I’m thrilled to have publishing industry veteran Debra Dixon with us. Debra sports quite a resume! She’s written ten books and contributed to twelve anthologies. Her popular Goal, Motivation, and Conflict workshop spawned a book that is now in its ninth printing. She’s also President/Publisher of Belle Books and its recent imprint Bell Bridge Books, which [...]
Behind the Christian fiction debate is two different paradigms, two contrasting views of Christianity. In one sense, those views are theological. But in another sense, they are cultural. In other words, the reasons Christians can’t agree about what Christian fiction should be is because they don’t agree about what Christianity is and what its followers [...]
The “Bash the Church” Bandwagon made another round this weekend, courtesy of Harold Camping. His failed prophecy about the rapture resulted in a global yuckfest. It seemed like every other post, update, broadcast, or tweet, poked fun at the senile old “prophet.” But I couldn’t help but feel that Christians, overall, were the biggest losers. [...]
I am a white male. Like it or not, both those things — white and male — say volumes about me. Of course, some people make them say more than they should. Which is the downside of living in our hypersensitive, politically correct age. But I am also a novelist. Those two things — [...]
Several years ago, a marketing firm revealed what many already knew: 40% of Tweets are pointless babble. That’s “babble” as in tweeting about What you’re eating, What you’re wearing, What you’re watching, and What time you go beddy-bye. Of course, what constitutes “pointless babble” is mostly determined by the follower’s interest in the Tweeter. I [...]
I’ve been gearing up for my quarterly 10 Great New Christian Fiction Book Covers list and, frankly, I’m having a hard time finding ten. Sure, there’s a lot of pretty Christian fiction book covers out there — gauzy, lacy, blue sky, dandelion, doe-eyed, sassy, flowery, fair-skinned, book covers. But after several dozen, it just seems like [...]
Apex Publications is one of the premier small press publishers of speculative fiction and horror on the market. Founded in 2005 by Jason Sizemore, Apex has grown from being a small print digest, to a pro-level online zine, to now publishing books and ebooks. Jason has graciously taken time to answer some questions about Apex [...]
As part of my series on indie presses: On Monday, I’ll be posting my interview with Jason Sizemore. Jason is an author, editor and publisher of Apex Publications, one of the premier small press publishers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Apex went from being just a small print zine, to a pro-level online zine, [...]
Is it just me, or are stories getting more… out there? For example, try explaining Inception to a friend. Or watch the trailer for Cowboys and Aliens. Nowadays, stories involving parallel dimension, time travel, environmentally-friendly blue-skinned aliens, and Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse are fairly commonplace. It makes sense. We’ve become conceptually jaded. Ray Harryhausen‘s [...]
In my recent review of Redeeming Love, I was pummeled for pointing out what I considered poor craft and patchy execution. The conversation took a turn when the “subjective nature of reading and reviewing” was introduced. And rather than discuss the merits and demerits of the book, the comments devolved into defenses for and against [...]
