Drumming hoof beats become the backdrop to fire bombing, shipwreck, kidnap, torture, and the threat of widespread nuclear disaster when terrorists steal a pale wild horse from Professor Lee Cantrell. But the imagery goes far beyond the present. Borrowing from the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation, Chasing the Fourth Horse utilizes the imagery of the pale horse to represent the imminent possibility of worldwide nuclear disaster—the powerful beat behind every scene of this thriller set in 2035. (Chasing the Fourth Horse, Essence Publishing, 2009, ISBN 155452388-5)
I’m pleased to announce that Chasing the Fourth Horse by my client, Dr. Dennis Price, is now in print—and you can win a free copy.
To enter this drawing for one of three free books, simply email editor@logosword.com and put "ENTER ME IN THE DRAWING" in your subject line. The drawing will end on Friday, August 28, and the three winners will be notified by email.
Authentic Thriller
'Chasing the Fourth Horse' is a winner! Dr. Dennis Price has created a fast moving, action packed, futuristic novel which exudes an eerie magnetism. I could not put it down. He masterfully weaves his expert knowledge of nuclear waste with the imminent threat of terrorism and a wholesome view of Christian eschatology. —Dr. Ray Register, resident in the Middle East for 39 years, fluent in Arabic, trained in nuclear warfare.
About the Author. Dr. Dennis Price is Professor Emeritus, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. An expert on nuclear waste management, he was nominated by the National Academy of Sciences and appointed by the President of the United States as a member of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board for a term each under Presidents Reagan and H. W. Bush. He has testified to the U.S. Congress on nuclear waste management problems and received two Presidential citations for integrity and ability. The San Diego Christian Writers Guild chose his book, Why Christ Is the Only Way, their Book of the Year in 2004.
Muddy Waters: An Insider’s View of North American Native Spirituality
Just out!
Nanci Des Gerlaise’s new book, Muddy Waters: An Insider’s View of North American Native Spirituality, testifies how the Lord Jesus Christ rescued her from the bondage and despair of a life of Native spirituality and gave her truth, peace, and joy.
The book also clearly sets forth the absolute contrast between Native American Spirituality and the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Born into a Canadian Métis family of medicine men, Nanci suffered intense spiritual struggles for many years. Then, as she emerged from the darkness of paganism into Christ’s glorious light, she knew she had to share what she had learned. This book is the result.
Native spirituality is spreading like wildfire as part of the larger spread of paganism, and influencing many Christians as well. This well-researched book combines Nanci’s story with a solid Biblical analysis of our culture and numerous practices popular in Native spirituality.
An excellent resource for parents, educators, and pastors.
Note: Nanci is available for interviews. Visit her Weblog for details.
I would like to thank Linda Nathan, President of Logos Word Designs, Inc., for her encouragement, mentoring and unrelenting assistance, which made this book become a reality. Her expertise in editing and rewriting, researching, publishing consultation, and oversight of the self-publishing process was a godsend for this first-time writer. I cannot stress enough my deep gratitude for her and her professional work and conduct. God bless you, Linda.
After the death of her fiancé only days before her wedding, a young teacher flees the protection of family and friends and moves to an isolated place to live among very different people. Her dream turns to a nightmare when she gets caught up in a four-generation curse pronounced on her friend, an embittered doctor accused of murder. With both their lives hanging by a string in the hands of a psychotic killer, can these two who have just recommitted themselves to God, trust Him for their survival?
Christian author Jackie Strange has written a tight, fast-moving, and suspenseful novel now in the hands of a foremost agent. Jackie brings years of professional experience as a writer to her craft, as well as extensive experience as a public speaker, including on radio and television. She has won numerous honors for her writing.
A Splendored Thing integrates inspirational elements with tough issues that real women face, both personally and socially. Not a romance novel, it yet weaves romance, suspense, and the struggle with suffering into its structure as a thriller.
In other words: Real women, real issues and no simple answers.
"When Austin Boyd recommended me to Linda Nathan of Logos Word Designs, he did me a remarkable favor. Not only is Linda a great editor, but she is also a dedicated Christian who walks daily with Christ. Although I had published many articles and stories and have taught college non-fiction writing, Linda has been an invaluable wordsmith and an encouraging guide on the complexities of writing fiction. Each of her clients receives one-on-one guidance on structure, plot, characterization and other fiction elements. Another of Linda's strong points is that she stays in constant communication with her writer. This prevents unnecessary anxiety on the part of the writer and provides a much-needed sense of security that the work has relevance. Logos's rates are reasonable, and Linda keeps excellent records of her time and work.
"I believe Linda Nathan is one of the outstanding editors of Christian writing in the publishing world today. If there are other books for me, Linda would again be my editor of choice."
New Apocalyptic Thriller Focuses on Nuclear Waste Mismanagement
Yucca Mountain, Nevada, Proposed National Repository for High-Level Nuclear Waste
Dr. Dennis Price is so concerned about the long-term dangers of the nuclear waste pile-up in our nation that he retired from teaching engineering at Virginia Tech to write a thriller and spread the word. His fast-paced, all-too-real scenario combines vicious Islamic fascism and the vulnerability of our nuclear waste stockpiles within a backdrop of powerful apocalyptic imagery.
Dr. Price's experience and education in science, engineering, and theology uniquely qualify him to address the underlying issues of this novel, which, with the help of Logos Word Designs, is now complete, in an agent's hands, and receiving publisher interest.
An expert on nuclear waste management, Dr. Price was appointed by two presidents for two terms on the national Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. He has also testified before Congress on nuclear waste management problems and received two Presidential citations for integrity and ability on the Board.
Dr. Dennis Price has created a fast moving, action packed, futuristic novel which exudes an eerie magnetism. I could not put it down. He masterfully weaves his expert knowledge of nuclear waste with the imminent threat of terrorism and a wholesome view of Christian eschatology.
Dr. Ray Register - Resident in the Middle East for 39 years
Fluent in Arabic, trained in nuclear warfare
If you want to grasp the dangerous path nuclear power is taking this world, visit his informative blog at www.nuclearwastewatch.blogspot.com.
* 6/20/08 note: John McCain announced that as President he would promote the building of 45 more nuclear power plants. Dr. Price says that, "Without reprocessing, which has been uneconomical to do, 45 new plants over a 40-year lifetime would produce 39,000 tons more of waste that we do not know what to do with--waste that is dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years."
"Linda Nathan of Logos Word Design, Inc. is blessed with wonderful editorial skills. She has a keen eye for proofreading and correction, ensuring proper grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation. Her excellence in writing mechanics is combined with creativity, imagination, and wisdom, enhancing over-all composition. She sees the forest AND the trees and makes the good better. I recommend her without reservation." --Dennis L. Price, Ph.D.
Logos Welcomes Karen McArthur as New Associate Editor
Logos welcomes Karen McArthur as an associate editor. Karen is an experienced, top-notch writer and editor with over 20 years of broad writing and editing in academic and professional environments. She loves to help writers at all levels achieve proficiency in expressing ideas clearly and concisely. Karen has a B.A. in English, an M.A. in Art History and most of the coursework completed for her Ph.D. in Art History. She and her husband Jim and their two children, Hank and Lucy, live in Kentucky. She currently teaches art history at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee.
Karen has written a book that has been garnering a lot of interest by publishers: Why Michelangelo Wasn't Gay: And Other Stuff You Thought You Knew About Art, But Don't.
“Imagine you are suddenly and badly debilitated by mysterious medical symptoms in the prime of your life. For seven years, you consult thirty-seven physicians who cannot find the problem and diagnose you with everything from “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder,” to “suffering from conflict about your role as a Southern woman." You are unable to drive a car for a total of nine years, and your career is over. You can't walk more than twenty or thirty feet without getting disoriented, and you can't remember what it feels like to live a normal life. You are desperate for that coveted correct diagnosis and treatment that will give you back your life.”
This is the story of my client, Lisa Hall, whom God blessed with healing through doctor #38. Harvest House recently bought her book, How to Take Charge of Your Own Health, and will release it in 2009.
Lisa’s currently looking for the following:
“Do you have an amazing medical story to tell? Have you suffered from a condition with an elusive diagnosis or no diagnosis? Have you experienced a dangerous medical error in a hospital? Did you undergo medical testing, only to find that the test results were flawed? Have you beaten the odds and overcome what seems to be a hopeless medical situation?” If you do, she’d like you to fill out a survey on her website at http://www.theproactivepatient.com/. Likewise, if you happen to be a physician trying to treat patients like this, there’s a survey for you, too.
With a record of 38 doctors, Lisa’s crowned herself “Miss Diagnosis.” She also plans to add an “Ask Miss Diagnosis” blog to answer non-medical questions.
Mike Delosso interviewed my client Austin Boyd recently, and Austin has given me permission to include it here. Austin authored the Mars Hill: Classified trilogy (NavPress, 2006-07), and he's currently working with Oliver North on a fiction series for the B&H Publishing Group. Hopefully, reading about his amazing writing schedule will inspire you and not tire you!
1) What is your writing schedule like? Do you write every day? Do you have a word- or page-count goal?
I have children at home, and I’ve found that writing at night after work takes me away from them… so I adapted to a new routine that most people consider insane. I get up at 4:00 or 4:30 AM and write until 6:45, when I stop to get ready for work and take the kids to school. That way I’m writing when everyone else (sane people) is asleep.
I write every day. I love it, and it’s easy for me because all these ideas are bubbling up all day at work, and I look forward to the morning to release those ideas. I develop an outline for each novel, and with that, I can rise each morning and pick up on the scene for the day. I have word count goals of around 2,000 words a day, based on writing six days a week.
2) How long did it take you to land your first contract?
I began writing my first novel in 1996 and signed a contract with a publisher in May 2005. In those 9 years, I spent 7 of the years writing without a great deal of insight into the necessary discipline or skills of the craft. Eventually, I decided to invest in myself. I hired a freelance editor (Linda Nathan, http://www.logosword.com/) to critique my work and show me where I needed improvement. After $5000 worth of reviews (using a second mortgage) over the course of two years, Linda and another editor, Heather Szott (http://www.hawkeyeediting.com/) contracted with me to locate an agent through their proposal submission service. Once an agent was in the mix, it was only a matter of a few months until we had a publishing contract. I was blessed to sign with a strong agent who had broad ties in the industry.
3) Are you a plotter or seat-of-the-pants writer?
I’m definitely a plotter (e.g., plodder). I’ll spend 50 to 100 hours in the research phase, and then I use the combination of two excellent methods that I learned from Davis Bunn and James Scott Bell. Some of it you can find in Jim’s excellent text Plot and Structure. Using a synthesis of their processes, I build a plot arc, then break the story into three acts, then into seven segments, then into forty to fifty chapters, and finally into about 3 to 5 scenes per chapter. As I do this expansion from small to large using the plot arc as the guide, I match character arcs for each of the major characters against locations in the plot where their activities need to occur. That leads to action for each scene, and by the time I am done, I have a 30,000 word outline with the POV, setting, key dialogue and action for each scene.
When I get up early each morning, and need to pick up a pen or hit the keyboard, all I have to do is reference the next scene in my outline… and I’m immediately back in the groove. There’s no such thing as writer’s block in my process. The outline phase takes me around 100 to 120 hours. Then I spend about 350 hours actually writing the book to a first draft. By the time the first draft is in the bag (about 12 weeks of actual writing after the outline) I have 500 to 600 hours in a book. Edits take another 300-400. Using this process, I’ve done three novels in 18 months while holding down a 50 hour per week job. I don’t recommend repeating that work load, though… it was punishing for me and the family… I take a year per book now.
4) What is your greatest challenge when writing a story?
Two challenges. Word count and writing real women characters. For word count, my editor tells me the planned word count target, and I usually write 10-15% above that target. I trim and prune and do what I can to get the words reduced after the first draft, but that’s never enough. Then I bring in my “word gardner”, Linda Nathan of Logos Word Designs. I give her my word target for each chapter and she whips through the text with a digital highlighter, recommending additional pruning. Her extra set of eyes helps me make decisions about which words I’m wedded to that I need to eliminate. I can accept or reject her recommendations.
Writing women characters. My second challenge is writing a believable woman character. To prepare, I watch lots of chick flicks, and watch other women (wife, daughter) when they are watching chick flicks. I do everything I can to observe and understand women and girls for character development, but a guy can get just so far with that approach. So, I found another trick. I have about 30 women who are fans and friends that have asked to read my drafts. I shotgun my first draft to all 30+ ladies and they read with a particular eye on the women characters, making comments on what works and what does not. I follow their advice to the letter (most of the time). That’s worked so well that I’ve gotten numerous comments about how realistic the women were, and how much my female fan base appreciates that realism. Writing a novel is a team effort, in my opinion.
5) What advice would you give an aspiring novelist?
Invest in yourself. Put some money into yourself to improve your skills, to pump up your marketing and to improve you proposal development. Hire a freelance editor and use that editor as a trusted sounding board for what is working, and not working, in your writing. Hire a publicist once you get a contract and use her to set up blog tours, signings, speaking engagements, book store visits, and TV and radio interviews. You might half to spend a third or half of your royalty check on a publicist and a freelance editor… but you’ll be money ahead once those books start to sell, and people wonder why. They’ll sell because they are quality books (the editor helps here) and because people are hearing about them (the publicist is at work.)
6) In a sentence, what do you want readers to walk away from THE RETURN with?
Always trust that God will provide for your every need, just as he did for John Wells and his wife Amy.
Logos Celebrates 15th Anniversary with Big Book Set Giveaway!
Fifteen years ago, in July 1992 . . .
I bought a used IBM PS-2 with a bonus from the law firm I'd just left in Oregon and opened a sole proprietorship called Logos Word Designs in Bellingham, Washington.
(Anybody remember the PS-2? Impossible to upgrade! But it was on sale!)
Struggling at the time with serious health issues, I didn't see how this endeavor could possibly succeed. But I reckoned without God's mercy. My first client, recommended by a friend, flew me to Vancouver, Washington, to reorganize his marketing business; he spent thousands of dollars on my services in the years that followed.
A writer friend--also in Oregon--hired me to work on her project, in the process teaching me many valuable things that stood me in good stead in the years ahead. Other interesting projects followed.
Hope in winter. One particularly bleak winter while I was despairing what to do next, I received a call from the publisher of Northwest Events & Lifestyle Review, the region's leading arts & entertainment news magazine. He was desperate for an editor. That fruitful--and fun!--relationship lasted for eight years from 1995-2003, when the fallout from 9/11 forced him to downsize and sell.
At the same time I became the editor of Christian Coalition of Washington's state newsletter, The Watchman. It was an enjoyable and unusual combination of publications for sure. While researching the Northwest for strawberry, tulip, music, and Shakespeare festivals, I was also interviewing state senators, house leaders, and political figures and writing stories on all manner of issues vital to Christians.
Needless to say, I progressed from the PS-2 (glad to see it go!) to a Compaq with much larger capacity. We incorporated. My husband Richard and I wrote two novels (The Glittering Web and The Protege--still unpublished), and a prominent agent agreed to represent us.
THANK YOU, ERIC! As the Internet grew and developed, so also did my techno-whiz son, Eric. Obviously possessing a mutant technological gene that had skipped me, he took to the new technology like the proverbial duck to water. He came alongside of me with a generous and loving spirit, as well as much power, strength, and wisdom about how best to develop my business.
"You need this, Mom," he'd say, installing the latest gadget. Or, "let me show you how to do that," guiding me in my half-paralyzed state through the terrifying intricacies of caring for my fancy Dell with all the bells and whistles. As he developed his own consulting and photography business, he built my Web sites, set up my emails, touched up my photos, helped me with my marketing, created the idea "Author 911: Solutions for Authors," created a podcast, bought my husband a laptop ... the blessings of my son are beyond counting. I thank God for him.
Today I'm doing the work I love, thanks to the grace and mercy of God. It's been a thrilling, if not at times an unsettling, ride. And it's time to celebrate.
BOOK SET GIVEAWAY:
Austin Boyd's Mars Hill Classified Series
Book 1: The Evidence
Book 2: The Proof *** Finalist in 2007 Christy Awards***
Book 3: The Return (NavPress) - just out!
Austin Boyd is one of those great blessing successes. Not only is Austin a remarkable and visionary writer and a good friend, he is a kind and gentle man who loves the Lord Jesus Christ and strives to glorify Him in his writing. It has been an honor and a pleasure to be Austin's editor and to assist him with the rewriting of his novels.
Therefore, it seems only fitting to celebrate my 15th year in this amazing ministry/business with a drawing for a FREE SET of this exciting series.
To enter, simply email editor@logosword.com and put "ENTER ME IN THE DRAWING" in your subject line.The drawing will end on Friday, August 3. Here's to another 15 years!
Linda loves writing and editing both fiction and nonfiction and brings over 30 years of professional experience in a wide variety of fields to her craft. Working with Christian authors to proclaim the love and truth of Jesus Christ is her main focus.
FREE BOOK DRAWING!
