Angels in April: Previewing Heaven Sent

Apri Book Preview: Heaven Sent 

Today I received news of a new book release for April-Montre' Bible's Heaven Sent.

Synopsis:

Andrew Turner seems like your average small-town teenager. He struggles with his grades; he helps his mother make ends meet; he longs for the prettiest girl in school to see him as more than a friend. But when his mother succumbs to a mysterious disease, this quiet teen discovers his life-and his family-are anything but ordinary. What are at first frightening visions reveal that he has spiritual gifts-and that his mother's illness is part of an unholy plan that will test his faith and everything he loves. Now, an untried warrior in a centuries-old battle, Andrew must also deal with the pain and anger he feels about his long lost father's sudden return and strive to rescue the unsaved brother he didn't know existed. And if he is to become a man and accept his extraordinary legacy, he must also stand strong in the Word and rely in God's almighty strength and unlimited love

First Lines:(you can click on the title to read the first page)

Hurry! Get in the car!” She yells at the top of her lungs. She is running so frantically that she doesn’t notice the blood running down her leg. She doesn’t have time to notice. All she can see in the pitch-black darkness are the taillights of the car ahead of her. She runs with the wind, and even the broken branches on the stony trail don’t seem to trip her up. The young man in the car starts it up and she jumps in. He cranks the engine, and before she can even close the door he is off. Dark whispering shadows consume the forest behind them.

“It’s moving faster!” she yells.

Oooh, spooky. Can't wait to read this one. If you read before I do, please comment.

Montre' said to me this morning. "Just to give you a little heads up, I'm hoping to create a series of books with the same characters so this first book is just the beginning of so much more! My publisher already has the second and is reviewing it so I hope that this first one does real well."

Now back to writing...He's writing his angel wings off and I still haven't gotten to Chapter Two.

Writing to see what the end gon' be,
Dee

Marcus Aurelius, Certain Death & Johnnie Cochran

Pray and Not Give Up
-Luke 18:1

This morning my mother recieved a sad, but unsurprising phone call. She owns a financial service company, whereby she provides investments, insurance, mortgages for her clients. Today a client called. This afternoon mom has to meet her client to complete her son's death claim.
Death calls are normal in this house.
Out of eighteen years of such things, we have seen and heard it all.

Last night a twenty-nine year old man with two daughters died violently. Someone(s) gunned the house he and a friend visited last night.
No one knows why.
No one knows who.
No ones knows anything, because there were no survivors.
But there are grieving mothers, looking to my mother for financial solace.

I think about her day and I imagine what she will say, what she always says at time like these.
"Pray and not give up." (Luke 18:1)

My mother and I don't have a

Steel Magnolias

kind of relationship more like Daughters of the Ya Ya Sisterhood.
We laugh hard.
We argue hard.
We love hard.
It's the Georgia Peach in our blood stream.
We pray hard.

I pray for this man, who died last night. I probably seen him before, probably have been to his house. His father died last September.
Yes. I remember now.

He's four years younger than me with twice as many daughters, strong, handsome, healthy. I'm half of those things. Yet, I am still here.

If you know me you would be surprised to know that my two favorite movies are day and night, opposing, dichotomies: The Sound of Music and The Gladiator--the one starring Russell Crowe. One movie hails the possibility and beauty in living and the other hails the certainty and beauty of dying.
I cry when I watch both movies. I fizzle somewhere existing in the middle caught up somehow by what I feel inside.
I am caught up today, because this young man died yesterday...the same days as Johnnie Cochran, esq. One young, in his prime, and clueless:the other, young in spirit, in his prime, and filled with illumination.

I want to be the latter. I pray to be the latter.

But in the meantime I need to do something profound with my life.
I need to raise my daughter in the best way I can.
I need to spend more time writing the stories that I carry inside.
I need to live with a big heart like Fraulein Maria and Maximus.
I need to pray and not give up.

What say you?

Writing to see what the end gon' be
Dee

Untitled: Butter Me Not Faith Wordcount: 1000

Altartainment & the Gospel Diva

Amy Grant 

This week I launch my Altartainment News eblog--Gospel Diva.
Why?
Because I write for a few christian newspapers, I receive boatloads of press releases and christian news. And sometimes they send them to me after deadline, so I decided I would share them with the world.
If you have any Good News to share or want to pass on, send them to me at vidae@writing.com.

Click on the title to see what Amy Grant's up to.

Writing to see what the end gon' be,
Dee

Easter Egg Hunt 

Confessions of a Book Reviewer Part One: The First Line

Virgin queen bees take what is known as a "nuptial flight" sometime within the first week or two after emerging from the pupal chamber. The new queen flies out of the hive and begins to produce a perfume-like substance called a "pheromone." The drones in the area are attracted to the pheromone and the queen will mate with as many as 20 of them.
-Arizona State University, Department of Agriculture. agriculture.state.az.us

Authors beware!
When you send me your book for review I don’t just read it. I try to find the pheromone in it.
Why?
With a BFA in Architectural Studies/Book Arts(dual degree,) ten years of newspaper editorial experience, fifteen years writing book reviews for national magazines, college literary journals and local press, my ego wants to have the best hive at Suite101.com and find the good stuff before anyone else. I want to be the Queen Bee in fiction reviews.
And lately, I’ve been thinking about dividing the colony and killing all the couch potato drones, because lazy writing is destroying the industry. Or at least making me sick.
When I receive media mail from my DHL crush, or my UPS crush or that skinny USPS postman that would rather stick a ms on top of my mailbox then step out of the truck and drop it at my door I don’t open the book. I just place it at the bottom of the stack of books and ms that pile behind my sofa and wait…for about five minutes and then I open the book to the first page.
Why?
Because by now I can look at a book and tell in one minute whether it is going to cost my two nice days of fun reading or two months of gut wrenching torture.
Now don’t take what I write here as a reviewer rant, but take it as a note on what I do and my technique on how I do it, so in the future you can decide if you want to receive a review from me(if you have the choice) or if you want to learn a little something about what a reviewer can do for you.
I cannot speak for every reviewer, so I open the door for discussion and will only tell you about myself.
I am a book reviewer, who mostly reviews for publicists, publishing houses, bookstores, and the occasional literary review, trade journal, some national print magazines and some ezines. In short, I review for just about anything.
Why am I important to an author? I cannot tell you whether a particular publishing house will take your manuscript, but I can tell you whether or not it has big buzz potential. I can tell you, which publishing house is a good fit for your work. I am almost (very, very close) to the point where I can tell you which editor will take your ms. But I am not an agent. And my suggestions are not guarantees or free.
I’ll review for free…maybe, but I won’t consult for free. So don’t blow my email up with manuscripts to review. Please.
But let’s look at what I can do free a charge and without fail—I can tell you if your book has big buzz potential in one minute. Big buzz potential is the ability to generate free good publicity from the people you need to back your book—in house marketing/publicists, your editors and the publishing house, and people you want to back your book—book store owners, reviewers, book club presidents. And I can produce my own version of literary pheromone. I can talk your book up to my editors, to my book club president friends and to some of the radio personalities, ministers, and magazine publishers that I know.
How?
With First Lines.

Click on the title to read my article in entirety.

Writing to see what the end gon' be.

Dee

African American Christian Writer's Coalition Launched

For Immediate Release

Contact: Marilynn Griffith (mgriffith32@aol.com) or

Pam Perry (pamperry@ministrymarketingsolutions.com)


Publicist and Authors Launch African American Christian Writer's Coalition

Detroit, MI (March 25, 2005) ---- As evidenced by recent finding by George Barna, (High African American Churches, Regal, 2004), the African American Christian Market (AACM) is here to stay, especially if publicist Pamela Perry has anything to do with it. "These books have been around for a while,but now with so many authors having success, the industry is paying attention," says Perry, whose publicity firm Ministry Marketing Solutions (www.MinistryMarketingSolutions.com) focuses on African American Christian authors.

To help publishers tap into the faith base of the black church, Perry and
several others have joined to form the African American Christian Market
Coalition (AACMC). The other founders include: Rebecca Florence Osaigbovo,
author of It's not About You, It's About God (Intervarsity Press, 2004) and
founder and executive director of Chosen Vessels Ministries (www.CVMI.org )
; Marilynn Griffith, poet, speaker, and debut novelist (Made of Honor,Steeple Hill, 2006) and editor of www.WordPraize.com; Dr. Gail Hayes,conference speaker, character value consultant and author of Daughters of the King, a self-published women's interest title that will be re-released by Warner Books/Walk Worthy Press in May 2005. See (www.DaughtersoftheKing.org).

Together, the AACMC seeks to bring greater exposure to authors and speakers
in this genre through workshops, teleseminars, conferences and greaterparticipation in CBA events. Perry's publicity firm continues to have great success teaching publishers how to interface with African American readers,authors and booksellers.

"We'd like to see the same infrastructure for gospel books as there is for gospel music. The market is the same. Our jobis to reach them," Perry says.

The AACMC hopes to reach more non-black readers as well. Today's hip hop
generation comes in many colors, as evidenced by the success of black books
in the general market.

"When you go to Book Expo, there is an entire African American Pavilion. We'd like to see something similar at CBA eventually...for authors. The first step though, is nurturing and promotingwriters," says Griffith, who uses her WordPraize blog to do interviews and circulate market information.

Dr. Hayes agrees, but thinks even more is needed. "Writing skills are good,but today's author has to learn to become a speaker as well. Those who succeed in the AACM won't only be writers, but Christian communicators."

To that end, the AACMC will support Bonefire 2005, a writer's conference forChristian women of color desiring to write and speak their stories. Confirmed speakers include Christy winner Sharon Ewell Foster, novelist Marilynn Griffith, recovery speaker and author Stanice Anderson, Walk Worthy Press (www.Walkworthypress.net) editor Denise Stinson and Glory GirlsReading Club founder (www.glorygirlsread.net).

"The sky islimit for this market," says Perry, who will host the conference in Detroit, Michigan.

Future plans for the AACMC include CBA/CAABA luncheons, awards presentations and an author referral service.

Good Friday & Meaningful Moments

An excerpt from Butter Me Not Faith

Letitia Mae Sanderson was a petite, older, white woman with sparkling eyes. She looked as if she held a great surprise captive inside her spirit.

Peaches often marveled at white people like her, because they all seemed to have those same stars in their eyes. They looked at life as a big world of opportunity and fun: southern blacks—people like her--looked at life as a big world filled with struggle and locked doors. And if it weren’t for a fervent faith that life no matter how hard was worth living and dying for, Peaches would have just smiled back at Letitia and continued cleaning the pans.

But her soul wouldn’t let her miss this slight chance for it yelled to her on the inside, “You’re change has come, girl!”


This week Dave Long at faith*in*fiction sparked a discussion about creating a different kind of meaningul moment in faith fiction. He suggested that most christian fiction books deal with either big conversion scenes or individuals coming back to their faith. But very little other less obvious themes that also speak on faith.

Last night I attended Maundy Thursday(a special Eucharist commemoration) service with my family. My sister sang in the choir. My daughter clapped. It was great to see old friends.

Reverend Bernice Madden one of our many ministers gave the spoken word for the service. Her subject was: "When he[Christ] was on the cross we were on his mind."
As she taught us a few things about the last week of Christ's life, I felt a meaningful moment cropping up.

I am policy chairperson for my county's head start and prek programs. A former parent and policy committee member sent me a formal complaint to address to the committee. I copied the complaint and passed it out to the committee. The staff person who this complaint was against attacked me for bringing the complaint to the meeting, although this act is my job. And she accused me of trying to get her fired--something I didn't have the time, energy or care to do. The PC dismissed the complaint and we went on with the meeting. Meanwhile I felt awful that this person attacked me and I didn't have anything to do with it. We spoke in private after the meeting and she apologized for jumping the gun. But the sting still stuck. Because now I feel that the committee may have the wrong idea about my persona.

Yet when Rev. Madden continued to speak a sweeping peace fell upon me. No matter how dejected I felt over this petty committee thing, it paled in comparison to the nasty accusations the pharisees made to have Christ killed and the horrible comments people said while watching him suffer on that cross on Good Friday.

Christ died for people who spat on him, lied on him and wished him dead.
Could you do that? I don't think I could.
But I felt what my great grandma used to say--A change gon' come--a meaningful moment.

I could build a short story from my situation. I could write a GuidePost article from it, too. I could build a novel without having The Angel Gabriel appear and square the socks of Peaches Parkers'[my hero] feet to get her to move on with her life.

Hallelujah. Help me, Holy Ghost.

May you find more meaninful moments this Holy Week.

Writing to see what the end gon' be,
Dee