D/FW Writers: It's Not Too Late

You can still register for the Best Southwest Bookfest, where I'm scheduled to speak this weekend. It's about the least expensive writer's conference around thanks to the sponsorship of local libraries. Come on over to Cedar Hill, y'all.

Six Words Changed My Life

A couple of editors got together last year and put together a compilation of stories about the power of words to transform a life. Their set of narratives now appears in print as Simple Little Words, which hit bookstores this week.

My contribution? A story about six words that changed my life. I mean, they really and truly set me on a course that changed my future. The words? Mary has chosen what is better. The one who spoke them: Jesus Christ. The context: Kitchen girl was telling her sister, theology-learning girl, to get back in the kitchen. And Jesus told kitchen girl to back off. Don't you love him?

(To my writing students: How shocking that a sentence which affected me so much could have a "be" verb in it, huh? But just so you know, the Greek has no such wimpy verb: For Mary the good part has chosen. Don't you hate me?)

What words have affected you?

Top Religion Stories

Christianity Today reported these as the top ten religion news stories of 2007:

1. Taliban kidnap of Korean short-term mission team, killing two
2. Atheism tops the bestseller charts
3. Presidential campaigns start early, with some faith surprises
4. Ruth Graham’s death
5. Anglican Communion fractures over Scripture, homosexuality
6. Three Christians tortured and killed in eastern Turkey
7. Lions of the Religious Right pass away (Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy)
8. President of Evangelical Theological Society returns to Catholicism
9. Campaign to oust NAE's Richard Cizik fails
10. Supreme Court upholds 2003 federal partial-birth abortion ban

Microtrends

Recently I watched Mark Penn, author of Microtrends, talking about the subject of his book. And he flagged some interesting stuff.

. The number of "lefties" is on the rise. No longer do parents try to keep their kids from being different. Whereas we used to try to keep up with the Joneses, today we're content to be different from the Joneses. In fact, if the Jones family has a white fence, we'd probably opt to paint ours purple. This attitude has also led to a huge number of kids being vegan. When kiddos say, "Yuck, I don't want to eat meat," today's parent says, "Fine, then don't eat meat."
. More than 30 million people now have tattoos.
. More people drive long commutes to own property. And that means a spike in audiobook sales.
. Couples are opting to have pets instead of kids or at least delay childbearing, trying out "pets" as surrogates first. So a great amount of disposable income is being spent on dogs and cats.
. A huge number of households are now headed by women.
. Dads are spending more time than ever with their kids. (Yet most marketers of parenting products still gear their messages to moms.)
. More people meet via internet, where race, class, and gender are not the barriers they once were. About ten percent of couples marrying these days met on the internet.
. A huge number of students are dropping out of college. We have books on how to get into college, but not much on how to transition out of college.
. The person who uses technology today is the most sociable person (whereas techies of the past were geeks). Today's tech connects people and brings them together.
. More dads than ever are becoming parents at age 40-45.
. The primary internet customer is the "long attention span" person who can go fifty pages deep into a site and stay up all night online.
. About half of folks who reach retirement age don't retire. Of those, half keep working because they prefer their jobs to leisure.

So I wonder...how would the public receive a book on left-handed over-40 college-dropout parents who get tattoos?

Happy Easter!

Yesterday I attended the memorial service for a friend. Today I celebrated that death is reversible:

"O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?"
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law;
but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:55-57).

Obama Trauma

To rephrase a popular question, If Obama speaks in the woods and no one hears him, is he still wrong?

I ask this because I mentioned in public recently that I thought Obama said some stuff in his recent speech that needed sayin'. I didn't say I was voting for him. I didn't say anyone else should vote for him. All I said was that he spoke some words of truth in this speech. Now, I didn't agree with every single word, but still--some of his words were absolutely true. I know because they came right out of scripture.

But when I acknowledged he had some good things to say, you'd have thought I had confused Obama with Osama if you'd seen the reaction I got.

I've heard Repubs and Dems alike say that his candidacy amounts to "just words." But Peggy Noonan once said that what's moving in a speech is the logic. Reagan's "Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev" speech was so powerful precisely because--as Robert Frost once wrote--"Something there is that doesn't love a wall."

In the same way Obama embraced his pastor without embracing all his ideas, I embrace some of Obama's words without embracing all of his politics. And I hope that if you are a die-hard McCain supporter or a huge Hillary fan that you won't stop reading my words here simply because I said something nice about Obama.

I invite your feedback. But only if you actually read the entire transcript of the speech before giving an opinion about it, okay?

The winner of Camy Tang's new book is Rowena Welch. Thanks to those who participated. Who knew y'all felt so strongly about Fanny!

A Different Kind of Storytelling?

Sometimes speakers and teachers who teach that we need to read the Bible considering the plain sense of the language structure (e.g., a kiss in Song of Songs means...a kiss) elevate material in the epistles over that found in the narratives--as if a directive from Paul trumps the truth taught in a story in Deuteronomy or the Gospel of Luke. It's just easier to conclude from "Rejoice always" that we need to always rejoice than it is to figure out the "take-away" meaning of Eve's interaction with the serpent. Does it tell us something fundamental about women? Or does it tell us only something fundamental about humanity? My friend, Dr. Dorian Coover-Cox, sent me some thoughts which deserve further consideration on the subject of biblical narratives:

I have read little from the experts on the theory of how to preach, teach, and apply narrative, though I suppose I should. Here’s just what I think so far. Biblical narratives need to be read and applied using many of the same skills that we use when learning from the experiences of people around us on an everyday basis, and they should be applied with at least as much authority.

Everyone who wishes to live beyond the age of, say, three must learn from observation and not from personal experience only. We routinely and almost inevitably learn from other people’s stories, whether they are written or not. Just as it is possible to draw wrong principles and misapply parts of stories or even whole stories that we watch or hear from people around us or that we read in a book or a blog, so it is possible to misapply stories from Scripture.

How do we make accurate observations, draw out applications, and apply appropriately experiences of life inside and outside the Bible? How do we learn well from the experiences of others or from our own? That is the big issue, and there, it seems to me, is one place where wise people and wisdom literature fit in, along with other directly didactic literature. We learn good life lessons from watching how wise people do it and from being instructed in how to do it.

All that does not even approach the topic of how biblical (inspired) narrative may need to be observed and applied differently than stories from other sources that we read, hear, or observe in progress every day. I have thoughts about that too.

Perhaps we'll consider them on another day.

Wordless Wednesday

Camy Tang: Interview and Book Giveaway

Today chick-lit novelist, Camy Tang, returns to talk about her new book, Only Uni. Hang around to hear what she has to say, and find out how you can win a copy. Also, you can read the first chapter here.

With which character in this book do you most identify and why?
I think I like Venus the best because she says what she means and she doesn’t take crap from anybody. I’m not quite as fearless as she is, but I’d like to be as frank. Maybe it’s my “Asian” side, but I was taught to just get along with people, keep my mouth shut, be polite, and hide my emotions--all that stuff. In the past few years, I’ve been discovering my identity in Christ and the person I am—not perfect, saying exactly what I mean, being emotional if I want to. In some ways I relate to Marianne in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, although not quite to her extreme. But she wasn’t afraid of public censure for showing her love for Willoughby or devastation when he married someone else.

Who (besides the obvious) is your favorite Bible character, and why?
I like Deborah. She took her job as biblical judge seriously and didn’t let any man dictate to her what her role should be as a woman in those times. She wasn’t afraid to tell Barak that because he wouldn’t go without her, a woman would kill his enemy. That had to hurt his pride. She struck me as a very no-nonsense woman with a lot of faith, and I’d like to be like that, too.

Name a book besides the Bible that has inspired you and tell how.
Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey is the novel that inspired me to write my own stories. Up until that point, I just enjoyed reading. Dragonsong was so amazing as a story that it sparked ideas for my own stories, and I started writing them down.

You are a marketing whiz. What advice do you have for first-time authors about how to get the word out?
First of all, only do what you want to do. If you don’t like blogging, then don’t do it. If you don’t like book signings, then don’t do it (unless your editor tells you to, naturally). My philosophy for marketing is to do what you enjoy doing. If you have to move outside your comfort zone a few times, it’s a lot easier if you’re mostly doing what you enjoy.

An author website is a non-negotiable. You have to have one. It’s basically your business card on the web for readers to find out about you and your books. It should be updated once a month with news about what you’re doing, and if you don’t have the techno-savvy to do it yourself, hire a web designer or even a high school student to do it for you. Another option is to get a MySpace or Facebook page and point your domain name to your page. Those pages are really easy to update and add content yourself.

I also suggest you get a newsletter group. You can use YahooGroups or a paid newsletter service, but start a newsletter so people can start signing up for your monthly or quarterly newsletter. No one minds an email in their Inbox once a month or once every three months, and it will get the word out about your new releases. Do this before your first book comes out to get anticipatory buzz going about your book. Also, in every interview you do and on your website, put the link for people to sign up for your newsletter.

For my book releases, I hold a newsletter-subscriber-only contest to both promote my book and gain new newsletter subscribers. For example, right now I’m giving away five huge boxes of books and 25 copies of Only Uni. It’s open only to my newsletter YahooGroup subscribers, so join today!http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Camys_Loft/join

Since you live with somebody who makes killer coffee drinks, what is your beverage drink of choice to sip while writing?
While I do love coffee, I usually drink tea. It’s better for my health and easier to make than coffee. I like it English-style with milk and honey, but I only have that for breakfast—for the rest of the day, I drink it plain. My current favorite is genmaicha tea, which is green tea with toasted rice in it. I grew up with this and the scent brings me back to my childhood.

Thanks for having me here, Sandi!

Thanks for hanging out with us.

Okay folks, if you want to win a copy of Only Uni for yourself or someone you love, leave a comment. I'll enter twice anyone who mentions his or her favorite scene in Sense and Sensibility. Winner TBA Friday morning.

Four Stars Each

Yesterday I finished reading Life of Pi--which I would describe as Old Man of the Sea meets Jungle Book. (Okay, so I'm not exactly staying current with what's on the NY Times bestseller list, but better late than never, eh?) I've spent lazy Sunday afternoons reading it this winter, and I highly recommend it for its fine style and excellent yarn spinning.

Also, while my hubby was out of town over the weekend, I opted to rent a "girl" sort of documentary: "The Beauty Academy of Kabul." It offers an interesting peek into Afghani women's lives by following a couple of groups that enrolled in a 2003 beauty academy. The teachers came from the West for three months to offer their skills. The film provides a look at the status of these strong women and how they have triumphed through difficulty. Good stuff.

Glory Stories

Part of what I love about being a mag editor is hearing amazing stories. A couple of weeks ago I got to briefly conduct a face-to-face interview with Atlanta's Dr. Charles Stanley about the importance of slowing down (as opposed to overloading our lives). He spoke candidly about how he had to learn that lesson the hard way and how now he preaches six weeks and takes off three. That way when he's in the pulpit, he's for real.

Then on Friday I got to go back into the studio and spend a couple of hours listening to the Jamisons--you know, my friends who've been in Kenya setting up five orphanages, among other things? They talked about their amazing experience getting pulled out of the country days before anyone had a clue that the elections there would cause such turmoil. While they spoke, we rolled the digital stuff formerly known as tape. You'll hear more about that in the days to come.

But afterward the three of us went to lunch and swapped more stories about the cool ways God has provided for our needs. (Since my husband's department got "outsourced" starting February 29, we've compiled a fascinating list of "little" provisions that add up. Let's see--the first one for the day yesterday was when my hubby learned he'd won a $100 gift certificate to the mall in a drawing held by a former vendor.)

Anyway, Heather and I continued telling each other more of such stories via email, and I remembered one from the past which I really should share with you:

The year was about 1988. Gary was in the middle of grad school and we lived on love. We certainly didn't live on much else, though we never missed a meal. Then I got promoted, and suddenly I needed a professional wardrobe. But we didn't have enough to buy even one suit jacket, let alone a complete wardrobe. At the time, Gary worked as a runner for a law firm. And one day an attorney humiliated him by handing him his dirty laundry in a bag and telling him to deliver it to the cleaners.

My man didn't like it, but he did it. And while he was at the cleaners, he noticed the employees were all shaped differently from us. And he wondered what they did with the unclaimed stuff that they couldn't parcel out to their own peeps. So he asked. And the owner said they had six huge garbage bags full of clean/laundered/starched clothes upstairs that Gary could have if he wanted them (apparently it was/is illegal to sell the unclaimed stuff so they had to give it away).

Gary brought home those bags and when we opened them, we found a cream wool Evan Picone jacket. Perfect fit. A black Saks 5th Avenue skirt. Perfect fit. About fifteen silk blouses and starched shirts. Perfect fits. Numerous pairs of classy pants in wool and linen and cotton blends--none of which needed altering. Total disclosure: The Bill Blass suit for him did have to be altered before it fit. In total we got so much classic stuff that was so well made that I still wear some of it all these years later!

In addition we worked with youth at the time. And in those bags we also found a full skit wardrobe complete with nurses' uniforms, security guard shirts, graduation regalia, and mechanics' jumpsuits.

The psalmist wrote, "For every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills" (Psa. 50:10). Yesterday after Gary opened the envelope, he looked at me and smiled. And I knew what he was thinking before he said it: "He must have sold another cow."

Girls' Night Out

Last night Carol (r) treated Eva (middle) and me (front center--okay, just kidding) to a fab Texas evening of outdoor seafood and Anne Lamott. She read from Grace (Eventually) and talked about writing and quoting poetry (Eliot's Prufrock and Auden were among those I actually recognized, which made me feel good about all the money I've spent on tuition at UTD). Oh, and she talked about Ann Coulter, but I can't repeat what she said.

My favorite quote from the night:

"It's only one six-billionth about you."

The Fellowship of Loons

Publishers Weekly (2/25) recently ran this quote from the web site bio of Wilbur Smith, the best selling author of The Quest:

"I was born of British stock on January 9, 1933, in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, in Central Africa. As an infant of eighteen months I was struck down by cerebral malaria, delirious for ten days. The doctors told my parents that it was probably better if I died, because if I survived I would be brain damaged... I survived and am now only mildly crazy. Which is good because you have to be at least slightly crazy to write fiction for a living.

Wordless Wednesday

Gas Prices

Gas prices in my area went up another two cents today. Guessing they did in your neighborhood, too. So in case you haven't already discovered a way to find the cheapest liquid gold in your 'hood, I'm including this link to gasbuddy.com.

Keeping Up with Dan Wallace...

...is not an easy task. But it's always rewarding. Today finds the man who taught me "honors Greek" featured in the Religion section of the Dallas Morning News. You can read the article here.

Random Facts

"October 5-14, 1582, never happened in Catholic lands. Brits (and their American subjects) born September 3 to 10 had no birthday in 1582. Those days were dropped when the Western world switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar" (Wired, 2/08). So I guess that means I shouldn't say "thank you" if someone tells me, "You're as classic as a 16th-century autumn," eh?

A Fox News story noted that the U.S. "seems to be experiencing a baby boomlet," reporting that in 2006 we saw the largest number of children born in 45 years--nearly 4.3 million. So look for lots and lots more Jacobs and Emilys in C-21.

World Vision reports (Spring 08) that 30% of Americans know little to nothing about AIDS; 25% believe the country is "doing its part" on AIDS; 14% are frustrated by the lack of progress; and 74% believe they personally should play a part to help those affected. Hear, hear!

An old but interesting study (2004) conducted by Wake Forest University found that teens who report drinking alcohol with their parents are less likely than others to have either consumed alcohol or abused it in recent weeks. I guess that sort of makes sense. I mean, surely a teen is less likely to get smashed at a wedding with Mom and Dad around than in a Corvette with a group of their rowdy peers.

More than 7.3 million people in the U.S. suffer from the inability to have a little Emily or Jacob. That means one in eight couples of childbearing age, according to RESOLVE. So don't go asking folks when they plan to hurry up and start a family. They might be trying...

The winner of the free copy of Informed Consent: Brian T. Carroll! Thanks, everybody who left a comment. You included a cool group of respectable women. Brian, shoot me your snail mail address via my profile, and I'll send the book on its way. Enjoy!

So Many Places, So Little Time

Consider the popularity of books such as 1,000 Places to See Before You Die and 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die. Well, now the staff of Smithsonian, has come up with a list of twenty-eight must-see places:

. Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, southwest Colorado
. Pompeii, the Roman port city
. Tikal, the ancient city in Guatemala
. Petra, in Western Jordan
. The Pyramids of Giza, rising from the Nile's west bank
. Taj Mahal, India
. Easter Island 's 1K statues (2,000 miles off of South America)
. The Great Wall of China
. Aurora Borealis, with best viewing around the fall and spring equinoxes
. Serengeti (esp. Mara River crossings in Kenya in September and October)
. Iguazu Falls, near where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet, seen best January through March.
. Machu Picchu, atop the Urubamba Valley in Peru, especially at sunrise
. The Louvre, Paris (esp. Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory)
. Zen Garden, Kyoto
. Uffizi Gallery, Florence
. Fallingwater, the personal residence in SW Pennsylvania designed by Frank Lloyd Wright
. Yangtze River, starting at Shanghai
. Antarctica, permanent population: 0
. Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, East Africa
. The Grand Canyon, Arizona
. 3,000 temples dotting a 30-square-mile plain in Myanmar (formerly Burma)
. The Parthenon, Athens
. Angkor Wat in Cambodia
. Ancient Ephesus in Turkey (photo, right)
. Venice
. Amazon Rain Forest, spanning eight South American countries
. Great Barrier Reef, Australia
. Galapagos Islands

For Readers, Writers, Book Lovers

Are you a reader, writer, or book lover? If so, plan now to attend The Best Southwest Bookfest presented by a group of public libraries in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. The Bookfest coordinators have put together inspiring events for readers, writers, and book lovers. The Bookfest occurs annually in the spring and features local as well as national authors (including a multi-time Pulitzer finalist—oh, and me, too, this time!), illustrators, literary agents, and publishers. My workshop, which they scheduled me to give twice: "Five Essentials Every Novelist Must Master."

This year’s Bookfest will take place March 27-29 at the Cedar Hill Recreation Center, 310 E. Parkerville Road, Cedar Hill, TX 75104. Admission to most events is FREE. But the Friday creative writing workshops, the Friday night dinner, and the Saturday luncheon require advance registration and payment. For more information on the event go to http://www.bestsouthwestbookfest.org/.

Wordless Wednesday

Free Book Giveaway

In honor of Women's History Month, I'm giving away a free book. Just leave a comment with the name of a woman in history whom you admire and I'll automatically enter you to win a copy of my medical suspense novel, Informed Consent.

If you belong to a fiction book club, shoot me a private message via my profile and I'll send you a copy, too.

Resource for Writers

If you're an aspiring writer and want to get a writer's conference in your inbox, consider joining The Writer's View. You'll learn everything you'd learn at a writer's conference (sans meeting cool people face to face), only you don't have to pay airfare.

How they work: Each Monday and Thursday a panelist poses a question about the publishing industry, the craft of writing, or anything related to the writing journey. These panelists are agents, editors, and writers who are well known in the Christian writing industry. Then, panelists and members write posts about the question raised. It's a moderated loop, so there's no blatant self promotion. Word counts are limited to 250 per post.

For beginning to intermediate writers, the group to join is TWV 2. Click here <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TWV2/> .

For advanced, published writers, join The Writers View. Click here<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheWritersView/> .You will be asked to fill out an application that you then send to the group's leadership. Then you'll receive an email letting you know whether you've been accepted.

Keep Austin Weird

Last spring at a legal event in Vegas my husband won a drawing for a free weekend in a corner suite at Austin's swanky Intercontinental Hotel on Congress (the main drag leading to the capitol). We had one year to use it.

Then in December we learned that the firm for which he'd worked for more than a decade planned to outsource his entire department. They set Feb 29 as his last day of work. So we chose that date to cash in on our weekend away. And I'm here to tell you that it sure beat hanging at home wondering about the future.

When I told my teaching assistant/artsy friend Eva about our Austin plans, she recommended that I buy a "Keep Austin Weird" t-shirt. I laughed and asked if she made that up. (I don't get out much.) She graciously informed me that it is pretty much the slogan for which Austin is known. (And I can now say this: For good reason.)

When we scoped out events calendars for this weekend in Austin, we initially found nothing. But when we awoke Saturday morning, we looked out our 15th-floor windows and saw that the police had blocked off Congress Ave. for a parade. Then I remembered--March 2 is Texas Independence Day. I knew this because, I kid you not, for my first nine years in Texas I had the day off on March 2 because my employer celebrated it as a corporate holiday. (Other states celebrate when they joined the U.S.; Texas celebrates the day they pulled out!)

So anyway, on Saturday after a gratis room service breakfast, we wandered down and joined the folks lining the streets. The highlight of the morning for us was watching a group of seniors (and I don't mean high school or college) march while doing choreography with state-of-Texas lawn chairs. Seriously. Lawn chair routines synchronized to "Beer for My Horses." Yup. That does it. Austin is certifiably weird.

After that we wandered to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum--one of the coolest I've ever visited. Not only is it obviously well-funded (i.e., beautiful, state-of-the-art), but its creators also gave attention to covering more than political history. Information about women and minorities and home life and farm life and church life were weaved into the narrative rather than existing in separate or annexed additions.

Also, the museum was hosting an exhibit called "Eyewitness: American Originals from the National Archives." And highlights included seeing George Washington's handwritten report about possible bioterrorism; letters from John Adams (he had teeeeeeny enough-to-make-you-blind handwriting); excerpts from Laura Ingalls Wilder's journal; an audio recording of Jimmy Carter's comments about his conversation with the pope (we lived in D.C. at the time and remember well that visit); Mrs. Johnson's diary recording the events of the Kennedy assassination as she saw it and her interactions with Jackie at Parkland Hospital; and much more. What a fascinating sampling of historical documents.

Next we watched a movie about Texas history that made us laugh out loud. A cowboy told of throwing dynamite in a rattlesnake hole and suddenly the sky rained snakes. Duh. Adding to the drama was a sensation in the seats of something wiggling, which evoked a scream from the teens in our row. Since we're transplants (I learned Oregon history; Gary learned Virginia history), we got to fill in some gaps about why Texas has had "six flags."

Then last night we returned to the IMAX at the same museum to see U2 in concert, 3-D style. Though it was cool, I prefer 3-D when producers reserve it for movies. Why? When I go to a concert, I want a dialogue, not a monologue. That is, I want to clap and scream and let the performers "feel the love." If you do that in an IMAX theater, people in white might escort you out. (Okay, they won't, but maybe they should.)

This morning, we had a nice swim and lovely breakfast before returning for one more IMAX show, this time called "The Story of Texas." The Lone Star State is as big as England and France put together and it was, indeed, at one time its own republic. After watching the show we concluded that Texas is not only huge but Texas as a state of mind means also having the ego to match. They say everything's bigger in Texas, but I wonder--have the folks who say that actually seen the Tetons or the Colorado River? Still, especially when we get to see more of it for free, we love the place we now call home--even if (or maybe especially if) parts of it are flat-out weird.