Winners and Announcement!

The five lucky winners who will receive a copy of Mystery of the Heart are:

1) KATIE J. from Florida
2) AMBER S. from California
3)MICHELLE SUTTON from Arizona
4) LINDA MCFARLAND from Red Lion, Pa.
5) MAXIE from Texas

I will be in touch with all of you soon. Congratulations and thanks for playing the first sentence game. I'm grateful to all of you who stopped by and if you didn't win keep reading.

Now for those of you who are interested I have a very special guest tomorrow. Debbie Lynne Costello will be here to tell us all about the new Christian Fiction Historical Society blog and lots more opportunities to win here and there. Don't forget to check in tomorrow for more fun.

Five Free Copies of Mystery of the Heart

On Thursday, February 21st Mystery of the Heart won the Clash of the Titles. In honor of that I wanted to give back. My awesome publisher, Realms at Charisma Media agreed. So in order to make this a little more interesting I'd like you to do a couple things if you're interested in getting a free copy of Mystery of the Heart.

This can also be used as a lesson in hooks. What pulls a reader in and catches their interest.

1) Share the first line of the novel you are currently reading, the author, and the name of the book or the first line of any fiction book you've read, the author, and the name of the book.
2) Let us know your first name and what state you live in.
3) Leave and e-mail addy in this format: jillian (at) jilliankent (dot) com to help protect from spam.

I'll get us started. "For eight years I dreamed of fire." Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Language of Flowers. Jillian from Ohio.  jillian (at) jilliankent (dot) com

Okay. You get the idea. I'll run this contest through Sunday, March 3rd. This contest will end at midnight on Sunday, PST time and is void where prohibited. U.S.A. residents only. However, if you live outside the U.S.A. and want to contribute your favorite please join the party. I'll post winners sometime Monday afternoon on March 4th.

Making Decisions

Sometimes I get stuck. I'm a thinker and frequently over think, over analyze, etc. I call this getting in my own way. It's also an aspect of the twin demons I've talked about in the past. Perfectionism and Procrastination can bring the best of intentions to an abrupt halt. I found a way out of that mess this week in several places. The first one was actually a sermon titled, Direction Without Doubt by Dr. Charles Stanley and you can listen to it here if interested. The second one was here at The Creative Penn where Joanna Penn is talking about, How To Write More And Create A Daily Writing Habit. 

What I loved and gave me great encouragement was thinking about how much work I wanted to complete this year before I watched that big ball in New York city bring in 2014. Time goes so fast and I don't want to waste it. I decided to shoot for 100,00 words. That's an 80,000 word novel and either two short stories or possibly a novella. When I divided 100,000 words by the number of days left in the year, 318, I got 314.4 words a day that I had to write. That's only a bit more than one page. ONE PAGE! Well I know I can do better without overwhelming myself. So I doubled it. That's 628.9 words a day and that equals (drum roll) 200,000 WORDS!

I work full time and have multiple family responsibilities and still I know I can do this if I don't procrastinate. That means not worrying about being perfect, no one is so why try. But do the best I can do and even if I only end up with 150,000 words that's amazing. 

So don't count yourself out in making some awesome word counts this year. You know some days are better than others and even with a crisis or two we should be able to write a book a year. And once that habit is formed there is no holding you back.  

And speaking of habits. You can use a calendar to track your progress or you can use whatever encourages you. I like Habit Forge. Maybe you will too. If you think this post was helpful please tweet it or Facebook it and spread the word.

All comments are welcomed and encouraged. 

 Have an awesome week. 

 

Clash of the Titles

THE ULTIMATE LITERARY CHALLENGE WHERE AUTHORS BATTLE AND READERS JUDGE

Beginning February 13th, Mystery of the Heart, will be in the Clash of the Titles battle. This is great fun and provides exposure for newly released novels. I'm grateful for the opportunity and consider it a great way to celebrate romantic fiction during Valentines Day week.

Voting will remain open for one week. So here's your opportunity to vote if you deem Mystery of the Heart worthy.  

Editorial Reviews

Review

 “A riveting tale of intrigue, courage, romance, and faith. I was hooked from the first page.” —Serena B. Miller, author of The Measure of Katie Calloway, 2012 RITA award for best inspirational romance

“A deliciously credible and moving account of a nineteenth-century woman pursuing her dream to become a doctor. I couldn’t put this one down!” —Sue Harrison, author of international best seller Mother Earth Father Sky

“Jillian Kent writes a sweeping romantic intrigue, brilliant with well-drawn characters and meticulous research of Regency England.” —Linda Windsor, author of The Brides of Alba historical series: Healer, Thief, and Rebel

Customer Reviews

 "That being said, I recommend that your read the first two books, they are equally as good, but this can be read alone." Maureen  |  3 reviewers made a similar statement

 "The pages are filled with mystery, adventure, intrigue and excitement. " lighthouse88  |  3 reviewers made a similar statement

 "Very hard book to put down, I found that I wanted to know what happened next and kept reading. " D. Duncan  |  3 reviewers made a similar statement

Exploring CFOM and The Well Writer

You may or may not be aware of the awesome Online Christian Fiction Magazine.

Bonnie S. Calhoun is the Founder and Publisher of Christian Fiction Online Magazine . She is also the Owner and Director of the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance which is the parent organization for the magazine. She has a special feature of the month on the lastest people and approaches to Christian fiction. This month you can read about The Pros and Cons of Self-publishing with Susette Williams here.

In addition to her passion for spreading the word about Christian fiction, Bonnie is also an author of snarky suspense. Her novel Cooking The Books (A Sloane Templeton Mystery) releases from Abingdon Press in April 2012, and her WWII historical Pieces of the Heart, in the Abingdon Press Quilts of Love series will be available in June 2013.

For more than a year now I have been honored to contribute, and organize other writers, to write for the column titled, The Well Writer. I believe it's really important for us to take care of ourselves. The link to the latest issue of The Well Writer titled Language of the Heart can be found here. I'm always excited when the new copy of CFOM shows up in my sidebar. You can get a widget for it and keep in on your blog too. And you can explore the archives too on the first page here.

There is so much packed in this online magazine that you don't want to miss it.

I need your help though. I rarely have difficulty coming up with ideas to write about regarding this topic of wellness.  I'd like to hear from you though. What kind of topics would you like to see The Well Writer team discuss? Anything special?

Writing Historical Novels

The Daughter's Walk: A Novel by Jane Kirkpatrick

Well I'm all excited, thanks to Jane Kirkpatrick, who has introduced me to a new website about Writing Historical Novels. "In 2013, Writing Historical Novels features monthly contributing authors from the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, India and Morocco, including numerous New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling novelists."

When I discover new sites like this I have a hard time getting anything done because I can't pull myself away from the experiences and suggestions of other authors writing about books set during historical time frames. For instance, I loved hearing what Anne Perry had to say in her post titled, Medicine in Historical Novels. And Adrian Goldsworthy's post, Starting to Write Historical Novels is sure to intrigue. He says, "The advantage of the past is that it provides such a varied canvas and a host of situations ripe for drama." I couldn't agree more. That's one of the many reasons I love writing historical romance. All of us who research for our historical novels know how fascinating and addicting it can become.

I searched through some of my own posts that I thought might fit this category. My first one is titled, Escape Into Medical History: Smallpox and another favorite is The Assassination of Spencer Perceval. It's so much fun exploring what other writers are doing all over the world. I think all of you will be interested in this next post from an editor. This is a post by Jane Johnson What Editors are Looking for in Historical Fiction. Jane is an editor with HarperCollins UK and just happens to write historical fiction as well. "Mix together one book and one reader and every time the chemical reaction will be different: it is an experiment that can never be replicated, since both reader and author are unique individuals."

I had to go looking for some of these novels and it was this line from Jane Johnson's novel, The Sultan's Wife, that captured my attention immediately.  Meanwhile, a young Englishwoman named Alys Swann has been taken prisoner by Barbary corsairs and brought to the court . She faces a simple choice: renounce her faith and join the Sultan's harem; or die.

So when was the last time you were captivated by a historical novel?