Mormonism has been good for the publishing industry. Or is it the other way around? Either way, it makes me wonder if Christians shouldn’t sit up and take note. Before you head to the comment box to tell me Mormons ARE Christians, save it. That debate goes on elsewhere and this post is not about [...]
The Christian Science Fiction & Fantasy (CSFF) Blog Tour of my novel The Resurrection is in full swing. It’s both exciting and unnerving to have so many people talking about and analyzing your book all at once. It’s also fascinating to see the various angles and emphases readers extract from the book. Or don’t. Here’s [...]
One of the most helpful letters I ever received was a rejection letter. If I’d had thick skin, however, I may have never benefited from it. Beauty, the saying goes, is only skin-deep. But the importance of skin goes a lot deeper. Most of us think of skin as just our body’s visible outer layer, [...]
My publisher, Charisma House, has assembled some of its authors for a group blog entitled Just the Write Charisma. It’s an interesting mix of authors and should be fun. I’ll be posting over there once a month. Today I’m up with a piece entitled The Downside of Niche Marketing. In it I ask, For an [...]
Christians are often accused of exploiting disasters like the Japan earthquake for their ends. No sooner does the rubble settle than we are whipping out our Bibles to proclaim God’s judgment or the end of days. But apparently, atheists aren’t much different. Within hours of the event, the headline at Debunking Christianity read like this: [...]
“In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.” — Pauline Kael, U.S. film critic. Newsweek (New York, Dec. 24, 1973). I recently received an email from a writer who gave up his book review site. Why? Because he’s trying to break into the publishing industry. He found [...]
I recently spoke to a spec-fic novelist who signed a multi-book contract with my publisher Charisma House (formerly Strang Communications). My apologies for sounding like a shill, but as much as I talk about speculative fiction here, it is neat to see Charisma House assembling a a formidable crew of spec authors (Mike Dellosso, Conlan [...]
The controversy surrounding Rob Bell’s upcoming book has reignited the discussion about hell, charging him with possibly being a Universalist. This post is not about Rob Bell, but the (alleged) belief that has put him in the hot seat (pun intended… figuratively). Universalism teaches that Jesus died for all people and that all people will [...]
Dear Author: Is it God’s will for you to sell a lot of books? To some, that question illustrates the complexity of understanding God’s will. To others, that question illustrates the complexity of understanding book sales. Either way, when it comes to successful marketing, there seems to be a strange dance between skill and luck, [...]
In my recent post entitled Christian Fiction: What’s Our Mission?, a multi-published author wrote in with this comment: “This question has been raked over the coals so many times it’s all burned out.” That post, as do many of my posts about the state of Christian Fiction, got a lot of hits, as well as [...]
