Fascinating Friday Feature – Did You Know?

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by Linore Rose Burkard When I studied English Literature at the City University of New York, the professors never included writings by famous British authors that paid homage to Christmas or Christ. Authors like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Sir Walter Scott, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. (Even Wordsworth, you ask? Yes, though not overtly.1)  When researching my book, Regency House Christmas: A Remarkably Regency Yuletide,2 I was pleasantly surprised to find material from these writers of my favorite historical era that revealed a faith my college professors avoided.   I included brief snippets from Coleridge’s “A Christmas Carol,” Wordsworth’s “The River…

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Fascinating Friday Feature – Learn, Persist and Have Faith

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by Dave Pratt Over the past few weeks, the first book in my Christian Suspense series, The Home Team, received numerous positive book reviews. That experience has left me both pleased and humbled and caused me to reflect on how someone like me, with several well-reviewed novels in print, who started the journey as a newly commissioned second lieutenant in the Army, braced by a senior officer in a hallway who growled, “Pratt, you can’t speak and you can’t write. Fix it, or you’ll fail.” More than a little shook by the experience, I signed up for the first correspondence…

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Fascinating Friday Feature – One Fruit of the Spirit

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by Ava Pennington Did you know there is only one fruit of the Spirit? Have you ever wondered why you didn’t have more of the nine fruits of the Spirit the apostle Paul listed in Galatians 5:22-23? That list includes love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. But what if I told you there is only one fruit of the Spirit? That’s right, just one, not nine! God describes several of His attributes as fruit that He develops in us. They are not separate fruits (plural). Rather, each one is a display or facet of the fruit…

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Fascinating Friday Feature

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by Jill Chapman  Writing has been an adventure for me in a multitude of ways. From the stories I wrote as a middle-school preteen to the weird stuff I drafted as a teenager, from newsletters, lesson plans, and Sunday school lessons to novels, my writing has been straight from my heart. When I began to write my middle-grade novel at age fifty-nine, I knew I wanted a mystery story with adventure that kids would love to read. The first drafts were not great. Several drafts later, I had the story ready. So, when I pitched it and sent the manuscript…

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Fascinating Friday Feature – The Big ‘Yes’ Continues

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by Linda Wood Rondeau I am forever fascinated by how God continues to affirm our calling, even within the worst discouragement and doubt. “Lord, I can’t do this anymore. It hurts too much,” I cried. “I wasn’t meant to be a writer.” I looked up at the wall of award certificates for unpublished work and thought I heard the room laughing at me. How many times have I wanted to quit? Every time I view my royalty checks or realize the non-existence thereof. My first career had been in human services, but I wanted to reach people outside the government…

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Fascinating Friday Feature – I Never Thought I’d Write a Children’s Book

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by April Graney I never thought I’d write a children’s book. My high school friend told me after graduation that she wanted to write children’s books. I thought that was weird. I’d never heard of anyone who wanted to do that. I wasn’t sure what I was going to pursue, but it sure wasn’t writing for sticky-faced little kids! I thought I’d be a journalist, or a novelist, or write for magazines. But for job security, I pursued a degree in English Education. After college and marriage, we moved to Dallas Seminary, where I fell in love with studying the…

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Fascinating Friday Feature – Why I Became a Professional Writer

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by Lena Nelson Dooley In January 1984, several publishers came out with inspirational romances–Silhouette, Thomas Nelson, Zondervan, Harvest House, Baker Books, Bethany House. At the time, I was an auxiliary rural mail carrier in Colleyville, Texas. While I was driving the mail route, I created a story in my head, like a motion picture. The first week of May 1984, I went to spend part of an afternoon with a good friend who thought romance novels were a waste of time. While we were talking that day, she asked me if I knew a particular woman who attended church with…

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Fascinating Friday Feature – A Fascinating Writing Journey

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by Diana Leagh Matthews My writing journey has definitely been just that … a journey. I never intended to become an author. One night in 2003, I argued with a family member and thought about just leaving everything behind. As I calmed down, a book idea popped into my head. I got up around 3:00 a.m. and typed up a four-page summary. The next day, I began writing and wondered if I could actually write a book. I heard a voice whisper in my soul, “You don’t know if you don’t try.” I didn’t tell anyone about writing a book…

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Fascinating Friday Feature – The Funniest Review

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by Linore Rose Burkard The Funniest Review: Thoughts on Reading and Readers All writers know that book reviews can be wonderful, maddening, or anything in between. One day, early in my writing career, I received an unexpectedly comical “review” for my first book, Before the Season Ends. A young lady came to me at church gushing about how she loved it and had lent it to a friend before school began earlier that week. She went on to relate how her friend had started it in homeroom, instantly loved it, and proceeded to read all day—all 310 pages—so that she’d…

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Fascinating Friday – Catch the Vision

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by Cheryl Schuermann Like many young writers, I once dreamed of writing novels set in exotic places with castles and golden-haired princesses with tiny waists. But more than a half century later, I found myself standing at the edge of a farm pond in the muck helping my grandchildren catch tadpoles. And thinking…wow, I see the makings of a devotion here. When this “I’ll never live in the country” city girl married a boy from rural Oklahoma more than fifty years ago, I didn’t realize how I would come to love the country experience. Soon after Stan and I married…

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