Never Could Have Made it Song & Song Writer of the Year

Donald Lawrence was named Songwriter of the Year, while "Never Would Have Made It"--co-written by Marvin Sapp and Matthew Brownie--was awarded Song of the Year during the 2009 BMI Christian Music Awards at the weekend in Nashville.

Yeah!!

CFN: Howard Relocation & Lay Offs

Christian Fiction News Update:

Simon & Schuster's Howards Books will relocate from West Monroe, Lousiana to Nashville, TN and a majority of the imprint's 21 member staff will be laid off.

According to Howard Books senior publicist Melissa Teutsch, a majority of the imprint's employees--including herself--will be laid off, effective April 30.

Nashville is the home of recently appointed publisher Jonathan Merkhand. Carolyn Reidy, Simon & Schuster's president and CEO, told the Howard staff in a memo: "For 40 years, Howard Books has stayed true to its mission to increase faith, inspire holiness and instill hope by publishing books of enduring appeal to the Christian reader. ... Your efforts have left us poised for future success and ready to act as caretakers of Howard's legacy."

Is Nashville the hub for Christian publishing? Is Howard hiring in Nashville? Do you agree with the move?

Announcing the Launch of www.DeeGospelPR.com

Save the Date.

Mobile post sent by deegospel using Utterli. Replies. mp3

I am pleased to announce the launchdate for DeeGospelPR.com is May 1, 2009. Save the date. Stay tuned. Every day I will post a snippet about my biz site, how it can be helpful to authors, bookclubs, recording artists, and businesses that read Christian Fiction Blog, as well as contests, scholarships for some of our programming and coaching sessions, client case studies, and why our site will not be a secret lead capture page with a mission to hijack your email with client news, newsletters, and other crap you get tired of deleting out of your inbox. I'm too busy to write unnecessary crap anyway.

Also with the launch of DeeGospelPR, Christian Fiction Blog will prepare for Phase II of this blog. We are approaching the five year block this fall. I will began shifting this blog back to more focus on great fiction. So in May prepare for the return of author, publicists, agent interviews, bookclub picks, christian publishing news, church news, plays, all that good stuff I haven't had time to load up because I was building DeeGospelPR. The Summer Reading Club selection will return and I will be going deeper into some of our books with some fun social media sessions. So stay tuned to the blog and subscribe, if you haven't already. Remember I don't send you eblasty things, just the blog in your email.

Thanks so much for supporting CFB and me.

Dee