FIRST: Abandoned Identity by Tamara Tilley

Happy New Year! It is January 1st, time for the FIRST Day Blog Tour! (Join our alliance! Click the button!) The FIRST day of every month we will feature an author and his/her latest book’s FIRST chapter! This month’s feature author is: TAMARA TILLEY and her book: Abandoned Identity Evergreen Press (AL) (August 1, 2007)…

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Finding the Theme in Your Story

Let’s talk about story themes.  Stephen King, in his book On Writing (Pocket, 2000) has this to say about theme: “Writing and literature classes can be annoyingly preoccupied by (and pretentious about) theme, approaching it as the most sacred of sacred cows, but (don’t be shocked) it’s really no big deal.  If you write a…

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A Very Jerky New Years!

This afternoon I decided to test out the new dehydrator I got for Christmas. Chris (13) really loves beef jerky so I thought I’d try it out. I mixed 2 lbs. of ground beef, squeezed it out through the handy little tube and plugged it in. It said to check it every hour, soaking up…

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Carnival of Christian Writers #15 – December 2007

    Carnival of Christian Writers #15 – December 2007 The Best of 2007 In this month’s carnival you will find a great collection of contributor’sbest blog posts for 2007.     The best of 2007 . . . In “Those Stinkin’ Rejection Letters“, Rachelle Gardner tells what rejection is like from the other side…

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Getting a New Computer

We know from the Bible that when Jesus comes into our lives, we become a new person in Christ. But do we really understand this concept? Recently I was trying to explain it to a friend of mine, and this friend kept coming back with fear. “I don’t want to lose myself.” When we finally…

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Top Book Picks for 2007

I’m not sure all the books I read in 2007, but I always keep the ones I love. The ones whose plot keep me turning the page and whose characters stay with me long after I close the book. So here they are. I’m sure all of these are in my book store, so if…

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Our Radical Sabbatical Part II

There are only twenty-four hours in a day. Why was it then that I felt like I was spending twenty-three of those hours behind my steering wheel? Last January, in an attempt to regain control of our busy and sometimes chaotic lives, my husband and I decided to give our four children (ages 6-16) an…

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My Life as a Book Meme

As if I didn’t have enough things to do today, the day before Christmas, I decided to write a meme. (As if you had nothing else to do, but play along.) But in the days after Christmas, when things have settled down and life is sweet, I’d love to hear your answers. Confession: After writing…

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Our Radical Sabbatical

Talking with my girlfriend this past New Years’ Eve, we commiserated with each other about all the time spent driving kids back and forth to different activities each week. Our conversation revolved around disgust in our ‘captivity of activity’. Later she asked me if I had made a New Years’ resolution yet this year. Like…

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Snowstorms and Soup

We are such creatures of habit, aren’t we? For instance, every time a true snowstorm blows in I begin craving potato soup. Thankfully, the writer in me always keeps a mini-journal in the margins of my favorite recipes…otherwise I probably wouldn’t have realized the connection between my favorite potato soup recipe and deep snowfalls! Rarely…

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