Sheila's Guests and Reviews

My review of Redeeming Daisy by Tanya Hanson is one the front page of Nights and Weekends at the moment! How cool is that! And I'm frantically trying to slide a review of Little Madhouse on the Prairie by Marion Elizabeth Witte under the deadline for next month's Poetic Monthly . Meanwhile one of the classes at the Muse Online Conference is about writing better book reviews and I'm finding it very helpful. Other classes include publishing pitfalls, how to plot a novel, dos and donts of submissions, what is Christian horror, and many many more. The Muse is great, the time is weak, and the week is rapidly passing... But if you're a writer and you're not musing this year you should certainly consider it for next year. It's online, you can study at home, and the price is FREE!

There's two reviews of my book, Genesis People, in this month's Poetic Monthly Magazine , volume #51. They're both really nice and it's so neat to see them there. Maybe I should ask them to review the sequel, Exodus Tales, as well:) Anyway, I'm feeling slightly over the moon and wanted to let everyone know. You can download the magazine free (or buy it) so I'd love to read what you think.

Maybe trying to edit 150 children's stories based on Psalms, plus 40 based on Exodus, was bound to leave me with a rather strange reading mix. But I finished the edits, dismayed myself utterly with the number of proof-reading glitches, considered writing a mathematical algorithm relating glitch-detection to glitch-fixing and creation (minimizing the function with respect to time might give the optimum point at which to self-publish), failed to differentiate my function, decided it was as good as I'll ever make it, and put in my order. Now I'm trying (and failing) to stop thinking about it till the books arrive. Anyway, here's this week's books read and reviewed for that continuing Reading Journey . The Miracles of Exodus , by Colin J Humphreys: This was a reread - The first book to make Exodus come to life for me (and get me over that feeling that surely someone would have touched the pillar of fire and found out if it was hot). I wanted to make sure I'd not mad...

My Mum didn't like the sound of her voice on recordings when we were kids. I didn't know why. It sounded the same as usual to me. And I loved to imagine hearing my own voice reading all the stories I wrote to make sure they came out right. My Mum didn't used to like the way she looked in photographs either. But I learned to understand that recently when I joined the " Meeting the God of America " project. On the web site my photograph is reflected, to make me look at the writing instead of away. It feels wrong and I cringe when I see it. But it must be the same as the image I look at in mirrors every day. I guess I just grew up more accustomed to photographs than Mum did. Still, going back to voices, I think I'm finally sharing my mother's dismay. I've started writing book reviews , and as soon as they're posted I always think there's something I want to change. There was I thinking writing could always be fixed by second thoughts. Then I becam...