Christians Read

I’ll let you in on a little secret…most authors put pieces of themselves into our characters. Whether it be the hero or heroine, if you look close enough, you can see little pieces of the author in their personalities and perhaps even bits of the town where they live or even their pets.

For instance, in Eye of The Storm, the heroine’s dog is a Boxer, Rhodesian-Ridgeback mix called Callie. She is named after my dog Callie who passed away this February, (below is a picture of the real Callie). She was a Boxer, Rhodesian-Ridgeback mix and the best dog I’ve ever had.

The heroine Kate and the hero Brady share a meal together of scalloped potatoes, green salad, and elk steaks.

Now for me, I love to cook and scalloped potatoes are one of my favorite recipes to make. I’ve included my favorite recipe for scalloped potatoes that I found on Allrecipes.com below. Allrecipes.com is a wonderful sight and the recipes are simple and easy to make.

As far as elk steak, well, I never tried elk until my husband and I bought our cabin in Colorado and some of our friends invited us over to enjoy some elk steaks. They were delicious. I’ll share the recipe at the end of the post.

Eye of The Storm takes place in a small mountain town called Soaring Eagle, Wyoming, which I confess, I patterned after the small Colorado town called Pagosa Springs, one of my favorite places to visit.

Eye of The Storm, Layers of The Truth, and Past Sins take place in the mountains, which I confess, is my favorite place to vacation. There’s just something about the mountains that helps to put life into prospective for me. I can feel God’s presence everywhere. It’s very humbling.

These are just a few of the pieces of my life that you will find my books. Believe me, there are more. All of my characters love coffee…just like me.

So the next time you pick up a book and start to read it, remember that you’re not only reading a book, you’re gaining valuable insights into the lives of your favorite authors.

These are just a few of the pieces of my life that you will find my books. Believe me, there are more. All of my characters love coffee…just like me.

So the next time you pick up a book and start to read it, remember that you’re not only reading a book, you’re gaining valuable insights into the lives of your favorite authors.

Baked Scalloped Potatoes

Ingredients

6 large peeled, cubed potatoes

1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup

1 1/4 cups milk

1 onion, diced

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Directions

1Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease a 2 quart casserole dish.

2Layer potatoes and onions into the casserole dish. Combine soup, milk and pepper in a bowl, then pour soup mixture over the potatoes and onions. The soup mixture should almost cover the potatoes and onion, if it does not add extra milk.

3Cover dish and bake in preheated 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) oven for 60 minutes or until the potatoes are cooked through. At 30 minutes, remove the casserole from the oven and stir once before returning the dish to the oven. Remove from oven and serve.

All the best…

Mary Alford

http://www.maryalford.net

My Journey with God As I’ve Developed As a Christian Writer

By Margaret Daley

In the past few years my faith has deepened. Actually it has grown quite a bit through the years I’ve written for the Christian market. God led me to write inspirational stories in the late 1990s. At first I ignored the nudge, but as the Lord so often does, he kept nudging me until I took up the challenge. And of course, he was so right. I found my writing home in the Christian market.

Several times in the past years, I’ve seen God actively working in my life. First, he gave me a story I had to tell. It became the first book in The Men of the Texas Rangers Series, Saving Hope. The story is about human trafficking, and I knew it would be a difficult sale, but I didn’t give up hope selling it because it was a story the Lord gave me. I felt him totally behind me. There was someone out there who needed to read it. I have felt that way about all my books in The Men of the Texas Ranger Series. The second book, Shattered Silence, is about bullying. He has given me passion about certain social issues and the desire to tackle them in a storyWhen I ran for the president of American Christian Fiction Writers, I did because He wanted me to run. I did out of obedience, not really expecting to win. I had books contracted and I was already serving on the board as Volunteer Officer. I didn’t envision myself as the president. I hated getting up in front of large crowds and giving a speech. I did win, and He assured me He would help me with giving the speeches. And He did. He is amazing.

My most recent journey with the Lord has me working on giving control over to Him. For so many years I tried to do everything by myself. I loved the Lord, but I didn’t need Him. Or so I thought. What has come home to me is that I can’t do it alone anymore. That I can’t do it without the Lord. Even knowing that, it has still been hard to give everything to Him. Not to worry. Not to forge ahead without considering what He wants me to do. As I’ve told people, I’m a work in progress, but with the Lord on my side, I can’t go wrong.

One of my current books is Hunted, Book One in Everyday Heroes. I recently put up for pre order the second book in there Everyday Heroes Series called Obsessed. Check out at Amazon: http://littl.ink/ObsessedAm. Blurb for Hunted: Murder. On the Run. Second Chances. Luke Michaels’ relaxing camping trip ends when he witnesses a woman being thrown from a bridge. He dives into the river to save her, shocked to find her wrapped in chains. As a canine search and rescue volunteer, Luke has assisted many victims, but never a beauty whose defeated gaze ignites his primal urge to protect. When Megan Witherspoon’s killers make it clear they won’t stop, Luke fights to save her, but can he keep her alive long enough to find out who is after her? 

Buy links: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Kobo and Google Play

By Marilyn Turk

Last weekend I watched a professional tennis tournament. As a social tennis player, I was amazed at the difference between how the professionals play and how I play I’m sure that most of the spectators shared the same thought I had, “I wish I could play like that.” But then the absurdity of that thought hit me. There are several reasons I don’t play like they do, and many of those reasons could apply to writing as well. Comparing my tennis game to the pros is like comparing my writing to that of best-selling writers. And this is why:

• Professional tennis players weren’t born professional. They developed their skills over time. Writers too, don’t usually start out writing best sellers. Writing skills must be developed over time. Professional tennis players have been playing much longer than I have. Most best-selling writers have been writing much longer than I have too.
• Practice, practice, practice. Professional tennis players practice every day. They know that if they want to get better, they must practice. For the same reason, writers should write every day.
• Professional tennis players try to improve their game. They don’t just play, they try to get better at their sport. In the same way, writers need to try to improve their writing.
• Professional tennis players listen to their coaches. If a coach tells a player what they do wrong, the player tries to correct. It. Writers have editors and critiquers who tell them what they do wrong, and how to correct their writing. Only by making the changes will a writer improve their writing.
• A tennis player who wants to increase their ranking must stay focused on the game and not be distracted by things going on around them. Writers, too, need to shut out the distractions so they can focus on their writing.
• Professional tennis players know their commitment means they must give up other time-consuming habits to play tennis. Writers too, must give up other things, for example, TV, that takes time away from writing.
• Tennis players sometimes lose games, but they don’t give up. Writers get rejected, but maintaining a positive attitude is essential to progress.
• Tennis can be lonely for these professionals who travel often, so they bond with other tennis players. Writing too, is a lonely activity, but developing relationships with other writers builds support and camaraderie.

To summarize, to be a good tennis player requires dedication to the goal. Good writing also requires staying dedicated to the goals of finishing,      improving, and succeeding. If I want my writing to be as good as top writers, I must be willing to make the investment they make. If not, my writing  will never get any better, and I’ll have no excuse to say, “I wish my writing was as good as …………”

“Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13-14 NIV

As a fiction author, I understand that sometimes professional historians have little use for historical novels because they think these books often have no basis in truth. But if the author has done her job, fictional stories can surreptitiously teach readers some wonderful historical facts.

When I was teaching college English and Humanities classes, I attended a faculty meeting during which our department head mentioned he was reading a fascinating book about the flu epidemic of 1918. Everyone around me groaned, but I said, “Cool. What’s the title?” I’m always on the lookout for books that contain important information about the past. One day I might write a book about WWI, and that flu epidemic must not be overlooked. Needless to say, I’m very enthusiastic when it comes to historical details.

I fell in love with history when I was about ten years old and my family visited the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. There I learned about a few courageous men who stood against a vast army and inspired other Texans to fight for their independence.

At about that same age, I fell in love with fiction when I saw Mary Martin play Peter Pan on black and white television in the 1950s and learned the joys of make-believe. As a teenager, I loved historical novels such as Jane Eyre, The Robe, and Tale of Two Cities. Even the movies I watched were more often historical in nature rather than contemporary: Laurence Olivier’s Pride and Prejudice, Errol Flynn in Robin Hood, and Robert Stack in John Paul Jones.

When I was an English and humanities professor, I was often dismayed by the lack of interest in and knowledge of history among my students. David McCullough, the author of many popular histories, including John Adams and 1776, said, “If we raise generation after generation of young Americans who are historically illiterate, we run a great risk. You can have amnesia as a society, which is just as dangerous as amnesia for an individual.”

Author J. M. Hochstetler says: “The results of history tests taken as part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (Nation’s Report Card) show that our children aren’t learning some of the basics of our nation’s past. Historians, educators, and even lawmakers are very concerned. They’re afraid that our students are losing touch with the great ideals and principles that are the foundations of who we are. And they’re concerned about what the consequences of this will be for our future.”

But what can be done to remedy the problem?

We can agree that it’s vitally important to teach the truths contained in history so our children can grow up to be responsible, contributing citizens and to ensure that our nation doesn’t fall prey to the mistakes of the past. But in practical fact, how are we going to help students to realize that what happened in the past has everything to do with who they are and the life they’re living today? How can we teach them that history really belongs to them?

Everyone loves a story. When we listen to or read a story, we unconsciously lower our defenses and open our hearts to underlying universal themes such as love and hate, fear and hope, revenge and forgiveness. Well-written, carefully researched historical fiction allows readers to identify with the story’s characters and experience a world that is only outwardly different from their own—in other words, to really GET history on an intimate level and to CARE about it.

With this desire to teach history through my own fiction, my own novels, I have developed a strong conviction about presenting historical facts as accurately as I can.

Most of us have no objection to an author telling a story set against a backdrop of actual history for the purpose of entertaining readers. However, if an author or moviemaker decides to twist historical facts to suit some other agenda, those of us who love history are prone to take exception. Above I mentioned the movie John Paul Jones, a biopic of a great American naval patriot who helped the United States win its independence from Britain.

But I must hasten to add that Hollywood has always loved to mess with history. Why tell the fascinating truth about one of America’s first great heroes when you can tangle it up with all sorts of fictional intrigues? John Paul Jones had enough going on in his life without involving him in a love triangle with Patrick Henry and the woman Henry married. And since Benjamin Franklin died in Philadelphia in 1790, he couldn’t have been at Jones’s deathbed in Paris in 1792, as the film shows. Admittedly, John Paul Jones was filmed in 1959. But have the movie makers changed any over the years?

Consider this example of a more recent movie titled, The Aryan Couple, starring Martin Landau, one of my favorite actors. According to movie reviewer Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel, “The Aryan Couple is the worst Holocaust movie ever.” Moore reports that the film is riddled with impossibilities for its setting, Nazi-occupied Hungary in 1944. In the story, a wealthy Jewish man has been able not only to avoid being carted off to a concentration camp, but he also still lives a lavish lifestyle in his castle in the country—that late in the war. If a young person attending this movie is interested in learning about the way people lived in WWII, what a distorted and wrong picture they will see. As Moore says, “Hollywood is forever finding new ways to tinker with history.” Unfortunately, many young people learn about history and even great fiction of the past from such films as this one.

Another example of Hollywood gone wrong is a 1995 movie based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. The heroine seemed to be taking her cues from the modern feminist movement. Someone said to me, “Well, this is just another telling of the story.” And one of my female students said, “If I’d lived back then, I’d stand up for my rights!” All I can say in response is that, in the time in which this story took place, women who acted out of line were shunned or drowned or hanged or burned as witches. That is history. Another one of my students wrote her assigned book report on The Scarlet Letter using the movie rather than actually reading the book. She had no clue that these two were substantially different, with the movie utterly distorting Hawthorne’s great story. And she was shocked to receive a failing grade. (At left, Hester Prynne, heroine of The Scarlet Letter.)

In producing a movie or writing a book, we should not change history. We shortchange our audiences, whether readers or moviegoers, students or adults, if we take today’s issues and place them in the past when such things were not possible. It’s so important to stick to historical fact. Each era of humankind has had enough issues of its own to teach succeeding generations what they need to know about the human condition. Let’s stick to reality. Let’s stick to truth about the past, as learned from trustworthy sources, so we can feel confident in the historical information we’re passing on to coming generations.

With that conviction in mind, when I set out to write any book, I commit myself to arduous and extensive research so to the best of my ability I would get it right historically. It’s always worth the journey.

So, what does a writer need to do to tell a good story? She must have characters with interesting internal and external conflicts and enough motivation to overcome them; a setting, which I define as time, place, and social environment; and of course, a plot, the storyline, the things that happen to and around the characters.

In order to turn history into fiction, I take three steps: first, develop those compelling characters my readers will identify with and care about; second, place them in real historical settings with actual events and real people, and third, start digging for the historical details that will flesh out my tale: the ideas our ancestors thought and the daily realities they dealt with. What were their philosophies, their struggles? How did they have fun? What did they eat? What kind of plumbing did they have. . .or not have? Digging out those details is like a treasure hunt to me.

I firmly believe we should use fiction to ignite interest in history and show students how interesting it can be. No one can ever know the absolute truth about every detail of history. In recent years, new information has come to light through documents and letters about the 1836 siege of the Alamo, where I got my first taste of delicious history. But nothing can change the fact that the courage of those who died that day in San Antonio inspired other Texans to fight for independence. In the April 2006 Smithsonian magazine, certainly a credible source, there are interesting questions raised about the recovery of John Paul Jones’s body. But nothing can diminish his heroic achievements in our American Revolution.

The unchangeable truth we can all agree on is that our children need to know American history and how it affects them, how their forefathers and foremothers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to ensure the freedom of future generations.

If it takes a fictional story, based of course in reality and historical truths, to attract our children to the importance of the past, by all means, let those stories be told!

(All pictures are from Wiki Commons and are in the public domain.)

Today is National Paperclip Day!

I know, if you are like me you’re thinking, really? There really is a day for everything, isn’t there.

But did you know…

Paperclips are not just for holding papers together. There are many other things that you can do with them!

• Replace a zipper tab
• Unclog a spray bottle
• Unclog a single serve coffee maker
• Hem holder
• Emergency hooks for broken necklaces

The Paper Clip Project

During World War II this small, universal office supply provided a visual method of protest at a time when any outward signs of objection could be dangerous, even in familiar company.

Early in the war, Norwegians were particularly persistent in their development of symbols. The paper clip represented “sticking together” for a time until the Nazis caught on and banned the wearing of paper clips.

According to a March 5, 1941, Provo, Utah newspaper article (The Daily Herald), the Norwegians switched to new symbols as quickly as the bans could be issued.
In 1998, a group of middle school students led by language arts teacher Sandra Roberts and associate principal David Smith began a project through a Holocaust education class. The voluntary after-school class, Whitwell Middle School principal Linda Hooper’s idea, would be the foundation for developing tolerance and diversity.

Inspired by the story of the protesting Norwegians and their paper clips, the students began to collect six million paper clips – one paper clip representing one Jew who perished during the Holocaust. Adults today still wrestle with how the Holocaust could occur. Imagine middle school students trying understand the magnitude of such an event on humanity.

The Paper Clip Project gained international attention and by 2001 the students collected more than 30 million paper clips. The school dedicated a Children’s Holocaust Memorial which displays an authentic German railcar filled with a portion of the paper clips.

For more information on this inspiring story, the book and film that followed visit www.oneclipatatime.org

After I read about The Paperclip Project I was both surprised and I admit I had a newfound respect for the paperclip. It just goes to show you, even the smallest of things can be used for good.

So, I hope you have a happy Paperclip Day.

All the best…

Mary Alford

http://www.maryalford.net