Henry Louis Gates' Ancestry Tracing in Atlanta

Trace Your Roots!Find out how with NBAF's DNA Project and African Ancestry...
SAVE THE DATES FORTHE NATIONAL BLACK ARTS FESTIVALJULY 18-27, 2008 visit National Black Artis Festival for more information

Summize Dee

I am rewriting my book proposal. Since I lost everything last year I am rebuilding it by scratch, so I decided to Google myself, see what's in the blogosphere that I left behind. To my surprise I stumbled upon a nifty sight for reviewers.

This review aggregation site does what it says. It compiles reviews of products for you to look through. Right now many of them come from Amazon, typepad, and other blogs I can see bigger things happening here. It's fast. You can snatch reviews for music, movies, books, etc. Check out my review of Tia McCollor's Heart of Devotion.

The section I think is most interesting is the Trends section. You can see what books are getting the most talk and join in the conversation. As soon as I have time I can't wait to chime in there.

Have anyone used Summize? Are there other better review ajax like applications out there?

Weekend Chatter: Obama on Christianity Today

I'm writing a lot today, so I don't have much to time to blog. Here are a few things that came across my table you may want to check out and chatter about. You can leave your take in the comments back I would like to know what you think. I'll throw in my two cents on Monday. You can also twitter me. My id is deegospel.

Senator Obama is on Christian Today talking about his presidential campaign and debunking the myth that Democrats aren't evangelicals. (Thank you from a Christian Democrat.)

On his faith: "I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death
and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to
be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the
example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always
prioritizing the least of these over the powerful."

Question: Who says Democrats can't be Christians?

CFBA: Fallen

This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing Matthew Raley's Fallen(Kregel Publications, February 29, 2008.)


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Matthew Raley is senior pastor of the Orland Evangelical Free Church in northern California, where he lives with his wife and two young children. For fun, he enjoys playing chamber music with friends, giving occasional solo recitals, and playing first violin in the North State Symphony. This is his first book.




ABOUT THE BOOK

Jim was at work when his eyes drifted to the coffee shop visible from his office window. An attractive woman driving a Mercedes pulled up to the curb . . . and Jim’s married pastor emerged from the car. When Jim delves deeper into his pastor’s world, will he be able to handle what he discovers? Is he right to suspect that Dave is having an affair? In the behind-the-scenes church battle that ensues, Jim is torn between duty to his church and a desire to show grace. A ripped-from-the-headlines drama of suspense that keeps you engaged to the last page.

Fallen: A Novel is the story about Jim’s relationship with Dave—how Jim tries to do the right thing to keep Dave accountable, but finds the situation getting worse and worse. It’s also about Jim’s other relationships. Just as he discovers hypocrisy in Dave, Jim discovers his own sins against his wife and daughter.

Kregel interviews Matthew...
Q: Now, you’re a pastor. You’ve been in ministry over ten years. Why didn’t you write a story that makes pastors look good? Why does Fallen seem to make the pastor the bad guy?

A: I’ve found that many evangelicals are in ugly situations with pastors who are literal bad guys. Everyone has seen the parade of scandals in the news—pastors in adultery, drug abuse, fraud, pedophilia, you name it. Believers in these situations usually have to penetrate layers of lies before they find out what their pastors have done. These discoveries are devastating, not just to individuals and congregations, but often to whole communities. In Fallen, I try to be honest about church life in America right now. I also try to show how believers who’ve had these experiences with their pastors can see their pain redeemed.

You can purchase this title right here! To stay in the loop about Kregel or any other Christian novels subscribe to christianfiction by Email.

Speedlinking: Best of Writers Blogs

Welcome to this week's speedlink. I'm highlighting the best of this week's blogs that deal with writing tips for full time writers and author blogs that have a life of their own. You can Digg this page for easy reference. And if you want to stay in the loop about great writers blogs subscribe to Christian Fiction Blog via email. Now Enjoy. Click the underlined titled to be directed to those blogs.

2 Best of Blog for Full Time Writers

• Chip MacGregor's 10 Things to Do to Becoming a Full Time Writer

8. Establish a calendar. This is critical if you're trying to move from part-time to full-time. A writing calendar just gives you a big-picture view of what you need to be writing. It might show something like "take the first two weeks of the month to complete your introduction and first chapter," then remind you to take a week to write that magazine article, followed by a week of revisions to an earlier project, then three weeks of working on your book chapters. In other words, you're using a calendar to break a big project into bite-sized chunks. It'll also reveal what night you're going out to dinner and remind you to take Kaitlin to the orthodontist.

• Flogging the Quill Why You Can't BE Generous when Crafting Compelling Fiction

What's wrong with being generous? What's wrong with allowing a reader to peel a story like the petticoats on a 1950s teeny-bopper, revealing character and plot layer by layer, in all their fullness and richness? I mean, there are plenty of famous novels and current bestsellers by top authors that take their time for the story to surface, right?

Well, famous works and established authors face a different reality than unpublished writers. Reputation or a history with readers can buy their stories the time to ease into things. But if you're unpublished and trying to land a literary agent, your reality is the hundreds of submissions an agent receives and the chore it becomes to crawl through them, looking for reasons to reject while at the same time hoping for a story worth reading. They're looking for professional-level storytelling.

2 Best of A Writer's Life Blog

• Tayari Jones' Blog
  

Tayari's blog bursts with soul and a big writer's heart. This week's she's saddened over the closing of Karibu bookstores, an African American readers icon, as well as sharing her passion for red velvet cake.

I am just heartbroken to announce the closing of Karibu Books in Washington, DC and Maryland. This announcement took me by surprise although I have heard, as often as everyone, that Americans don't read anymore and big chains are snuffing out the little guys. Sigh.

• Carlene Brice's The Pajama Gardener Blog.
  

Bestselling Brice, who will be releasing a novel next month speaks about Martin Luther's King, Jr's legacy and the democratic convention underlying debate are black women, black or female?

Walk Tall is a dream I had a long time ago. Fourteen years ago actually. My mother had recently died, and I was doing freelance PR. I was leaving a meeting to set up free prostate cancer screenings at a church on behalf of the American Cancer Society. I was driving down Colorado Boulevard and this voice in my head said, "You should write a book of affirmations for people of color." I was near 1st Avenue and swerved into the far right lane so I could turn west and go to Tattered Cover (it used to be located in Cherry Creek). That day I bought a book called How to Write a Book Proposal and went home and told everyone I was going to write a book. Just like that. (There's a funny/sad story about that book that I talk about in the new intro to Walk Tall.)

Where did that voice come from? God? My mother? My deepest self? I don't know, but I listened to it and I'm so glad I did. Walk Tall lived in print, first with RPI Publishing then with Beacon Press, for 10 years and had 100,000 copies in print. When it went out of print, I thought the story was finished...but not yet.

I hope you enjoy these blogs this week and come back here to tell me what you think. Now I have to get to writing myself. :)

Dee

Christian Fiction News: Suicide Cults & Secrets

OT: Teenage Suicide Cult with Social Marketing Link
I'm writing two articles about social networking for a christian trade publication and I come across the most scary thing I've ever read. Teenagers are hanging themselves as a suicide pact and they meet via Bebo, a social network site. Read more here.

Bethany House Editor's Secret Submission


Bethany House, editor and now new Christian Regency author of the Lady of Milkweed Manor, Julie Klassen speaks about secretly working on a regency title, then submitting the novel under a pen name to her employer, a traditional Christian publishing house. To her surprise, Bethany House took the novel and printed 26,500 copies for the books first print run. "So why the secrecy in submitting the manuscript? And why did she submit it to her own publishing house?" Read her story here.

BY MOLLY MILLETT for Pioneer Press (Click link to read full article.)

Jesus Christ Elvis Pressley Rock Star
Golden Hearts Award winner, Leanna Ellis left Harlequin to write a novel for B& H about a dying man's wish and a love for Elvis Pressley. Read more here.

Christian Fiction News: Biafra Resurrected

This morning when I opened my email I rejoiced. In this month's Books & Culture, Susan VanZanten Gallagher wrote an interesting article about my favorite book of 2006, Ngozi Adichie's Half of A Yellow Sun. She began the article introducing Adichie as an emerging Nigerian writer and then shares why she thinks Adichie is pushing past her counterparts.

While the latest work of the Big Three has turned toward satirical political allegory—see for example Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah (1987), Soyinka's King Baabu (2002), and Ngugi's Wizard of the Crow (2006)—Adichie has opted instead to employ a sprawling Dickensian narrative to depict the all-too-common post-independence African cycle of cynicism, coups, and corruption. Her epic exploration of the themes of authentic identity, love, and sacrifice employs realism rather than the strategies more commonly found in African fiction today: self-conscious metafiction, broad allegory, or magic realism.

...[Half of a Yellow Sun]The novel's complex structure and psychological realism are supported by an elegant prose sparingly spiced with metaphors and sensual detail. Adichie captures the sights, smells, and texture of Nigerian life, with vivid accounts of intricately embroidered agbadas, pepper soup, chicken boiled in bitter herbs, armpit powder, and the melodious sounds of High Life, the popular Nigerian dance music of the Sixties that was one of first contemporary fusions of African and Western music.

Question: As we celebrate the life of MLK, Jr. here in America this month, how would we Christian authors depict and build a compelling story about the Civil Rights movement?

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God's Self Portrait
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