Watch Over Me is She Reads (www.shereads.org) March book club pick.  If you leave a comment or sign up for the She Reads newsletter, you’ll have a chance to not only win a copy of Watch Over Me, but also a beautiful handmade pottery vase (if you’ve read the novel, you know one of the main characters is a potter).

If you don’t know about She Reads, check it out.  From its website:

She Reads exists to honor Christ by connecting readers with novels that:

• inspire through excellent writing
• explore deep issues of faith
• initiate change in the reader’s life

Each quarter, the She Reads book club will offer three current titles as featured selections. Readers have vast differences in taste and for this reason diverse genres and authors will be chosen, with a total of twelve books per year.

Why should I join She Reads?

Readers who join She Reads receive a number of benefits, including:

• Connection with other readers on the She Reads blog who are passionate about great fiction and uplifting stories.
• Information via the She Reads newsletter that will keep readers up to date on their favorite authors, and books, with a few surprises thrown in for fun.
• Reviews of newly released titles written by a variety of readers, writers, and industry professionals.
• Options to create a She Reads book club or bring an existing club under the She Reads umbrella.
• Relationships developed within the intimate setting of a regular book club meeting.
• Fun planned study guides with activities and interesting facts developed specifically for the She Reads book club.
• Online Community for those who can’t participate in a monthly meeting (or don’t live near an existing club), via the She Reads blog and Facebook group.
• Pre-selected novels they can trust and appreciate – an important aspect in today’s economy where every buying decision requires a second thought.
• Access to authors they love through print interviews, meet and greets, conference calls, etc. Each selected author will participate in two conference calls with the first 100 guests (per call) who sign up. This will be a free service and a chance for readers to have their questions answered by the authors themselves!
• Free books from time to time via contests, giveaways, and publisher promotions.

Who is running this thing anyway?

On a large scale, She Reads is an offshoot of Proverbs 31 Ministries, helping bring God’s peace, perspective, and purpose to today’s busy woman. As an organization, Proverbs provides leadership and technical support.

On a daily basis, She Reads is run by Marybeth Whalen (Director) and Ariel Lawhon (Assistant Director), pictured below.

Keep checking back all through the month of March, as there will be other goodies – recipes, interviews, etc. – posted regarding Watch Over Me and my writing.

Speaking of Proverbs 31 Ministries, yesterday it featured a devotion I wrote.  Encouragement For Today, the daily online devotional ministry of Proverbs 31, “reaches approximately over 300,000 people all over the world every day at no charge through email. These inspirational messages written by our team of speakers and writers draw women (and men) into the powerful and relevant truth of God’s Word.”  You can sign up to receive Encouragement For Today through email.

The devotion I wrote, “Too Many Eyes,” focuses on who we were made to be in Christ, and how God has created each one of with unique gifts and talents (and quirkiness!) that fit exactly into His plans for us and those around us.

On Valentine’s Day, She Reads posted the story of how two fiction authors “just happened” to fall in love and get married.  Well, one of those authors happens to be me.  The other is my wonderful husband of almost 5 months, Chris Coppernoll.  I know, some of you are saying, “I didn’t even know there was a wedding!”  There just didn’t seem a way to announce it without fanfare – and those who know me in real life know I’m not much for fanfare.  But, it *is* a great story, if anyone is interested.

If you want to learn more about Chris’ latest novel, Screen Play, She Reads also featured it in its Worth Reading section.

Christa Parrish’s writing is a breath of fresh air in Christian publishing. Watch Over Me is just as impressive as her debut story, Home Another Way, written with heart to touch your soul.

Perceptive and authentic, Christa peels back the layers of the disintegrating marriage of Benjamin and Abbi Patel, revealing two hurting souls fearful healing their relationship is beyond them. Highlighting the isolation of battle trauma that has altered Ben’s personality and the corrosive affect infertility has on Abbi’s self worth, this is a painful yet ultimately uplifting read yet not in the way you expect. Other complex relationships are explored in the home of Matthew Savoie as the young teen struggles to overcome his disability and find acceptance from his dismissive Aunt and troubled cousins. Christa’s literary gifts are many but her unerring ability to write authentically about the human heart and genuine spiritual struggle sets her apart from most of her contemporaries. Watch Over Me is a journey that will linger in your heart and mind long after the final chapter ends.

As a side note: Rel does a amazing job reviewing Christian fiction.  Please stop by her blog and read her posts – I’m sure you’ll discover authors you’ve never read, but will enjoy.

Many of you know about the, uh, arduous task of titling Home Another Way.  Watch Over Me came a little easier (even though I loved my working title – Things Found in the Morning – but no one else did).  But this process was so simple, I was quite shocked.  My working title had been The Air I Breathe – which I didn’t love, but it was okay.  I submitted it with about four other ideas to Bethany House Publishers, and a few days later received an email telling me The Air We Breathe had been approved.  A slight tweak, but very close to the original.  Maybe I’m just getting better at knowing the market.

All three titles have some relationship to songs.

I already have a working title (and synopsis) for book four (and the title has nothing to do with a song, as far as I know).  As soon as I finish up The Air We Breathe, my agent and I will begin the proposal process all over again.

I am a ruminator. I like to think, to pick at my words, to poke through the rubble and find perfection. That takes a loooong time. It also, often, causes me to “freeze up” as I’m writing. Yes, there are times when I’m literally unable to type a single word. However, Write or Die has given me a kick in the pants as book three’s deadline approaches, apparently feeding my need for outside pressure.  (I have always performed best in the 11th hour, so to speak.  I won’t mention how I used to start my 40+ page lab reports at midnight the day they were due, skip all my other classes, and work on pure adrenaline for 16 hours straight, printing the report out minutes before it was due and dashing into my class at the last moment.)

From Dr. Wicked’s Write or Die site:

The idea is to instill in the would-be writer with a fear of not writing. We do this by employing principles taught in Introduction to Psychology. Anyone remember Operant Conditioning and Negative Reinforcement?

Negative Reinforcement “strengthens a behavior because a negative condition is stopped or avoided as a consequence of the behavior.”

Consequences:

• Gentle Mode: A certain amount of time after you stop writing, a box will pop up, gently reminding you to continue writing.
• Normal Mode: If you persistently avoid writing, you will be played a most unpleasant sound. The sound will stop if and only if you continue to write.
• Kamikaze Mode: Keep Writing or Your Work Will Unwrite Itself

These consequences will persist until your preset conditions have been met (that is, your time is up or you’ve written you word count goal or both).

I set it for Kamikaze mode with an “evil” grace period.  Imagine my horror when, the first time I used the application, it started EATING my words because I stopped typing for a few seconds.

Write or Die claims to put the “Prod in Productivity.”  Why it works for me, I don’t know.  But I plan to keep using it.

I truly fell in love with the struggling characters in Watch Over Me, a novel about loss, need, soul damage, and relationships that heal. Christa Parrish knows how to draw a reader into a complex, emotional, but not overwrought story. Her subtlety is superb. She entices the reader with just enough to want more, painstakingly unfolding the story.

Watch over Me opens with a marriage in crisis, a PTSD former soldier struggling with unruly emotions and his peace-loving wife. Distance defines them. When the husband, now a police officer, finds an abandoned baby and brings her home to foster, the fissures in their marriage widen. Woven into that relationship is a deaf teenage boy who desperately needs a family. I loved this book. Loved the characters. Loved everything about it.

While you’re at it, visit Mary’s excellent blog to learn more about her two critically-acclaimed new novels, Daisy Chain and A Slow Burn.

Watch Over Me | Christa Parrish
This novel has lots of story threads—an abandoned baby, an eating disorder, a failing marriage, an unloved teen. Christa Parrish redeems those gritty plot elements with a story about grace for troubled people with messy lives. She has drawn believable Christian characters who face marital discord and personal demons—and try to cope with them on their own strength. The facade they’ve built keeps others from knowing how deep is their despair—and it takes an infant to begin to turn them outward. Throughout the novel the main characters run from God, but Parrish shows (not tells) how God pursues them, even through terrible heartache. She writes with sensitivity and grace.

Also, I’ll be signing again that afternoon at Milk & Honey, 16 Exchange Street, Glens Falls, NY 12801, from 2 to 4 p.m.

Mainstream
Watch Over Me by Christa Parrish
* * * * (Compelling – Page Turner)

Parrish’s deft characterization pulls readers into a storyline filled with raw emotion. At first it’s unclear how the third character fits into the plot, but when it’s revealed, the story comes together seamlessly for an unforgettable conclusion.

Deputy Benjamin Patil’s life changes when he finds a baby in a plastic bag and he and his wife, Abbi, take the child into their home. But this home is anything but happy. Benjamin suffers from depression after a tragic tour of duty in Afghanistan, and Abbi hides her secrets and pain in an eating disorder. But their love for the baby bridges the gap between them, forcing them to confront themselves and their marriage. What happens if they find the baby’s mother?

The number one way your characters – and as such, your readers – learn new information that propels the plot along is through dialogue.  Dialogue can make or break a novel.  Have you ever read a book and just cringed at some of what the characters say?  Dialogue needs to be realistic, relevant, revealing, and resonant. 

Realistic – to both your audience and your characters.  Obviously, you’re not going to include every mundane conversation that people have in real life.  But, there has to be realism in the interaction between characters.  Who here is a mom?  Do you always speak kindly to your children?  Who here is married?  Do you and your spouse ever snip at each other?  Flirt with one another?  These are real life things.  Also, dialogue needs to be realistic to your characters – having your protagonist say something that makes the reader stop and think, “I could never have pictured that coming out of so-and-so’s mouth,” only serves to pull the reader out of the story.  As writers, we want to keep them within the world of the novel as much as possible.

Relevant – is there are reason your characters are saying these things now?  If Sam and Bob have been talking about cars, and suddenly Sam says, “Oh, this steering wheel cover reminds me of the dress Jane wore last week to work.  Have you seen her lately?” well, that’s just wrong.  Dialogue needs to flow naturally from one topic to another.  Readers want to see the connections.

Revealing – every sentence should give your reader a deeper understanding of the characters and story.  Some rules I try to stick with in order to do this are:

1. No saying things that have already been said.  I read a book once when one character said something like, “This is Judy.  I work with her.”  And then, half a page later, Tom asks Judy, “So, how do you know Bill?”  Well, the reader learned that two paragraphs ago.  Not good.
2. No saying things that both characters and the reader already know.  This is just rehashing and doesn’t server to move the story along.  That means, no recounting events that already took place.
3. No saying things that don’t in some way advance the plot or characterization.

Resonant – is there something memorable about the dialogue?  Will it stick with your reader?  

Who needs another website devoted to reviews and analysis of new film releases?

The basic premise behind our approach is the idea that the artist’s intent matters. By contrast, the so-called “fallacy” of authorial intent, one of the byproducts of twentieth-century formalism, claims that the critic or the viewer is the sole arbiter of meaning—that the filmmaker’s intent is ultimately irrelevant.

Yet at the same time, art of any form is still communication. Film, in particular, is an attempt by an artist or group of artists to express certain ideas about beauty, meaning, or truth. To the extent that a critic overemphasizes a subjective impression of a film at the expense of what a film actually says—or what can be known of a filmmaker’s intent through interviews, the filmmaker’s body of work, or the film itself—communication has not only failed, it has been willfully disregarded. Sadly, the vast majority of film criticism, while still making valuable contributions to the understanding of any given film or culture in general, tends to undervalue the communicative power of film.

I, personally, don’t think all Christian media is good simply because it’s labeled Christian.  Nor do I think secular books, music, and movies have nothing to teach us about faith, especially when watched through the eyes of Christ.  I like that Past the Popcorn “will attempt a serious analysis of a film’s meaning, both from the audience’s point of view and from the filmmakers’, as much as is critically possible. Recognizing that all films still exist (in part) as entertainment, films will also be subjectively reviewed for “nutritainment value” and audience-appropriateness.”  

Other movie review ministries:

Plugged In Online: This site has been one of my favorite tools in regard to what I allow my son to watch.  The reviews are presented only from a conservative Christian worldview – artist value is not considered – looking at all positive and negative elements, listing anything someone may find inappropriate.  I appreciate the thoroughness, and like that I can be certain there will be no surprises if I let Jacob see a particular movie.

Hollywood Jesus: A great site that explores pop culture from a spiritual point of view.  Everything from books to movies to comic books to toys and games are reviewed.  Some rather thought-provoking questions are asked, too.