Interview by Hugh Cook Cynthia Beach is the author of The Surface of Water, a timely novel published this year by InterVarsity Press. The novel presents an unflinching, lifting-the-veil portrayal of a contemporary evangelical megachurch; it reveals the damaging consequences when faith is overruled by the temptations of power and wealth. In our age of #churchtoo, the novel thus is a relevant and timely read. Cynthia Beach is interviewed by author Hugh Cook. What is the main storyline of The Surface of Water? Matthew Goodman, celebrated pastor of a Chicago megachurch, nevertheless has a ..read more

  by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig LitLinks are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 70,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers. While you’re there, check out the Writer’s Digest award-winning Hiveword novel organizer. Have you visited the WKB lately?  Check out the new redesign where you can browse by category, and sign up for free writing articles, on topics you choose, delivered to your email inbox!  Sign up for the Hiv ..read more

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig I’ve definitely made my peace with public speaking in the last 15 years or so. It’s still usually not my most favorite activity, but I’ve gotten to the point where I enjoy sharing information and even providing some entertainment. The easiest form of public speaking is podcasts. I usually appear on a podcast at least once a year. It’s minimal prep and I can even have notes in the background. The same goes for zoom calls, recorded or not. I have a checklist for appearing on podcasts, which you can see here. Minimally harder is speaking to writers in pers ..read more

  by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig LitLinks are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 70,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers. While you’re there, check out the Writer’s Digest award-winning Hiveword novel organizer. Have you visited the WKB lately?  Check out the new redesign where you can browse by category, and sign up for free writing articles, on topics you choose, delivered to your email inbox!  Sign up for the Hiv ..read more

by Hugh Cook On a rainy Saturday morning this spring, Indigo Books, Canada’s largest bookstore chain, arranged an in-store book signing for my novel Heron River. Many of you who read the blogs here on Elizabeth Craig’s site are also writers, and you may be hoping to obtain a bookstore signing yourself for your recently published or soon-to-be-published book. If you land that signing, perhaps some of what I experienced that day at Indigo Books may resonate with you. The store manager welcomed me as I entered the store and led me to a table just inside the store’s front doors. “Here’s your spot ..read more

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig From everything I’ve seen online through the years, I’d say one of the biggest issues writers face is procrastination. I think the reasons behind the procrastination vary from writer to writer. One of the reasons could be perfectionism: you don’t think you can make the story in your head come alive on the page the way you want it to. Another reason could be the thought of what might seem like an insurmountable task. I recently read an interesting article about procrastination, which I thought might be helpful for some writers. It was by Hal Hershfield ..read more

  by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig LitLinks are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 70,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers. While you’re there, check out the Writer’s Digest award-winning Hiveword novel organizer. Have you visited the WKB lately?  Check out the new redesign where you can browse by category, and sign up for free writing articles, on topics you choose, delivered to your email inbox!  Sign up for the Hiv ..read more

by @AngelaAckerman @WriterThesaurus Writing is no easy task, especially as it means juggling dozens of story elements at once: characters, plot, setting, dialogue, description, pacing, symbolism, you name it. And when we become so focused on bringing these things together, we may lose sight of our most important job: getting readers to bond with our characters. Our fiction can have a larger-than-life cast, a crazy-twisty plot, and fantastical setting elements, but none of this will matter if we fail to get readers to care about and invest in our characters. Luckily, writers are subject matter ..read more

  by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig LitLinks are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 70,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers. While you’re there, check out the Writer’s Digest award-winning Hiveword novel organizer. Have you visited the WKB lately?  Check out the new redesign where you can browse by category, and sign up for free writing articles, on topics you choose, delivered to your email inbox!  Sign up for the Hiv ..read more

  by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig LitLinks are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 70,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers. While you’re there, check out the Writer’s Digest award-winning Hiveword novel organizer. Have you visited the WKB lately?  Check out the new redesign where you can browse by category, and sign up for free writing articles, on topics you choose, delivered to your email inbox!  Sign up for the Hiv ..read more