Welcome 2019! Today is the first day of a brand-new year. We have 364 more days ahead of us to live, laugh, love, and maybe cry a little before this year is behind us. As I think about the days to come, I can't help but also look back.
2018 was a mostly good year. I had some not-so-wonderful moments both personally and professionally but many more wonderful ones that far out-weighed the less than wonderful days. This blog is focused on my writing journey so that is what I will talk about today as I let you know some of the highlights of 2018 and things to look forward to in 2019.
2018 was another good year for freelancing. I had numerous articles published in an assortment of magazines and sites and even taught a workshop on freelance writing in June at the Kentucky Christian Writers Conference. One highlight was getting my first acceptance in a regional magazine for an article that will not come out until late summer '19.
On the book front, 2018 saw the release of one book and re-release of another, both by PixNPens. The most recent release, Prayer Warrior Confessions is an anthology compiled (and partly written) by Shirley Crowder and me. It has been received well by readers, has just finished a blog tour, and is garnering many great reviews. Another book that has been quite successful this past year is Prayer: It's Not About You. This book remains my best-selling book, actually, partly because groups of 10 or more often buy it for group Bible studies. Last August, a men's small group studied it and the leader emailed and told me he intended to teach it in a Sunday School class he leads this spring.
What were the less-than-wonderful moments in my writing world? Well, I did receive a few rejections of submitted articles (which is the norm for freelancers but stings just the same) and I learned that SEEK magazine will be folding. It has published so many of my articles. Also, my husband and I had a couple of disappointments with large traditional publishing companies who gave us every indication they were going to publish our book, "A Stand for Truth" but in the end, they did not. One actually sent a contract but it differed greatly from what we had discussed with them and was not a contract we could sign.
So, I start 2019 with much hope and great expectancy. Here is what I know already about my writing journey in the year ahead:
Freelancing:
I will be receiving contracts from both Focus on the Family and David C. Cook in January for articles to be published sometime in the coming year. I still have articles coming out in SEEK in Jan, Feb, April, and May before they close their door in August. And I know of other articles I wrote coming out in May in Purpose Magazine and in August or September in Blueridge Country magazine and devotions in both the winter and spring issues of The Secret Place.
Books:
My husband and I are moving ahead with the publishing of A Stand for Truth with the help of Gregg Bridgeman at Olivia Kimbrell Press (the press that worked with me on my novel, The Whisper of the Palms) We do not yet have a release date for A Stand for Truth. And speaking of my novel, it will be featured in a friend's blog in mid February and will go on sale at that time too.
My co-writer on many of my books, Shirley Crowder, and I have been and will stay quite busy again this year. We are in the process of writing the Glimpses of God series of devotional books; four in total--winter, spring, summer, and fall. We have winter all done and turned into our publisher. It will release next fall. (It will keep us busy in the summer when it hits the publisher's editing schedule.) We are putting the final touches on the spring book and hope to have that to our publisher in February and are just starting on the summer one which has a deadline of next August. So, while it may be winter outside, my thoughts for the next few months will be filled with summertime!
