secure her future. Before Richard can make a…

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PUGS Pointers #4

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Hi! I’m Kathy Ide. Iin addition to being a published author, I’m a full-time professional freelance editor. For CAN, I’m blogging about “PUGS”–Punctuation, Usage, Grammar, and Spelling…tips for writers based on the most common mistakes I see in the manuscripts I edit. Each blog post will have one tip for each of the four categories, as well as a reason it’s important for authors to “polish their PUGS.” (For more PUGS tips, check out my website, www.KathyIde.com, or get a copy of my book “Polishing the PUGS” (available through the website or at the conferences where I teach). If you’re interested in…

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Creative Writing Prompt

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Greeting and almost Thanksgiving blessing to you from Gail Gaymer Martin at www.gailmartin@aol.com Sometimes writers draw a blank. They face a new novel with an empty page, and their creative process has taken a vacation. I am always looking for creative ideas on writing to add to my blog Writing Fiction Right at www.writingright-martin.blogspot.com I want to tell you about two very creative writing prompts that can help to stimulate your creativity and perhaps get you out of the slump that sometimes happens to writers. The two prompts that I thought were great are Creative Writing Prompts and Story Praxis….

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