Author Archives: Linda Bonney Olin

About Linda Bonney Olin

Linda is a farm wife and writer of Christian music, drama, devotions, mystery fiction--whatever the Holy Spirit assigns.

Who Doesn’t Love Books and Bargains?

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Greetings from Faith Songs!

I almost feel as if I should introduce myself, after my two-month absence from Faith Songs. As many of you know, my parents’ health needs take me away from home (and away from my high-speed Internet) for weeks at a time, and that was the case for most of December and part of January. When I got home, my first priority (okay, second—after smooching my husband) was the farm bookkeeping. Besides the usual accounts payable/receivable and payroll, January is prime time for annual business reports, employer reports, tax reports, lender reports, Workers Comp audit reports—you get the idea. Squeezed in writing and submitting a few new hymns and devotions. No time for blogging.

New release: Transformed

Book cover TRANSFORMED: 5 Resurrection Dramas by Linda Bonney OlinWhen the bookkeeping finally hit a lull between deadlines, the Holy Spirit shifted me into high gear to get my latest drama book published. I polished the content, cover, and interior design to a high gloss with the help of my wonderful beta readers. The paperback edition of Transformed: 5 Resurrection Dramas rolled onto the cyber-shelves at  Amazon and CreateSpace the last week of January, and the Kindle version went up on Amazon shortly afterwards. Stay tuned for information about a Book Launch Party (exclusive giveaways, discounts, fun trivia, and who knows what-all) on Facebook. Hopefully I can get that scheduled before the book and I both curl up and yellow with age.

But, first!

My Holy Ghostwriter poked me to share some thoughts about the Bible characters in Transformed. I say “characters” because that’s what you call people in a play, but these were real people, even though the premises of the dramas are fictional (at least, I’m pretty sure none of the apostles ever appeared on a TV talk show!). In fact, the five lead characters were among Jesus Christ’s closest family and friends: his mother, Mary, and his brother James; the apostles Simon Peter and John; and his devoted disciple Mary Magdalene.

The five dramas portray how they were transformed by Jesus’ resurrection. But what about the soul-wrenching days that led up to it? What was each of those individuals doing, and thinking, and feeling after Jesus died, before news came that he’d risen from the tomb, alive? We tend to treat Holy Saturday like a blank page between Good Friday and Easter. That page deserves to be examined more closely before we turn it. That will be the focus of an upcoming series of posts here at Faith Songs.

Book Resources for Lent

In the meantime, I invite you to check out Transformed: 5 Resurrection Dramas on Amazon or CreateSpace. It offers drama, comedy, music—and best of all, life-changing truth.

Book cover of Giving It Up for Lent: Bible Study, Drama, Discussion by Linda Bonney OlinAnd don’t forget my other Lent resources: The Sacrifice Support Group: A Dramatic Comedy for Lent and Giving It Up for Lent: Bible Study, Drama, Discussion. ’Tis the season! Ash Wednesday is March 5, 2014.

Chances are, you’re not one of the few people who shop for church play scripts and Bible study materials for a church group. But my tribe (that’s you!) can pass the message to the people in your church who do buy them—pastors, worship leaders, drama teams, small group leaders, adult Sunday School teachers. Please do whatever you can to help me get the word to those folks. If you’re not a church person yourself, you probably know one or two you can mention it to.

Yes, the post title said “Bargains”

Trumpet fanfare! My Book Launch Party for Transformed will unveil a discount code of 50% on all my Christian drama books and Bible study workbooks. The code will be valid only on paperback editions, only at CreateSpace.com, and only on the Launch Party dates.

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Book Launch: Lenten Bible Studies and Drama

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Do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. Hebrews 13:16 (NIV)

Book cover of Giving It Up for Lent by Linda Bonney OlinThat Bible verse serves as the epigram in the three books exploring Lenten sacrifice I launched this week:

Giving It Up for Lent—Leader Guide: Bible Study, Drama, Discussion

Giving It Up for Lent—Workbook: Bible Study, Drama, Discussion

The Sacrifice Support Group: A Dramatic Comedy for Lent

It might seem strange to talk about Lent in December. After all, Ash Wednesday won’t roll around again until March 5, 2014. But I hope my helpful readers will pass the information about my new books to whoever organizes Bible studies, dramas, and supper programs for their churches. They may be preparing next year’s programs now.

Speaking of preparation, today is the first Sunday of Advent, and Advent and Lent are sister seasons of spiritual preparation.

During the four weeks leading up to Christmas Day, Christians around the world remember the time when God’s people waited—not weeks, but centuries!—for the Savior God had promised. We traditionally read Bible passages from Old Testament prophets including Isaiah, Samuel, Jeremiah, and Micah, and gospel accounts, especially Luke, that shed light on that promise and its fulfillment in the coming (“advent”) of Jesus. His arrival as a baby in Bethlehem is a joyful occasion, so Advent meditations carry a hopeful note.

During the forty days of Lent, Christians prepare to mark the final fulfillment of the salvation promise, in Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Although Lent ends with a victory celebration on Easter Sunday, the horrific circumstances of Jesus’s suffering and death give Lenten meditations a solemn tone. As we read the Bible accounts, we wonder, how can we make ourselves worthy of Jesus’ willing sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins? We can’t, of course. But we can reflect on it, with gratitude. And try, in our own small way, to emulate his spirit of self-sacrifice for the good of others and the glory of God.

Giving It Up for Lent and The Sacrifice Support Group might just help folks do that. So please, pass the word!

No matter what your faith, may you find peace, renewal, and true joy during this holiday season!

Linda

 

My Life as a Dog ~ Obeying the Master

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Sign showing a man with a dog on a leash

As requested, here are the sermons I delivered at worship services on October 20, 2013.

Before reading the sermons, click and read the Bible verses I’ll refer to:

Psalm 19:7–14
John 8:3–11
John 14:10–24
Matthew 22:34–40
2 Timothy 4:1–5

Youth Message ~ YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!

What’s a boss?

When grownups talk about their boss, they probably mean the person at their job who tells them what to do, maybe the person who owns the company they work for. The dictionary says a boss can be anyone who makes decisions, exercises authority, controls, dominates, and so on.

Have you ever heard someone say, “You’re not the boss of me”? What was the situation?

I thought that was a modern expression from a TV show or something. But I looked it up and discovered it’s been said in books for more than a hundred years. Usually the situation is that an older brother or sister told a kid to do something, or to stop doing something. The kid doesn’t want to obey and is sick of getting ordered around by someone who has no right to give orders. So the kid snaps back, “You’re not the boss of me!”

Now, if [a parishioner] said to me, “Linda, shut up and sit down,” I could say, “You’re not the boss of me!” and keep right on talking, because I don’t have to obey [the parishioner]. I wouldn’t actually say that, because that would be pretty rude. Saying that could get you in trouble, especially when the person telling you “Do this, don’t do that” really is the boss of you!

Who really is the boss of you? Who has the right to tell kids what to do? Parents? Teachers? Those are the main people you’re supposed to obey.

But there is one more, who’s really important.

I looked up another word on dictionary.com. The definition was: “a person who has authority, control, or power over others; a master, chief, or ruler. One who exercises restraint or direction over; dominates; commands.” Sounds a lot like the definition of a boss, right?

The word I looked up was Lord. For thousands of years, people have called God “Lord,” and Christians call Jesus our Lord and our Master. Why? Because he is the boss of us. He’s the boss of everyone.

Message ~ MY LIFE AS A DOG: OBEYING THE MASTER

Well-trained dogs

I get a kick out of watching the annual Westminster Club Dog Show on television, seeing all the various breeds with their different sizes and shapes and temperaments. One thing they all have in common is being trained to obey commands. They sit. They stay. They jog around the ring on a leash.

I’ve never seen one bite the judge. They don’t jump all over him and sniff his pants. Sometimes a dog gets overly frisky, but generally show dogs behave very well, thanks to their training.

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Don’t Let Fretful, Futile Preparations Cheat You

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Photo of an old-fashioned lamp and flower basket

Today I wept for Judy.

I woke feeling overwhelmed and anxious. Too many tasks, too little time and energy. Farm bookkeeping. Church conference preparations and fundraiser contributions. A long list of writing and teaching tasks. A longer list of household duties, most of which I’ve allowed to build up while occupied with more important matters. The number one matter: my parents. Before my feet hit the floor, I was praying for direction.

What preparations should I make in anticipation of my mother’s upcoming surgery and recuperation? We don’t have a date yet, but it’s a safe bet I’ll be staying with my parents for a month or more, partly to help Ma, partly to take care of Dad while she’s in the hospital and laid up afterwards. Late December and early January are ground zero for the farm bookkeeping, payroll, and taxes, so I started making a list of things I might be able to do in advance. That kicked the old brain into overdrive! I put on my clodhoppers and went for a walk on the flat.

The sun and wind and river would have been very pleasant if all the uncertainties of taking care of my parents during this surgery, and beyond, hadn’t been banging in my head. Ma has done an amazing job of taking care of Dad at home, but he’s an 89-year-old guy with diabetes, a pacemaker, and advancing Alzheimer’s. We’ve had some tough discussions already, and more lie ahead. The worst of it, I thought, is that I could make the smartest preparations in the world and get caught short by the unforeseen, just like when … Judy died.

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Split-ting Words Without Getting a Split-ting Headache

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Sheet musicEver notice all the hyphens in your hymnal? I pity the guy who had the job of putting them there!

When song lyrics contain words of more than one syllable, the divisions between syllables are marked with hyphens in the score. This allows each syllable to be individually aligned with its musical note.

Some syllables are sung across a series of notes. The score will generally use a curved line called a slur to mark the range of notes assigned to a particular syllable. It may display multiple hyphens for an extended syllable.

The clip of sheet music pictured above shows the hyphenated syllables Glo-ri-a, ex-cel-sis, and De-o in the classic Christmas carol “Angels We Have Heard on High.” Look at all the hyphens following Glo! That single three-letter syllable is spread over sixteen separate notes. Keep an oxygen tank handy when the congregation belts that one out!

Where Do the Hyphens Go?

But Gloria-induced hyperventilation is not the source of the headache I mentioned in my post title. My split-ting headache comes from trying to figure out exactly where to divide words when I type lyrics into a music notation program.

I vaguely remember a few of Sister Mary Adele’s rules from fifth grade grammar:

  • End a long-vowel syllable with the vowel.
  • End a short-vowel syllable with a consonant.
  • Split words between two consecutive consonants, unless they form a diphthong. (Wait a minute, diphthongs combine vowels. What do you call a consonant combination? A gerund? No … I’m getting too old to keep that stuff straight.)

But Sister Mary Adele’s rules don’t always give the right answer. Even words I thought were obvious turned out to be split differently in my hymnal. Where would you place the hyphens in the common word everyone, for example? I didn’t even guess the number of syllables correctly.

What’s a lyricist to do? Use only words of one syllable? Not likely. Insert hyphens wherever they look right to me, and hope no one else knows better? Tempting, but not the most quality-conscious approach.

How to Divide and Conquer Multi-Syllable Words

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary is my hard-copy reference for word spelling, definition, and syllabication. A quicker solution: I keep a browser window open to Dictionary.com while I work on lyrics. When I need to check a word, I type or copy/paste it into the search box and hit Enter. Voila! Dictionary.com displays the word and its derivative forms in hyphenated syllables.

Even if you don’t write music, knowing where to find a word’s correct syllabication might come in handy someday. If you lay out the interior pages of a print-on-demand book in Microsoft Word, for example, you might want to override Word’s hyphenation to tweak a line here or there. Splitting a long word differently (Con-gregation instead of Congre-gation, for example) can improve the appearance of a printed page or break a line of dialogue at a more reader-friendly place in a script.

Edited September 23, 2021: By the way, give yourself a pat on the back if you split everyone into three syllables. But some sources split it like this: eve-ry-one, while others split it like this: ev-ery-one.

Edit January 10, 2016:
Entering hymn lyrics into a digital score by copying and pasting from Microsoft Word is a lot quicker than typing the words directly into the score. To do that, I first have to separate the syllables with a space or a hyphen (depending on the music notation program). Inserting all those spaces/hyphens individually gets pretty time-consuming.

But I recently was tipped off to Lyric Hyphenator, a free online utility from Juicio Brennan. Just paste your text into the on-screen box and click a button to have it hyphenated automatically. If your notation program uses spaces instead of hyphens to separate syllables, you can then use Word’s Find/Replace All function to replace all the hyphens with spaces.

Caveats: Lyric Hyphenator works with standard English words only. You should eyeball the results for accuracy; as always, use a dictionary to check the syllabication of any questionable words or proper names. (Lyric Hyphenator says eve-ry-one; Merriam-Webster says ev-ery-one.)

 

Are You Peeking Through the Publishing Window?

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Poster of a Sparrow Perched on a Window , asking Why peek in the window when the door is wide open?High-flying indie authors make news practically daily. Industry gurus exhort writers, practically hourly, to invest major effort and money into launching our own books into the stratosphere of publishing success, whether by independent or traditional methods. We must conduct our writing activity in a serious manner. Be professional. Businesslike. Goal and results oriented.

Shrewd advice. But …

On Saturday, September 14, I’m setting aside my aspirations to soar with the eagles. Instead, I’m heading to W. B. Ogden Free Library in Walton, New York, to flock with a few of my favorite sparrows.

The Ogden Writers Group grew out of a memoir-writing workshop led by Columbia University professor Leslie Sharpe, so it’s not surprising that quite a few members are older individuals who write memoirs and fictional stories about bygone days, primarily for the benefit of family, friends, and others interested in the times and places they describe.

Do these writers expect to land fat royalty publishing contracts, or want the obligations a contract would entail? Not really. Do they have the means or desire to set themselves up as self-publishing moguls, managing teams of editors, designers, and marketers to turn their books into indie sensations? I doubt it. Do they have big bucks to shovel into the coffers of vanity publishers? Not that I know of.

No, they’re what many in the industry refer to (with disdainful sniffs) as “amateurs” and “hobby writers.” The sparrows of the writing world, I call them. True, some write more polished prose than others. But they all have stories to tell. Poignant stories. Funny stories. Historically, socially, and spiritually significant stories. Should those manuscripts lie in a drawer forever because they weren’t written by people who fit the “professional” mold?

My presentation to the group will encourage those sparrows who are perched on the windowsill—not on the outside looking in, but trapped on the inside looking out wistfully at the eagles, and woodpeckers, and hummingbirds with their published books. I’m going to suggest that they (you?) can get out there and fly, too. The publishing door has been opened wide by self-publishing services like Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon’s ebook publishing division) and CreateSpace (Amazon’s print-on-demand division). Maybe my sparrow friends’ books will never reach the highest heights. But a sparrow-sized flight is still a flight to be proud of.

Are you a sparrow on the windowsill? Stay tuned. I plan to record my talk and post it for those who can’t attend the meeting. (Update: Recording and script are now posted on my Resources page!)

Meanwhile, here are several sparrow flights I’ve helped launch. Please click on the covers and give them a look. <3

Cover of My Cup of Tea by Phyllis Neff Lake

MY CUP OF TEA:
A Novel of Conversation, Friendship, and Love
by Phyllis Neff Lake

 

Kindle cover of Rivington Street by Frank Di Giovanni

RIVINGTON STREET:
A Drama in Three Acts
by Frank Di Giovanni

 

Cover of Songs for the Lord by Linda Bonney Olin

SONGS FOR THE LORD
by Linda Bonney Olin

 

Photo of paperback book cover of The Sacrifice Support Group:Lenten Drama and Discussion by Linda Bonney Olin

THE SACRIFICE SUPPORT GROUP:
Lenten Drama & Discussion
by Linda Bonney Olin

 

 

Eddie Jones ~ Skull Creek Stakeout

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Cover of Skull Creek StakeoutLast October I posted a fun interview with the irrepressible Eddie Jones. Eddie is an author, acquisitions editor for Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, humorist, and follower of the Lord’s leading—not in that order of importance, as Eddie would surely agree. He had just released Dead Man’s Hand, the first book in his Caden Chronicles trilogy for boys.

Since then, Dead Man’s Hand has won the 2013 Selah Award for Young Adult Fiction and racked up nominations for the 2013 INSPY Award for Literature for Young People and the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award.

Now Eddie Jones is in the news again with the second installment of Nick Caden’s adventures, titled Skull Creek Stakeout. He’s a busy guy these days, but he posted an interview on his website that will bring you up to date and explain why vampirism is an appropriate and important theme in a middle-grade boys’ book with a Christian worldview. Yup. Vampires.

Read my October, 2012, interview with Eddie Jones.

Read Eddie Jones’s August 23, 2013, message.

Check out Dead Man’s Hand.

Check out Skull Creek Stakeout.

New Indie Author ~ Frank Di Giovanni

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Photo of Frank Di Giovanni, author of RIVINGTON STREET, reading from his play

Frank Di Giovanni, author of RIVINGTON STREET, reading from his play

Frank Di Giovanni, a long-time member of the W. B. Ogden Writers Group in Walton, New York, enthralled an audience at W. B. Ogden Library last night with a dramatic reading from his newly released play, Rivington Street.

The three-act drama follows the conflict between retired businessman Sam Israel and his son, Robert, a pushy lawyer. After the death of his beloved wife, Sam leaves their Florida residence and returns to the old neighborhood in New York City—over Robert’s fierce objections. Sam meets up with Dave, the present owner of Sam’s former clothing store, and can’t help but compare Robert’s attitude to the close, respectful relationship Dave enjoys with his adult son, Max. The fat hits the fire when Robert shows up, armed with papers authorizing him to take Sam “home” by force. Yes, Robert is one of those characters you love to hate. Don’t worry, though. “Salvation,” as Frank calls it, comes by the end of the play.

Missed the event at Ogden Library? Click here to listen to Frank Di Giovanni’s reading of Act Two, Scene One of Rivington Street. (The recording runs about 25 minutes. Please forgive the slight gurgle that was left behind when I filtered out a loud ventilation fan.)

Having heard Frank read his work at writers group meetings, I wasn’t surprised by the authentic characterizations he dressed his dialogue in. As audience members remarked during the question and answer session that followed the reading, both Frank’s writing and his animated reading put us right into the scene. Frank says he’s had no acting experience to account for his theatrical flair. He jokingly suggests it came with his Italian heritage.

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10 Tips Put Poems to Music

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Random Writing Rants banner

Ever had the desire to write hymn texts or put your poems to music? Think it’s impossible because you have little or no music training?

Check out my 10 tips for putting poetry to existing music, on my guest blog post at Random Writing Rants, which is a terrific source of information, advice, and encouragement for adult and teen writers.

EDIT June 11, 2021: Random Writing Rants is no longer active, so I’m copying my ten tips for you here:

From Random Writing Rants

To get you rolling, here are ten tips for putting new words to old music. These are geared to hymns and faith songs, but the same principles apply to other poem themes.

  1. Listen for the Holy Spirit ( or whatever muse inspires you) popping little rhyming phrases and themes into your head. As you read your Bible or listen to a sermon, imagery may jump out at you. Grab those ideas and see how they might be developed into verses. Themes and images that divide themselves into three, four, or even five parallel aspects lend themselves nicely to song stanzas. For example, my hymn text “Seasons of Life” has four stanzas, each one corresponding to (you guessed it!) one of the seasons. A refrain can serve to summarize, bridge, or unify the stanzas.
  2. Choose a tune that suits the general attitude of your text and the musical style you’re going for. A soulful solo? Hand-clapping bluegrass gospel? Lyrical waltz?
  3. Refresh your familiarity with public domain tunes, to help your brain suggest a good choice for a given text. I use recordings on Andrew Remillard’s YouTube channel or hymnary.org to hear the tunes. There are other helpful sites too.
  4. If your poetry tends toward esoteric imagery, multi-layered metaphors, and literary tours-de-force, I suggest you bring it back down to earth when you write hymns. Hymn lyrics have to be easily understood to be absorbed while being sung. You know what I mean. How often do you sing a whole congregational hymn and when it’s done, you have no idea what the words said? Don’t let that happen to singers of YOUR songs! Be original, but not incomprehensible. Choose one simple image and build on it.
  5. Songs are meant to be sung, right? So give singers a break, with easy-to-pronounce transitions between words. Don’t shove a mouthful of consonants into a speedy succession of eighth notes or tongue-twisting combinations in adjacent syllables. Beware of embarrassing words created from run-together sounds. Hearing “snot” in “It’s not” is a classic example. Sing it out loud and adjust as necessary.
  6. Carefully match your words to the notes, using the right number of syllables. A printout of the tune’s sheet music, which often can be downloaded as a PDF file, can be a useful tool to help you match syllable for syllable. It’s okay to split a syllable across multiple notes or split a single note into its equivalent of shorter notes to spread it across multiple syllables. However, when you write new words to a familiar song, try to keep the same pattern of split notes and/or syllables that was in the original song, to help singers make the switch comfortably.
  7. Match accented (stressed/emphasized) syllables to stressed notes. For example, sing “Jingle bells! Jingle bells” out loud to hear the primary accent on the “Jing” notes. It would sound weird to replace those words with “The Lord reigns! The Lord reigns!” even though the number of syllables is the same, because accenting “The” instead of “Lord” sounds weird. A better choice is “Jesus reigns! Jesus reigns!” because “Je” correctly matches the stress on “Jing.”
    Caution: Please don’t jumble the normal order of words in a phrase or sentence to make accents fit. That always sounds awkward or confuses the meaning of the sentence. Remember, your message (which actually is God’s message) is top priority in a faith song.
  8. Don’t shortchange the message by forcing words into stilted rhymes, either. Look for original rhymes using words that contribute to the whole, not just throwaway phrases tacked on to complete a rhyme.
  9. Look for opportunities to musically convey the emotion of verbal phrases. For example, the phrase “Praise the Lord” fits a rising sequence of notes, with the highest note gloriously emphasizing “Lord.” (The refrain of the old hymn “To God Be the Glory” does exactly that.) On the other hand, “Satan is dragging me down” calls for a downward sequence or an ominous minorish-sounding musical phrase. Passages that speed up or notes that are held out convey different dramatic effects too.
  10. Last but not least: Get permission to use copyrighted music, or else stick to public domain tunes (which aren’t copyrighted). Give credit where credit is due: When you publish or perform your new masterpiece, cite the name of the tune’s composer.

Now, do you hear music bubbling up from your memory? It wants someone to give it new words! Why not you?

Back to my Faith Songs post…

If you haven’t already read my posts here on Faith Songs about my adventures in writing original music, take a look at them, too:
Writing Songs for the Lord
To the Ends of the Earth

By way of an update, I’m happy to say that, thanks to my musically inclined collaborator, Phyllis Neff Lake, the project of adding piano accompaniments to the hymns and faith songs in Songs for the Lord is well underway. Yay, Phyllis! Yay, God!

Meanwhile, I’m adding material slowly but surely to a second songbook. This one will feature original hymn texts set to some of my favorite classic hymn tunes. Just this morning, the Holy Spirit showed up with a new hymn idea in the wee hours. I grabbed a newspaper lying next to my bed and scribbled a draft of the verses before they floated out of my memory.  🙂

Let me know if you’re inspired to give it a try!

Blessings,
Linda

P.S. 9/28/2013

I just added new links to my Resources page that will interest poets who want to write new words to set to old hymns.  Hymnary.org offers XML and midi files of public domain hymns. MuseScore, a free music notation program, opens those files and lets you edit them. Replacing the old lyrics with your own words is easy! You can modify the notes, too. Then you can save and print professional-looking sheet music. Have fun!

 

A New Twist of Fate ~ and Faith

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Photo of Twist of Fate book featuring poem The Wind and The Spirit by Linda Bonney Olin

Today’s mail brought my paperback copies of Twist of Fate, a charity anthology produced by Indies in Action. If you have sharp eyes, you can sneak a peek at “The Wind and The Spirit” in the photo. I wrote this faith poem specifically for Twist of Fate, which was edited by Stephen L. Wilson and published by Navigator Books. All contributions were donated by the participants, and all proceeds will benefit the May Tornadoes Relief Fund, managed by the United Way. (Yes, that’s why I used tornado imagery in the theme and visual layout of “The Wind and The Spirit.”)

Indies in Action is a group of independent writers and artists who banded together to tangibly express our compassion for victims of tragedies. Our first anthology project, Angels Cried, benefits the survivors of the Sandy Hook tragedy.

Twist of Fate was released early in July, and quickly shot to the Number One spot on Amazon’s Hot New Releases list. Its success is well deserved. The Indies aren’t just caring people, they’re also good writers! I particularly liked W. F. Lantry’s poem “Storm,” Dave Fessenden’s poem “Holy Vine,” and Lori Dillon’s short story “Ruby Slippers.”

Even though Connecticut and Oklahoma are American locales, Indies from around the world pitched in on both anthologies. Dr. Kiriti Sengupta of India, for example, not only donated two pieces of writing to Twist of Fate but also delved further with interviews of several contributors. Check out his interview “Linda Bonney Olin, a God-Centered Writer from the U.S.” and jump from there to other fascinating entries on Kiriti’s blog.

Of course, Indies in Action can’t succeed in our charitable quest without folks who contribute by purchasing copies of the anthologies! To get in on that action, click on the links below. Don’t forget to leave a comment here and a review on Amazon. Thanks!

~ Linda

Twist of Fate paperback
Twist of Fate ebook
Angels Cried paperback
Angels Cried ebook