Hello Fiction Friends,

I had the pleasure of meeting one of our great authors this weekend. When I first started working here at Moody Publishers, I was corresponding with Jocelyn Green and noticed on her email signature that she lives on the same street that I did when I attended the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. It was a fun little coincidence to me. Well, my husband and I took a little trip back to that area this past weekend for a get together with some of his college buddies and their wives and I was able to pop in on Jocelyn and finally meet her face to face. This was my first sit down with an author and it was really neat to hear about her process and see firsthand the different ways in which she organizes herself and her thoughts. Here are 5 fun little facts that I learned about Jocelyn and her writing process:

1) The 4 Civil War fiction novels that Jocelyn is writing for us are her first fiction novels. She has done so much research. In order to keep her ideas organized, she tapes colored index cards to the wall with one line running east to west with actual historical events and then cards running north and south that are fiction lines she is adding in.

2) She also keeps bulletin boards that are packed with pictures of real people from the specific time and place she is writing about, samples of clothes, and pictures of the actual places. Continue reading / Leave a comment…

Coffee withdrawal at ACFW

By Deb Keiser

I stood on the platform waiting for my train into Chicago yesterday morning and glanced down at my iPhone. Like most of the commuters our faces were turned toward something to read—a newspaper, book, or an electronic device. Hardly anyone talks first thing in the morning. Not enough coffee yet.

I read this hysterically funny email string of comments about coffee makers at the American Christian Fiction Writers Conference which runs September 22-25 officially, but many participants are arriving on Wednesday.

Anyway, it appears that there will not be coffee makers in the rooms at the convention hotel, the Hyatt. It was so hard for me to believe that a reputable national hotel chain would not know that coffee is one of the nation’s staples. It is like soap—everyone needs it.  I had to call to discover for myself if it was true—and it is! “No coffee makers in the rooms, for green reasons.” The desk clerk told me when I called the hotel. Sounds fishy to me . . . next thing you know caffeine addicts will be escorted outside to drink coffee and forced to join the smokers on the street. I can just see us huddled together in the dead of winter on the sidewalks of Chicago.

No less than 16 people commented on the hardship of going without coffee first thing in the morning. I think that was the longest email string sent from the ACFW conference. Christian fiction writers definitely have their priorities. Continue reading / Leave a comment…