Joyce's Client Sandra Orchard's Debut Novel Releases Sept. 6th

Is it possible to be a man of honor and live a life of lies?

Rick Gray hopes so, because as an undercover cop, he’s had to make too many sacrifices, including a future with Ginny Bryson, the woman he loves.

But when she finds herself in the center of an arsonist’s line of fire, Rick’s lies just might be what they both need to save their lives – and the lives of those they love.

Rated 4 stars by the Romantic Times, Deep Cover is the first book in Sandra’s Love Inspired Suspense series, Undercover Cops: Fighting for justice puts their lives—and hearts—on the line.

Released to book club members in July, Sandra is thrilled to have already received many touching letters from readers. She says, “This is what makes the years of writing and rewriting all worthwhile—learning that you’ve touched people’s hearts with your story, pointed them toward God’s love, and hopefully inspired them to know Him better.”

Deep Cover explores the challenge undercover cops face in being compelled to lie to do their job, and the consequences reaped in their personal lives as a result. The hero is tormented by the fear that his job will endanger the life of anyone he dares to love, yet is bound by a promise to his father to not quit. The heroine, devoted to caring for her mentally-challenged sister and dying mother, denies herself the grace she so freely shows to others and must learn that her worth doesn’t come from what she does.

For Sandra, seeing characters in Christian fiction battle the same questions, yearnings and frustrations she sometimes battles, and triumph through God’s grace, inspires hope and strengthens her faith. She hopes her books will do the same for others.

Sandra has an Honors B. A. & Sci. with a major in math, and taught high school math before starting her family. For almost two decades she home educated her children, and now divides her time between the administrative duties of the family business and writing. She’s an active member of American Christian Fiction Writers, The Word Guild, and several RWA chapters, and recently began a blog for readers titled Conversations about Characters. www.SandraOrchard.blogspot.com

Edgy Fiction or More of the Same Old Same Old by Linda Glaz

The words edgy fiction are being tossed about like a marble on a teeter totter. I was recently given a work to proofread and was told I would enjoy it because it was “edgy fiction”. I read it; it was a wonderful romance, albeit formulaic. So where was the edgy?

Ah hah! I finally figured out what the author and publisher thought was edgy.

A lot more sex filled the pages. Is that edgy or is that just plain old secular?

Don’t panic. There’s no right or wrong answer to that question. You won’t be given a test. But think about it. Are we in the inspy market simply leaning more toward secular when we call our work edgy or are we jumping on the secular wagon and riding off into the sunset, guns drawn, bustiers showing, and kisses as well as other body parts flying here and there?

Okay, a bit melodramatic, but you get my point.

What defines edgy for you?

For me, it’s an author willing to push the limits of his/her genre. Takes steps no one else has. For romance, it means stepping outside the traditional formula and bringing a wonderful romance that might or might not have a happy ending.

Love Story anyone? There’s hardly a woman who lived in the seventies who didn’t read/watch that romance. I can’t tell you all that I read back then, but I can tell you almost scene for scene what happened to Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw’s love. For the story’s time, IT WAS EDGY!

As an inspy writer, do you merely throw in a bit more sex, violence, or **shudder** a couple obscenities and call that edgy? Or do you dare delve into difficult topics that might bring thought-provoking interest to your work?

This is an issue very dear to my heart.

You will hear more on it.

Facebook Tips by Jennifer Hudson Taylor

A couple of weeks ago I responded to a few concerns about Facebook on an email loop and had a suggestion to post a blog about it. I did, and I thought I would share it here as well. 

I think Social Media is like writing. You have to work at it through trial and error before you figure out your voice and discover what works best for you, your personality, your goals, etc. Plus, goals change, so I think our social media will go through stages, just like our writing.

Here are some perceptions/facts that we are going to have to accept and figure out how to work around:

1) People prefer to friend personal profiles over liking fan pages.

2) We can ask them to go to our author page, but we can't force them as we've all discovered.

3) People can unlike a page just as fast as they can like it.

4) Readers do want a glimpse into our personal lives. They like praying for us, connecting with us, and knowing all the news. I consider them my online church family, but I don't share everything.
5) Rules on FB change often, but one that has been consistent and has NOT changed since the beginning is that an individual cannot have more than one profile account and every Fan Page has to be connected to a profile. Please keep this in mind if you decide to convert your current profile into a Fan Page and then decide to create a new, private profile with a different email. 

I started out trying to keep my profile page personal, and luring everyone to my author page, but I gave up. I couldn't change other people's perception, so I had to change mine--the way I think about FB and my place/role there. FB isn't private. They own every piece of content and photo we upload onto their site, regardless if it is on a profile page or a fan page. If a hacker wants my info, he/she can get it.

Here are some suggestions that have worked for me. These suggestions will

not work for everyone, so please keep that in mind.

1) I recommend my author page to every person who friends me. Over half of them have not liked my page. I don't know why, but I do know that I don't want to lose my connection to them, so I've made the decision to sacrifice my profile to accept others. Some people who have NOT liked my author page did go buy my book. I don't understand it, but I stopped trying to analyze it a long time ago.

2) For those who have both friended me and liked my page, I make sure I post different things on each so it doesn't feel repetitive to them. I'm so used to it by now so it doesn't seem like extra work. It's merely part of my job.

3) The social culture of FB and Twitter are so different, that I don't link them. I tried this, and I started losing likes because FB people don't like as many posts as Twitter people. Therefore, I use Twitterfeed and I've set certain blog posts to go to FB and others to Twitter. That way some of it is automated and does free up time for me to post things I want to generate discussions on and to do other things.

4) If you want to generate discussion, ask a question. People love giving opinions and sharing ideas.

5) I give a glimpse of my personal life, but I don't share anything I wouldn't want anyone on the Web to see or know. I don't post many family photos on my author page, but I do post some on my profile. However, I'm careful. I don't post images of my 14 year old daughter in her swimsuit or talk about vacation until we are back home. I monitor her FB page and I don't let her accept people we don't know. Other authors have sent her friend requests, but I don't let her accept them.

6) I screen each friend request and the profile of anyone I send a request to.

7) When I reach my 5,000 friend limit, I'll have the perfect excuse to send people to my author page, and they will know it isn't because they didn't pass muster to be my friend. It puts the blame on FB's rules, not me. Plus, I won't have to screen people anymore.

8) I don't worry about keeping up with 3,000+ friends. I create my friend lists and use them as needed and I don't worry about it. I have enough pressure. I don't need to add more to myself. If I happen to see a post on my newsfeed and I want to comment, I do it and I forget about it. I don’t worry about trying to comment on everyone’s post. Based on some of the comments I've seen from others, I'm concerned that many are putting too much pressure on themselves to try and keep up with everyone. Don't do that. Just relax and let go.

9) I've set all my social media on an email address that is NOT my main email. That way, I'm not annoyed by alerts I don't want. I don't need to know that 20 people commented on a post after me. Also, if one of my social media accounts is compromised, they don’t have access to my main email.

10) I place ads on FB every so often and they have worked well. You can set a daily cap and target people who are not already a friend or fan. My husband and I have set up a separate credit card just for online purchases such as this so that it isn't linked to anything if it were to be compromised or stolen.

I don't like the word by Terry Burns

One of my clients made it all the way through committee and they were supposedly putting the deal points together when it suddenly got nixed from somewhere upstairs. "We haven't had much luck with apologetics," was given as the reason.

The client's response was that the book was NOT apologetics, but I told him they had read it and if they thought that was what it was, then arguing with them about it would be futile.


But it did cause me to think. I know what apologetics are, defending a position (usually our faith) with logic and reason, a rational explanation against objections and alternate views. But I don't like the word, never have. It sounds too much like apology or  apologizing to me and I never have and never will apologize to anyone about my faith.

I wish there were another title we could get the genre label switched to. It's a lot like evangelism, but that word has a little different connotation. Maybe some word that had iron to it and didn't sound like passive defense but more like strong offense. I don't know what the word would be, do you?

Of course it will never happen and I will just have to continue to live with it, but...

I don't have to like it.

Would You Read On? by Diana Flegal

Welcome to the newest, Would You Read On? submission. Today's first page is a Fantasy title.

Aiden breathed in the crisp autumn air and the scent of dewed leaves as he glided on the back of his commonlear dragon. She smoothly and swiftly flew him to the meeting place where a test to transform the brotherhood of squires into knights soon would begin.

“The brotherhood” as they called it, was an impenetrable bond between the three boys. It was Samuel’s idea. When they were twelve years old, they were the only ones in the entire kingdom to begin squire training that year. From that time on, they were inseparable.

Aiden was the youngest by several months, yet many assumed he was the oldest—by at least a year. He had always been tall, muscular and mature for his age. He also had a competitive spirit, which helped ignite their bond. It was this competitive spirit that prompted Aiden to challenge Aeric and Samuel to make this more than a test. It had to be a race.

Sir Zachariah stood with one hand on his hip and the other hand shielding the rising sun from his eyes as his head tilted skyward toward the incoming squire, his face clearly indicating his eager anticipation of the arrival of the three boys. Zachariah’s long grey cloak and beard, the two almost matching in color, whisked in the breeze as Lucy soared gracefully into the landing, grounding her rider close to the other commonlear, Cameron, and his squire, Aeric.

“Good to see you,” Zachariah greeted with a warm smile.

“Good morning, Sir Zachariah,” Aiden said. “Good to see you, too.” Aeric walked over with his arms folded and head cocked.

“Still up to the challenge?” He asked with a bold smirk.

“Of course,” Aiden replied with buoyancy as he dismounted Lucy.

“Good,” Aeric said. “You know, we haven’t discussed what the loser will owe the winner. How about good old fashioned humiliation?”

Would you read on?

Last weeks First page generated a lot of discussion and I must confess I left off the introduction. I will not do that again, I feel I did a disservice to the authors first page. The book, Your 100 Day Prayer is scheduled for release September 15th by Thomas Nelson Publishers. It is authored by John I Snyder. I do hope you will check it out further.

Happy reading!

No-Name Submissions by Andy Scheer

Last week I wrote about how titles can help pre-sell your writing. 

But any acquisitions editor also knows the frustration of receiving material from people who fail to  create an appropriate title for the attached documents that contain their queries and proposals.

Consider these titles, a sampling from ones I've received in the past couple weeks:

● Full Proposal for Hartline Literary.doc

● Resume.doc

● hartlineliterary.doc

● FIRST THREE CHAPTERS.doc

● Book Proposal.doc

● PROPOSAL.doc

Yes, most of these file names at least identify the content's genre. But I get no clue who sent them—or what kind of project they're for. So after downloading the file, I have to rename each one so I can later find them in my computer.

When naming a file to send to an agent or editor, the rule of “reader first” applies. These people receive emails from countless people, so don't camouflage your attachment with an anonymous file name. A title like “Full Proposal for Hartline Literary” may help you identify that document, but in the computer of a Hartline agent, it sticks out like one more penguin on the iceberg.

Instead, I suggest something like this: Becky Smith fiction proposal.doc (assuming your name is Becky Smith and you're proposing a novel) or Ira Roth proposal on Retirement Savings Myths.doc.

I'll let my colleagues check in with their own file name preferences. But my advice is to apply one of those great life principles we all learned in kindergarten: Put your name on your paper.

To Pitch or Not to Pitch by Linda Glaz

The Elevator Pitch
We’re told to have it all nicely wrapped in bows and ready. But when do we actually use an elevator pitch? Does the moment EVER arrive? Okay, been told when not to pitch—the bathroom’s off limits.

That’s a given! Don’t forget!

I presented at the Faithwriters conference last weekend and we had a blast. FW is a smaller, more intimate conference where you really get to know folks. And they create quite a unique environment where you might show up strangers, but leave friends. And not in the shallow sense of the word. You have two days to really get to know just a few people.

An amazing time.
But I digress…

Before the power outage, before the third floor treks in very hot weather, I was riding the elevator to the classrooms on the first floor.

“Hey, Linda. Remember me? Well, we’re in an elevator, and I figured, why not ask if I could do my elevator pitch.”
“Go for it.”

And with a huge grin on her face as if she’d been waiting forever to pitch in an elevator, she did. By the first floor, I had the pitch, thought it sounded interesting and requested a look.

So, do elevator pitches work? Should they be really good? Yes, to both.
You just never know when you might run into someone in an elevator.