A New Year

                        (This is my back yard.)

The New Year is upon us. It's hard to believe we are entering 2023. Time has a way of flying by, especially the older a person gets. I will reach a milestone birthday in March this year. When I was young, I never thought I would be happy to turn sixty-five, but I've been without insurance for a while, and am looking forward to being eligible for Medicare. As my ninety-four-year-old, and still doing well, father would say, "You only have two choices in life--grow old or die. I'll take growing old." 

What is coming up in my writing life in 2023? Here's a partial list. As a freelance writer other writing opportunities will arise as the year unfolds but here is what I know now. 

Right now I am up to my nose in deadlines that I put off during the holidays. I have a first rounds of edits for my new devotional book that will release in '23 waiting for me to go through. I have a week of devotions due back to "The Quiet Hour" editor on Jan 31st. I finished writing these before taking a couple of weeks off for Christmas, but I need to read over them, self-edit them, and get them submitted. And I am teaching a workshop on writing for magazines in March for which I need to create a power point. All of these need to be done before the end of January so I have my work cut out or me. 

Here is my year in a nutshell:

January: 

a) Get 1st round of edits to my cowriter to add to hers by 1/10.

b) Get seven devotions submitted to "The Quiet Hour" editor by 1/30

c) prepare another submission to send out by 1/20 (Hopefully I can say more about this later.)

February: 

a) Have the Writing for Magazines Power Point finished by month's end. 

b) May hear back from a magazine editor who liked an article I submitted in the fall and said she would consider it in January or February.

March: 

17-18 Attend and teach a three-hour workshop at Mid-South Christian Writer's Conference in Memphis.

April:

A devotion I wrote will appear in the Spring Issue of "The Secret Place" but I do not know the exact date yet. 

May-August:

a) Edit, edit, edit on the new release!! (There are so many rounds of edits that happen in the making of a book, it can take up an awful lot of time. I don't like the edit stage nearly as much as I do the writing stage.)

b) Work with my committee at the Mid-South Christian Writers conference on faculty selection for the '24 conference. 

September: 

Seven devotions I wrote some time ago will appear in "The Quiet Place" 9/4-9/10.

October-December:

a) My new devo book will release some time in the fall, but we do not have a release date yet. 

b) A memoir article I wrote a year ago and submitted to the editor of "Goldenseal" magazine should be coming out in late '23 or early '24 according to an email he sent. 

Whew! I'm tired just thinking about it but I love writing. There is nothing I would rather do! As the year unfolds, you will be hearing more about my upcoming release. Hopefully I will be able to share its title and focus soon followed by a cover reveal and release date in the upcoming months. 

What's New

I haven't posted in a few months. That is not the norm for me but truth-be-told, working with this blog and my other one frustrates me because it won't let me make paragraphs, so I now just make short posts. That said, as I am typing this it looks different and maybe this blog will allow indentions now. Here's to hoping that problem has been fixed. 

So, what has occupied my time since the last post?

 A lot of things. For one I've been working hard on writing that new devotional book that I signed a contract on. Over the summer I've managed to get my parts written and self-edited. It will go through many more rounds of edits before the final version. I completed a devotional assignment for seven devos  for "The Quiet Hour", have submitted a few freelance articles, and am working on a few other things, some of which I am not ready to mention yet, and I've been working with the other members of the faculty committee for the MidSouth Christian Writer's Conference to find faculty for next year's conference. In addition, I am about to embark on working with a website designer on an author website. I will post more about this including the link to it once it's up and running. I will also post the title of the devotional book Shirley and I are working on that will release in '23 and its cover when we have these. So stay tuned. Meanwhile, the pic on today's post are two pics from a photo shoot I had in the spring to get new author pictures for my website. Like everyone else, I grow older with every passing day. I have made a personal choice to update my author pics about every five years at least so when people actually meet me in person, they won't be too shocked with how much older I look in person compared to my author pics. lol! 

New Book Coming Soon!

 

I am so excited to let you know that Shirley Crowder and I just signed a contract with Entrusted Books (an arm of Write Integrity Books) to co-write another devotional book! The book will release sometime next year, most likely in the fall of 2023. I will share more about it over the next few months. For now I'm thrilled to be starting a new writing project. That is like play for me. :) 

What's Ahead for 2021?

A new year has dawned. I know we're all thankful 2020 has moved on and given way to a new year. I, like most of you, am praying this year brings good surprises and not bad ones. For starters, I pray this year brings a decrease in the Covid virus, so that cases, hospitalizations, and especially deaths drop significantly and we can get back to a more normal life that might even include the ability to travel again. This virus wrecked havoc among my family and friends like I'm sure it has many of you. My older sister's entire family caught it last spring but none needed hospitalization, my brother and father caught it in the summer and both ended up hospitalized. We thought we were going to lose my then 91 year old dad but by God's grace he pulled through. A friend from my college days was not as lucky. She lost her son to the virus in the summer. And the virus rages on still. *sigh*

So yes, that is my number one hope and prayer for 2021. I have many writing things to keep me busy and to look forward to in the coming year. Here are some of them:

My first devotional assignment for "The Quiet Hour" published by David C. Cook is included in their current winter issue and I have another coming out in an issue later this year. I just submitted my third seven-day assignment for them that will be in their summer '22 issue. I am a regular with them now and love it! I also have individual devotions in the winter and upcoming spring issues of "The Secret Place".  

I will have two new books releasing this year--one in the spring and one in the fall. They are the last two books in the year-long Glimpses of God series. As soon as I have the spring cover, I’ll share it with you. 

And I will be teaching two workshops at the MidSouth Christian Writers Conference March 19-20. It will be all online this year. I encourage you to sign up if you are a writer or interested in becoming one. My workshops will cover devotional writing as well as freelance writing. 

In addition to these activities that I know of I'm sure more will pop up during the year. I am constantly writing and submitting things. Right now I have several partial books on my computer that I write on pretty consistently (switching from one to the other), I stay active with a couple of local writing groups, I have a few friends I mentor in some way or another, and I write and submit freelance articles, stories, and devotions regularly. 

Oh, and one more thing. The kindle version of my husband's memoir, A Stand for Truth that I co-wrote will go on sale in a week or two in honor of its one-year release anniversary. Stay tuned for that! 

Writing News

Fall is here and winter is closing in. Time has a way of flying by. This is the one year we may all be happy to see time go by, though. Here's to hoping 2021 brings a cure / vaccine for Covid and many other blessings! 

Though I have penned many books the past few years, I still enjoy freelance writing. One of the perks of freelancing is that along with payment, most magazines also send complimentary copies of any magazine I have contributed to. Currently,  have a devotion in the fall issue of "The Secret Place" and an article in the "Focus on the Family Magazine". I also received notice that "The Secret Place" will carry another of my devotions in their upcoming winter issue.  

And ... some exciting news on the book front. In August, my co-writer, Shirley Crowder, and I (in agreement with our publisher) decided to list one of our devotional books "Glimpses of Prayer" as a permafree--meaning it is permanently free on Kindle. Authors who have several books sometimes do this for promotional reasons. It has worked! This week it shot up in number of downloads on Amazon and a few days ago it hit #1 in two catagories--books on Christian prayer and Christian devotional books. Woohoo! (It has stayed there for several days, though I fully expect it to move down in time.) 

Writing is so much fun for me! It's a gift God gave me and I feel like a child who loves taking out my gift and playing with it everyday! 

Looking Forward ... And Back

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!