Hey Christian Indies,
Are you called to write your book? How do you know if God has called you to be a writer? The ladies discuss this as well as what it means to be created to create in this episode.
Be sure and join our private Facebook group, Listeners of the Christian Indie Writers Podcast, to be a part of this growing and dynamic community of Christian writers.
We can’t wait for you to join us on today’s podcast!
Tina, Jamie, and Jen
How accurate does your novel need to be?
Does anyone really care if your character is holding the gun properly or if she is dressed in the appropriate attire for the time period.
Do coroners really give cause and time of death at a crime scene?
Will an EMP really shut down everything electronic, sending us back to the stone age?
Believe it or not, accuracy is important to readers and in this episode, the ladies will share ways you can ensure your novel is accurate.
Be sure and join our private Facebook group, Listeners of the Christian Indie Writers Podcast, to be a part of this growing and dynamic community of Christian writers.
We can’t wait for you to join us on today’s podcast!
Tina and Jen
Winter nights in the wilderness were not what Ivan expected. Having spent his life in the city he couldn’t remember ever seeing a sky so vivid. The stars hung in the sky like a child’s mobile, some invisible strings longer than the others, so it seemed as if he could reach up and touch them. He came out every clear night he could, and stood looking up in awe at the beauty of the stars. But tonight was different. Tonight took his breath away. He knew scientific facts about the aurora borealis, seen pictures and videos, but none of that prepared him for this.
As he gazed into the sky the many colored particles danced across the sky in a ribbon that reached from the eastern horizon to the west. In his mind, Ivan heard Mozart as he watched the particles dance in perfect time. It made his chest ache so that each breath seemed almost painful.
His body shuddered from the cold and he knew he’d been standing out here too long. He should go back inside and check on his sleeping son. As he turned toward the cabin a new sensation crawled up his spine, making the hair stand up on the back of his head. He stopped to listen. The night was completely silent. He turned in a slow circle, examining every shadow among the trees. No movement. Alarm coursed through him as he realized. It was completely silent. No shrill calls of the night birds. No hooting from the owls nesting nearby. No rustling or scurrying of the many small animals that lived in the forest. They’d all gone silent.
Before he could react he saw them. Dark shadows in the shape of men rising as if spectors and emerging from the treeline. He tried to run but they were on him before he took a step. He heard the sickening thump from the back of his head more than felt it. As the sky shrunk to black in his vision he called out.
“Joshua!” and the sky faded to black.
Christina Cattane is a Christian Indie Writer who writes stories set in Alaska and other exotic locales. She is the author of a novel called ‘Lost in the Land of the Midnight Sun’ which falls in the Christian Dystopian Fiction genre, but she also writes in many other genres. Tina grew up in Alaska, has lived in Saudi Arabia, and currently resides in Michigan with her husband and youngest 2 of 4 kids. Her travels around the world often influence her writing. Visit her website at http://christinacattane.com where you can see the progress she is making on her novel. Or catch up with her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cmcattane
Paid email marketing. Reader sites. Promo sites. Deal sites. Lions. Tigers. Bears. Oh my!
Book marketing is confusing enough without having to navigate through all the confusing names of what essentially are the same thing… book promotion sites. But what are they and how do you find the best book promotion sites for your novel?
Recently, in Episode 172, we continued our Book Marketing Strategies 2022 series where we discussed Paid Email Marketing Websites. What are they? Where do you find them? And once you’ve found them, what do you do with them. You can watch or listen to this episode, but the following article will give you the bullet points of what we discussed.
[Read more…] about Best Book Promotion Sites 2022
Jenifer Carll-Tong is the best-selling author of historical Christian romances and co-host of the Christian Indie Writers’ Podcast.
“What are you eating?”
So lost in his own thoughts, Cade hadn’t heard Colleen approaching and the sound of her softly lilting Irish accent tinged with disgust made him jump. “Where’d you come from?”
“I was out back hanging the wash. What is that?” she asked, motionining her head in the direction of his lunch.
[Read more…] about Writing Sprints Inspiration: JeniferJenifer Carll-Tong is the best-selling author of historical Christian romances and co-host of the Christian Indie Writers’ Podcast.
Joanie looked down at her plate. Several crumbs had fallen away from the graham cracker crust and formed what her mind saw as a smile face on the plain white porcelain, or what she assumed was porcelain—this was a swanky sort of place after all. Didn’t all swanky people eat off porcelain? Or was that only in the olden days?
Joanie had grown up with corel ware—dishes that were virtually indestructible, especially in the days before granite countertops became the default for the suburban set. As her mind took a walk down memory lane, re-living several occasions in which either she or her sister had managed to explode a corell plate in spectacular fashion, She continued to stare at the smattering of crumbs, longing to press her fingers into them. The keylime pie had been a delicious indulgence that hadn’t lasted quite long enough in the microscopic portion it had been served.
“I could go for another slice,” a voice croaked from her left side, and Joanie looked up in surprise to meet the gaze of Mrs. Vanderpool, who hadn’t spoken a word to Joanie throughout any of the equally miserly courses the two had sat through together. Joanie had been seated on the end, leaving her with no other opportunity for conversation, and she and Mrs. Vanderpool had been placed immediately across from the perpetually drunk Olsens. Joanie looked across at them now, and saw only the same red-faced man, grinning at everything being said at the other end of the table, where those with good breeding or at least some potentiality for entertainment which overshadowed potential for embarrassment—had been sat, and his washed out blonde wife, who sat as still as she’d seemed to the entire evening, one arm hugging her body, the other a stand for a wine glass which she lifted with rhythmic regularity to her overly powdered face, sipping at it through lipstick that seemed intent to create an entirely new upper lip, this motion only interrupted by a lifting of the empty hand to wave away each offered course, not even bothering to look at the server with her heavily mascara-d vacant eyes. Joanie wasn’t sure if Mrs. Olsen saw her now, or if she had noticed Mrs. Vanderpool’s comment. As far as Joanie could tell, Mrs. Vanderpool hadn’t spoken a word to anyone since arriving at the estate two days previously, merely gesturing to everyone with shakes of the head and points of her walking stick. Her silence and refusal to join in the party’s hilarity had only been matched by that of the perpetually stoned Mrs. Olsen, and Joanie had actually wondered whom she would hear speak first. She wondered now if Mrs. Olsen would smile, were she to understood the nature of her victory.
“Oh, yes, the pie was very good,” Joanie stammered, and smiled at the plump and fashionably dressed matriarch.
“There was a time when the portions were bigger,” she said, lifting her considerable girth in a massive harumph, as if her substantial size were proof of what she’d said.
Jamie Hershberger enjoys writing shorts (short fiction) under the pen name, J. R. Nichols. She is the creator and curator of www.writingshorts.net and the editor of The Writing Shorts Newsletter. Her flash fiction has won several contests and has been featured in two anthologies.
“Not sure, but I think we can get five dollars a piece for ‘em,” Millie said, sucking her finger where it had touched the end of the glue gun.
“Gettin’ a blister?” Cora’s face was scrunched up the way it always did when she was worried.
“She’ll be alright,” I said. “You just put your head down and keep on workin’. These bows ain’t gonna put themselves together.”
But it was no use—Millie’s injury apparently warrented further inspection, and, as a result, a trip to the kitchen for a bit of aloe.
As the girls scurried off to do that, I heard the crunch of feet on gravel and looked up to see Mr. Frank coming up the drive. My insides made moaning protestations I could feel in my muscles and reflexively I gripped the staple gun I was holding a bit harder than I meant to, but I kept working and managed to keep my face stony as I greeted him.
“Fine day we’re having,” he said, looping his thumbs through the loops of his levis and turning to look up at the sky, as though I had asked him to produce a personalized weather report. I thought about telling him he ought to remove his aviators and get a real and right look at the beautiful sky but then decided not to bother. My staple gun misfired and I suppressed the urge to curse or to even make like I’d intended for things to go otherwise, instead casually setting down the gun and picking up the glue gun the girls had left behind.
My heart gave a bit of a panicked flutter as the girls came to mind but they’d retreated into the safety of the house and so, again, I remained passive, even as Mr. Frank came to the table where I worked and picked up the staple gun. I didn’t like having him so close to me, close enough I could tell his wife cared to spend enough of his hard earned money to buy the fancy fabric softener, close enough to smell the pipe tobacco he kept rolled and tucked into the chest pocket of his flannel.
I wished I could tell him to leave.
“Mommy, do we have any bandaids?” It was Cora’s voice. The two angel faces peered out at me from the slice in the screen I’d been meaning to replace. My eyes instinctively flicked to Mr. Frank, and his eyes were exactly where I knew they’d be, even though he’d tried to shield ‘em with those aviators. He wore the same, sickening smile he always put on whenever he saw my girls.
“Go on back inside,” I said, as calmly as I could, though my mind was on Mr. Frank, looking for even a singular twitch of a muscle indicating intention to move and calculating who between us could reach that screen door faster, or if the staple gun could be put to some sort of good use after all, should it come to that.
“Where we keep the bandaids, though?” Cora insisted.
“Got some under my sink. In the little bathroom. Go on, now.”
I could breath again when the little faces retreated into the cool darkness of our home.
“Shouldn’t let ‘em undermine your authority like that,” Mr. Frank said, with a cluck of his tongue.
“You’re right,” I said, and made movements like I’d been just about to be wrapping up for the day and go inside. “I think I’ll go on in there and give ‘em a good beating.”
He barked out a dry laugh and swiped a finger across his eye. Stalling. Like I might invite him inside. But I’d put a beating on the table and not a luncheon, so he’d have to go on home to his woman and his coon hound.
I’d won this round.
“I’ll be seeing you,” he said.
I didn’t respond. I just reached up and pulled down hard on the cord to shut the garage door behind him.
That’s all for today!
Jamie Hershberger enjoys writing shorts (short fiction) under the pen name, J. R. Nichols. She is the creator and curator of www.writingshorts.net and the editor of The Writing Shorts Newsletter. Her flash fiction has won several contests and has been featured in two anthologies.
“Can you tell me a story Grandma?”
“Of course child, but you need to be sure your hands are working while I do. These fish won’t cut themselves.”
“Yes Grandma, I promise.’
“Good, then hold your ulu properly like I showed you, we don’t want any cut fingers.”
“Sorry, I forgot.”
“Very good. Now let me think, which story shall I tell you?”
“A new one, that I haven’t heard before!”
“A new one? Well I’m not sure…oh yes, I know of the perfect one. Are you ready?”
“Yes Grandma, and see, I am cutting the fish like you said to.”
“Very good. In a time long ago, before the great catastrophe, there was a baby boy born in a giant city made of strange stone. His family lived in a great tall wigwam so high it touched the sky. “
“How is that possible Grandma, to build a house that tall?”
“The strange stone had magical power not to topple over. Now this boy was a child of promise.”
“What does that mean Grandma? What is a child of promise?”
“It means he was promised to his mother by God. She prayed and prayed to have a child and promised to dedicate his life to God if he answered her prayer.”
“Oh, so she promised, and God promised too. So he’s was a child of promise!”
“Yes, Yes, very good. The boys father was a man of God…”
“What was his name Grandma?”
“The father’s name was Levi, and the boys name was Joshua. Now Levi was a man of God, and one day while he was praying, God spoke to him.”
“Did he see God?!?”
“No only heard his voice.”
What did it sound like?
“Like a still small voice within his heart.”
“How did he know it was God?”
“Because, he spoke with God often and recognized his voice when he heard it. Now listen, God told Levi to take Joshua away from the great city of strange stone, and take him to a far off land where the rivers ran turquoise and the mountains stood guard.”
“Just like our village…
Christina Cattane is a Christian Indie Writer who writes stories set in Alaska and other exotic locales. She is the author of a novel called ‘Lost in the Land of the Midnight Sun’ which falls in the Christian Dystopian Fiction genre, but she also writes in many other genres. Tina grew up in Alaska, has lived in Saudi Arabia, and currently resides in Michigan with her husband and youngest 2 of 4 kids. Her travels around the world often influence her writing. Visit her website at http://christinacattane.com where you can see the progress she is making on her novel. Or catch up with her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cmcattane
“Ooh, there,” I almost yelled it out loud, but managed to stifle it before alerting Nettie to my presence in her garden. Her precious garden, I hmph. You know she cares about those stupid roses more than people, that’s what I like to say.
[Read more…] about Writing Sprints Inspiration: Rhonda“So, Miss Albright … tell me, do you think of our little home?”
Sarah chose not to address Mr. Sutton’s obvious facetious use of the word ‘little.’ “It’s one of the most beautiful homes I’ve ever seen.”
[Read more…] about Writing Sprints Inspiration: JeniferJenifer Carll-Tong is the best-selling author of historical Christian romances and co-host of the Christian Indie Writers’ Podcast.
