Trailer Park Tuesday: Divine Divas

Every Tuesday Christian Fiction Blog spotlights a new movie, book or running stage play. Our pick for this week is Victoria Christopher Murray's Divine Divas, Young Adult Novel Series. I am so glad to see Victoria, Claudia, Jacquelin, Stephanie and other AA Women Writers write in this market, because I cringe every time I see a teen reading a Zane novel. This is a great response to that challenge. Watch and enjoy. Not for nothing I am concerned with the cover. Your thoughts? Click here to see the trailer.

Who Met the Browns?

Haven't heard any good feedback about TP's Meet the Browns from those who have seen the movie already. I'll see for myself this week, but I want to know your thoughts? Late weekend chatterbox question: What do you think?

Cleaning the Edges of Contempo Christian Lit

The ACFW loop this week and weekend still chirps a discussion on edgy vs traditional Christian novels. Part of me thinks that that the argument is absurd. Christian aesthetics is as varied as Hip Hop. Why debate this? We can't homogenize this thing, even though at times we try. Christian Fiction are works that edify the Body of Christ and glorify God. But in Contemporary Lit an edge emerges, the objective blurs, faith seems as if it fades. But does it? No, of course not. So then the question--the real debate isn't about which style is better. The debate secretly becomes where is our faith in our stories? What is our Christian Worldview and is the true account apparent in our art?

Should we water it down or steep it in legalese? Should we beat a reader over the head with scripture or make new parables our generation can respond to? What hinders a novel from having a contemporary point of view, yet keep a razor's edge truth about whom we belong to? How do we do that without having our faith questioned?

These are all questions that don't continue the debate. They make the debate ridiculous. We're not preaching to the choir. We're not listening to ourselves, because I think we're afraid of the answers and what they might mean. Let's discuss...

Continue reading "Cleaning the Edges of Contempo Christian Lit" »

Problogger Guest Post: How to Breathe Life Back into Your Blog

This weekend while I celebrated Selah's eighth birthday and Christ's Resurrection I learned that my article, How to Breathe Life Back into Your Blog was selected as a guest post at Daren Rowse's Problogger. Here's the link and a snippet from the blog.

Updated: Thinking about pulling the plug on your blog?

I almost did last year after I found myself busy with other projects, my Adsense and Chitika checks were waining and especially after I noticed that many of my blog friends had shut down their blogs or were barely using them. At first I wondered was I kissing a dinosaur? Should I stop blogging and move onto something better?

But for some odd reason my blog would not go gentle into that goodnight.

Furthermore, as a host of niche book blog I still had tons of books to review, local and national book events planned, authors penned in my interview calendar and book news to get out. I couldn't end things, if I wanted to.

So I went back through some of the blog comments to get another perspective on the matter. To my surprise, I discovered the blog, had ideas, plans and things to share with me about our future. We began to reconnect and slowly CFB has brought back that blogging feeling to me. Perhaps your blog wants to do that to you.

Here are 5 things your blog comments provide that can help breathe life back into your blog.

Thanks, Daren for the opportunity.

Feedback for CFB: Do you use your comments to build a better blog?

Bibles for Our Troops

Dear friend,

Requests for Bibles for our troops continue to pour in. This email just arrived:

"My husband's cousin is in charge of a brigade in Iraq and we would like to send Bibles to his whole brigade. They have already lost a Sgt. We could probably find out where to send them. How much would this cost? I believe there are 700 men and women in all. We have been praying for a way to reach these soldiers. His cousin, a Lt. Col., is not saved so we pray for his salvation also. Thank you."

Meeting the tremendous need for God's Word among our men and women in uniform is only possible with the support of people like you. Campus Crusade for Christ's Military Ministry is still receiving requests for 15,000 to 20,000 Rapid Deployment Kits each month.

To learn how you can help place these Kits-each with a New Testament, daily devotional, and evangelistic booklet-into the hands of our troops,
click here. Or visit: http://give2.ccci.org/featured/rdk-ct8

Thank you for your support and prayers for our troops.

Blessings in Christ,

Megan Hawkes
Director, Donor Relations
Campus Crusade for Christ, International

Please feel free to forward this on to a friend. All gifts are tax deductible.

Review, Secrets of a Sinner

Secrets Of A Sinner
Author: Yolanda Tonette Sanders

Publisher: Kimani New Spirit

Release: May

Aspiring model, Natalie Coleman’s dream to live in the Big Apple is detoured when her mother dies of cancer. Natalie decides to sell her family home and move to New York. But all changes when she meets another obstacle, handsome Detective Troy Evans, then another, then others until she sees her truth…she’s her problem. She travels to her family home in Mississippi for redemption...

The full review is in the May issue of Romantic Times Magazine.

FIRST: Only UNI

It is the Ides of March when we have a special blog tour for one of our FIRST members! (Join our alliance! Click the button!) Normally, on the FIRST day of every month we feature an author and his/her latest book's FIRST chapter! As this is a special tour, we are featuring it on a special day!

The special feature author is:

CAMY TANGwebsite and her book Only Uni

Zondervan (March 2008)

Sushi for One? (Sushi Series, Book One) was her first novel. Her second, Only Uni (Sushi Series, Book Two) is now available. The next book in the series, Single Sashimi (Sushi Series, Book Three) will be coming out in September 2008!

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:


Chapter One

Trish Sakai walked through the door and the entire room hushed.

Well, not exactly pin-drop hushed. More like a handful of the several dozen people in her aunty’s enormous living room paused their conversations to glance her way. Maybe Trish had simply expected them to laugh and point.

She shouldn’t have worn white. She’d chosen the Bebe dress from her closet in a rebellious mood, which abandoned her at her aunt’s doorstep. Maybe because the explosion of red, orange, or gold outfits made her head swim.

At least the expert cut of her dress made her rather average figure curvier and more slender at the same time. She loved how well-tailored clothes ensured she didn’t have to work as hard to look good.

Trish kicked off her sandals, and they promptly disappeared in the sea of shoes filling the foyer. She swatted away a flimsy paper dragon drooping from the door frame and smoothed down her skirt. She snatched her hand back and wrung her fingers behind her.

No, that’ll make your hips look huge.

She clenched her hands in front.

Sure, show all the relatives that you’re nervous.

She clasped them loosely at her waist and tried to adopt a regal expression.

“Trish, you okay? You look constipated.”

Her cousin Bobby snickered while she sneered at him. “Oh, you’re so funny I could puke.”

“May as well do it now before Grandma gets here.”

“She’s not here yet?” Oops, that came out sounding a little too relieved. She cleared her throat and modulated her voice to less-than-ecstatic levels. “When’s she coming?”

“Uncle picked her up, but he called Aunty and said Grandma forgot something, so he had to go back.”

Thank goodness for little favors. “Is Lex here?”

“By the food.”

Where else would she be? Last week, her cousin Lex had mentioned that her knee surgeon let her go back to playing volleyball three nights a week and coaching the other two nights, so her metabolism had revved up again. She would be eating like a horse.

Sometimes Trish could just kill her.

Taken from Only Uni, Copyright © 2008 by Camy Tang. Used by permission of Zondervan.