Category Archives: ACFW

#ACFW2017 Pre-Conference Mix & Mingle

So blogging consistently hasn’t been my strong suit this year (or, like, ever), but here we go! I’m also over on InspyRomance today talking about conference!

For more on how this link up works, check out the original post on Laurie Tomlinson’s blog!

Name: Carol Moncado

Location: Southwest Missouri

What you write/tagline/trademark: Romantic Dramedy in the Ozarks – and elsewhere (mostly because I love the Romantic Dramedy part, but there’s no easy way to say things like “fictional countries in the Alps, Mediterranean, and Atlantic – for now… ;))

The fam… & Shrek

Place in the book world: Indie author with 23 works in “print” (see header pic ;))

On a scale of hugger to 10-foot-pole, please rate your personal space: #AllTheHugs #AllTheTime

Something VERY serious: How do you take your Starbucks? Starbucks, shmarbucks. Where’s the Dr. Pepper?

The unique talking points that will get you going for hours: Marching band! Band momming is my life right now – outside of writing ;). Indie publishing. How Jen Cvelbar (my roomie!) and I met.

Loved ones at home you’ll be missing: My husband (20 years last May!), 4 kids (15yo girl who can only work Saturday next week because she doesn’t have a ride, 13yo girl who’s crazy busy next week, 12yo girl whose guitar lessons I’ll miss, 10yo boy who always misses everyone most), and two dogs. Mr. Benny and the Jett. The Shorkie and the Yorkie. They may never forgive me for being gone.

Jett & Mr. Benny in some sort of stand off…

Conference goals we can pray for? Not just conference per se… I leave Monday for McAlester, OK (about half way) and will spend the evening working. Tuesday morning, I’ll head to see my cousins (probably in Tyler, TX, but there’s a CHANCE they’ll be in Dallas), then head to Dallas to pick up roomie/dear friend Jen Cvelbar (writing as Jennifer A. Davids) from the airport. Before we go to the conference hotel Wednesday afternoon, we’re going to Tom+Chee and IKEA (because I’ve never been to either ;)). Then crazy busy conference.

And before all that I have a million words to write…

I’m also having a huge sale next week and really need to get this next book almost done so I can have it up for preorder during the sale. I’d really appreciate prayers for a productive couple of days so I can.

Anything we can celebrate with you? If I get this manuscript almost done, I’ll be celebrating that ;).

One or two ways we can help you build your platform? You can like my author page on Facebook, join my new Facebook group, and sign up for my email list by clicking here!

Head over to Laurie’s blog to participate! Hope to see you there!

ACFW, Pre-Conference Mixer

2016: Day 193 or Annual Pre-Conference Mixer

YAY! One of my favorite things about getting ready for conference is Laurie Tomlinson’s Pre-Conference Mixer! And it’s totally that time of year again! Want to play? Check out the end of the post.

The 5lb Shorkie Scaredy-Cat

The 5lb Shorkie Scaredy-Cat

Here are my answers!

Name: Carol Moncado

Location: SW Missouri

What you write/tagline/trademark: Romantic Dramedy in the Ozarks…and Elsewhere (yeah, it used to be and the Alps, but then I ended up with more places ;))

Place in the book world: Indie. Newly-minted USA Today Bestselling Author – thanks to the WHISPERS OF LOVE boxed set! It’s currently #79 on the USAT list :D. I have nine novels out, am in/have been in four boxed sets with novellas/short novels (two are out as singles with the other two coming out this month) plus one other novella. I have 2-4 novels likely coming out this year and at least two more (new) novellas. Right now, I’m loving my royalty niche ;). You can find all of them on Amazon.

On a scale of hugger to 10-foot-pole, please rate your personal space: I’m just gonna leave Laurie’s answer ;). All the hugs.

The unique talking points that will get you going for hours: Books, more books, even more books. Indie publishing. My kids. Friends (the tv show, not the people – but the people too). LOST. NCIS (Ziva? Not dead.). Royalty stuff (it’s all research. promise.).

Loved ones at home you’ll be missing: My amazing husband and four kids. I (will) have a freshman, 7th grader, 6th grader, and 4th grader (only boy!). Plus the 5lb Shorkie who is a total mama’s boy.

Conference goals we can pray for? That I can be a blessing and encouragement to others. To be in the right places at the right times.

Anything we can celebrate with you? See the note about the USA Today thing?!

One or two ways we can help you build your platform? You can “follow” my profile on Facebook (unless we actually know each other – then send a FR 😉 – but I don’t use my “author PAGE” anymore because FB has made it impossible for people to see things unless you pay them) and sign up for my newsletter (there’s cover reveals and preorder discounts and even free novellas occasionally)!

YAY! Can’t wait to see y’all! ETA: Find me! I’ll have chocolate chip cookies to share!

Here’s how to play:

– Copy/paste the questions and fill out your own answers in a post on your own website and paste the URL to that specific post (not your homepage) using the handy link-up tool on Laurie’s page. Just click on the button below that says “Add your link”. If you don’t have a website, feel free to answer the questions in the comments below! (And share it in my comments below!)

– Make sure to link back to this post after you fill out your answers so any of your readers who are conference attendees can participate, too! The more, the merrier.

– Click through the links below to get to know other conference attendees before Nashville!

ACFW, Conference, Pre-Conference Mixer

Writing Resources for Teens

Updated 12/9/10

Yesterday I was talking with a friend who has a teen friend who wants to be a writer.  My first instinct was to tell her to write, write, write!  And to learn proper grammar and punctuation because that’s important.  I submitted the question about resources for teens to the ACFW main loop and these are the answers I received.  Many, many thanks to those who helped with this.  I will update this as I find more resources.

  • Christian Writer’s Guild [Jerry B. Jenkins] has a teen program – Squire; Contact info: Leilani Squires
  • One person thinks Brandilyn Collins has stuff for teens – That’s a link to her blog, *I* didn’t see anything with a quick glance but maybe someone else knows
  • Written World Communications has a magazine for/by kids 9-19 – StarSong guidelines
  • Chicken Soup for the Soul is looking for teen contributors [through 12/31/10]
  • Stephanie Morrill’s Go Teen Writers – “In 2011, we’re starting a program called “Write Now” and I’m going to spend the year detailing the process of writing a novel. I encourage readers of the blog to e-mail me writing questions and we have a lot of fun on there.”
  • Mr. Raney [which is also the name of my high school music teacher – but so not the same guy – amuses me anyway ;)] runs Clash Entertainment – “an entertainment website for Christian teens and besides reviews of YA and books, movies, games, etc. of interest to teens, he also looks for contributions from teens, from photography, to reviews, to banner design, etc. The site doesn’t have craft of writing information, per se, but it’s a great place to learn about the publishing and Christian media world, and about current books that are releasing in the CBA.”  Mr. Raney is the husband of best selling author Deborah Raney.
  • Check out Caleb Breakey – Mentorship Program [didn’t have time to look around the page too much but looks like there’s a lot of good stuff there]
  • Clubhouse Magazine and Clubhouse Jr. – Submission Guidelines
  • Jill Williamson’s Teenage Author – she will answer questions submitted through the site
  • Novel Teen – direct link to Chris Solaas’ articles that ask tough questions and give tough answers about the motivations for writing.  Not for the faint of heart!
  • Melanie Dickerson’s blog
  • Randy Ingermanson’s Advanced Fiction Writing
  • Seekerville’s blog – this is personally one of my favorite places on the web – both for writing tips, awesome authors and a fabulous commenting community – plus they have a bunch of NCIS fans.  And food.  Lots of food.  And an island.  Check ’em out whether you’re a writer or not.
  • Linda Burklin has a creative writing curriculum that will be coming out early next year through the Institute for Excellence in Writing. It is aimed at 10-14 year olds, and focuses on writing stories.
  • Donita K. Paul hosts a chat every Monday night for young writers. She is currently working through Jeff Gerke’s book The Art and Craft of Writing ChristianFiction with the teens.
  • Christian online writing groups for teens, such as:
    • Diana Sharples’ Yahoo group – critique group through Yahoo for writers of Christian young adult fiction. Our members include writers at all skill levels, from novice to published, and we have some very talented teen writers in our midst. This group is for serious writers who are able to do at least one critique per week, and prospective members should be prepared to send in a sample of their work and do a sample critique. (I make an exception for ACFW members… no need to go through the approval process.)
  • Chicken Soup for the Soul is looking for teen contributors [through 12/31/10]
  • Jill Williamson’s Teenage Author – she will also answer questions people ask through the site
  • Novel Teen – direct link to Chris Solaas’ articles that ask tough questions and give tough answers about the motivations for writing.  Not for the faint of heart!

Books [recommended by Melanie Dickerson who recently compiled the list for middle schoolers]:

  • Writing Christian Fiction by Jeff Gerke
  • Fiction Writing for Dummies by Randy Ingermanson
  • Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Browne and King
  • The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
  • A Novel Idea by various authors, published by Tyndale
  • Plot and Structure, Revision and Self-Editing, and The Art of War for Writers, three books by James Scott Bell
  • The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Christian Fiction by Ron Benrey
  • Goal, Motivation and Conflict by Debra Dixon

[I have a number of these books – not that I’ve read all of them yet – but have heard many good things about them.]

ACFW, Teen Resources, Writing

Monday Musings, Volume 1

Current Facebook status: Quote of the night: Matt [watching football]: take the time out! Christopher: I don’t want a time out!
Currently Playing in the Background: Imagination Movers

So now I have three days of standardized[ish] posts ;).  Monday Musings is pretty much whatever occurs to me – News and Notes from the last week or whatever else comes to mind.

Novel Track update: I’m currently at 15402 for the month.  I hit 4000 plus a couple yesterday!  WOOHOO!

News and Notes:

ACFW Conference is in St. Louis next year! WOOHOO!  That increases significantly the odds that I’ll get to go!

Tomorrow, Julie Lessman’s first book A Passion Most Pure should be here!  Her second two are waiting at the library :).

Friday, I got WITSEC for research purposes.  I also got Erica Vetsch’s The Bartered Bride for fun and enjoyed it.  Look for the review sometime in the future.

Saturday, I got to go shopping and to Olive Garden with Penny.  WOOHOO!  Needed a girls’ night out – and we got free dessert because our dinner took forever to get to us :).

Okay – those were pretty random but I’ll plan better next time!

Monday Musings, Novel Track

Flash Fiction Friday, Vol. 4

Current Facebook Status: kept Em home because her head and back of her neck hurt and she wanted to sleep longer. She’s doing much better though :). Thanks for the prayers! [explanation: Em fell on the sidewalk yesterday and bonked her head – trip to Urgent Care followed because she was acting weird – Dx: mild concussion]
Currently Playing in the Background: NCIS from this week
Current Novel Track word count [only NT Novel]: 449 words of drivel, but 449 words more than I had this morning

Yay!  Flash Fiction Friday!  Get to hang out with Jan a bit, procrastinate on Novel Track and still write a few words ;).  I’m thinking some variation on this may end up in my NaNo project…  Jan’s is on her blog.  Anyone else wanna take a gander at it?  Use the first sentence, set the timer for five minutes and… GO!

The young executive stood in front of the picture window biting her nails.

The forest spread below her like a blanket.  This wasn’t where she wanted to be.  She wanted to be anywhere but staring at the pristine snow of the mountain meadow across the valley from her.  She wanted to be back in Florida.  On the beach.  Well, maybe not on the beach.  It was the wrong time of year for that, even in Florida, but at least she would have had the option of pulling on a hoodie and going for a jog on the boardwalk.

Instead she was here.  In the mountains.  In a state.  One of the United States.

Maybe.

She wasn’t even sure about where she was.

The window shades had been pulled closed during the flight.  They’d stopped in at least four cities, maybe more because she thought she’d slept through one of them.

All because of what she’d seen and who her grandfather was.

Had been.

Wasn’t anymore.

But still.  The mob didn’t forget and she’d gone to surprise her grandfather – a former federal agent – only to find herself running from a hit.  She’d managed to get away, but she’d seen who killed her grandfather.

Who she was sure had killed her cousins when they arrived not long after she’d left.

Some surprise party it had been.

“When can I go home?” she whispered.

The agent in the room hadn’t heard her so he didn’t respond, but she hadn’t been talking to him anyway.

“I look to the hills from whence my help cometh.”  Quoting the Bible, via The Sound of Music.  She was going to lose it if this went on too long.

Flash Fiction Friday, Novel Track

Novel Track and NaNoWriMo

Current Facebook Status: is up and at ’em.  Lots to do and so little time to do it.  Or something.  At least she’s not so loopy she’s going on and on about candy pumpkins again ;).
Currently playing in the background: Playhouse Disney

EEP!  National Novel Writing Month is only a month away!

Double EEP!  Novel Track starts tomorrow!

Novel Track is ACFW’s answer to NaNo – four months a year, you set your own goal of at least 10K words and when you meet your goal, you get a badge to put on your blog or website :).  My goal for October Novel Track [January, April and July are the other months] is 50K words which should finish my WIP [Work in Progress] – the sequel to Unbreak Her Heart.  Well, it’ll finish the rough draft – which will be very, very rough, I’m sure.

I think I’ve decided on my NaNo project as well!  I’m going to do something completely different – based in part on the Flash Fiction from Sept. 10.  I wrote a couple paragraphs for a friend and outlined the basics in another paragraph – she liked it as much as I did :).  I’m contemplating turning it into a Romantic Suspense book but that would mean research into things like Witness Protection ;).  I’ve already started doing some other research – turns out a friend’s husband is on the board of an organization in town that my play a role, etc.

So – can I write 100K in the next two months?

Triple EEP!

Okay – yes, I can.  I wrote nearly 65K last Nano and 100K the year before that [nothing I could whip into publishable shape but I did it!] so it’s possible.  I just need to make sure I write 2K a day.  I can do that.  Um, yep.  I can.  [Technically, 50K a month is about 1667 words a day, but 2K a day gives a buffer for those days it doesn’t happen at all.]

One problem I anticipate having is writing in a vacuum. I have no beta readers/critique partners at the moment so no one to send it off to.  Except maybe one.  Hmmm… Will have to ask her about that.  We’ll see how the writing in a near vacuum goes…  ACFW has a critique group designed, as I understand it, to help with critiques and then help people find each other and break off into smaller critique groups.  There’s an orientation of sorts the first 2 business days of the month [tomorrow and Monday] so there’s hope of finding someone soon :).

In order to get it all done, I need to make To Do Lists and stick to them!  That’s my problem – I’m great at making them, not so great at sticking to them.  Working on that too…

So I will be eeping for the next two months as I try to get this done.  I’ll be posting my word counts and excerpts here [favorite sentence of the day maybe?] so watch this space!

The writing frenzy is about to begin!

NaNoWriMo, Novel Track

Monday, Monday…

Current Facebook status: TGIM? I’m trying to be thankful God, I really am, but I’d much rather still be sleeping… 😉

I’m so not liking this 8am class thing [though I suppose it is much better than the 7am class thing a number of years ago – however, then I lived less than 10 minutes from campus…].  Alarm at 530 should be illegal.  And now, about six hours after posting that status, I still wish I was napping ;).  But alas, I’m not.  On the upside, I’ve been playing with ‘Sup’man’.  Christopher is convinced that he’s ‘Sup’man’ – but even that didn’t protect him from getting a big ole knot on his head last week :(.  Thursday night, it was bigger than a fat Tootsie Roll.  Four days later, it’s shrunk to the size of… well, a regular Tootsie Roll, maybe a bit smaller.  He’s fine though :).  He’s made of tough stuff.  Guess his sister had some Kryptonite on her when she bumped him into the Entertainment Center ;).

Today’s a big day for me!  I’m [un]officially* a member of ACFW!  I am quite excited about this :).  I also ordered three books: Candace Calvert’s Code Triage, and, on her recommendation, Code Blue and Medical Error both by Richard L. Mabry, MD.  I initially had Critical Care and Disaster Status in my cart instead, but, since I just read those and Mabry’s are not available at my library [though I have requested them and they are ‘under consideration’], I went with Mabry instead.  The other two will be purchased soon :).

And since I am now a proud member of Amazon Mom, I get free two day shipping so they will be here on Wednesday!!!  Wednesday is Disaster Status review day [finished it again yesterday] and the day I get Code Triage!  That’s just a good day all around :).  Lots to do in the meantime so I can curl up on the couch with the book once I get it :).

And I get to see friends at my First Place 4 Health Bible study tonight – that’s always good!  Watch this spot for squeeing when my username/password are approved and I can access all the ACFW goodies!

*[Un]officially because I filled out the application and Paypaled them my money but don’t have access to the website just yet.

ACFW