Issue #06

On-Your-Feet Fiction

An update from Columba Booth

The Lord upholds all who fall, and lifts up all who are bowed down (Psalm 145:14).

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Hi Reader!

What is victory?

Since July, Paul and I have been to Boise twice to set up a Vrbo rental, SoCal to visit my daughter, Lake Almanor for a family camping trip, New Orleans for the ACFW conference, Louisiana to visit family, and North Carolina to see Paul’s daughter and son-in-law. More trips are ahead!

Whew! Five years ago, I had no idea I’d be traveling our beautiful country and fulfilling my lifelong dream of writing novels. Back then, I was facing the empty nest alone, with no plans to travel or do anything big.

Is all this victory? It is a victory, but it is not the victory.

Paul meant to live out his days tinkering with projects and fixing up old furniture. He didn’t want to remarry and risk losing someone again. If people pressed him to get out and date, he was adamant. “I’m never getting remarried.”

So much for that! I told him he had to marry me if he wanted to be my boyfriend.

For both of us, marriage is a victory that brings joys, blessings, and growth. It is wonderful to have a partner in this life. You appreciate it all the more if you’ve lived without it. A God-restored life is a beautiful thing.

But the victory is not that.

The victory happens when, miraculously, we surrender to God’s will.

The victory is our rebirth in Christ. It is being joyful in all circumstances, serving the Lord in peace, even when life disappoints or brings trauma. It is “dying daily” to our sinful nature and resting in God’s love and grace. Accepting His power to address life’s challenges.

The victory is supernatural. Only God can win it within us, defeating sin. And it is the witness our dying world needs to see.

Life’s blessings can vanish overnight. Businesses fail. Disasters destroy a hard-earned legacy. Wars break out, an accident ruins a vacation, loved ones make choices that worry us.

But there is a constant:

Has God won some victories in your life lately? Tell me!

Writing News

This year’s American Christian Fiction Writers Conference was in New Orleans, at the enormous Hyatt Hotel. They have 1,300 guest rooms! Plus lots of eateries and, of course, a Starbucks. We didn’t have to leave the building, which was nice because it was so humid outside. All the conference activities were on one floor, so navigating everything was easy, even for me!

I gleaned valuable training and information from the workshops and main session:

• My job as an author is to deepen my relationship with God. Everything good flows from there.
• Did you know Love Inspired has branched out? Now, besides their clean romance imprint, you can get Love Inspired Suspense and Love Inspired Trade (i.e., full-length novels).
• AI can help authors develop a faith arc for a novel! Weird, huh? It’s also useful for brainstorming, research, and plotting. However, my son (an AI engineer) told me not to trust AI’s answers because it will give educated guesses if it can’t scrape the exact data from the web. (So I deleted a sentence about fields of golden grasses in East San Diego County, lol!)
• Everything we do and say online is recorded and used. (But you already knew that… right?)
• ChickLit died a quick death. (ChickLit typically features a diary type format with a single career girl.) Good thing I wasn’t writing ChickLit!
• “Plotters” are authors who plan before they write. “Pantsers” are authors who write “by the seat of their pants.” I’m somewhere in between. I have to know where the story is going, but along the way, intuition steers me in unexpected directions.

I didn’t plan to pitch my work in progress because it isn’t finished. It doesn’t even have a title yet! But I spoke with three agents just for insights, and two asked for a proposal once the book is finished. One of them asked when she saw how well Wonders in the Deep is doing on Amazon. Thank you for your reviews! I so appreciate that.

My goal is to complete the novel by end of January, then send the proposal in February. Guess I better pack my laptop for all those trips!

Prayer

Today, let’s ask God for victory.

Dear Father,

Thank You for Your work in our lives. Every day, let us surrender to Your victory in our souls. Help us put to death the deeds of the sinful nature and walk in Your Spirit.

Please open our eyes to recognize when someone is hurting or needs a word from You. Speak through us. Give us courage to bring Your hope to our distressed world.

We ask for Your victory in the United States, during this season of intense spiritual warfare. Banish the condemning and hopeless narratives of Marxism. Restore our country to its values and Christian roots. Revive Your church, dear Lord. Purify us to lives of effective service.

In Christ’s name,

Amen

Life-Changing Fiction

Author Rachel Hauck taught my favorite workshop at the conference. She pointed us to God’s love and the preeminence of relying on Him as we write. She spoke Heavenly wisdom, so naturally I went right onto Amazon and bought her most popular book!

The Wedding Dress features a mysterious wedding gown and the four brides who wore it during the past 100 years. It’s full of faith, as I expected.

I love Rachel’s writing voice. It’s contemporary, yet has a hint of fairytale whimsy and just a touch of symbolism. And, oh goody! I just saw it’s the first book in a series of three!

We all know the potential issues that come with megachurch money and fame—or, if we don’t, we can learn it here. Celebrity Pastor, by Creston Mapes, is a true-to-life suspense story that follows the decline of a big-time pastor and his wife. It’s a solid read—honest and compassionate, as well as scary in places!

In Christ’s love,

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