Outside the Time Box

Disclaimer: This post is all up in your business about God. If you find that offensive, you might want to take your ball home and come back to play another day.

What if you pray for an event, then it never takes place. What happens to those prayers?

Fun Example: You're told your manuscript is going before a publishing board on Thursday morning. You figure the amount of time it takes to eat doughnuts, schmooze, discuss the upcoming weekend's planned frivolities, and also for the actual 5 minutes of business that will be tackled. Ought to be about an hour. So you round up all your buddies on Thursday, don head coverings and prayer shawls, then drop to your knees at 10:00 a.m. sharp and pray like nutty-nuts until 11:00. Whew! That should do it, right?

Not so much. You find out the following week that the meeting had been cancelled.

Serious Example: You're asked to pray for a meeting between your adult child and pastor...who's going to confront said child for their ungodly lifestyle choices. The outcome will either be repentance and a renewed relationship with God, or an angry stiff-arming toward the church and hardened heart. As a parent, you're desperate, so you call everyone you know and ask them to pray.

Then find out later that night that the child never showed up at the meeting.

My question is...what happened to all those prayers? Were they in vain? Are they wasted? Do they even count for anything at all?

I'm no theologian, but here's my take on it. God is timeless. Whether an event happens or not, it's the heart we have for an issue that He listens to, and is powerful enough to take into consideration if/when the event really does happen. In His own words, He is I AM.

When I think about that, my brain hurts. I don't understand this whole everlasting, existing all the time kind of thing, but honestly, I don't need to. God needs to, and I trust that He does. Because of faith in His being, His power, and His mercy, I can say with assurance that no prayer is ever a waste of time. After all, we are commanded to pray.

Pray constantly. Ephesians 5:17

Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord's people. Ephesians 6:18

Pray without ceasing. 1 Thessalonians 5:17

The future is yet to be lived for us here in Humansville, but God is sovereign. Put your trust in Him, not in your petitions, or the clock on the wall, or the 'scheduled' meetings.

Either He's in charge or He's not. You decide.

Feeding a Starving Artist

Lest you think this is a back-handed marketing scheme to get you to up the sales of my latest release, well...yeah, if the shoe fits. I'm not going to turn down free exposure, especially when I can get a tan out of the deal since it's finally sunny around here. But let's move beyond me, because really, there are other more interesting train wrecks to stare at.

Ever read a book that sinks sharp, pointy hooks into your heart and you wish you had an elephant-sized megaphone to shout about such a brilliant author to the world? Granted, a mega-megaphone would be a stinkin' expensive yet very cool accessory to own, but there is no such thing. Don't panic, though. I've got a few tips for you to be able to share your passion for whoever your latest favorite author is.

#1. Buy their books.
Really, this is the simplest and most effective way to support your favorite author. Plus it's a great excuse for you to park your heinie on the couch and zone out in Fiction World for three hundred pages or so.

#2. Share it.
See the "I just bought" button on Amazon? It's there for a reason. Use it! Go ahead. Spread the love.

#3. Write a Review.
So here's the deal about reviews...remember what your mother taught you? No, not the running with scissors thing, which is easily bypassed with goggles and a helmet. I'm talking about if you can't say anything nice, then don't bother. But (and I've always got a big but) if you've read something worth shouting about, don't hold it in. Bad for the ol' digestive tract. You don't have to be eloquent with your words. Just type from the heart and slap up 4 or 5 stars. Easy peasy.

#4. Like it.
Click it. Those little thumbs up really do draw attention.

#5. Tag it.
This one takes a tad more effort. Scroll down the book's page until you see Tags Customers Associate With This Product. Then type in some words you associate with the book so other potential readers can find out about this book/author.

#6. Share the link.
Just for a few minutes, ignore the naysayers that threaten how social media will squash your braincells into a gooey mess resembling guacamole, then go hog wild on your Twitter/Facebook/Pinterest/Tumblr and/or sites of your choice. Simply copy the Amazon link and go viral.

Word of mouth (or keystroking fingers) is really the best way to show support for an author...other than sending them cash outright. Which I'm not opposed to.

Need my address?

Are You A Flower Serial Killer?

My heroine Miri Brayden in A Heart Deceived slaughters roses. How good a gardener do you think the author is?

4th of July Writerly Fun

Really? You’re seriously here reading my blog when you should be out shooting bottle rockets or stuffing your face full of potato salad? Well, alrighty. Since you’re here, I’ll oblige.

Pop on over to Language is a Virus. It’s a super fun website with all kinds of writerly toys to play with. One of my favorites is the Visual Poetry Generator. You simply copy in your text, choose typeface color, background color, and then doodle a picture. Click on save and voila! Instant art with words.

There are a ton of other fun things to do there as well, such as:

A Mad Lib generator

Text mixers

Haiku-a-tron

Title-o-matic

Never ending story

All kinds of writing exercises

Yeah. You could spend the day there without getting sunburnt or annoyed with all the firecrackers. Win, win!

Triond

Triond... kind of sounds like a newly discovered alien life form on Planet Squeekgiggle, eh? A cross between a tribble and a unicorn, or maybe a freakish hybrid of trillium and duckweed? Wrong on both accounts. Triond is a website that pays you cashola for words, baby! Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout!

So here's the dealio (can you tell I'm super excited to see Despicable Me 2?)... Triond is like blogging only your words aren't just floating out in a big cyber void of nothingness. You blog about something, anything, and they find a home for it. Then, if it generates income from that website, you rake in 50% of the take. No meeting in dark alleys. No thug named Pimp Daddy to rough you up. No kidding. You write it; you get paid.

Here's how it works:

1. Submit a piece of writing, a photograph, or a composition to Triond. They accept all original content on any topic including articles, audio & visual, and pictures.

2. Once your content is approved, they publish it on a website in their publishing network that suits your topic and target audience. And wowzer, are they networked! From poetry and literature, to business, sports travel, health & wellness, etc.

3. As soon as your piece is published, it begins generating revenue from income sources such as display and contextual advertising that appears on the pages of your content. Translation: ads. If someone clicks on an ad on your page, cha-ching! Then Triad shares with you 50% of the revenue generated by your content. You can keep track of your published items in your Triond account.

4. Payments are made via PayPal, check, or Western Union money transfer monthly on the 15th for earnings you've accumulated up until the end of the previous month.

If you'd like to see some samples of what others are submitting, click here.

Next time I have a few spare minutes, I'm going to submit some pieces and see how it goes. Why not? Sounds easy enough and way more profitable than picking the sand out of your toes after a hard day at the beach.

Writing Without A Contract

Times are tough. Where's a toaster repairman when you need one? Apparently they've gone the way of the dinosaur and I have to buy a cheap, plastic, made-in-the-farthest-reaches-of-China replacement because there's no way I have enough money for a Dualit Combi 2x2. Grr.

Unless, of course, I land a contract that would front me the moolah. But as I said, times are tough. Contracts are hard to come by.

I've got a writerly buddy, multi-published, who finished up a contract and poof! A cloud of magic fairy dust fills the air--not the glittery kind a drunk elf at a renaissance festival sprinkles around. The malevolent kind. The stuff that chokes elephants. But I digress... When the air clears, there are no more contracts to be seen for said author (and no, I'm not talking about me; I've never written a book under a freaking contract so I wouldn't know what it feels like).

Okay, so enough with the intro. As an encouragement to any writer who finds themselves in Nocontractsville, here's a handy dandy list to remind you the sun still shines.

Top 3 Reasons Why Writing Without a Contract 
is a Good Thing

1. No deadline, dude!
Let your hair down. The pressure's off. The calendar isn't whapping you upside the head like a boxer wannabe with a crazed left hook. Use the time to do some serious research. Practice sharpening up a skill you know you need help with.

2. Write what you want to write.
You're not glued to a synopsis. The story can dangle and twist, then shoot off in any direction it wants to go. You want flying monkeys? There's no one to tell you they're a bad idea. Unleash your creativity and let it roam the neighborhood.

3. You can sail that manuscript on a vast and wide sea of publishers.
When you're not committed to one company, you can market your story to loads of different venues. And if the stars are all in alignment and you're wearing your lucky underwear, maybe you'll even get a bidding war going. It's always gratifying to see publishers sit up and beg.

Reminders

Warning: today's post is full of God talk. If that offends you, stop reading right now.

"Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you."

Deut. 31:6

I don't know about you, but sometimes my focus gets skewed onto life's problems. Easy enough to do, since there are a bajillion sticks poking me in the eye, tempting me to squinch my lids shut. Troubles range from small scale to large....the new contract that never comes, the prodigals, the drippy toilet or worrisome lump you discovered on your body.

But closed eyes never make problems go away.

So today, whatever tough issues you're facing, let's just take a moment to stare wide-eyed at a few truths to whack our thinking back into shape, shall we?

The battle is the Lord's.

God is on the throne. He's not stepped down or slipped off.

Yahweh is the God of impossibility. The impossible situation is where His glory shows most starkly.

He is intimately involved in this world, in your life. Intimate enough that He knows your name, that He shed tears and blood in anguish for your sake.

There is no obstacle in your life or in your loved one's life that He cannot overcome.

You are precious in His sight. He made you. He gives you breath even now.

But don't take my word for it. Crack open God's word and see for yourself.