by Jason Joyner | Feb 12, 2008 | Blog, fiction, goofiness, writing craft
Thanks to Maureen Johnson, a YA (young adult) science fiction of some repute, for the following highly informative post:
HOW TO BE A WRITER IN TEN EASY STEPS.
Finally! After all this time, the answer has been revealed! We can all stop working so hard now and follow this tested* methods for becoming a writer. I am good on Step Three at least. Seven and Eight are coming along.
Hat tip to John C. Wright.
*I haven’t personally tested this, and cannot vouch for the methodology used.
by Jason Joyner | Feb 7, 2008 | Blog, CFBA, fiction, reviews, scrapbooking
This book was right up my wife’s alley, as she loves to scrapbook. (I say she loves to buy scrapbooking stuff and look at it without using it, but this usually gets me in some sort of trouble…) Anyway, here is my special guest review from my beautiful bride Beccy!
Sisters, Ink is the start of a series about 4 adopted daughters who still get together to scrapbook as a way to connect their busy lives. This is the first in the series, and it follows Tandy, living a busy high-placed life of an attorney in a big city, while her family lives in a small town in Tennessee. Her life consists of a dog and many hours of work.
She hasn’t been “home” for 3 years. When she arrives it brings back the joy of being home again: scrapbooking with her sisters, being with her dad, and reacquainting herself with her high school boyfriend.
As her two week visit changes life, she has to decide whether to go back to the big city or find her niche in a sleepy town.
This book had strong characters. The four sisters are distinct, and it was great to see the way this worked out. Even though they were all different, they still bonded as a family. The plot had a great romantic story along with the various family dynamics. I enjoyed the book from the viewpoint of a scrapbook fan, and I understood the lingo and the desire to get together socially and scrap. A weakness of the book was the beginning – it was very flowery with its description and ended up being distracting with its wordiness. Still, I enjoyed the book a lot, and would recommend it to my friends whether they scrapbook or not.
by Jason Joyner | Feb 7, 2008 | Blog, CFBA, fiction, reviews, scrapbooking
This book was right up my wife’s alley, as she loves to scrapbook. (I say she loves to buy scrapbooking stuff and look at it without using it, but this usually gets me in some sort of trouble…) Anyway, here is my special guest review from my beautiful bride Beccy!
Sisters, Ink is the start of a series about 4 adopted daughters who still get together to scrapbook as a way to connect their busy lives. This is the first in the series, and it follows Tandy, living a busy high-placed life of an attorney in a big city, while her family lives in a small town in Tennessee. Her life consists of a dog and many hours of work.
She hasn’t been “home” for 3 years. When she arrives it brings back the joy of being home again: scrapbooking with her sisters, being with her dad, and reacquainting herself with her high school boyfriend.
As her two week visit changes life, she has to decide whether to go back to the big city or find her niche in a sleepy town.
This book had strong characters. The four sisters are distinct, and it was great to see the way this worked out. Even though they were all different, they still bonded as a family. The plot had a great romantic story along with the various family dynamics. I enjoyed the book from the viewpoint of a scrapbook fan, and I understood the lingo and the desire to get together socially and scrap. A weakness of the book was the beginning – it was very flowery with its description and ended up being distracting with its wordiness. Still, I enjoyed the book a lot, and would recommend it to my friends whether they scrapbook or not.
by Jason Joyner | Feb 3, 2008 | arts, Biblical worldview, Blog
Breakpoint is a favorite internet place of mine – I get daily emails from Chuck Colson’s radio broadcast. This last week there was one called “Made for Beauty.” It speaks of Francis Schaeffer’s book Art and the Bible, which I’ve spoken about before here.
Here’s the opening:
The neighbors watched the new church building go up in just one month—and what a sight it was! The church was a squat, square building made of unrelieved concrete. On the inside was garish red carpeting. A massive parking lot surrounded the church.
Nothing could possibly have been uglier—and the fact that so many Christians build church structures like this reveals how far Christians have strayed from the place beauty and art are meant to have in our lives.
As the late Francis Schaeffer notes in his book, Art and the Bible, we evangelicals tend to relegate art to the fringes of life. Despite our talk about the lordship of God in every aspect of life, we have narrowed its scope to a very small part of reality. But the arts are also supposed to be under the lordship of Christ, Schaeffer reminds us. Christians ought to use the arts “as things of beauty to the praise of God.”
I’ve talked about what is in the rest of the article before, but it is nice to see the same message getting out. Check out the article here.
by Jason Joyner | Feb 3, 2008 | arts, Biblical worldview, Blog
Breakpoint is a favorite internet place of mine – I get daily emails from Chuck Colson’s radio broadcast. This last week there was one called “Made for Beauty.” It speaks of Francis Schaeffer’s book Art and the Bible, which I’ve spoken about before here.
Here’s the opening:
The neighbors watched the new church building go up in just one month—and what a sight it was! The church was a squat, square building made of unrelieved concrete. On the inside was garish red carpeting. A massive parking lot surrounded the church.
Nothing could possibly have been uglier—and the fact that so many Christians build church structures like this reveals how far Christians have strayed from the place beauty and art are meant to have in our lives.
As the late Francis Schaeffer notes in his book, Art and the Bible, we evangelicals tend to relegate art to the fringes of life. Despite our talk about the lordship of God in every aspect of life, we have narrowed its scope to a very small part of reality. But the arts are also supposed to be under the lordship of Christ, Schaeffer reminds us. Christians ought to use the arts “as things of beauty to the praise of God.”
I’ve talked about what is in the rest of the article before, but it is nice to see the same message getting out. Check out the article here.
