Predictable Endings

Predictable endings are plaguing the creative world- books, movies and even songs. Everything seems to be going along a pattern, but I for one would love to see that pattern broken. It wasn't very long ago when I would be shocked by book and movie endings, but no more. Let's attempt to do better at keeping the reader or viewer guess, shall we?

Wield The Pen Responsibly by Lacresha Hayes, Bestselling Author

As an author, your job can get easier with time. As we write, we gain much needed experience. Our failures mesh together perfectly with our successes to teach us how to promote and touch our readership. And we learn the funniest lessons. We learn that two books on identical subjects may not actually appeal to identical readers because our styles adjust during our careers. As we grow and evolve, so does our writing. But sometimes, we can become lazy and insensitive and that spells trouble.

There are some authors who will only ever write a book and maybe a few articles, but this article is for those of us who write as a way of life. Most of us will be writing for the rest of our lives due in part to the stories and circumstances that beg our attention and ask us or even pester us to write about this or that. We keep living and learning and the teacher in us or entertainer in us keep us wanting to share. Therefore, the day we die, we'll probably die with some work or other in progress. That is why I am writing this article.

The written word has a power not wielded by anything else, and matched by very few things. No matter how much technology advances, there will never be a replacement for what is written. How we read, when we read and where we read may change, but the fact that we read will not change. Therefore, it behooves us to be responsible with what we share with the world. We never know if something we write will become a part of history thirty years or 100 years into the future. Please wield your pen and fingers responsibly!

About the Author:
Lacresha Hayes is the author of The Rape of Innocence, Truth and Intimacy: A Couple's Journal, Becoming: My Personal Memoirs, Raw Redemption, Tangled and many more books. She writes regular articles at her Pretty, Powerful and Prosperous blog as well as several guest posts all over the internet. She has risen to stardom through her multiple programs for women, business owners, victims of abuse and authors. She reaches out to help those who need it and that has won her the respect of novice writers and professionals in the literary world. For more information, visit her website, www.lacreshahayes.com today.

Christian Books

I won't lie and pretend that I never read anything other than wholesome books. There is a lure to reading suspense, romance and paranormal books, at least for me. Still, I try to keep these kind of books to a minimum because I've found the more I read them, the more I want to read them.

The term Christian is now being applied to all kinds of crud because the name Jesus or God is mentioned a few more than 2-3 times. Hogwash! I like when publishers and authors call their books just what they are and let me make up my own mind about whether I want it or not.

Anyway, I said all of that to say that all next week I will be reading books by my Facebook friends. Some of them won't be Christian and thus when I post my review here, I'm going to be honest and fair, so the next couple of weeks may not show up too many Christian books. We'll see how it goes.

Cowboy for a Rainy Afternoon by Stephen Bly

CHAPTER 1

The Matador Hotel died on July 5^th, 1965, but they didn’t bother burying it until last fall.

New Mexico heat blanketed Albuquerque that July like too many covers in a stuffy cabin. The kind of day that you sweat from the inside out and feel sticky dirt in places that you don’t ponder much except in the shower. I reckon that four-bladed overhead fan that squeaked like an unfed cat failed to console Shorty McGuire. Doc Boyce said he passed on durin’ the night, but no one discerned it until they observed the empty back table at the Round-Up Café. For the last nineteen years of his life, Shorty lived in a second-floor room at The Matador. At straight up 6:00 a.m. ever’ mornin’ he ate two eggs fried hard under the faded picture of Theodore Roosevelt leading the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill.

As a boy, I calculated that Shorty McGuire and the others must be pushing a hundred-years-old when I met them for the first time in 1954. I reckon I surmised wrong. The Albuquerque Herald reported that Hadley (Shorty) McGuire was only 86 when he died on that July day in 1965. The Herald is right most of the time. As the last of that bunch at the Matador, there was no one left to take his trapings, so Whip Johnson and me cleaned out Shorty’s goods a few days after his funeral. Whip managed the hotel in the 60s for his Uncle Durwood Johnson who gained some fame in the Southwest on the rodeo circuit after the war. He won the hotel on a bet on a black half-thoroughbred stallion down in Magdalena.

The floor of Shorty’s little room with one four-pane slide-up window was carpeted solid with six to eight inches of newspapers, not a one newer than 1939. He claimed that cowboyin’ didn’t provide the time to read much, so he saved them for his retirement. I never did know if he got caught up. We didn’t have the nerve to give his tattered clothing to the Rescue Mission, so we chucked them into the hotel incinerator. We crated his boots, wooly chaps and battered Stetson, then donated them to the state museum. I had a notion they would want to display the gear of an old-time cowboy. But they stored them in a back room for a few years, then sold them at an auction to raise money for a modern art statue that looks like the scrap-iron pile out behind my barn. If I’d known they were selling Shorty’s belongings, I’d have bought those suckers myself and buried them, rather than let some car dealer in Denver drive off with ‘em. But that’s the way the past is. You can’t hang on to it all. What survives gets stolen by strangers who have no blasted idea of what they hold in their hands.

The tobacco-stained furniture in Shorty’s room belonged to the hotel, but Whip decided to replace it all and re-carpet. So they moved in newer furniture, but I don’t think the room was ever repainted. Whip and me always thought that room smelled like Lordsburg, but that might be its location on the south side of the hotel, facing the Santa Fe tracks. I never went back to the hotel after that day. The hippies ran it in the early 70s, then some drug dealers. I think one of them big moving companies bought the place and used it for storage for a decade or two before they tore it down last year. All them red bricks got shipped to the west side for deluxe estate fencing around an upscale gated community. I hear they decided to build urban condos on the old hotel site for rich city folks, but I can’t figure what kind of people would want to live in downtown Albuquerque. At least, not nowadays.

I still have Shorty’s rim-fire saddle hangin’ in my tack room. It was one of the first ones Estaban Chavez built, when he still had that shop behind the Chinese laundry in Las Cruces. Lots of folks have wanted to buy it over the years, but it doesn’t belong to me. Some day Shorty’s kin will show up wantin’ his things, and I’ll have it ready. I keep the leather oiled. Shorty died almost forty years ago, but I’ll hang onto it for him.That’s the way things are done around this part of the country. It’s one of the lessons I learned in the lobby of the Matador Hotel.

Time and Perseverance

So many authors fall through the cracks with great books because they have not yet decided what part of their message in each book is the strongest. Your book can't be about everything for everybody. It has to be about something specific to speak to a specific audience. Otherwise, it meets with a "blah, blah, blah" attitude from readers and no one will take you or your book seriously.

I love reading from unknown authors but it takes more than a feature from me and a few other bloggers for someone to notice you and take you seriously. Marketing your book is marketing your message and that takes time and perseverance.

From the Inside Out by Chrishawn Simpson

From the inside out....That’s what you have to do - cleanse from the inside out. To spiritually cleanse is a renewing process that will give you a brand new life. It will give you enlightenment, satisfaction, and a new energy you never knew you had. You will be renewed, refreshed, and rejuvenated.

Simply put, if you don’t cleanse yourself from the inside out, then you are setting yourself up for failure no matter what. The hidden shadows that you have locked deep away are still working their damage on the inside and that portrays itself on the outside. You will always sabotage your intentions without even realizing it. It’s called self-sabotage and thousands of people do it on a daily basis. I don’t care how good your intentions are, nothing will come of them because you will undoubtedly sabotage them. Period.

The Bible says in Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” See? Even God says if you don’t change the inside, the outside won’t change. If you’re constantly feeding yourself garbage, then garbage is what is going to come out. If you let your shadows’ faces (fear, resentment, jealousy, angry, rage, envy, etc.) constantly haunt you that is what is going to be portrayed in your actions.

You need to identify the inner garbage that is hindering your life and you need to clean it up. It needs to be cleared out and thrown away for good for change to take effect. You have to put your pride aside, get your ego in check, and surrender your fears, your self-limiting beliefs, your self-centered will, and your “all about me” attitude.

You can learn more about how to cleanse from the inside, determining what your shadows are, and transforming your path, in the author, Chrishawn E. Simpson’s book, Transform Your Path, which can be purchased at www.TransformYourPath.com. Transformation is a wonderful process and in this 16-chapter revolutionary book, you will get 21 exercises that will challenge you to your very core and make you face reality - which sometimes isn't pretty; but is very necessary for change to begin. Once you complete this guide, you will be strengthened, alive, and whole. You will be TRANSFORMED!

About the Author:

Chrishawn Simpson is the founder of the revolutionary, life-changing program, Transform Your Path. She uses proven techniques to help you overcome your obstacles, tackle your shadows, and challenge your core beliefs, all for the sake of leading a life filled with purpose, passion, joy, and fulfillment. Check out her website at www.TransformYourPath.com for more information and to purchase the book.

The Six Liter Club by Harry Kraus

ELUSIVE WHISPERS, A DARK CLOSET, STRONG ARMS... DOES SHE EVEN WANT TO REMEMBER?

Camille Weller has arrived as the first African-American attending in the trauma service of the Medical College of Virginia. Never mind that the locker rooms are labeled "doctors" and "nurses" rather than "men" and "women" or that her dark skin communicates "incapable" to many of her white male colleagues in the OR. Camille has battled prejudices her entire career, but those battles were small spats compared to what she faces now.

When a colleague discovers a lump in her breast, she believes Dr. Camille Weller is the best doctor for her. Together, they decide on a course of treatment that bucks the established medical system, keeping Camille firmly in the cross-hairs of male surgeons already riddled with skepticism and suspicion.

Her success as a surgeon is jeopardized further when dark whispers from her childhood in Africa plague Camille’s thoughts. Bewildering panic attacks instill fear in a surgeon bent on maintaining the control, pace, and direction of her own life. Unable to shake the flashes of memory, Camille is forced to face a past she has not acknowledged since the death of her father on an African mission field. Who was he? Who was she? And why would either of those answers affect her present?

Note from the author: the inspiration for this story came to me as I listened to a real life account of missionaries being martyred for their faith in Congo. I decided to write this fictional account through the eyes of one of the children of the martyrs. My protagonist is the daughter of an American surgeon missionary and a Congolese native.

Bloggers, Writers, Authors

Many bloggers who do not write anything else sometimes mistakenly believe they are not writers. Writers come in many forms and shapes. Not every writer pens articles for newspapers and magazines. All of them don't do educational material. All don't write books. But the one thing they all have in common, blog, author, freelancer journalist, is they work with words daily. Those words are then later read by someone else, even if that someone is just family members.

I take great pride in my writing here on my blog. Maybe I'll get to doing my children's book one day or maybe not, but I know that I write well and I don't have to publish a book to prove I am a writer/author.

Lacresha's Motivational Moment - LOOK AHEAD

One of the hardest things to do today in the entertainment industry is to look ahead. None of us has as much foresight as we'd like to have, but we all have some.

When you're writing, it is your responsibility to look ahead of you to see what children in later generations will see, to feel how they may feel, and to try to interpret your work they way they will. I know it isn't easy to have an imagination free from all restraints but still find the restraint of Christianity there. I know it gets even harder when we see other professing Christians write, sing and do whatever they want to do and still feel comfortable saying they serve God. But, the rewards of faithfulness are many. Don't give up on writing inspirational stuff for the Lord and to help others. Stay strong in your convictions and soon your payday will arrive! Remember who you are and who you belong to.

Lacresha N. Hayes, author of
The Rape of Innocence ~ Truth and Intimacy ~ Raw Redemption ~ Becoming
http://www.lacreshahayes.com
http://learntofeelpretty.blogspot.com

Welcome to what will be called Lacresha's Motivational Moment. This will be geared toward writers and authors, unpublished and published, or freelancers.

Lacresha has been such a huge inspiration in the lives of so many that I thought it'd be nice to give her one more place to spread her wisdom and wiles.

LMM will post every Monday until which time we discontinue it. She's a very busy woman and I don't suspect we'll be able to hold her here long but let's enjoy her while she's here with us sharing her knowledge. Please leave comments, if nothing but amen or I agree. Thank you.

Great Friend and Writing Diva, Chrishawn Simpson

I had the pleasure of meeting Chrishawn Simpson on Facebook a few months ago through an exclusive group we both participate in. From the day I met her until now, I haven't ceased to be amazed by her brilliance.

Chrishawn is the owner of several online businesses, an author, web designer and life coach. She is the visionary behind the Transform Your Path program, which coincidentally is the name of her latest book release.

I don't have words to really sum up this mother, friend, prayer warrior, and all-around sweetheart but to say she is truly living up to her name, Darling Diva. If you want more information on Chrishawn, please visit her website at www.transformyourpath.com

President Obama and His $4 Million in Royalties

I was not surprised to learn that President Barack Obama's book sales had increased once becoming president. But, I was shocked to learn that they increased to the tune of $4 million in royalties last year alone. WOW! Congratulations, Mr. President!

Authors, it is still possible to become a millionaire without writing 100 books.

Interview with Lacresha Hayes, Multiple Genre Author

Today, I am pleased to have Lacresha Hayes here with me on my blog. I've interviewed her before, but this is definitely my favorite interview to date. I look forward to your comments.



Me: Lacresha, we're happy to have you back over. Anything new with your writing career?



L.H: Thanks for featuring me, Kim. Actually, a lot has changed since I was here last. I just recently released my first exclusive Amazon Kindle ebook, TANGLED: LOVE CAN BE FOUND IN STRANGE PLACES. I have been writing more fiction recently with real life issues handled in various ways. I still try to make sure God gets the glory in the end.



Me: How has getting into fiction changed your writing?



L.H: With fiction, you can expand upon your own life experiences and those of the people around you and build a whole plot that readers can relate to. It's more about imagination, but the difficulty is in keeping it centered when you're Christian. In real life, people cuss, have pre-marital sex, fight, argue, etc. You have to have that in your book, but it has to be done in a way that doesn't offend your Christian audience. It's growing me up in my writing.



Me: What was your first work of fiction?



L.H: RAW REDEMPTION was my first official work of fiction. I'm extremely pleased with it. I didn't know how well it'd turn out, but I didn't venture far from home. The book is about a sexually abused woman who runs as far and as fast as she can, but then is forced to return home to her secrets. I've gotten a lot of great reviews for the book and that has encouraged me to do more with my fictional writing.



Me: Does your writing ever conflict with your own values as a Christian? As a mother? As a wife?



L.H: Sure it does. Sometimes, my characters make decisions I would not have made personally. Other times, there's so much of me in the character that those around me instantly can relate the character to me. There are times when I write about things that are difficult to read about/hear about. I believe any writer is going to come to a place where they feel conflicted if they are truly trying to make a difference with their writing.



Me: Finally, what advice do you have for others who write fiction and nonfiction, Christian or otherwise?



L.H: The first piece of advice is to make sure whatever you are writing is something you want to write. It's hard to write when you don't want to do it. The second piece of advice is to write what you know well or don't mind researching. You want your books to be sound in information. Lastly, I'd tell authors to make sure they spend time on their craft. Spend a lot of time reading other authors in your genre. Read books on writing. Re-read your own works, particularly as you write and publish more works. Encourage yourself by seeing how much you are growing from article to article, book to book.



Me: I enjoyed this interview, honey. I love nearly everything you write. Please give us book titles, purchasing information and contact info.



L.H: Thanks for doing this for me, Kim. Here are my book titles and their Amazon links.



~THE RAPE OF INNOCENCE, about surviving abuse and other personal tragedies in life. My bestseller. Get it at http://tinyurl.com/ygbd9xp or visit the blog at http://therapeofinnocence.blogspot.com
~TRUTH AND INTIMACY: A COUPLE'S JOURNAL, about building a solid marriage and rebuilding it when it begins to crumble. Get it at http://tinyurl.com/y5eucnq or visit the blog at http://truthandintimacy.blogspot.com
~BECOMING: MY PERSONAL MEMOIRS, a book of poetry and reflection about surviving and thriving in the midst of troubles.
~POETIC INFINITY, a book of poetry on the woes of life today.
~RAW REDEMPTION, the fictional story of Cheyenne that deals with abuse, denial, anger and eventual resolution.
~TANGLED, the fictional story of Shannon that deals with ideas of success and failure, divorce and Christianity, and learning to be happy again.



My website is www.lacreshahayes.com and my most popular blog is P3, http://learntofeelpretty.blogspot.com. I can be reached via email at lacresha.hayes@gmail.com.

Writers Versus Authors

There's this school of thought that writers are those who write, whether published or not. Authors are those who have signed contracts with publishers to produce a book.

Within the category of writers, you have freelancers and staffers. In fact, there are so many kinds of writers and authors that we can get lost in definition. To me, the qualifications for writers and/or authors are not so strict. If you have a book, self-published or traditionally published, you are an author. If you write regularly, whether it be blogging, articles, research pieces, etc, then you are a writer.

Just My One Voice and One Opinion

As a reader, I'm just one person with one voice concerning books, blogs, authors and their influence in the world. I believe in being honest, though, and I must say that even though last year saw us top and surpass one million books published, I am highly disappointed in quality.

Where are the originals? When one thing sells well, everyone else writes their interpretation of it as if we readers are only topic prone. Well, we're not. We want variety, originality, and heart. For me, I want authors who are not afraid to be different, to be bold, to make a statement and help change the mindsets of others.

Making Use of Facebook

I've never seen more authors than those who lurk around Facebook daily. But it doesn't help them to be there if they are not making full use of everything Facebook has to offer. For me, the reader, I have a wealth of info at my fingertips now because of FB. I can pop over to any author's page or profile and see what they are writing and take a peak at what others are saying about it before I buy.

I recently met a great group of women and one comes to mind, Nichole Gibbons Osborn. She's a writer, blogger and soon-to-be author. I also had the pleasure to befriend Janet Chester Bly, an awesome writer, and to become closer to Joyce Sterling Scarbrough. Other great writers I've met there are Lee Ann Ward, Linda Kozar, Julie Malone, and Tricia Goyer.

I'm making good use of Facebook, getting close to the authors I read everyday, and posting to further the kingdom of God. What could be better?

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's day from the Jamisons to you. Celebrate by purchasing a couple's book and working through it together. Have a romantic evening.

What is Your Responsibility as an Author?

As an author, what is your great responsibility? Some say to provide entertainment. If that is the case, you are missing the biggest picture. You are missing the point of the power of the wielding the pen.

As a pen-wielder, your biggest responsibility should be social reform, education and then entertainment. A true author can master them all flawlessly. Those are the ones I love to read. I want a book that can make me cry, make me angry, make me smile and call me to action. Maybe I'm alone in this regard.