Author Intrusion

Justice in the Burbs Promo Video finished!

Our promo video for Justice in the Burbs is finished. Award-winning documentary filmmaker John Paget, (Route 66, Almost Elvis) came and filmed in Lexington and put together this video. If you'd like to use Justice in the Burbs for Sunday School or small groups, this is a great resource to send to your pastor or ministry director. Let us know what you think?

yes, we have a patron saint

For all you writers, Francis de Sales is your man. 

Right now, I also need a patron saint of lost keys, sleeplessness, inability to manicure my own nails or make a decent pie crust, and back pain!

Got any favorite saints?

It was a lovely weekend here in Lexington!  I sat on the porch Saturday, the day I took for a sabbath this weekend, and read and read. It was so great. Right now, Sunday evening, I back out here, working on my rewrites for Embrace Me (Thomas Nelson, Feb. 2008).  It rained a while ago (we need a dozen more of those rains, you?) and the atmosphere is clearer than it's been in a while.  The sun is low and golden and the temperature has dropped just slightly. It's the prettiest evening we've had all year.

At our church gathering tonight our oven fried potato wedges were a huge hit! Here's how you do it.  (Don't faint, I'm actually putting up a recipe!) Cut those yummy russet red-skin potatoes in wedges and throw on a large baking pan, douse liberally in olive oil, mix with your hands. Arrange potatoes in single layer, dust with Old Bay seasoning and throw on some kosher salt.  Bake at 375 for 45 - 60 minutes, turning them with a spatula in the middle of cooking.  Dip in this sauce: four parts mayo to one part ketchup and a little horseradish sauce to taste.

Oh my garsh!

How was your weekend?

PW Review on Justice in the Burbs. Sweet!

Publisher's Weekly Magazine has given Justice in the Burbs a great review. You can pre-order here. Download a copy of the intro and chapter one here.

Justice in the Burbs: Being the Hands of Jesus Wherever You Live Will and Lisa Samson. Baker Books, $14.99 paper (208p) ISBN 978-0-8010-6809-6

Award-winning Christian novelist Lisa Samson (Songbird; Quaker Summer) and her husband, sociology doctoral student Will Samson, intertwine fiction and nonfiction in this challenging and inspiring book about justice. Lisa Samson's novella features the Marshalls, a suburban family with all the accouterments: Matt climbs the corporate ladder, Christine cares for their three children, and both are busy with numerous church leadership positions. One day, however, Matt and Christine visit an inner-city mission, and their ideas about how they should be living gradually, but dramatically, change. The nonfiction portion of the book examines the issues these characters (and most of the book's readership) face. The Samsons talk about why God cares what we eat, where we live, how much electricity we use, and to whom we minister. Astonishingly, the authors manage to do this without hitting a sanctimonious note. On the contrary, they repeatedly highlight the heartbreak and complexity of what they refer to as "thinking and living in keeping with God's heartbeat of justice," and frequently acknowledge their own struggles and failures. The Samsons include short meditations at the end of each chapter written by a variety of Christian authors, as well as a series of helpful discussion questions at the end. (Aug.)

back from Colorado

The mountains in Estes Park just make you gasp, don't they?  Being around giant nature reminds me how truly dumbfounding it is that the God who created such astounding beauty communicates with me and cares.  It's crazy, isn't it?

The CCWC was loads of fun. I got to see a lot of my friends from the blogosphere and from writerville. God was speaking to a lot of people in various ways and I knew I was supposed to be there. I'd tried to back out, but when the director, Marlene Bagnull, told me 21 people had signed up for my workshop Living Intentionally, Writing on Purpose, I knew I had to go.  I'd descended into a deep bout of depression and couldn't imagine packing my things, getting on a plane, and doing all the things travel entails. But God got me there and several people, thanks be to God, said after that workshop (it felt a little like church) they knew why God had called them to come to Colorado.

But God had plans for me too. He's very thrifty, isn't He? I had a couple of words spoken over me which make me ask you to pray for me, that I would truly recognize the voice of God. Especially pray that God would show me what my next adult novel is supposed to be. If you'd be willing to pray with me over this for the next month, please email me or let me know in the comments.

So I'm back. Filled with expectation and gratitude.  I'm in the process of finding out if you can order the CD from the above mentioned workshop or the one on Women's Fiction. I'll post the link as soon as I know.

Hope you all have a great week.

favorite writers of women's fiction

Okay, friends!  Loved your definitions and attributes of women's fiction.  Now, tell me who your favorite women's fiction authors are (male or female!) and why!

Thanks!!

women's fiction

I'm preparing for my workshop "Women's Fiction: What it Is, What it Isn't" for next week's writer's conference.  I'd love to hear your take on it. What do you think the characteristics of women's fiction are?

photo

Some People Leave You Changed

This past weekend, Will and I had the pleasure of hosting Tom Davis, President of Children's HopeChest and author of Fields of the Fatherless, here in Lexington .  Tom's heart for the orphans is so large, you expect to see it bursting from the corners of his eyes.  Ty and I will hopefully be headed to Swaziland with Tom and Children's HopeChest this coming autumn.

Tom's book Red Letters, a call for Christians to find the heartbeat of Jesus within themselves by joining with Pure Christianity (visiting the widows and the orphan in their distress) will be released at the end of September by Cook Communications.  Cook is also publishing the next book Will and I will write together, More Than Enough (working title).  Pre-order this book!

Cook will also be publishing Tom's first novel, Scared. I'm his writing coach/developmental editor. This weekend we spend hours and hours talking fiction, what makes it work, what doesn't. It was exciting to sit out at The Owl, talk about plot, character, setting, pacing and resisting the urge to overexplain! Among other things. Scared tells the story of a photojournalist's last chance to keep his soul and the Swazi orphan Adanna who shows him the way.

Check out Children's HopeChest and pre-order Tom's book!

learning in lent

It was a different Lenten season for me, not as dramatic as I'd hoped, honestly, but one filled with life lessons. It's so easy to want to learn from others' triumphs (especially if they outline it in book form, or better yet, a pamphlet!), as well as their mistakes, but sometimes you just have to learn from your own. For good or bad.

This time of "being away" made me realize for sure that the world doesn't revolve around me! Imagine that! Here I was walking around thinking that cosmic glue that holds the universe together was . . . me! Okay, maybe that's a bit hyperbolic (ya think?), but there's a part of me that honestly believes if I know about something and worry about it over and over, somehow that will be make it all better. The war? The state of the church? Christian publishing? Who made the best-seller list with half the talent and 1/4 the time spent while I still wallow in my miasma of bewildered self-pity?  Guess what? It's all still there! And God's still on it.  Does that mean I don't care? Of course not. But limiting my exposure cut not only a great deal of wasted time from my life, but a lot of anxiety.

If I don't check my email. Nobody's gonna die.  I learned that too.

If some things cause you a great deal of anxiety, maybe it's not that God wants you to conquer it, maybe it's a clue that God doesn't want you around it in the first place. Maybe what's causing you anxiety isn't supposed to be in your life at all.  I'm learning to identify those areas and start to filter them out so I can spend more time being proactive in the areas I know am called to: family, career, church, justice.

Fixed hour prayer, such as the prayers found in Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours, are a wonderful way to set your mind on God. I realize a lot of protestants balk at prayers already written out, but, if you're at all like me, laying or sitting there trying to pray, going through a laundry list that lasts, oh, say 15 minutes at the most, and then not being able to think up much and resorting to a praise session that basically consists of Awesome God, All Hail King Jesus, and As the Deer, split up and combined into something you're really trying to make sound good for The King of Kings, well, having beautiful words and thoughts written for you brings to mind the loveliness of God, your own need for repentance (I mean who does that naturally?) and a certain language of gratitude that may not come to your mind on it's own.  It's a wonderful way to join in with Christians all around the world praying these same prayers.

I'll post more lessons as I think of them. One other thing I've learned?

How much, despite all that, I missed you guys! Please let me know you're still around and say hello in the comments! Glad to be back. Hope you are all well.

YoRD: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Or . . . It's Great To Have Good Friends.

I could say A Moveable Feast, a memoir of Hemingway's Paris days in the 1920's, afforded me many insights, enabled me to learn a thing or two. The chief and most "duh" one would be the fact that I can now spell the author's name correctly.

No, there aren't two Ms in Hemingway. Who knew? (Don't answer that!)

I'm not much of a reader of books on the craft of writing or the writing life. But then, I've always needed to figure out much of life on my own so this doesn't surprise me or cause me dismay. However, I'm a firm believer that reading good writing: the classics and the top of your chosen genre, is the greatest teacher. Unfortunately, this method takes a great deal of time; fortunately, if you're a fiction writer, it's highly enjoyable!

However, A Moveable Feast enabled me to read a book on the writing life and learn from the writing as well. A lot of contemporary editors would have a field day with Hemingway's prose, and part of me smiles because we Christians want formulas to follow (sinner's prayer anyone?), rules to obey, steps to take to achieve our perceived goal. It's no different at Christian writer's conferences and in critiques.  Shoot, I yack about POV, passive verbs and dialogue tags as much as anybody else. But despite his breaking of the rules (and maybe because of it!), Hemingway hurtles you through his prose, ushering you seamlessly into his world while still maintaining a unique style. My biggest concern with conferences and the same rules being touted over and over, is that a homogenization can and does occur, (if some of the critiques that pass through my hands at conferences are any indication). And who wants that? (Oh, but the shining ones are worth it all, aren't they? How I love holding some pages in my hand and thinking, "Oh yes! They've got the gift! What can I do to help?")

I'm not sure how Hemingway does what he does but you can be sure I'm planning on heading down to the book shop to find a copy of The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway's first novel.

While Hemingway doesn't delve into craft, he paints a portrait of a writer's life and what struck me over and over again was that they were a real community there in Paris and each had their part to play and hearing the names: Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Fitzgerald, Ford, Stein, bandied about like I'd talk about my own friends, made me realize that while we write alone, we aren't lone writers. Or shouldn't be, anyway. In a profession understood by few, we need to stick together, encourage one another, simply be available.

  I guess that's not so hard. I've made some wonderful friends along the way, friends who have sweetened the journey and allowed me to feast with them wherever we may find ourselves. You know who you are. And even if you just suspect it's you--be assured it's you too! It's easy to take all that for granted sometime. So let me just say thanks. (I couldn't put all the pictures up. That would take a dozen posts.)

I devoured this book. Sweet, salty and at times a bit bitter. Place it in front of you, savor it and I do believe you won't want to send it back to the kitchen.

Best of all, it caused me to remember my own writing friends and to be thankful for the encouragement they've been throughout the years. A good book will do that sort of thing for you.

lisa

pictures places in no particular order!

wasted days

In A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway says while nursing a hypochondriacal (but oh, so talented)  F. Scott Fitzgerald on a short road trip from Lyon to Paris:

"I was getting tired of the literary life, if this was the literary life that I was leading, and already I missed not working and I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life."

. . . the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.

I resonated with that phrase. How many days have I wasted, unable to concentrate on writing, or even to figure out the thing at its core, days when it all seems a little crazy to be putting words down on paper, describing the lives of people that never existed, never did one real thing, never changed the world. The least I could is write biographies of great people! But somedays, I can't, or don't, even write about my own made-up worlds.

On these wasted days, I have to admit, a certain loneliness does try to push its way from my heart and out through my skin. Naturally, I view the rest of the writing world generously and suspect they all got their word count in no problem, they're actually working on other projects just to fill in the time and their inboxes echo. But I sit in my bubble of disappointment.

Hemingway had it right. There is a sort of death loneliness about wasted days. We know we have so few days to really spare. I'm always keenly aware of my mortality, as though a big clock walks behind me doing some sort of tapdancy shuffle.

So I propose this: If we see a day is going to go to waste, well, let's waste it well! (Hey, I'm not dillusional! We are going to waste some of our days. It's inevitable!)

Call a friend or a family member and catch up, schedule an impromptu coffee with someone, read, sit in a church, work on that craft project you've beeing wanting to finish, cook a great meal, listen to music.  All of these are productive in their own right, but they're also nourishing.  Maybe we waste our days at times because we fail to provide some food for the psyche. Here's a thought--maybe we should take time to feed our souls in the first place and perhaps, we'd have steam to make the most of the days we are given.

peace,

lisa