The Fellowship Cafe

Lavern08

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*Calls the ServPro™ (Like It Never Even Happened©) team* :Sun:
 

Carrie in PA

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Since the weather is turning warm, I thought I'd stop by with some fresh strawberries and whipped cream for the cafe. They're from the local farmers' market and they're soooo sweet and delicious!!
 

Lavern08

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*Makes a couple of Shortcakes to go with* :Thumbs:
 

Carrie in PA

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Mmmmmmmmmmm, shortcake....

(doesn't tell Calla that bowl was for her anyway)



So what's everybody working on these days? I'm working on a novel I'm going to submit for HQ's Love Inspired line. It's a contemporary small-town romance. It's kind of nice to be working to fit within their strict guidelines, sort of like bumpers in a bowling lane. LOL

I'm also working on a book I'm going to self-publish. I was a columnist for a local paper for ~15 years, so I'm putting together a selection of my favorite columns, then fill in the missing years with a selection of blog posts, then have a couple of short stories at the end. I haven't written the column for almost 6 years, but I still have people stop me in the grocery store, so why the heck not, right? I don't expect much in the way of sales because it's so locally niche, but I think it'll be good experience dabbling in self-pub in case I eventually go that route.
 

Melody

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Yes, very smart, Carrie, to pull together stuff already written. Fingers crossed your self-pub journey goes well. I am working on the second story in my Brides of Brevalia series. Doing better writing scenes by hand than sitting at the computer. Plus, I can have a favorite movie playing in the background. ;)
 

rwhegwood

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A little late to the thread, but here are the stories in my to-do basket:

Fantasy:
Galenborn Series
Sequential novellas starting in the mid-1830s that tell the story of a society of mages that lived in the old south and kept to themselves...imagine something like Hogwarts meets Gone With the Wind. The central story follows a mixed orphan who acquires a rare and dangerous pet that is thoroughly bonded to him. If the boy is not separated from the pet, their world is endangered. They have two options, let the boy and pet grow up a little, and see if they both can survive the ordeal to put the little monster back where it belongs...or kill the boy, return the beast while young and containable, or kill them both and be done with it...though it would be a shame since the beastling is really quite rare and it would be wonderful to study it a bit before returning it or dispatching it. This story plays out against the background of the antebellum south, the Civil War, and the Reconstruction. The key conceit is how our narratives of ourselves shape who we are and what we aspire to be.

YA/Apocalyptic: The Wind Hath Heirs. The world has gone crazy. Almost everyone under twenty-five is developing weird powers, with infants and toddlers possessing the strongest powers of all. No one knows why, and between the gaining of random powers by the youth, and the loss of control by the adults, and the monsterfication of little children, there is no safety, and tactical nukes and helo borne kill squads are proving ineffective. Against this background three siblings (high school, middle school, and elementary ages) struggle to escape their city and make new lives for themselves in a wild new world where almost anything can be wished for, and nobody actually needs anybody anymore. The tag line is "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. When everyone's mounted, where will you hide?"

YA Science Fantasy: Tarragon. This is a series I hope to write for Fiction Vortex, if they like my pilot. Tarragon is a pot dragon (think fire breathing hotplate that hordes rare fungi). He lives and works in the battalion kitchen of a mage city-state, one of several who wars in regular competitions for the crystal harvest.This particular city-state has lost a lot in the past few years. Tarragon wants to cheer them up. He got a whiff of a near-extinct truffle while the mage army was fleeing the last route at the most recent failed harvest. Now all he has to do is convince one of the junior cooks to harness up the kitchen dray beast to a sledge and help him trek into the wilds to find it. The story is set in the world of solid space. In this universe light and dark matter are so mingled much of gravity is negated, and the universe is an endless swiss cheese of solid space time, where the hollows are occupied by stars and their solar systems. Taragon and his people live essentially as the intestinal flora to a giant boreworm (a living world ship) in which they will travel till they find a goldilocks hollow (think natural dyson sphere) in which to settle. The story arc over the series will grow from just the antics and capers of a living kitchen appliance (so to speak) to touch upon the larger realities of their world, and the meaning of their lives and labors...why the rhythms of their lives matter. (for example: the harvest contests are necessary because the power fixed in the crystal is needed by the world-worm to live and bore, but it can't "digest" it. However, by using it for magic and magic items, that power gets released in a form the worm can absorb. The cyclical mage wars are necessary to the survival of everyone, not just to harvest the crystal, but to use and expend it, without which the worm just gets constipated, malnourished and dies...as will everyone else shortly thereafter.

Science Fiction:
Finish edits and submit on
Apolytikion for Old Bones: (Novelette) A misfit monk who is part of a colony city building expedition to Mars with a number of brother monks, who do fit in, has an accident that renders him transhuman, and now he must live truly alone, becoming the monk he had always failed to be in his flesh.

Come The Apocolypse: (novelette) the story of a nun, some aliens, and a sentient scent. Mother Xenia has been called away from her monastery and her retirement as a planetary availability validation agent by a family/tribe of aliens who have found the perfect world, and need her to investigate and dismiss the evidence that there might be some sort of intelligent life on this world after all. They have found an elaborate well-maintained garden, but the gardner is nowhere in sight...it's open for settlement, right? Maybe not. Almost done. I want to send this to IGMS first.
 

vicky271

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Need some encouragement. Dealing with an internal battle right now. It's been active for several months. Mostly trying to drown out the voices of man to focus on the voice of God. I feel like because I'm a Christian, it is expected of me to write Christian fiction. But I don't feel called to that. But i'm afraid that, if I don't write Christian fiction, the community will shun me, and call my works blasphemous. So it's a battle to drown out the voices of man, and try to find God's voice.
 

heyjude

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Need some encouragement. Dealing with an internal battle right now. It's been active for several months. Mostly trying to drown out the voices of man to focus on the voice of God. I feel like because I'm a Christian, it is expected of me to write Christian fiction. But I don't feel called to that. But i'm afraid that, if I don't write Christian fiction, the community will shun me, and call my works blasphemous. So it's a battle to drown out the voices of man, and try to find God's voice.

:Hug2: All you can do is listen for God. Spend lots of time in His Word.

If writing non-Christian books is blasphemous, I'm in some hot water, friend. I try to stay close enough to God to hear Him when He convicts me on something, but I don't believe for a minute that writing non-Christian works is somehow shutting the door on Him. Maybe it's different for each of us, though. Only you can answer that. I'll be praying for you to have clarity!
 

BethS

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Need some encouragement. Dealing with an internal battle right now. It's been active for several months. Mostly trying to drown out the voices of man to focus on the voice of God. I feel like because I'm a Christian, it is expected of me to write Christian fiction. But I don't feel called to that. But i'm afraid that, if I don't write Christian fiction, the community will shun me, and call my works blasphemous. So it's a battle to drown out the voices of man, and try to find God's voice.

This is something that really is between you and God, but just fwiw, I think there are probably a lot of Christian writers who don't write fiction aimed at Christians or about Christians. But that doesn't mean their work can't be uplifting in some way, or that it can't find ways to touch and encourage the hearts of others. Just look at JRR Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. If you've ever read his letters, you'll know just how deep his commitment to God was. And he found ways to express that in his works, though none of them could be called Christian fiction, certainly not in the modern sense.

Something to think on, anyway.
 

vicky271

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This is something that really is between you and God, but just fwiw, I think there are probably a lot of Christian writers who don't write fiction aimed at Christians or about Christians. But that doesn't mean their work can't be uplifting in some way, or that it can't find ways to touch and encourage the hearts of others. Just look at JRR Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. If you've ever read his letters, you'll know just how deep his commitment to God was. And he found ways to express that in his works, though none of them could be called Christian fiction, certainly not in the modern sense.

Something to think on, anyway.

:Hug2: All you can do is listen for God. Spend lots of time in His Word.

If writing non-Christian books is blasphemous, I'm in some hot water, friend. I try to stay close enough to God to hear Him when He convicts me on something, but I don't believe for a minute that writing non-Christian works is somehow shutting the door on Him. Maybe it's different for each of us, though. Only you can answer that. I'll be praying for you to have clarity!

Thank you!
 

Gravity

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After five published trade-published CBA novels, my wife and I left the Christian market and have been putting the final touches on our first SF novel, a general market work called FULL BURN. Open call for the house we're submitting it to ends 31 December, so we're (hopefully) polishing it well!
 

Carrie in PA

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Need some encouragement. Dealing with an internal battle right now. It's been active for several months. Mostly trying to drown out the voices of man to focus on the voice of God. I feel like because I'm a Christian, it is expected of me to write Christian fiction. But I don't feel called to that. But i'm afraid that, if I don't write Christian fiction, the community will shun me, and call my works blasphemous. So it's a battle to drown out the voices of man, and try to find God's voice.

If it helps any, the Christian market is a man-made marketing construct, nothing more, nothing less. That market doesn't speak for God, it speaks for the readers they sell books to. I did a quick google search for "Christian authors writing secular books" and got a TON of articles - I read a bunch on the first page that were really good.

I think the key is simpler than we make it - if we write in a way that doesn't distance us from God, it's fine. And that looks different for every writer, just like alcohol -- drinking can be a sin for someone who can't handle it, but it can be perfectly okay for someone who enjoys a glass of wine now and again.

You can absolutely write secular books that don't offend your convictions and beliefs without conforming to the specific market.

Your gift, your talent, your work - that's all between you and God.

:Hug2:HUGS! It's not an easy dilemma!!