Squirrel's Story Starters!!!
Here's the prompt for this month. Submit the story to my email address:
Cheryl@CherylWyatt.com
The winner will receive their choice of one of five new Inspirational Fiction releases from Steeple Hill publishers.
Note: This site is in no way related to Harlequin, or Eharlequin. This is just an aspiring author promoting fellow writers and their work.
Write a 500 word scene using one of these three opening hooks:
1. "You'll never guess who I just saw at the cop shop."
2. "This is not your car."
3. "Excuse me?"
Incorporate five of the ten words into the story, and use NO "ly" adverbs.
Trick
First
Love
Letter
Old
Model
Stand
Passersby
Reunion
Flutter
You will have until Sept. 15th to email me your story. Winners will be notified by Sept. 20th and prizes will be mailed by the end of September. You retain ALL rights to your work. I will not post or print it anywhere, and in fact will delete entries once I've logged entrants names for that month and chosen a winner.
If you'd like to enter my contest, leave a comment letting me know.
If you send three friends to stop by my blog, then you score a bonus point!
Happy Writing!
Squirrel
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Friday, August 18, 2006
My Meltdown
Just so you know, I had another meltdown. . .only this time it made national news.
Check it out here:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,208026,00.html
Squirrel
Check it out here:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,208026,00.html
Squirrel
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
LET'S SAY THANKS CARDS TO SOLDIERS
Regardless of your stance on the war in Iraq, our deployed soldiers deserve our thankfulness. If is for our freedom they are defending, after all. So won't you please join me in extending gratitude? Here's a really easy (and free!) way to bring a smile to a soldier in the midst of dust and chaos.
"Let's Say Thanks!" is a web site that sends free post cards to U.S. servicemen & women.
Please take a few minutes to check it out here: Let's Say Thanks.
It costs nothing and takes only a few minutes.
Please spread the word!
http://www.letssaythanks.com/
Squirrel
"Let's Say Thanks!" is a web site that sends free post cards to U.S. servicemen & women.
Please take a few minutes to check it out here: Let's Say Thanks.
It costs nothing and takes only a few minutes.
Please spread the word!
http://www.letssaythanks.com/
Squirrel
Sunday, August 13, 2006
SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE
I've been thinking (dangerous I know) about my characters' spiritual struggle for this next book I'm plotting. I often use things I've gone through with God, or things folks close to me have gone through in their relationship with Him as ideas for my character's spiritual struggle.
Since I write Inspirational Romance, there needs to be a challenge to the characters' faith which they work out with God by the end of the story. So not only is there the development of the romance, and often a suspense thread to tie loose ends up with, the spiritual (faith) struggle needs to be present.
In my current story, the hero is a backslidden Christian. He grew up a missionary in India, lived there as an American citizen most summers. His father is of Indian descent, his mother American. The heroine believes there's a God, but the idea of having a personal relationship with the living God is a foreign concept to her at the beginning. When the rug of her existance is pulled out from under her before the hero's eyes, he knows it's going to take the love and power of God intervening to make things right, and to set her back on her proverbial feet. He also knows he has to get his issues worked out with God before he can be of help to her, so her tragedy becomes his catalyst. The last thing he wants to be to her is a hypocrite since hypocracy is a tool the enemy used to pull him away from the church. He always loved God, but knows how difficult it is to fight the good fight of faith without the support of Christian brothers and sisters. . .and a church family. . .upholding him. A couple soldiers in his circle have recently converted to Christianity, and this also helps him want to come back to his strong faith. He fights the good fight of an american soldier against terror and evil in the world in a tangible sense. Now he knows God is pulling him into warring another realm, where the battle is not with flesh and blood, but against powers and prinicipalities and dark rulers who are demonic, and trying to kill, steal and destroy the heroine's life and purpose on earth.
So this brings me to an idea.
I'd love to know what spiritual struggles you've had which you've truimphed over in your life with God. Only email me if you're giving me permission to use that struggle in a future book between a hero and heroine. If I choose your struggle, I may also need to consult.interview you during the book in order to make things realistic for my characters. I will never use real names or situations in my books. This is just to get ideas for spiritual struggles, because though my stories are fiction, I want the struggle to be real and something readers can identify with. I also want God's response to be real, meaning, how He responds to my characters should reflect His heart and how He'd respond if these people were made of flesh and blood instead of imagined.
In other words, I write modern day parables which I hope encourage and entertain people.
If you don't want to post your struggle here, feel free to email me. All emails are confidential.
Come on....share your struggles!!! You never know whose life you'll touch if you get transparent with what you've been through. Maybe someone else will be in the throes of something you're standing on the other side of, having come through the fire of it as gold.
Ready, set, SHARE! :-)
My email is Cheryl at CherylWyatt.com (replace "at" with "@") if you'd like to respond privately. If I choose to use your struggle in an upcoming book, I will contact you asap so leave your contact info.
My good friend and author mentor, Margaret Daley, spoke on weaving in characters' spiritual threads at RWA's FHL banquet this year, so if you're a writer, be sure to drop by her blog and check out her posts on this. www.margaretdaley.com. Click on her blog link then scroll to the message where she talks about interweaving spiritial and faith elements in. Margaret has published nearly 50 books, and her characters' struggles always seem realistic and touching, especially how she wraps up the relolution. Check it out and sign her guestbook.
Have a great day!
Off to plot,
Squirrel
Since I write Inspirational Romance, there needs to be a challenge to the characters' faith which they work out with God by the end of the story. So not only is there the development of the romance, and often a suspense thread to tie loose ends up with, the spiritual (faith) struggle needs to be present.
In my current story, the hero is a backslidden Christian. He grew up a missionary in India, lived there as an American citizen most summers. His father is of Indian descent, his mother American. The heroine believes there's a God, but the idea of having a personal relationship with the living God is a foreign concept to her at the beginning. When the rug of her existance is pulled out from under her before the hero's eyes, he knows it's going to take the love and power of God intervening to make things right, and to set her back on her proverbial feet. He also knows he has to get his issues worked out with God before he can be of help to her, so her tragedy becomes his catalyst. The last thing he wants to be to her is a hypocrite since hypocracy is a tool the enemy used to pull him away from the church. He always loved God, but knows how difficult it is to fight the good fight of faith without the support of Christian brothers and sisters. . .and a church family. . .upholding him. A couple soldiers in his circle have recently converted to Christianity, and this also helps him want to come back to his strong faith. He fights the good fight of an american soldier against terror and evil in the world in a tangible sense. Now he knows God is pulling him into warring another realm, where the battle is not with flesh and blood, but against powers and prinicipalities and dark rulers who are demonic, and trying to kill, steal and destroy the heroine's life and purpose on earth.
So this brings me to an idea.
I'd love to know what spiritual struggles you've had which you've truimphed over in your life with God. Only email me if you're giving me permission to use that struggle in a future book between a hero and heroine. If I choose your struggle, I may also need to consult.interview you during the book in order to make things realistic for my characters. I will never use real names or situations in my books. This is just to get ideas for spiritual struggles, because though my stories are fiction, I want the struggle to be real and something readers can identify with. I also want God's response to be real, meaning, how He responds to my characters should reflect His heart and how He'd respond if these people were made of flesh and blood instead of imagined.
In other words, I write modern day parables which I hope encourage and entertain people.
If you don't want to post your struggle here, feel free to email me. All emails are confidential.
Come on....share your struggles!!! You never know whose life you'll touch if you get transparent with what you've been through. Maybe someone else will be in the throes of something you're standing on the other side of, having come through the fire of it as gold.
Ready, set, SHARE! :-)
My email is Cheryl at CherylWyatt.com (replace "at" with "@") if you'd like to respond privately. If I choose to use your struggle in an upcoming book, I will contact you asap so leave your contact info.
My good friend and author mentor, Margaret Daley, spoke on weaving in characters' spiritual threads at RWA's FHL banquet this year, so if you're a writer, be sure to drop by her blog and check out her posts on this. www.margaretdaley.com. Click on her blog link then scroll to the message where she talks about interweaving spiritial and faith elements in. Margaret has published nearly 50 books, and her characters' struggles always seem realistic and touching, especially how she wraps up the relolution. Check it out and sign her guestbook.
Have a great day!
Off to plot,
Squirrel
HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPO
Hello y'all!
Back from surgery. Major hip reconstruction. Everything went well. I'm getting all buff and stuff from carrying myself around on a walker. Going up stairs is rather interesting though. You have to hop backwards...which doesn't sound too dangerous except for the fact that the walker is two feet wide and the steps are only one foot wide. Hopefully I won't fall and break my non-surgical hip.
WRITING UPDATES
Mailed off revisions the Sunday before Monday surgery. . .which would have been July 31st. I emailed it to my agent and she snail mailed it to the editor who did email to say she got it, and was looking forward to reading it. So I could hear any day.
I haven't been entering contests as of late. I'm plotting my next novel and enjoying that. I LOVE the title. For now I'll call it TGTN. I'll tell you what it is when I send it to an editor. I'm getting to know the characters and their issues. I'm having a couple plot issues with it, but for now, I'm trying to sort out scenes so I can dive in and get the rough draft done. So that's what I'm working on now.
I plan to attend the ACFW conference, and I think I may even have a sequined skirt in the mix for my walker. LOLOL!
Thanks for all your prayers and support prior to my surgery, and during this time of recovery.
God is faithful. He brought me through, and I'm really awed by the peace He gave during the entire process. Day by day He's getting me through the pain and frustration of immobility.
Blessings,
Squirrel
Back from surgery. Major hip reconstruction. Everything went well. I'm getting all buff and stuff from carrying myself around on a walker. Going up stairs is rather interesting though. You have to hop backwards...which doesn't sound too dangerous except for the fact that the walker is two feet wide and the steps are only one foot wide. Hopefully I won't fall and break my non-surgical hip.
WRITING UPDATES
Mailed off revisions the Sunday before Monday surgery. . .which would have been July 31st. I emailed it to my agent and she snail mailed it to the editor who did email to say she got it, and was looking forward to reading it. So I could hear any day.
I haven't been entering contests as of late. I'm plotting my next novel and enjoying that. I LOVE the title. For now I'll call it TGTN. I'll tell you what it is when I send it to an editor. I'm getting to know the characters and their issues. I'm having a couple plot issues with it, but for now, I'm trying to sort out scenes so I can dive in and get the rough draft done. So that's what I'm working on now.
I plan to attend the ACFW conference, and I think I may even have a sequined skirt in the mix for my walker. LOLOL!
Thanks for all your prayers and support prior to my surgery, and during this time of recovery.
God is faithful. He brought me through, and I'm really awed by the peace He gave during the entire process. Day by day He's getting me through the pain and frustration of immobility.
Blessings,
Squirrel
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