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Because of a family illness, I need to take a break from blogging. I hope to be back to writing in January, and I wish you all . . . not a merry Christmas, exactly, but a deep joy no matter what your life feels like right now.
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Earlier this week on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart brought up the all-too-predictable "war on Christmas" that creeps into December news stories, as alarmist commentators bemoan the erosion of Christmas as a Christian holy day and whimper aloud about how the separation of church and state p...
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My new author website is live and mostly ready to go. Spurred by helpful instructions on what authors should have in a website, I wanted a site that was active with fresh content, though the newsletter feature is not yet live. I am so pleased with the results, and wanted to post some photos here to thank Paraclete Multimedia for listening to all of my suggestions and working on multiple revisions to get an author website that is both fun and functional.
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As Advent begins and a cease-fire is brokered in Gaza, guest blogger Ruth Everhart, author of Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land, has Bethlehem on the brain. Our gauzy Christmas carols don't do justice to the realities of ongoing conflict in holy places. As she writes, "The next time you’re shopping and hear a song about Bethlehem, would you pray for them [the people there]?"
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I know it's old hat to say "keep Christ in Christmas," yada yada, but I find that this time of year I need a daily reminder that the month of December is about more than just decking the halls. Here are five daily devotional suggestions I like for the holiday season.
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Hey, you! Mormon woman with the minivan. Does visiting teaching bog you down with miles of guilt? Do you pretend to have a fussy toddler when it's time for the annual visiting teaching conference, just so you can stay in the hall? When If you read the Ensign's monthly visiting teaching message to your assigned sister, do you feel like you're not measuring up and hope like hell you don't make her feel that way, too?
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Am I giving to charity via these glossy catalogs of chickens and goats, or am I just satisfying an insatiable need to shop?
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“This book is like a baby that needs to be born and I am looking for a stable.” Can we just say that as a general rule it’s a bad idea to compare your book to baby Jesus? Baby Jesus did not need editing. Mary didn’t send the bambino back and say, “Well, all the basic baby organs are in place, but his eyes are too far apart, and he has redundant navels, and I’m not thrilled with the proposed Jesus title. Can you fix those problems in the second draft?” Those are the kinds of things an editor does.
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I started this series with some softball advice: Don't mention in a query letter that God told you to write this book. Most of you were probably patting yourselves on the back when you read that, because you're not psychotic. (Well done, you!) So today's advice is a little less intuitive to sane people: don't tell your publisher that you're happy to do interviews.
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This first short post in a five-part series aims to help authors avoid five all-too-common pitfalls that can instantly derail their query letters. First up: "God told me to write this book."
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Jana Riess is the author of Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray, and Still Loving My Neighbor and several other books. She is currently immersed in a multiyear Twitter project called The Twible. (It’s the Bible, now with 68% more humor!)
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