More Contest News!

 I have also recently learned that Glimpses of God Autumn, one of the devotional books I co-wrote with my lifelong friend Shirley Crowder, is a finalist in the Ames Award! 

Contest News!

I learned yesterday that I am a Selah Award finalist again this year! Woohoo! The Selah Awards are industrywide awards designed to honor the best in Christian publishing from the previous year. It is given in many different genres, I finaled in the essay category with a piece that was published in "The Lutheran Digest" in '22. I'm pretty excited! 

 

Writing Updates

 

A few things have happened in my writing life since my last post. 

The big news is that Shirley and I will be writing a second book in a new two-book devotional series that will be coming out next year. We contracted with Entrusted Books in '22 for the first one. That manuscript is now written and turned into our publisher. We pitched a follow up book to that one making it a two-book series and our publisher gave us the green light to move forward. Though we have not signed the contract yet, our publisher did give us tentative release dates. The first will come out in March of '23 and the second in either fall of '23 or spring of '24. You will be hearing much more about these two books in days to come. 

The second news is that I will be teaching a workshop on magazine writing at the MidSouth Christian Writers Conference on Friday March 17th. The conference should be great, and I am so looking forward to attending an in-person conference again.

And speaking of writing for magazines, I got word that an article I wrote about Louisville baseball player, Felton Snow, will be published in the Kentucky Monthly magazine in April. Felton was a player and coach in the Negro League in the 1930's and '40's. In his years as a coach, he coached some of baseball's greats including Satchel Page, Jackie Robinson, and Roy Campanella to name just three. After he retired from baseball, he worked in a barber shop in Louisville until his death in 1974 and was then buried in an unmarked grave. Last summer the city of Louisville along with certain sponsors, gave him a beautiful marker as well as a celebration of his accomplishments which included the Louisville miner team, the Bats, retiring his number and hanging a jersey with his number in his honor at the stadium. In writing that article I went to the cemetery where he is buried and snapped a picture of his new marker. That is the picture at the top of this post. 

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. 

Website!

I have a website now! I am so excited to share my website with you. My friend, Rhonda Dragomir did a wonderful job setting it up. It's a good thing for a writer to have a website and I had drug my feet on it for way too long. But now I happily join the others and proudly present to you, my website!

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. :)