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Summer 2006
Hi All,
I’ve had a very
busy spring. I gave a workshop on writing commercial
fiction at a writer’s conference in St. Maries,
Idaho in April. I was also the keynote speaker! I’ve
spoken at a number of conferences over the past year
and have a variety of workshops developed. Now when
I’m asked to present it’s much easier to pull
something together.
Another way
my writing career has broadened is I am now
teaching story structure for commercial fiction
privately. I am doing it through my company,
Writing With Fire. My clients are emerging
writers who need someone to guide them through
the structure of a novel. I take them from
plotting through the first draft. I really enjoy
it and plan to do more of it. Perhaps someday I
will be able to do it fulltime. It’s a perfect
companion to my writing career.
You all
probably remember that I entered my debut novel,
The Winds of Sonoma, in several contests.
I haven’t heard on all of them, but I did win
the Beacon Award, and am a finalist for the 2006
Booksellers Best Award, the 2006 Gayle Wilson
Award for Excellence in Romance, the 2006 Write
Touch Readers Award. Finalist means that Winds
was one of three or four books chosen for
further consideration in the competition, and a
possible win.
My third
book, The Fragrance of Roses, is being released
next month. And last week I finished my fourth
book, working title But the Greatest of
These is Love.
It will be released next summer. It
is a stand-alone book.
My agent is
currently in negotiations with Thomas Nelson for
another series. Their imprint for Inspirational
fiction is Westbow. There are a number of very
good things this could mean for me if I get a
contract with them. I am in the process of
writing a synopsis for the first book of that
proposed series. It will deal with two Hispanic
young people, both from poverty and difficult
family situations, who find each other. They
both realize they are called to spread the good
news about Jesus Christ. But their calling is
not as ordinary as it seems. You see God has
given them a heart for the Muslim people.
I don’t even
want to think about the amount of research that
is going to be required for book two. But I just
keep remembering when I started to write the
Fragrance of Roses I knew NOTHING about
peripheral blood stem cell transplantation. And
yet, as I wrote that book, every person I needed
appeared right when I needed them. In fact, when
you get right down to it, I knew NOTHING about
how to write a novel when I started writing
Winds. And now I teach others how to do it. Like
I always say: Follow the Lord where He leads.
His ways are mysterious and beautiful.
Have a
glorious summer.
Nikki
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2005
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