Senior Editor Tina James is in Seekerville!!!

Janet here. I'm thrilled to have Tina James in Seekerville today!! She's a terrific editor, wonderful to work with and the nicest person you'll ever know. And Tina's got news!!! News that involves the number four.

To celebrate her visit the Seekers are dressed in historical garb from whatever era appeals to us from Biblical times to World War ll. So for me that means lavish hats, dainty gloves, drawstring reticules and parasols. I'm wearing net gloves, Adelaide's lovely hat from Courting Miss Adelaide and a floor-length frilly dress from 1901, the timeframe of my March release Wanted: A Family. The S-shape corset underneath makes me look like a strutting pigeon. You'll recognize the look if you've spent a long day at the computer and can't straighten up. LOL

Since the Seekers are exhausted from holiday cooking and baking, we're hosting a potluck today and asking all of you to bring your favorite dish, historical or not. Let's party! I'll choose the winners of the four January historicals Tina so graciously offered from those commenters who get into the fun of dressing up and bringing food. Let's show Tina a great time in Seekerville!! Without further ado, here's Tina!

Hello, Seekerville!

My name is Tina James, and I’m the senior editor of Love Inspired Historical and Love Inspired Suspense.

January is an exciting month for Love Inspired Historical. This month the Love Inspired Historical series increases from 2 to 4 titles every month. This means if you enjoy compelling, engaging stories of romance, adventure and faith set in times past, we have twice as many wonderful stories for you to enjoy!

And if you’re a writer who loves writing inspirational historical romances set in earlier eras ranging from Biblical times through World War II, then this is a great opportunity for you to try to write a Love Inspired Historical and submit it to us. Because that next Love Inspired Historical author could very well be you!

Do you have what it takes to be a Love Inspired Historical author?
• Do you have a story with an exciting blend of romance, faith and historical detail?
• Can you craft an emotionally complex story with likeable and believable characters?
• Does your story focus on a strong romance, but also includes a compelling and sustainable conflict that arises naturally from the characters?
• Does your story have an element of faith that is well-integrated into the plot?
• Is your story uplifting, entertaining and inspiring and doesn’t contain explicit sensuality or graphic violence?
• Is your story historically accurate and gives a sense of the time period?
• Does your story have a unique premise that incorporates saleable themes?
• Does your opening chapter grab the reader’s attention from the first line of the story?
• Do you have a distinctive, appealing author voice?
• Can you write at least one to two books per year?

If you found yourself nodding vigorously to these questions, then polish up that manuscript or proposal and submit it to Love Inspired Historical today!

I’m seeking manuscripts approximately 70-75,000 words in length and set in various countries and time periods. I am always looking for exceptional stories set in the West. But I am actively focusing on acquiring manuscripts with non-Western settings, too. Americana (post-Civil War), European historical eras (e.g. Tudor, Regency and Victorian England, eighteenth-century Scotland, etc.), twentieth-century (turn-of-the-century through World War II) and foreign settings are all welcome.

Some innovative story ideas that I would be interested in seeing include—stories about women pioneers; stories about bounty hunters; royalty themed stories; stories about World War II adoptions; stories about immigrants coming to America; stories with a Pearl Harbor setting or Titanic setting.

If your voice, characters and plot fit Love Inspired Historical, I encourage you to submit your project to me. For new authors, please submit a detailed synopsis and complete manuscript and for previously published authors, please submit a detailed synopsis and three sample chapters.

Want to learn more about Love Inspired Historical? Then see our writing guidelines at www.eHarlequin.com.

Happy writing!

Tina

Janet again. Thanks Tina for being with us today and sharing the excitement that Love Inspired Historical is releasing four books a month! What an opportunity this is for readers and writers!!

Did you notice Tina's desk? I've got some work to do. LOL

Aren't the Love Inspired Historical January covers gorgeous? Kudos to the Art Department! As you can see, I couldn't resist showing off the March cover of Wanted: A Family.

I brought banana cream pudding for the dessert table. Melt in your mouth delicious. And chicken and noodles to pile on a mound of mashed potatoes. Yum! The best part--nothing has a bit of calories. So share your food and the outfit you're wearing, the carriage or Model T you're driving, the prop airplane you're flying--anything that takes us to another time, another place.


We're so excited about this party we've added more fun. If you arrive in Seekerville dressed for the party you can ALSO win one of ten Seeker Surprise packages. More details here. Winners announced in the Weekend Edition.

The Seasons of a Writer's Life

Ruthy here.... When I e-mailed Sara Mitchell to tell her how delightful her Christmas novella "Mistletoe Courtship" was, I didn't know that single act would bring us to today, or that she'd open her blog post with my most favorite verse from the Bible, Ecclesiastes 3:1.


But God knew. He always knows, and those intersections, those "vee's" in the road, the bends, the angles, the forks, the flat tires...


He knows. He cares. He loves.


And then expects us to work with the gifts he's given us. Sweet job, God! So here is Sara, a delightful gal I had the honor of meeting in Orlando at my first RWA book signing... you know... The one I was late for!


Oh my stars. Without further digression, I give ye Seekerville:  Sara Mitchell, sweet woman and delightful Steeple Hill author.


“What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun?” offers a modern paraphrase of the question posed by the writer of Ecclesiastes. A few verses later the Teacher adds some of the most well-known passages of the Old Testament, largely due to the secular song rendition performed by the Byrds several decades ago: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”

...Which brings me to my blog musing for today—the Seasons of a Writer’s Life. For some reason autumn has always been my favorite season of the year. I love the smells, the soaking autumnal rains, the crisp cool nights and the eye-aching colors. But I also tend to grow more introspective in autumn. More...nostalgic. Have I been a faithful steward over my craft, or do the flaws and failures outweigh the joys and successes?



So I thought I’d invite everyone on a brief “seasonal sabbatical” through my own writer’s mind. Today is September 29; fall has officially arrived. My next Love Inspired Historical, A Most Unusual Match, comes out Jan. 2011, and I have the major characters of another book clamoring to come to life. I ought to be melting the computer keys. Instead, I feel more like...well, the hunkered down survivor of a winter ice storm. Winds of urgent tasks to be addressed “right now” sweep me from my office out into the storm....

Well, you get the picture.



On the other hand, winter can also be a cozy season, where plot threads germinate under the ice and God’s peace seeps into your pores like the warmth of a well-stoked fire. Those storms that break branches and fell trees also cleanse our minds of weak characterization and poor plots.



Then spring arrives. This messy season provides moist and fertile ground if your writer’s mind never stops sprouting metaphors. Are you in a spring fever of deadlines? So distracted by life you can’t keep your mind on your latest project? Or are you suffering from spring floods with so much to do that, like the winter wind, those floods sweep you into their grasp, bearing you away from the pages you meant to write that day? Of course, you might be budding with a new contract, about to burst forth with the best story you’ve ever written. Your creative mind soaks up the spring rains of possibilities, the sunshine of God’s Presence—and your agent’s expert direction!



Then there’s summer in all its sweltering glory. Slogged out revisions and re-writes, weeds of distraction, slugs of doubt that kill the root of your God-breathed gift. Parched brains shrivel because a drought of exhaustion, life, and personal/professional expectations have sucked your creative well dry. Only banal clichés survive—and no writer who loves his/her craft can survive on clichés, dried-up, lifeless plots or shallow cardboard characters who wilt under the hot exposure of a critical marketplace. Yet summer also offers fresh fruits and vegetables, roses and sunflowers, vacations and picnics. The nourishment of a great conference, the fragrant bouquet of an understanding friend, the dizzying delight of a first sale; a gorgeous cover; a new contract; the warm satisfaction of knowing you’ve persevered. You’ve written every writer’s favorite phrase: “the end.”

So...as writer or observant reader...count how many clichés I’ve used in this blog, but count as well how many expressions struck a responsive chord in your heart. Hopefully they’ll be at least one or two of the latter! See how many similes, metaphors or other useful devices you can construct in a self-examination of your own writing life. Regardless of the date on the calendar, chew over what season you’re currently living through. Perhaps the mental exercise will bring a smile to your face, or crack an ice flow in your frozen or drought-dry brain. As I have come to learn over the decades of my own life, you’ll realize writer seasons change like the weather. Time really does pass and birds do continue to sing. God gifts you with the cherished asset of patience. A stranger smiles at you, or the florist gives you a coffee mug you admire while you’re waiting for her to fill the get-well helium balloon you’re purchasing. (Yes, that just happened to me! That mug lifts my heart every time I enter the kitchen.)

I confess that merely through writing this blog I moved from a bleak autumn with dried-up lawns and tired trees to the anticipation of jewel-tone leaves and blue skies alight with hope. For me, part of the joy of writing is not only putting words together to create a story, but knowing that throughout every season of writer weather God Himself is working out His perfect path for my life. (Great. Now I can’t stop babbling like a mountain creek at the height of the spring runoff...) Seriously, though, I do believe the faith lived every hour by Christian writers provides added strength to their writing lives, and through the Lord’s mysterious alchemy that faith seeps into our written words.

Whatever the season in your life today, may you all experience the delight of a word aptly written like apples of gold in settings of silver. (The first person who can provide the source of this revised quote deserves a bushel of ginger gold apples, a species native to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. They were discovered after one of the worst winter storms in Valley history, and are the sweetest apples I’ve ever tasted.) While I can’t send a ginger gold apple, there is a drawing for a free autographed copy of one of my backlist books, which I hope the winner enjoys. Thanks for stopping by. And thanks to all the ladies of Seekerville for inviting me. Ya’ll are a delight to my soul.



Sometimes God does calm the storms in our lives; sometimes He raises us above them on wings of eagles. Sometimes He allows the storms, and calms the child who lives inside us all. And all the time, through every season, He walks beside us, holding us close whether we soar or slog.