Write! Canada is Canada’s largest conference for Christians who write and/or edit, coming up June 18-20, 2009 in Guelph, Ontario.
Wondering if you should go? Check out this video:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGqK-zLXqnM]
For me, Write! Canada is three events bundled into one: professional development conference, worship retreat, and now that I’ve been there a few times, it’s a family reunion too.
Got my registration in, my flights booked… can’t wait.
Your Best You, by Bonnie Grove (Beacon Hill Press, 2009)
Your Best You, subtitled “Discovering and Developing the Strengths God Gave You,” is about just that: finding positive ways to grow into the unique, effective individuals we were designed to be.
If you’re struggling with an addiction or a stubborn habit, the book won’t be a quick fix but it’s a powerful tool to help you change – if you’re willing to work at changing. Note that the author’s description of stubborn habits includes negative thinking and gossip, not just physical behaviours like smoking or overeating.
Maybe you’re not looking to break any destructive patterns like these. This is still a book worth reading. I didn’t approach it with any sense of felt need to make a change, but I found the exercises on discovering my strengths very enlightening.
The book cover is a clever play on author Bonnie Grove’s method of “trying on” different possibilities for change. Unfortunately, it also implies a limited target readership. Your Best You is a valuable tool for everyone. If you’re a man – or a woman to whom the cover screams “not for you!” – please take a look at the back cover and read the summary, or read some reviews to see what it’s really about.
I’d never articulated my strengths in this way before, nor considered applying them to various facets of my life. Having done so, I’m beginning to see changes. For example, I’m using creativity and organization (with prayer!) to better manage my time and to pre-plan meals. And I’m using perseverance to actually do what’s on my list instead of putting it off. Prayer and persistence will be needed to keep me on track!
Your Best You offers a fresh approach to making changes: first keep a log to discover patterns and triggers, then articulate your goals and explore how to employ your strengths to reach them. I like the Bonnie Grove’s emphasis on not asking “what’s wrong?” so much as asking “what’s right, and how can I use that to make changes?”
The book is filled with charts and questions to help discover your strengths (the author calls them “reflections of God’s image in you”). It may be tempting to skip the application/fill-in sections, to think “I already know this” but it’s very helpful to stop and work them through. I learned a lot.
The questions are designed for reflecting or daydreaming in a positive manner. Daydreaming is one of the author’s strengths, and this may be harder for those who lack it, but these are valuable exercises. There are plenty of examples for those who have trouble filling out inventories. I would have liked to have a list of possible strengths, for those who aren’t strong at critical thinking or observing patterns, but the examples helped.
The author acknowledges that many readers may cringe at allowing ourselves to look at our successes and explore our strengths, as if it’s boastful or self-exalting. However, the point of the exercises is to give God the glory, not to congratulate ourselves. Grove invites us to see what God has done so we can cooperate with Him as He keeps working, and she draws an interesting parallel to the miracle of the loaves and fishes: if we give our gifts back to Jesus, how might He multiply them?
Identifying our strengths, and identifying behaviours we want to change, leads to making “do-able” short goals on the way to reaching long-term goals. Grove likens it to a “you are here” map: first you have to find where you are in relation to what’s around you, then find where you want to go. Then you can plan how to get there.
Prayer is a key element in discovering and implementing this plan. Readers are encouraged to “try on” their strengths in making desired changes, with the expectation that some things will “fit” while others will need adjusting. Grove asks readers to keep a journal of positive results.
One thing she stresses for the journey is the importance of being kind to yourself. Change is a process, and we need to set up meaningful rewards to meet the needs we formerly tried to satisfy through whatever behaviour we want to leave behind.
Kindness to ourselves includes keeping a “strength to change” journal, where each day we record one positive thing we did, chart our progress, and talk to God about the journey. The book includes a wonderful exercise that has readers stop and think about the ways we’ve seen God’s touch on our lives and consider how we know He’s with us.
Relying on God and on one or two trusted and supportive friends is key to our success in the journey to change. Follow-up exercises at the end of the book equip us to plan for continued success so that we don’t revert to what we’ve so intentionally left behind.
Readers can use Your Best You as a workbook for “discovering and developing the strengths God gave us.” Combined with prayer, it can be a powerful tool for positive change in our lives.
You can read an excerpt of Your Best You here.
Sara Mills is the author of two 1940s-era PI mysteries featuring Allie Fortune, a “female Sam Spade” operating in New York City. Sara is a wife, mother, writer, freelance editor and motorcycle racing enthusiast. She loves animals, raises Golden Retrievers, has a house full of hamsters, guinea pigs, turtles, puppies and any other stray that makes its way to her door. (from her website — click here to read the rest, or you can read interviews with Sara at Cara Putman’s blog or Novel Journey) And I discovered today that she lives in Canada. I’m always looking for more Christian authors in Canada.
I’ve wanted to read Miss Fortune and Miss Match for some time. Wish I had a happier reason for deciding to order them now, but here it is: Sara’s husband Keith died suddenly last week, and she’s now a widow with three young kids. (For more details, see a recent post at Novel Journey.)
Some of her good friends at American Christian Fiction Writers have organized a blog tour to show their support and love. Her friend Ronie Kendig’s blog explains, “This isn’t an attempt to trivialize Keith’s death–I’d actually think he’d be thrilled to see so many throwing their support behind his beloved wife and the mother of his children.” (You can read the whole blog post at Craving the Supernatural)
Sara, I’m praying for you and your children.
About the books:
Miss Fortune (book one)
They call her the P.I. Princess.
Allie Fortune is the only female private investigator in New York City and she’s one of the best.
When there’s a knock on her office door at four in the morning, Allie’s first inclination is to ignore it. Someone out on the streets in the middle of the night is usually trouble, either causing it, or being chased by it, and Mary Gordon is no exception.
You can read more here or read the first chapter here.
Miss Match (book two)
FBI agent Jack O’Connor receives a letter from Maggie, a woman he used to love, saying she’s in trouble in Berlin. The FBI refuses to get involved, so Jack asks Allie Fortune to help him investigate. Allie and Jack pose as a missionary couple who want to bring orphans back to the United States.
Youcan read more here or read the first chapter here.
Both books should be available in your local bookstore or online at Chapters, Amazon.ca, Amazon.com or Christianbook.com.
My blogroll has sections “For Readers – General” and “For Readers – Suspense” and today I want to point out two blogs which highlight Canadian Christian Authors.
Books for Book Lovers, by Kimberley Payne, and
Interviews and Reviews, by Laura Davis.
Also, the Hot Apple Cider website is featuring weekly interviews with the authors who contributed to the book.
Congratulations to Canadian author Linda Hall whose romantic suspense novel, Shadows at the Window, won Romantic Times Magazine’s Reviewer’s Choice Award for 2008!
Moving from Fear to Freedom, by Grace Fox (Harvest House Publishers, 2007)
In this book, subtitled A Woman’s Guide to Peace in Every Situation, author/speaker Grace Fox gives women an honest look at common fears–her own and others’, and maintains that there is an upside to fear: it can let us experience more of God in our lives as we cling to Him. We can move beyond theoretical head knowledge to practical heart knowledge. It reminds me of Job saying, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” (Job 42:5, NIV)
Each chapter of Moving from Fear to Freedom deals with a fear that could be debilitating: our children’s safety, loss of possessions, hard times, the future, inadequacy, rejection, issues in our past, and aging. Grace introduces us to contemporary women and biblical characters who discovered how trusting and relying on God overcame fear’s effects.
Chapters also include “Points for Progress”: questions to help individuals or groups think through and apply what they’ve read, “Promises to Ponder”: Scriptures that give God’s perspective on our fears, and “Praying the Promises”: those same verses personalized in prayer.
It’s these practical steps that make the book so valuable. Personal testimony that other women not only face but can overcome fear is encouraging, but learning how to deal with our own personal fears is liberating. As Grace says on page 9, “Filling our minds with the truth of God’s Word equips us to face fearful situations as they come along.”
And they will come along. The stories in this book show that although there may be clear moments of choice-to trust God for the first time or with a particular fear-the “moving from fear to freedom” is a journey rather than a single step. Armed with a trust in God’s character and an arsenal of promises from His Word, encouraged by the knowledge that most women are facing a variation of the same struggle, we can take that journey.
Men struggle with fears too, and Grace’s reference notes include both male- and female-authored books on the subject. Not that a man would dissolve in a puff of smoke if he read Moving from Fear to Freedom, but be warned that the personal stories and examples all come from a female perspective.
I found this a helpful book, easy to read, and one that I’d recommend to others. Different chapters will speak personally to different readers, but the foundation is the same: take the scary step to trust God with our fears. He loves us and He is enough to bring us to freedom.
Sound like wishful thinking? I’ll let Grace answer that one: “Maintaining an attitude of trust and rest is easier said than done, but it is possible. How? By understanding the character of God and how it relates to the nitty-gritty of everyday life.” (page 57)
“Me Speak? – But I’m a Writer!” Adele Simmons of Chestnut Lane Creative will be presenting a workshop at Whitby Baptist Church (in the Worship Centre), 411 Gilbert Street East, Whitby, Ontario on Saturday, February 7, 2009, 9:00am – 3:00pm. For those of you who are time-challenged, the workshop presents the bulk of the information in the morning, so you may dash away at noon, if required. (Rate adjusted accordingly). This workshop will include hands-on practicum with sound equipment, Impromptu Speaking, Humour in Speaking, Looking Good and Follow Up. Cost is $85 for members of The Word Guild, WCDR, POWE and WBC, and $95 for non-members. Email for more information.
Author and speaker N.J. Lindquist will be presenting two workshops in Sudbury, Ontario, February 27-28, 2009. “Release the Creative You” is an evening workshop about motivation and releasing your fears to allow your true creative self to develop and flourish. Pre-registration price is $20 or $25 at the door. Students (ID required) pay $10 or $15 at the door.
“Get to Know the Writer in You” is a full-day workshop for aspiring writers to get you started working with words. It will run from 8:30am – 4:30pm. Pre-registration price is $85 or $95 at the door. Students (ID required) pay $42 or $55 at the door.
Both Sudbury workshops will be held at and will be held at It will be held at Glad Tidings Auditorium, 1101 Regent St. South in Sudbury. Telephone 705-522-4523 for tickets. You can view the poster here.
I’ve had the privilege to attend workshops by each of these speakers, and have come away much the richer for it.
Sharon Fawcett is a Canadian author and speaker whose ministry offers hope: in the daily stresses common to us all, and in the anguish of depression and eating disorders.
Stop by Sharon’s website, Words of Hope for a World in Need, to check out her articles and resources. Here’s a video trailer on her new book, Hope for Wholeness: the Spiritual Path to Freedom from Depression:
Cibou, by Susan Young de Biagi – Cape Breton University Press, 2008
A 17th century Mi’Kmaq maiden’s life changes as she spends time with two brothers from France: Jesuit missionary Antoine Daniel and his sea-faring brother Charles. French fishermen have traded with this group of natives on the Atlantic shores of what will one day be Canada for perhaps 100 years, and by the time of the novel the French/English power struggle for this part of North America is beginning to affect the indigenous population.
Cibou shows the Mi’Kmaq community’s daily life and observations of the French and English foreigners through the eyes of a young woman named Mouse. Author Susan Young de Biagi depicts the Mi’Kmaq as a people of integrity and spirituality, living in harmony with nature and caring for the less-fortunate among them.
Susan Young de Biagi has given us a well-written story with characters and events that linger after the final page has been turned. I think the best part of this gift is the Mi’Kmaq approach of looking at life – really observing and chewing it over – and finding life lessons to apply. Whatever our culture of origin, as we’ve moved away from the oral tradition we’ve lost the propensity to do this.
This isn’t a novel to rush, nor is it dry and heavy. It flows gently, thoughtfully, and is well worth a second read. One of my favourite characters is the chief, a man who embodies Fr. Antoine’s God’s call to lead through servanthood. The chief is wise and deserves the people’s confidence, but he doesn’t look the part except on formal occasions. His wife complains (with pride) that every time she makes him a thick new robe, he gives it to someone in need.
The author presents Mi’Kmaq spirituality and Antoine’s Christianity with sensitivity, as an integral part of the characters’ lives. She makes no comment, but leaves readers to take – or not – what they will from this as from the rest of the book. As a Christian, I found much to think about.
In a culture where mainstream fiction often portrays Christians’ failings and bad examples, it’s refreshing to see a character who “gets it right.” For those who prefer to see where Christians go awry, there’s a hot-tempered zealot to offset Antoine’s practical love.
A review by Maura Hanrahan in the Catholic Register suggests the novel would have been better served with Antoine as the viewpoint character. I can’t agree.
We see both Antoine’s and Charles’ values more clearly through Mouse’s fresh eyes, and would have missed much of Mi’Kmaq culture if we only saw what a stranger saw. Plus, we’d miss the sometimes-laughable interpretations these gentle people put on what we understand as common practices. (Mouse and her friend, Bright Eyes, for example, are horrified by Antoine’s use of a handkerchief.)
Plus, Antoine would have been too good to be true if we knew him from inside his own head. As might the chief. Characters who are very noble or wise are best presented in small doses lest the reader feel inadequate or preached at. Mouse, with her clear-sighted timidity, makes an ideal observer. She sees, and leaves us to draw our own conclusions.
The same review commented on the stiffness of the Mi’Kmaq dialogue. I have no idea how real 17th century Mi’kmaq spoke among themselves, but to me the dialogue felt natural and flowed well, regardless of its historic authenticity. Instead of stiffness, I heard an older pattern of speech, which helped transport my imagination into the past.
Cibou is Susan Young de Biagi’s first novel. A former Nova Scotian, she resides in British Columbia. Ken Chisholm of the Cape Breton Post reports, “De Biagi is working on her next novel, due in a couple of years, about Alexander Graham Bell and the Silver Dart.” I’ll be looking forward to it.
You can read the first few pages of Cibou here. The novel is in stores now, and available online.
Married Single Moms is a blog by Canadian speaker and author Carla Anne Coroy. Want to find out what a married single mom is? Do you know all too well, and want a supportive blog community? Stop by to read what Carla Anne has to share.