The Secret Portal at ACFW—Lenora Worth

A lot of writers, editors, agents and industry people congregated at the Omni Hotel and Resort in downtown Nashville last week for the annual American Christian Fiction Writers conference. It was great to see so many friends and get such wonderful hugs, but our MC Brandilyn Collins warned us about the “normals” out there. We needed to remember they might not get some of our conversations.

Writers are used to “normals.” I call them civilians. They are the non-writers who can’t understand why we grill people we’ve just met with all sorts of pointed questions. Especially if one of those people has a profession that we find fascinating.

So we knew to behave and try not to discuss interesting plot twists in the elevator or in the bathroom. And we couldn’t get too giddy or scream too very loud if we got a nice contract on the next book.

I was fine with all of that. But Brandilyn also mentioned the strange elevators at the Omni. We had one wing that had floors One through Thirteen. My husband and I were on the thirteenth floor. Okay, I was also fine with that. But then it got weird. The other set of elevators went from One to Four and then skipped a few floors and went on up way too high for me. Brandilyn called it the Alternate Universe and asked for stories about it. What went on in this strange gap where the elevator didn’t stop? Was it a secret portal? An empty space? A place of horrors beyond imagination? I had a story but I was always too tired at night to sit down and write it.

But I know what that AU was all about. It’s the Author’s Universe. It’s the land where Alice goes down the rabbit hole and the Hobbit Frodo finds that ring. It’s where Romeo meets Juliet and Scarlett first sees Rhett Butler. It’s the place where happy endings collide with chilling suspense stories.

It’s the place of alliterations and allegories and action and adventure. It’s the place where irony meets reality and reality turns into a fantasy. This place is a place of lost dreams and broken faith, a place of hope and redemption and restoration and reformation. It’s a place where, as Ted Dekker suggested, we write to find ourselves. Or we write to lose ourselves. It’s the place where transformation meets meditation and where “methanoia” (a kind of rendering that Ted also mentioned) meets method and structure and plot and a transformation takes place right before our eyes. It’s the place where we do find ourselves in every word we write and we do lose ourselves in deep point-of-view and hard-to-write plots.

It’s the place where our imaginations go to find the truth, where our minds go to find the perfect plot and the perfect pitch. It’s a magical, enlightening, encouraging, and entertaining place. It’s a world where writers go to learn craft and tell their tales. It’s a well and it’s a mountain. It’s a train and it’s a plane. It’s a deep ocean and a sunny meadow.

It is the stuff of dreams.

Or at least, that’s how I see it. While we were there, learning and praying and meeting and greeting and seeing and being seen, our imaginations went straight to that Alternate Universe and made it our Authors’ Universe.

And I loved every minute of it. If you were there, what do you think about the AU? Did you fall down the rabbit hole or find that all-important ring? Or did you go all sci-fi and get beamed up? I hope that you found something great at ACFW. And I hope you came away with your imagination intact and your heart ready for all of the possibilities!

Here are a few more pictures from my adventures!

         

        

                                                       

      

     

And look for what my imagination created, out in October:

Drumming up a fiction series.....

Dangerous Tidings, a Holt Medallion Award Winner

Hello, all. Dana Mentink here. Summer means "write like crazy" time for an elementary school teacher. I dash off into my garden here in Northern, CA and hammer out as many words as I can before the Mentink children find me. Having just finished the last in the four book Pacific Coast Investigations series, I'm at that scary time when I have to build a world, a fresh series idea that will hopefully please readers and editors alike. Sheesh! That's a tall order! This puts me in mind of a few questions I have to ask myself and I figured I'd pose them to you, too!

When writing a series....

1. Should it be a small town setting? Do we enjoy that type of story, dear readers? The little small town where strange and nefarious things occur? Usually this town has a quaint name, like Rose Villiage or Bear Mountain. It's got to be catchy, you know, not like 'Cuperinto' or something.

2. Should the stories focus on one family or on many unrelated characters? Do you like to follow the lives of those four brothers or sisters or do you find that tedious after a while? Hmmmm.

3.  What would a reader find unique about the series? Are the characters all scientists? Navy Seals? Dog trainers? Or maybe scientific Navy Seal dog trainers? What series have you found to be unique?

The Dance

A couple of years ago, my oldest granddaughter was certain she wanted to be a dancer when she grew up after she watched the children’s show, Angelina Ballerina.

Unfortunately, for the dancing world that has since changed.

I was about my granddaughter’s age when I read my first Nancy Drew mystery and knew that I wanted to create stories when I grew up. That was it. Career settled. Life put into place.

 

If only it were that easy. Fast forward six years and then I discovered Phyllis Whitney and Victoria Holt and became hooked on the romantic suspense genre.

 I had no idea when I decided to write that I was about to embark on the dance of a lifetime.

 

Just like dancing, writing requires a lot of discipline and training. 

First, you must learn the proper steps: There is nothing scarier than sitting in front of a blank computer screen for the first time and trying to write…something. It’s a huge leap to go from reading inspirational romantic suspense to actually writing it. When I wrote my first story, I had no idea all the intricate steps involved in creating a suspense story, but I wrote, I read about my craft, and I found a great network of seasoned authors who willingly shared their knowledge.

 

Practice, Practice, Practice: It you don’t use it you lose it. In other words, to improve as a dancer or a writer, you have to work through all the self-doubt and times when life gets in the way.

In the beginning, writing was a trial and error experience for me. I confess I tried other genres in the process before I came back to my first love, inspirational romantic suspense. Some wise author once told me, write what you enjoy reading and then perfect it. In other words, if you don’t read contemporary romance, then don’t try to write it.

Submitting a manuscript the first time can be a frightening experience. After you’ve polished and perfected your baby, it’s time to send it out into the world and let it stand on its own. And that’s just the beginning. You wait and wait until one day you receive news about your baby. Only it’s not what you were hoping. The dreaded rejection letter arrives and it feels as if someone slugged you in the stomach hard. This wasn’t what I expected. To quote my granddaughter, “Now what”? Well, some rejection letters are form letters. Those you file away. Others have comments from the editor who reviewed it. Those you can gain little pearls of wisdom to help you along your way…but you have to put aside your hurt feelings and listen. You can’t take it personal. Publishing is a business. A very hard one at that.

It’s finally Showtime! What do you mean I’ll be dancing by myself?

 

For me, ten years of writing came down to five minutes in the spotlight. In 2012, I entered the Speed Dating Contest that editor Emily Rodmell hosted and I was one of the lucky ones who got an appointment to chat with Emily. On the day of the pitch, I was on vacation in Colorado. At our cabin, internet service is nonexistent. I could have given up and said, well, that’s it, better luck next time, but I didn’t. My husband and I drove into the small town of Pagosa Springs where I did the entire chat on my laptop in the parking lot of the Ace Hardware Store.

Emily was kind enough to request a synopsis although I was so nervous she probably didn’t understand anything I told her. I promptly sent the synopsis out to her. Then she requested the first three chapters followed by the full manuscript. With each request, I tried not to get my hopes up.

 

In December 2012, Emily called. To this day, I can’t tell you what she said to me other than that she wanted to buy FORGOTTEN PAST for Love Inspired Suspense. It was a surreal moment. One that still hasn’t fully sunken in yet. It's a great feeling to have your dream become a reality and even greater to hold your book in your hands.         

 

A Second Dance. If you’re an author, getting a second book published is almost as hard as selling for the first time. It takes a lot of hard work and perseverance. After some wonderful lessons learned during the editing process of FORGOTTEN PAST I was able to sell three more books to Love Inspired Romance including my February 2016 release, Rocky Mountain Pursuit. I’m looking forward to what the future hold while remembering the dance that got me here.    

To quote Garth Brooks’ famous song, The Dance, “I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss the dance”.

And what a dance it is.

What about you? What dream are you dancing to obtain? Whether it is becoming a published author or something else, I’d love to hear how you’ve overcome the obstacles along the way to your Showtime?

All the best...

 

Mary Alford

www.maryalford.net  

Color me surprised! A Carol Award!

Well..color me surprised! I was not even there for the big moment when my name was announced as a winner of the 2014 ACFW Carol Award for Romantic Suspense. I mean...gee, the other two books in my category were both written by the fabulous, amazing Irene Hannon who leaves me somewhat star struck. Imagine my surprise to hear from Chip, my agent that I actually won. It's been soaking in for the last few days and here are my big old hunks of wisdom gleaned from winning this amazing award.

1. I'm just the vessel. I mean that from a Christian perspective, but also from a practical one. The idea to write a missionary nurse story set somewhere internationally wasn't mine, it came from Chip MacGregor. He said, "Hey, I've got a publisher interested in an international setting with a missionary  as the hero. Are you game?" I was game. I mined my family's history (my mother lived briefly in Guatemala) and researched, interviewed and picked people's brains until they couldn't stand the sight of me. You see? I just put the words on the page, but the idea and the story came from many, many different folks who filled me up with their experiences. The vessel, that's all.

2. The award will not change my life. Someone asked me that the other day. "How did winning a Carol last year change your life?" (I was blessed to receive the Carol in 2013 as well.) My answer? It didn't. Oh don't get me wrong, it was a sweet, sweet thing to hear my name called. Yes, I put it on my website and yes, I splashed it around the cyber world with a decided lack of humility, but at the end of the day, the trophy goes on my shelf and my bottom goes back in the chair. When I have one of those moments where I think I am THE worst writer on the planet, I can take a look and savor the moment again. Perhaps that's the biggest payoff of all.

The 2014 Carol Award winners are Katherine Reay, Julie Cantrell, Jody Hedlund, Terri Blackstock, Melissa Jagears, Becky Wade, Tina Radcliffe, Patrick Carr and Melody Carlson. Have you read any of these fine ladies? Does "award winning" on a book cover convince you to buy it?