Beauty in Words Summer Celebration

Hope to see you tomorrow. Other authors participating: Dwan Abrams, Caterri Leaks, Ashea Goldson and Roishina Henderson.

Come Share the Beauty of His Words with Me Tomorrow

Come meet me. I will be speaking on the Beauty of Words through Blogging.

Saturday June 13, 2009
2:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Calvary Baptist Church
184 Academy St
Madison, GA 30650
(706) 342-4260

Summer Reading Challenge: Sisterchicks in Wooden Shoes

I met and chatted with Robin two years ago at the Christy Awards. She is a sweetheart, and her books are just as sweet , so I recommend her latest, Sisterchicks In Wooden Shoes as this week's Summer Reading Challenge entry.

Summary: When a mammogram result comes back abnormal, midlife mama Summer Finley makes a snap decision to relegate fear to the back burner and fulfill a lifelong dream. Summer heads for Holland where she meets up with tulips, wooden shoes, and her best friend, Noelle.

Pen pals since fourth grade, Summer and Noelle have never met face-to-face. Through decades of heart-level correspondence, they have sustained a deep friendship. A week of adventure helps both women trade anxiety for a renewed and deeper trust in God. When Summer confides in Noelle about the abnormal medical report, Noelle finds the freedom to share a long-held heartache, and both women discover they needed each other more than they realized.

Author Bio:

Robin Jones Gunn is the best-selling and award-winning author of over seventy books, including the Glenbrooke, Christy Miller, Sierra Jensen, Katie Weldon, and Christy and Todd: The College Years teen series. The Sisterchicks® series has sold more than 300,000 units, bringing her total sales to more than 3.5 million books worldwide. A Christy Award winner, Robin is a popular speaker, both at home and abroad, and is frequently interviewed on radio and on television. Learn more about her at www.robingunn.com www.sisterchicks.com

Why Fiction Matters: Gran Torino

Disclaimer:Gran Torino is not a Faith Based Movie

This morning I finally saw Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino. It's one of those (actually all) Clint Eastwood Directed films that leave you speechless long after the credits have rolled. What I like best is Eastwood always chooses simple scripts with much depth. This time he chose debut screenwriter Nick Schenk, who wrote the script at a bar at night.

However, why I am writing about this script here is because of a constant discussion I have had with my writing friends about character develoment. What it means, why it's important, how to build a compelling story that gives a glimpse of a major turning point in the life of universal character. Gran Torino does that. Granted the minor characters (Walt's family) seem one dimensional, the characters that counted were fleshed out as far as they needed to be for this story.

Moreso, there is a spiritual takeaway in this story if you look through the racial slurs and juvenile misbehavior.Life's value isn't based on what we do, the titles we have, our social status, the money in the bank, even being parents...Life's value is based on the good impact you made on the relationships God placed in your presence between birth and death. I tell you. I sat in my room speechless and thinking about how can I be better.

Good writing--not always, but often--should convict us to want to be what God intended. Don't you think?

Dee

Victoria Christopher Murray's Skype Contest

Just chatted with Bestselling Author Victoria Christopher Murray. She along with Simon & Schuster Publishing are hosting a Skype Bookclub Contest. Listen for details. For Social Media enthusiasts this is a great example of using SMS to reach your market. To learn more about the contest visit: http://www.victoriachristophermurray.com/…ontest.pdf

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Trailer Park Tuesday: Scared

Good Tuesday. Today's Trailer Park Tuesday Spotlight is Tom Davis' Scared: A novel on the Edge of the World(David C. Cook.)

Outside of the trailer being outstanding(Cook is doing a great job with this tool,) this novel represents the kinds of books I hope to continue sharing on Christian Fiction Blog. It's one thing to write a story set around church folk and peep into their private drama, but it is another more illuminating activity to take a relevant and current topic affecting our world (World Hunger,) then showing the Christian response to the matter. Having a Christian Worldview in a novel is more than just spouting a scripture and a prayer here and there it's about how we react, how we try to solve, how we use our faith to solve our problems. Kudos again to David C. Cook Publishers.

An excerpt from an interview with Tom Davis...

My passion is driven from the core belief that not only can everyone in the West do something to help children trapped in poverty, they must. God’s kingdom comes when God’s people tackle issues like these and change the circumstances because of their love. We are the answer, that’s why we must act.

If you would like to win a copy of Scared, click here. The Cook Fiction Blog is running a contest. If you subscribe to Christian Fiction Blog, prepare for another sweepstakes involving this book and our fifth birthday. CFB is heading to Kindergarten next month!

Dee

Related Christian Fiction Blog Posts:

• Pearl's Miracle: A Short Story
  
• 2008 Summer Reading Challenge: Say Your One of Them
• Sex, Crimes, The Congo & The UN
• Wildcard Tour: Be Last
  

Pearl's Miracle: a short story

by Dee. D. Stewart

We pant, pray and run toward another restless sleep. But tonight the air smells different to me. Not its usual burnt trash and trees stench. Tonight...tonight it smells of guava. A perfect fruit balanced in taste and scent, both sweet and sour, both firm and soft. Until you bite one you will not know how it will taste. Until nightfall we will not know what we'll face. Uganda is not balanced. We tread through the dark in an unbalanced manner, but we are quite rational. We know this road. And tonight our footsteps sound less like stomps, but gallops. Tonight...tonight is different.

My bigger brother, Apolo, grips my hand and glides me through the bush like a plum angel with black wings. "Let's go."

Apolo is fifteen and knows the quiet way to Noah's Ark . Some say he is the oldest child commuter. The same say he is the most protected.

But our dying mother prays that I am the one who is the most blessed. For no one else knows my name except the geckos in the brush. They see me clearly, but do not speak. Nor can I speak back to them, since no words have fallen from my lips since I shouted at God three years ago. I was seven years old then.

But Apolo talks to me as if one day I will just speak again and tell jokes about how the gecko's bright eyes mirror Wilson, our family ghost. Now wouldn't that miracle be more than a blessing?

He stops and jerks my hand to make me stop. He looks around us; then whispers. "I hear something."

My heart runs, but won't leave my chest. It bubbles up my throat, then paces from jaw to jaw. If I only I could speak then this nausea wouldn't taunt me like this. What have I done? What will be done? My nostrils reek of guava.

Apolo says to others who walk with us. "Hide."

My knees turn to mush like matoke. I can't move.

"Pearl?" Apolo calls me. "Get down."

We squat near a series of compost piles. Yet the night still smells like guava to me. We hear brush folding and crumpling. I smell dirt, red sand, salt and fear. The Lord's Resistance Army stands footsteps away from our future.

The Lord is my shepherd...

I close my eyes so I can camouflage into the night. God made me this dark for my protection from the sun and from his army. Apolo lays prostrate against the swishy ground. His hands clutch my ankles. He holds me up. Now we are statues.

He made me lie down in green pastures...

I can feel my nostrils widen as they walk closer, smell the banana tree bark that comprises the barrel of their guns. My stomach growls loud like a rumbling thunder along the Earth.

Feet stop. A soldier yells, "Who's there?"

I can't breathe.

A large slab of invisible wood pushes my chest and connects with the fear pacing at the tip of my throat. My head begins to quake, my jaws quiver and my heart begins to pray:

Yea thou I walk through the valley of death...

"I will fear no evil."

Apolo's hands fall away from my ankles; then slaps across my mouth. My eyes pop open. We hold each other. Tears drizzle down our eyes, our hands, and our legs. We both wish that I never spoke again. We both rejoice that I speak. Guava.

The soldier comes closer, searches through the brush until his gun's barrel tip touches my elbow. He leans down. Eyes whiter and colder than coconut milk. They grow large like gecko.

Wilson.

My heart leaps and falls.

Another soldier shouts at him. "What do you see?"

Wilson looks at me, then at Apolo. He looks at me again. This time his eyes twinkle like they did three years ago before he hid Apolo and I under compost and was carried off by his new family.

He sighs. "I see a miracle."

"What?" the soldier's voice comes closer.

He tilts his chin slightly toward a safer direction in the brush; then he cuts the air with his free hand. "I said. I see colobus. That's all."

Apolo and I hold our breath and each other until the woods are quiet again.

We are minutes from Noah's Ark, but further from whom we once were. We will not go back to our village or to Mama. We will go to Dure in the morning, instead. And we will pray for another miracle: Wilson's freedom.

Copyright 2006 Dee D. Stewart.

Note: Every night more than 25,000 children leave their villages or camps throughout the district and walk to Gulu town to escape being killed or abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army, which is waging war against the Ugandan government. These 'night commuters' head for shelters such as Noah's Ark, as well as the grounds of the town's hospital and schools.

Dee Stewart is a mother,writer and editor. She's written for Spirit Led Woman, Gospel Today, and Precious Times magazines. Her short story, "Straddling the Fence," is featured in Infuze Magazine's Best of 2005 Christian Shorts Anthology. She can be found at her blog, Christian Fiction Blog

Photo: IDP Girl in Riyadh Camp Smiles by Doug Mercado