L. Jagi Lamplighter's Blog, page 56
May 15, 2013
Caption This Winner!
A number of good ones, but the winner was:
If she'd known they were teleportation devices, she'd never have stuck them in her ears.
May 13, 2013
Capture This!
Winner posted Wednesday.
May 8, 2013
Body Image Lies Women Believe: Free Kindle eBook & $100 Giveaway POST HTML:
UPDATE: Due to technical issues, this book will be free tomorrow and Friday, May 9th and 10th!
Posting this for another author. Her new book is coming out:
—–
By Shelley Hitz and contributing authors
FREE three days only: 5/8/13, 5/9/13 and 5/10/13
PLUS enter to win a $100 Amazon Gift Card!
About the Book, Body Image Lies Women Believe:
Are you insecure about your looks?
Have you ever compared yourself to someone else and found yourself wanting?
Do complements or put downs determine the image you have of your beauty?
Real Stories of Overcoming Body Image Lies Women Believe with God's Truth Throughout this book, Christian women share their stories of how they have struggled with body image lies and a distorted view of themselves. However, each of their stories also contains hope – the hope of replacing these lies with God's truth. Our prayer for you is that you find encouragement within these pages and allow Christ to transform you with His truth. We Are Each Created Unique God has created each one of us with unique abilities, unique talents and a unique personality. As women we are influencers and God has given us that role and our beauty to share with others. Yet so often we settle for a counterfeit. The enemy has counterfeited our idea of beauty, convincing us to share our beauty with the world in a distorted way. Today that often means that we see our beauty as what we look like on the outside. What Lies Have You Been Believing? Join us for the journey of replacing body image lies with truth from God's Word.
FREE on 5/8/13, 5/9/13 and 5/10/13
Paperback | Large Print | Audiobook
Shelley Hitz 
Shelley Hitz is an award-winning and international best-selling author. Her openness and vulnerability as she shares her own story of hope and healing through her books will inspire and encourage you. Shelley has been ministering alongside her husband, CJ, since 1998. They currently travel and speak to teens and adults around the country. Shelley's main passion is to share God's truth and the freedom in Christ she has found with others. She does this through her books, websites and speaking engagements.
Follow Shelley Hitz Website | Facebook | Twitter
Enter Below to Win a $100 Amazon Gift Card!
Thank you to our sponsors! The giveaway is sponsored by Staci Stallings, Spirit Filled Kindle, Grace & Faith 4 U and Body and Soul Publishing.
Share this FREE book and giveaway with your friends!
Caption This Winner!
We have two winners, this week. It was a tie. There were many good responses, but these two amused the most:
What grumps on four feet in the morning, two feet during the day, and three feet in the evening?
and
"Of course it's alright to use it for target practice, mon ami! A few cannon balls could only improve *that* face, non?"
I also think the one that suggested the Washington Monument as a scratching post deserves an honorable mention.
May 6, 2013
Caption This!
Winning caption will be posted on Wed!
May 2, 2013
Possible Back Blurb–thoughts welcome.
Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts—a school of magic like no other!
Who knew so much could go awry in one week?
Rachel Griffin is a thirteen-year-old girl with one small goal. She wants to know everything! To this end, she has come to Roanoke Academy—located in New York State’s Hudson Highlands—a year younger than her peers. Her perfect memory, which helps her excel at scholastic pursuits, had an unexpected side effect. With it, she can see through the enchantments sorcerers use to hide their secrets.
When someone tries to kill a fellow student, Rachel begins paying attention. She soon discovers that, in the same way her World of the Wise hides from mundane folk, there is another more secret world that hides from the Wise. Rushing forward where others fear to tread, Rachel finds herself beset by wraiths, embarrassing magical pranks, a Raven that brings the doom of worlds, and at least one fire-breathing teacher.
This does not stop her learning magic, making friends and, most importantly, finding romance!
Curiosity can kill a cat, but nothing stops Rachel Griffin!
Wright’s Writing Corner–The Trick Revisited!
New cover!!!
Last night's writing workshop went very well. The kind folks at Savvy Authors kindly prepared a transcript of the class. For today's post, I am going to post the transcript for the rest of you to enjoy.
The subject of the workshop was 'The Trick', my favorite writing technique for both its simplicity and its effectiveness.
The Trick: Raising expectations in one direction but having the story first go in the opposite direction.
The Trick is the secret to writing, the thing that makes a story work: expectation followed by something other than the expected outcome – but something that is thematically consistent with the original events.
In art, artists use shading to emphasize the lighter portion of their work. The shading provides contrast that draws the eye back to the non-shaded part. In a story, writer’s need to do the same thing. One way of providing that contrast is with The Trick.
Of all writing techniques, The Trick is the easiest to do. You just decide where you want the story to go, and then you indicate—through dialogue, character thought, or narration—that the opposite is coming. If you want to have a happy incident, you make your character glum. If you want something bad to happen, you make him unexpectedly happy. It is that simple, and it is tremendously effective.
You just have to remember to use it. That is all.
How best to use it, of course, gets more difficult. If you are too blatant about your reversals, the audience will not be taken in. I’ve read books or watched shows where every time someone was happy, I winced because I knew something bad was coming. That actually undercuts the effect. The reader is alerted rather than lulled into a false sense of security.
So, the more subtly you can apply it, the more effective your scene. But you would be amazed at how blatant you can be and still have it work. Some of the bestselling authors today are quite obvious in their use of the Trick, and yet people read their books with great eagerness.
How exactly does one use The Trick? Let me use an example from real life. This happened just this spring.
I have a friend whose house was foreclosed by Bank of America. It was a condo, really, but it was his home. It was a very sad thing because he had been up on his payments. However, there was a misunderstanding. Some years earlier, my friend had lost his job. During his jobless period, he had arranged payment plan with B of A, where he was paying a portion of the monthly amount.
My friend is a hard worker. When he got a new job, he approached B of A and offered to return to the full payment. The person on the phone told him to stick to the current payment plan.
Fast forward a few years. My friend gets a sudden call from B of A. They say: Pay up the many thousand dollars you are now behind. Obviously, my friend did not have this on hand.
He lost his home. Time went by. There was a class-action suit against B of A. My friend participated and was part of a winning settlement.
A few days ago, the check arrived. When he called me to share the story, he said that he sat with it in his hand for almost half an hour, praying and terrified, before he opened it. You see, he knew that while some people had gotten as much as $3000 from the settlement, many had only received $300. He did not know if he could bear it if his check contained only $300.
Finally, he ripped open the envelope. It contained a check for $6000!
Pause a moment. Think of how that makes you feel. Okay. Ready? Let’s go on.
Now, there’s another part of this story I left out. My friend works in an office, but he has always wanted to do more. When he graduated from college, he wanted to serve in the army or as a police officer. He wanted to do a job that mattered. He applied many places. Each time, he was turned down due to ill health.
That was nearly twenty years ago. His health has improved. Recently, he discovered that he might qualify to become a firefighter. This is the kind of work he could excel at—active work helping people with truly important things.
To make this change work, it would help a great deal if he could take some paramedic classes. This will be difficult for him, of course, because taking classes while working is always a strain.
When word first came about the B of A settlement, he looked online to find out how much he might be getting. The top payment for someone in his category was: $125,000!
Even though he knew this was probably an exaggeration, my friend spend an evening daydreaming of what he might do if he received the entire $125,000. He could quit his job, pay off his debts, and take the classes! He could be free of his current life entirely! He could be the man he wished to be.
Eventually, however, he discovered that this was not the amount people in his position would receive—and the fears of receiving only $300 began.
Now, think of how different the story I told above would have felt if I had told you: He held the envelope, expecting, hoping, that it would contain $125,000. All his hopes for the future, all his dreams, lay in this one check. He ripped the envelop open. It contained a check for $6000.
Instead of a miraculous triumph, that same $6000 now feels like a crushing defeat.
That’s The Trick.
The rest is available here, but you have to sign up as a member of Savvy Authors (which is free.)
May 1, 2013
Here it is! — My New Cover!
Here is the cover to my newest book, a fantasy YA, to be released some time this summer.
Caption Winner
There were a number of good entries, but this one took the cake for wittiness.
Stop calling her Wendy Darling!
April 30, 2013
Happy Walpurgisnacht!
Tomorrow, May Day, I will be leading a Writing Workshop online. It's free. Details are here:
http://www.savvyauthors.com/vb/showevent.php?eventid=1956
Also, tomorrow I will unveil the cover art for my newest novel: The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin.
