Christian Novel Contest

I'm sure you know of this contest, but just in case you don't.

Jerry Jenkins Christian Writing
Guild Operation First Novel For Unpublished Authors
Entrant may not have had a book published or accepted for publication prior to the Wednesday, October 19, 2005 entry deadline.
Winners announced Febrauary 6, 2005.
You must be a member of Jerry Jenkins Christian Writing Guild to participate.
Click on the title and it will direct you to the official site.

Georgia News: Send the Light acquires Appalachian

STL BUYS APPALACHIAN AND APPOINTS CEO

Carlisle, England-based Send The Light Limited (STL) announced its subsidiary, Send The Light Inc. (STL Inc.) in Waynesboro, GA, signed an agreement yesterday afternoon to acquire Appalachian Distributors from its owner and founder Tom Torbett. The transaction is scheduled to close by the end of July.

Appalachian Distributors, who employs over 100 people in 100,000 square feet of warehouses, will continue to operate from its Johnson City, TN and Reno, NV facilities as a division of STL Inc. Torbett’s sons Tommy and Lance will continue working in the business.

Businessman and STL board member David Passman was appointed STL Inc. president and CEO.

Munce Marketing president Bob Munce, who originally introduced Torbett to STL said, “It’s not surprising that Tom, in wishing to retire, would pick [STL] to acquire his business.”

STL’s U.S. operation also includes FaithWorks, Great Value Books, Authentic Publishing, and Paternoster. U.S. sales revenues are projected to be $65 million in 2006 and STL Inc. will donate a percentage of earnings to support world missions.

In 2001 Word Entertainment sold its U.K. subsidiary to STL, which entered the U.S. market in 2003 when it purchased OM Literature from Operation Mobilization.

Earlier this year, STL acquired FaithWorks, the largest full-service Christian distributor, from National Book Network in Washington, D.C. These acquisitions provide a substantial presence for STL in the U.S., and complement its global strategy of advancing the Christian faith through literature distribution.

July Christian BestSellers List

Ranking Title Author/Publisher
1 (4) The Revelation Beverly Lewis, Bethany House, p
2 (6) Monster Frank Peretti, WestBow (Nelson), c
3 (7) The Shunning Beverly Lewis, Bethany House, p
4 (14) Soon Jerry Jenkins, Tyndale, c
5 (17) Moonlight on the Millpond Lori Wick, Harvest House, p
6 (22) Breaker's Reef Terri Blackstock, Zondervan, p
7 (27) The Rising Tim LaHaye & Jerry Jenkins, Tyndale, c
8 (37) Redeeming Love Francine Rivers, Multnomah, p
9 The Warrior Francine Rivers, Tyndale, c
10 The Covenant Beverly Lewis, Bethany House, p
11 A Thousand Tomorrows Karen Kingsbury, Center Street (Warner Faith), c
12 Beyond Tuesday Morning Karen Kingsbury, Zondervan, p
13 Whence Came a Prince Liz Curtis Higgs, WaterBrook, p
14 Oceans Apart Karen Kingsbury, Zondervan, p
15 Sisterchicks Down Under Robin Jones Gunn, Multnomah, p
16 The Storekeeper's Daughter Wanda Brunstetter, Barbour, p
17 One Tuesday Morning Karen Kingsbury, Zondervan, p
18 River's Edge Terri Blackstock, Zondervan, p
19 A Kingsbury Collection Karen Kingsbury, Multnomah, c
20 Redemption Gary Smalley & Karen Kingsbury, Tyndale, p

Numbers in ( ) denote Top 50 placement. / p designates paper; c, cloth

This list is based on actual sales in Christian retail stores in the United States and Canada during May, using STATS as the source for data collection. All rights reserved. Distribution and copyright ©2004 CBA and Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.

The Business: Wal-Mart Picks Off Share from Christian Retailers

Dale Wolf of Context Rules Marketing writes:

"Independent retailers who attended the recent Christian Booksellers Association meeting were lamenting the loss of market share to Wal-Mart. Share dropped from 57% to 53% as Wal-Mart cherry picks the high volume SKUs for Bibles, faith-based DVDs and videos, books, crucifixes and choir robes."

If you are interested in scheduling a booksigning, please call 1-800-WALMART. Prepare for a long wait.

Dee

CFS: Black Fatherhood Anthology

Black Fatherhood Anthology
===============================
Black Fatherhood Anthology ISO Submissions Kinship
Press, a Philadelphia-based imprint, is soliciting
personal essays of not more than 1,500 words from men
or women who can tell a short, uplifting anecdote or
thumbnail sketch of a loving, supportive black father
who was willing to make enormous sacrifices to raise
healthy, productive children. The selected essays will
appear in an anthology designed to paint a
well-rounded portrait of black men as loving,
committed role models. A portion of the proceeds from
the sale of the book will benefit The Fatherhood
Initiative Program.

Submissions should be e-mailed to
(mailto:kinshippress@comcast.net) no later than
August 15, 2005. The authors of the selected essays
will receive five copies of the anthology and have an
opportunity to share in a meaningful project that
celebrates the black experience.

Please include your name, contact info and e-mail
address with your submission. Feel free to forward
this request for submissions to black writers'
groups, conferences, or other talented individuals
who may be interested in contributing to the
anthology.

Info:
Kinship Press
7715 Crittenden Street, Suite 308
Philadelphia, PA 19118-4421
(mailto:kinshippress@comcast.net)

Dee Stewart, Editor

God's Self Portrait

Art can only be Art by presenting an adequate outward symbol of some fact of the interior life.
- Margaret Fuller

Every third Saturday of the month my writing group/prayer partners meet. We met today. And we celebrated our first published prayer partner, Tia McCollors. Her debut novel, Heart of Devotion is top three on this month's Essence Magazine Bestsellers List. (The African American equivalent of the New York Times BL. )

We-the group-have shamelessly been plugging this novel all year not just because we have read and critiqued it through most of its phases. And not because we are living our own dreams through her success vicariously. But because we believe that Tia's story is divine. Although it is romance based, this novel discusses God's romance with us and how that romance is more important and more heartfelt than any kiss a man can give. We believed God moves in this book. And now we see the evidence, since nonbelievers are buying the book and being ministered by it.

Margaret Fuller talks about aesthetics(art philosophy) and how to define its essence. Art cannot be art, if it doesn't speak to us on some divine level. She doesn't say divine, but a presentation of an adequate symbol of some facet of the interior life. For the believer that interior life is the soul, a divine thing.

In Tia's case her novel manifestated God as a lover. In Purple Hibiscus it is the illuminaton of a God through family tragedy. In Eden it is the manifestation of God's healing ability even through death and racism.

The house was warm. I once heard that whatever god a person believed in, that god would look just like him. But something was wrong with the gods in my house. None of them looked like me. They were blue-eyed and dirty-blond. Upright, narrow-jawed. Those same gods I saw during communion where there was no wine or cracker if I didn’t first praise Him and believe that He gave me life. I did until I went to take Miss Hattie Mae, the neighbor, a bowl of sugar for her potato pone. There I saw, for the first time, a black God.
-an excerpt from Eden

If we can't see God moving, then we see nothing.

Before I became a mother, I was many things, but alive inside was not one of them. The Child Terrific in me disappeared after years of disappointments, deaths, other things that ate at my soul...it left me with amnesia.

But I remember that I once was a gifted painter. My paintings were the size of walls. They were so huge. I only have one painting of mine in my home, because they are too ginormous for Dee's Duplex. The others rest in my dad's warehouse in Valdosta. And every now and then I go there just to look at who I once was. What motivated me?

To my astonishment I realized why my paintings were so large...because I was screaming. I was screaming: Who am I? Who do I belong to?

And as I read and review many books now I have found that the books that scream Who am I? Who do I belong to? the loudest are the books that I find God in.

They are all symbols of a big facet in our life's core. Who are we? Who do we belong to? We so called faith ficton authors believe that we know the answer, but when we create a painting with our words I hope we know for sure that until we start writing what's on the inside, what beats us up when someone doesn't give us a glowing book review, or that one thing that we are not willing to surrender to a God we can't see that are imperfections makes us works of art to Heaven. We are wonder. We are beautiful...flawed. Art.

So what does this mean, Dee?

When I begin to write the second draft of the novel that I have let sit in my closet for a year I need to write about why I sat it up there somehow metaphorically in this second draft. Outside of the fact that the novel holds all my fears about myself, my faith, my future, my maternity, my hopes, my failures, my everything wrapped in a rubber band and a Publix shopping bag, it also holds my clinging urgent faith that God will eventually get tired of my whining and get me the thing I want, a book contract. (Like I do when Selah whines about wanting to watch the Cheetah girls for the umpteenth time.

See. It is in these truth's that we find ourselves connected. And without this connectedness there would be no whining, no questions...no doubts. And without those questions there is not art. Because Art isn't just about what looks interesting or pretty it's about finding the self-portait hidden inside.

And since we were made in the image of God...

Let's write on to see what the end's gon' be,
Dee

This entry is a part of July's Celebration of New Christian Fiction. Please click on the link to read what others are saying about the interior life.

Lessons in Reading Christian Fiction Books

By Marina Woods, editorinchief@goodgirlbookclubonline.com

 

 

It’s no secret that I looove a good book! But equally important is the message that the book leaves with me long after I am done. Have you ever felt that way? Read a book and it became so good and meaningful to you that you carried it everywhere you went and you couldn’t wait to wind down long enough to find enough time to finish it. Then, when you did finish, you realized the characters had become a part of you and thus a void of sorts was left in your life?

 

I was just speaking to a friend about this and we shared the same sentiment. She began to tell me the books that had impacted her reading time the most, and without a doubt they were all Christian fiction books. (Yippee!)

 

One in particular was That Faith, That Hope, That Love by Jamella Ellis,. Of course I couldn't  forget the sister-girl of Christian fiction, Victoria Christopher Murray when she released Temptation. (She had me up two nights in a row reading it!) And last but not least, there is a sweet lady I call the God Mama of fiction, the beloved Sharon Ewell Foster. I fell in love with historical Christian fiction with Passing by Samaria. The pages were overflowing with so much wisdom and love that I had to use two different color highlighters for passages I didn’t want to ever forget.

 

My, oh my, where has the time gone? These titles impacted me over four or five years ago, and yet they still live inside of me. I know there are many awesome Christian fiction books on the scene at present and I will surely share those with you next time.

 

I hope you find a good book that you won’t soon forget either. You’ll meet unforgettable characters and discover lessons that the characters learned which you can apply to your own life.  When you do, don't forget to share with a friend!

 

Happy Reading!

Marina

© Marina Woods