Christians Read

Please join me in welcoming DiAnn Mills to Christians Read today.

DiAnn, thank you for joining us. It’s always a pleasure to learn from you.

Can you tell us how is a Christian Novel Different?

I’m often asked how a Christian novel is different from a general market novel, and my response is always the same.

Novels are about strong characters who have a problem to solve. It’s all about character.

But there’s more. A Christian novel is a story in which one or more of the characters solve his/her problems or strive for a goal from a Christian Worldview. God is a priority: His plan and His purpose for the character. Flaws and weaknesses are important parts of the character’s journey. Faith aspect is not an engine additive. It rises from the writer’s deep rooted convictions. Good overcomes evil. Period.

Sometimes Christian fiction is called inspirational, but the category is misleading because any religion can refer to a story that embraces core beliefs as inspirational.

A Christian novel can be any genre.

A Christian writer can create novels for the general market or the Christian market.

A Christian Publishing House understands the business is also a ministry. Many contribute to charitable organizations and pray for their writers and employees.

Here are 10 of my writing objectives in every story:

1. Realistic, unexpected, and unpredictable.
2. Values and beliefs are shown not told.
3. Goals to entertain, inspire, and encourage readers.
4. Internal beliefs fed by life experiences and often lies the character believes about life, the world, and him/herself.
5. Well-developed characters with a rich backstory.
6. A plot filled with twists and turns, ups and downs, with stress, tension, and conflict. The character arc includes a spiritual thread.
7. Dialogue that’s fresh, exciting, and in character.
8. Narrative rooted in point of view.
9. Emotion and Symbolism for the reader’s evocative experience.
10. Antagonistic setting – everything works against the character.

    In a Christian novel, readers may be uncomfortable with what is stated regarding faith. Of course if the reader is a democrat or a republican, some may take offense to what is written. A story is about a character struggling to achieve a goal, not an opportunity to pound the reader over the head with a Bible or a philosophy.

    A few distinguishing attributes are:

    1. Avoids cursing
    2. Avoids sex scenes
    3. Avoids violence for violence sake

What Christian fiction is not:

1. A platform intended to evangelize all those who are not Christian.
2. Preachy, and the characters are unrealistic, unsympathetic, and their actions are predictable.
3. Filled with words only other Christians might understand.
4. A narrative of sermons, people quoting Scripture, or lengthy prayers

A common theme for all novels:

1. Show strong characters who are not victims but survivors.
2. Pit characters into the forbidden, frightening, and unknown. Adversity is the classroom for spiritual growth and positive change and reveals who the inner character really is.

   The next time someone asks why you read a Christian novel, feel assured to say, “Its all about character.”

   How do you describe a Christian novel?

DiAnn’s latest FBI Task Force Novel, High Treason, releases February 6th and is available at Amazon.

Blurb: When Saudi Prince Omar bin Talal visits Houston to seek cancer treatment for his mother, an attempt on his life puts all agencies on high alert. FBI Special Agent Kord Davidson is the lead on the prince’s protective detail because of their long-standing friendship, but he’s surprised―and none too happy―when the CIA brings one of their operatives, Monica Alden, in on the task force after the assassination attempt.

Kord and Monica must quickly put aside interagency squabbles, however, when they learn the prince has additional motives for his visit―plans to promote stronger ties with the US and encourage economic growth and westernization in his own country. Plans that could easily incite a number of suspects both in the US and in countries hostile to Saudi Arabia. Worse yet, the would-be assassin always seems to be one step ahead of them, implicating someone close to the prince―or the investigation. But who would be willing to commit high treason, and can Kord and Monica stop them in time?

DiAnn Mills is a bestselling author who believes her readers should expect an adventure. She combines unforgettable characters with unpredictable plots to create action-packed, suspense-filled novels.

Her titles have appeared on the CBA and ECPA bestseller lists; won two Christy Awards; and been finalists for the RITA, Daphne Du Maurier, Inspirational Readers’ Choice, and Carol award contests. Firewall, the first book in her Houston: FBI series, was listed by Library Journal as one of the best Christian Fiction books of 2014.

DiAnn is a founding board member of the American Christian Fiction Writers, a member of Advanced Writers and Speakers Association, Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers. She is co-director of The Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference and The Mountainside Marketing Conference with social media specialist Edie Melson where she continues her passion of helping other writers be successful. She speaks to various groups and teaches writing workshops around the country.

DiAnn has been termed a coffee snob and roasts her own coffee beans. She’s an avid reader, loves to cook, and believes her grandchildren are the smartest kids in the universe. She and her husband live in sunny Houston, Texas.

DiAnn is very active online and would love to connect with readers on Facebook: www.facebook.com/diannmills, Twitter: https://twitter.com/diannmills or any of the social media platforms listed at http://www.diannmills.com.

Thanks again for joining us today, DiAnn.

Last time, I promised we would explore some of the themes I discovered in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. I hope you enjoy this next phase of our journey. Remember this was research for my master’s thesis, so if it sounds a bit academic, stick with me. It will lighten up soon. Now, back to themes.

According to CliffsNotes: “In a work of literature, a theme is a recurring, unifying subject or idea, a motif that helps us understand a work of art better. With a novel as richly ambiguous as Moby-Dick, we look at themes as guides, but it is important to be flexible while we do so. A good deal is left to individual interpretation so that one reader might disagree with another without necessarily being ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ about what the novel is saying.” Well, if CliffsNotes gives us “permission” to come up with our own ideas, it can’t be wrong. Right? (I took the fuzzy picture on the left.)

Anyway, while many people list themes by single words—revenge, religion, defiance, I consider these to be subjects. For me, a theme is a complete idea expressed in a strong, declarative sentence. For instance, one subject found in the pages of Moby Dick is revenge. The theme would be: The man bent on revenge will ultimately destroy himself and all he holds dear. With revenge as the subject of Melville’s greatest tome, the destruction of Captain Ahab and all he values becomes the inevitable end of his quest, hence the playing out of the theme. And yet there are other themes that can be considered even deeper. (Picture by I. W. Taber – Moby Dick – edition: Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, Public Domain.)

Religion and Defiance

Although Moby Dick is a multi-layered masterpiece with far too many themes to count, most scholars agree that religious themes predominate. For many literary critics, both academic and religious, the central theme of Moby Dick is Ahab’s struggle against God, whom he considers cruel and unjust and whom he sees personified in the White Whale.

So then, one must ask: Who is God? What does He require of a mankind? What should be our response to Him?

To Captain Ahab, God is an unjust Creator who capriciously wounded him by sending a great white whale to bite off his leg. A proud, successful man, Ahab cannot accept this assault on his person as others might accept adversity. Rather, seeing the whale as a “pasteboard mask” behind which hid this cruel Being, Ahab sets himself above God and defies Him. He sets out to avenge himself, seeking actually to kill God by destroying His instrument. In his monomaniacal quest, he instead destroys his ship, his crew, and himself, crying out in defiance with his last breath: “…thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.” Moby Dick, Ch. 135. And so ends the tale, as told by Ishmael, the ship’s only survivor. Ahab is dead. He died defiantly cursing God. (Picture at left is from Wiki Commons and is in the public domain.)

In the most basic terms, this theme may be summed up thus: If we fail to understand God’s love and grace in the midst of our adversities, our lives can become a tangle of bitterness, destruction, and death. Maybe you can come up with something stronger, but that will serve my purpose today.

Moby Dick is one of America’s greatest novels of all time, yet many readers are put off by both its length and its ambiguity. Countless articles and even entire volumes of formal criticism have been written explicating its themes from every conceivable literary viewpoint. Each interpretation has merit if honestly based on a valid ideological construct. My Bible-based Christian faith provides the “valid ideological construct” by which I interpret this novel.

Because imaginative literature has the power to affect our lives, we should never hesitate to read those novels that cause us to think about our own lives and, maybe more important, beyond ourselves. I believe well-written fiction can impact each of us in ways too numerous to list.

Next time, I’ll tell you how I developed Ahab’s Bride as a companion story to the original novel, with the aim of interpreting some of its themes from a Christian viewpoint.

Sometimes, when we find ourselves in a situation that seem out of control and hopeless, the best place to turn it to God. He is there with us no matter what we face in life.

Today, I’d like to share a little about my latest release, Nowhere to Run, available now at Amazon.

I hope you enjoy it.

When you don’t know which way to turn, the most dangerous place to fall is in love…

Surrounded by death and lies, the last thing Dr. Jordan Scott needs is to fall in love.

Jordan thought she knew her boyfriend better than anyone…until a Detective Riley Donovan confronts her with the truth about her brother’s death. His murder was no random act of violence. And Caesar is the prime suspect, which puts her directly in the path of danger.

Here’s an excerpt:

Chapter One

The steady vibration of Doctor Jordan Scott’s cell phone interrupted the last of her nightly rounds. The text message read 9-1-1. Urgent.

She recognized the extension at first glance. It was the ER.

Under her breath she uttered a desperate prayer. Please, don’t let it be another critical child.

It was after midnight, and already she’d treated two injured children under the age of twelve. One didn’t make it.

Jordan didn’t bother returning the page. When someone on the ER staff contacted her, no spare time remained for details. She took the steps two at a time. This wasn’t her first trip down these stairs tonight. And if life were running true to form for a Saturday night, it wouldn’t be her last.

“Someone paged me?” she asked the first-year resident on duty. He couldn’t make eye contact. This was the same kid who’d been flirting with her a few hours earlier. Now, his gaze bounced to the floor, then back to Jordan’s general direction before locking on something just beyond her left shoulder.

“Jordan.” Her attention jerked behind her to where Doctor Elliot Colton, the ER’s attending was standing.

“Elliot, someone paged me?” The sympathy pooling in Elliot’s dark brown eyes made it clear something dreadful had happened.

“I need you to come with me—”

“What’s wrong?” she interrupted because the look in Elliot’s eyes scared her. Elliott had been both her friend and mentor since she’d started at Manhattan General. She trusted him with her life.

“Please, Jordan…” Elliot took her arm and slowly forced her toward his office.

Out of earshot from the rest of the staff.

The mere act, coupled with the seriousness in Elliot’s manner, was all too familiar and frightening.

Jordan barely waited until he’d closed the door. “What’s happened?” For the first time, his gaze slipped from hers, and fear pooled in her stomach. “Elliot, what is it?”

“It’s Jeremy. There’s been…an accident.”

She read the truth in Elliot’s eyes even before she could form the words to ask. “Is he?”

His gaze panned across her face. She’d seen that look a thousand times before. He was trying to determine how much of the details to reveal.

“I’ll explain everything, but right now I think you need to prepare yourself for the worst.”

Once the reality of what he wasn’t telling her finally settled in, Jordan turned on her heel and headed for the door.

Elliot hesitated only a second before following. “Jordan, wait.”

“Where is he?” But she didn’t need to ask. She knew. They’d have taken Jeremy to the Intensive Care Unit.

Jordan jabbed the elevator button until the doors slid open.

“Tell me what happened to my brother.” Her voice shook with emotion.

“I don’t know all the details yet.” He stopped and peered away.

“You said this was an accident?” Why was Jeremy driving anyway? Everywhere he needed to go was in walking distance of their brownstone.

“He’s been shot.”

Before she could even let herself consider the meaning of those words, the doors opened to the fifth floor ICU.

“It’s this way,” Elliott said quietly, taking the lead. She’d heard him use that same soothing tone a thousand times in the past, but never felt its impact before today. Now, each word, though patronizing, carried the weight of a blow.

He led her down the long ICU corridor lined with doors. The ones at the end were reserved for the most serious patients.

Those without hope.

Elliot pushed the door open. It took all her strength to follow him inside. She almost didn’t recognize her brother. Most of the top of his head had been bandaged to cover the bullet wound. A fresh patch of blood seeped through the thick dressing.

Jeremy’s eyes were closed; he was barely hanging onto life. A multitude of lines connected him to life support.

“Oh, no.” Jordan drew in a ragged breath, then crossed the room to reach for Jeremy’s hand. It felt cold to her touch. The boy lying in that hospital bed now was nothing more than a shell of the energetic kid she’d all but raised alone.

The world and its concerns disappeared. She was no longer aware of Elliott standing close, or her worries for a future with her boyfriend, Caesar. The only thing that mattered was Jeremy. She’d do anything to take his place.

Still clutching his hand tight, Jordan fell to her knees and began to pray.

All the best…

Mary Alford

Happy Saturday!

I had planned to go to town—thirty minutes away–and buy groceries today. A normal Saturday routine for most. Also, I’m in desperate need of a pedicure so thought I’d slip one of those in too. But wouldn’t you know it? A snowstorm is hitting in the morning. Again. Growing up in the part of Texas where it doesn’t snow (maybe once a year if that and it melts by noon) I have always loved the white stuff. Now living in Michigan for the last year and a half, it hasn’t taken me long to get tired of the snow and the subzero temperatures.  I never really knew what “brrrrr” meant until spending a few winters in the Great Lakes region.

But the good news is that I can curl up with a great book and . . .

Let it snow.

I’m currently reading Lynette Eason’s Oath of Honor—GREAT romantic suspense story. Just finished up Susan May Warren’s Troubled Waters. She’s an adventure writer after my own heart. Soon I’ll be starting Susan Sleeman’s Kill Shot. She’s an amazing romantic suspense/thriller writer. So many great books and too little time.

Oh, wait, it’s a snow day. That means I can take off from work, doesn’t it? Add to that, it’s a SATURDAY. Sure, I can read all day.

Now that’s what’s in my TBR (To Be Read) pile. What’s in yours?

Might I make a suggestion—MY NEW RELEASE!

I’m kicking off a brand new series—COLDWATER BAY INTRIGUE—set along the stunning Washington state coastline. You wouldn’t expect anything less than an amazing backdrop for one of my stories would you?

Thread of Revenge is the first book in the series, and so far reviewers are loving it.

“Wow, what a great page turner!” –Kara

“I loved this book!!”—Katrina

“Thread of Revenge is the first explosive book in the Coldwater Bay Intrigue series.”—Brit98

I hope you’ll get your hands on a copy today!

COAST GUARD PROTECTOR

Marine biologist Sadie Strand is back in her coastal hometown to prove her best friend was murdered—but searching for evidence almost costs Sadie her life. Abducted, drugged and left for dead on a sinking boat, she’s barely rescued in time by Coast Guard Investigative Service special agent Gage Sessions, an old friend. Assigned to protect Sadie and connect three complicated cases, Gage risks his life time and again to make sure the woman he once loved survives. But although the handsome, guarded agent vows to protect her, someone will keep killing to ensure the truth never rises to the surface.

For purchase options CLICK HERE.

(Digital version available today. Print version available February 6^th)

Blessings!

Elizabeth Goddard

That’s what I thought since my love was novel writing, although I had published a few articles, short stories, devotions and blogs about things of interest to me. But one evening after classes at the May Blue Ridge Conference, several of us sat around talking. Cindy Sproles told about God showing up in a miraculous, unexpected way.

I told of God showing up in the Ladies Room at the Presbyterian Church for my experience. Others chimed in. I said, “Someone should put these stories in a book.”

Two months later Terri Kalfas of Grace Publishing contacted me to say, “I’m interested in that book you talked about.”

What? I didn’t mean…ME! But I contacted some of the story tellers, they told others, and soon the stories poured in. Terri suggested a Christmas Moments book. Okay, Christmas is a good time for this kind of book. They are great gifts!

Then, my daughter was asked to teach an adult Sunday school class. The first lesson was on God’s Word, and the importance of words. Since I deal in “words” she asked me to help. Class members told of experiences when words hurt or helped. My daughter looked at me and said, “Mom, that’s your next book: Spoken Moments.”

I hadn’t planned on a next non-fiction book. But accounts of these stories being life-changing began to come in. People were using them as devotions, giving them as presents. So a call-out was given for additional articles and they poured in. Since the authors of the first book knew they would not get payment but the royalties would go to Samaritan’s Purse, we continued that plan. Suggestions for new book topics keep coming. Now…I love working with these authors and their stories. There are now 10 books in the Divine Moments series.

The Moments series books have presented the opportunity for many writers to be published for the first time. Some of the true stories are also written by multi-published authors.

The writers are delighted to get no payment, but do get a discount on orders, and all royalties are donated to Samaritan’s Purse, a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world.

Stories may be short or long (some have even written poems and a few wrote short fiction stories that corresponded with the theme). If you wish to submit please attach your article to an email to yvonnelehman3@gmail.com, Times New Roman, single spaced, 12 point type, and be sure to put your mailing address (for free copy), your short bio, and email address on the article.

I look forward to hearing from you: see more at www.yvonnelehman.com

If you have a story to tell, Divine Moments series might be the pace for your story.

What I am accepting now:

• 2018 Christmas Moments – happy, sad, childhood, adult, experience, observations, etc. – anything about Christmas – may be faith-based, may be about Santa
• Romantic Moments– dating, marriage, weddings, falling in love, first love, second love, brides, bridesmaids, grooms, flowers, anniversaries – anything about Romance
• Questionable Moments – Experiences that result from your feeling God/Jesus brought a biblical question to your mind/life, or perhaps you questioned God or your faith.
• Personal Titanic Moments – Times of grandeur, or disaster, floating, uncertainty, cowardice, nobility, final moments, cry for help, great expectations, etc.
• Broken Moments – times of brokenness, your story or your observation of someone else’s, and how faith or a positive result helped or healed the brokenness. May also be stories of any kind of brokenness: toy, promise, vow, heart, marriage, arm (such as mine!), mirror, relationship with people or God, or your thoughts on brokenness.

Black & White Moments – stories may be either right or wrong, hot or cold, good or bad. Or they may be times when they’re shades of grey, a choice of two wrongs. They may be a combination of opposites (opposites attract!) such as the darkest days of our lives may be when we saw the “light.” Use your imagination.

Why I Wrote Part of the Overcomers

By Margaret Daley

When some writers I knew started talking about some of their problems they had as they grew up, an idea took root. We decided to write about our experiences dealing with our learning disabilities. In spite of our learning problems, we each went on to become a published writer.

The learning disability that I have is auditory processing. There is nothing wrong with my hearing, but once I do hear something I don’t process the sounds the same way as others. I can’t learn a foreign language or sing on tune. If someone talks too fast, I can’t follow what he is saying. I have to really concentrate when someone is making a speech or I lose track of what is being said.

When I worked with students with learning disabilities, I wouldn’t let them tell me it was too hard for them. I told them if I could struggle to learn to read (trouble hearing the phonetic sounds of words) and still master the ability to read, they could, too. If I could go to college, then they could dream and go for that dream whether that was going to college or trade school.

I will always have a learning disability. I won’t outgrow it. But I learned to work around it and compensate for my auditory processing problem. I’m a visual learner and learn best by seeing rather than hearing. I use that to my advantage.

We all have strengths and weaknesses. We need to learn to use our strengths to overcome our weaknesses. As you were growing up, what did you have a problem with?

Amazon Buy Link: http://littl.ink/OvercomersAM

Please excuse my late post! I had it mostly planned, but four trips to the VA with my dear hubby in the past week sort of took over my brain. The good news is that David is doing well after his lung cancer surgery and treatment. More recovery and treatment to come, but we’re praising the Lord for progress. Now I can get back to my writing responsibilities.

In my last post of 2017, I invited you to join me on a journey to learn more about Herman Melville and his magnum opus, Moby Dick. Here’s the next installment, taken from a lesson I taught my freshman composition students when I was a college professor. This is the introduction to an informative research paper. Many of my students had never written a research paper, so my purpose was to help them organize their paper with a sort of road map in the first paragraph. It needed to have an attention-getting device, a thesis statement, and a plan of development. By following my model and sticking to their plan of development, students could stay on course and not wander off track as they completed their papers on the author of their choice.

Enlightened individuals have always sought to increase their knowledge of far off places. Before our modern age of information, in which we can instantly discover some of the most obscure intelligence on just about anything, scholars and other curious people depended on experienced, well-informed writers to educate them about people of distant lands. One such writer is Herman Melville, a nineteenth century visionary writer having experience as a whaler in the Pacific South Seas, wrote shocking, realistic novels about seafaring life, informing his own generation of faraway worlds they did not know.

Two novels that display Melville’s broad understanding of his subject matter are White Jacket, based on his experiences aboard the Naval frigate United States, and Typee, based on his service as a cabin boy on the whaling ship Acushnet. Because he grew up in a well-to-do family, Melville’s early life gave no hint of the future adventures that would inform his work; however, financial disaster struck when he was only twelve. His father died, leaving the family in “genteel poverty,” thereby cutting short the future author’s educational opportunities. From then on, he essentially educated himself through an extraordinary variety of career choices – bank clerk, sales clerk, school teacher, whaler, and, of course, writer – some of which made appearances in his most successful stories. He was encouraged in his writing by such illustrious authors as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, to the latter of whom he dedicated his greatest novel, Moby Dick. Unfortunately for Melville, his early writing success could not be sustained during his lifetime (his later works were panned or ignored by critics), and the author died in poverty and obscurity. Subsequent generations of lovers of literature, however, have discovered his true literary genius. That the thundering, passionate, mysterious, and compelling novel Moby Dick is now standard reading in high school and college English courses (not to mention the myriad of books and motion pictures based on it) points to Melville’s enduring influence on American literature.

What do you think? Can you see each part of the introductory paragraph? Can you see how this provides a road map for a student writing an informative paper? I’m no longer teaching those college classes, but many of my students reported success from using my model. What more could a teacher ask?

Next, I will explore some of the themes I discovered in Moby Dick and how they influenced my master’s thesis, Ahab’s Bride. I hope you enjoy the next phase of my journey.

Even though it is mid-January and the New Year is underway, the rest of the year stretches out before us with endless possibilities.

As a grandmother, I can only imagine the possibilities of fun times ahead for me and my granddaughters.

As a Christian, I want to fill 2018 with God, drawing nearer to him each day, and trusting him with every mountain and valley that stretches out before me.

As a wife, I want to let my husband know how special he is to me every chance I can. Our time together has been amazing so far and I’m looking forward to what lies ahead for us as well.

As an author, my future holds several new releases for 2018 and hopefully many more possibilities to come.

As a human being, there are so many things I wish for in 2018. Peace, the cure for cancer. A child’s hurting to go away.

Most of these things I can control. I can spend more time with my grandchildren, tell my husband I love him every chance I get, stay focused on my writing more, and spend more time with God, drawing on His strength. And through prayer to Him, I can lift up those things that I would like to see changed and turn them over to Him.

So what about you? What lies ahead for you in 2018? What would you like to see changed this year?

Heart Of Texas Blurb:

Laney Winters gets the biggest shock of her life when she learns she’s pregnant…on the same day she finds her husband in bed with his secretary. With her blissful life exposed as fraud, and her husband wanting nothing to do with raising a child, Laney faces divorce and her greatest fear–moving back home to live with her two eccentric old-maid aunts. Hiding the demise of her marriage and helping to manage the family diner should be uneventful, but a new man in town has the gossips speculating. Laney’s two aunts create an exciting mystery around the stranger, and Laney is sucked into an entertaining game of “Save Jake Montgomery from Aunt Thelma.” When her aunts’ latest victim turns out to be the town’s new family doctor, Laney must entrust him with her secrets, and along the way, discover that when your life flips upside down it’s God’s way of giving you a different perspective…and a fresh start.

Buy Links:

Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Texas-Mary-Alford-ebook/dp/B078TP6HPC/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1516629046&sr=8-12&keywords=mary+alford

Barnes and Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/heart-of-texas-mary-alford/1127766285?ean=9781522300120

Pelican Book Group:

http://pelicanbookgroup.com/ec/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=37_46&products_id=469

All the best..

Mary Alford

http://www.maryalford.net