Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Celebrating Rosh Hashanah ~ The Jewish New Year!

To all my Jewish friends out there...Happy Rosh Hashanah!!!  Watch this super FUN video!!! Love it!!!  :-)



Rosh Hashanah and T’ruah
In Traditional Judaism, Rosh Hashanah “Head of the Year” or originally called Yom T’ruah “Day of Trumpets” or “Blowing,” is celebrated as The Jewish New Years Day. The Holiday is observed on the first two days of Tishri (which begins tonight), and marks the beginning of a 10 day prayer, self examination and repentance which culminates on Yom Kippur. These 10 Days are referred to as Yamim Norai’m “The Days of Awe” or more commonly called “The High Holy Days.” Rosh Hashanah also commemorates The Creation of the universe, “the great Catching Away” commonly called “The Rapture”.

Readings for Rosh Hashanah
Torah (First 5 Books of the Bible): Beresheet (Genesis) 21:1-34; Bamidbar (Numbers) 29:1-6

Haftarah (Prophets): Sh’mu’el Aleph (1 Samuel) 1:1-2:10       

 
Brit’ Chadashah (New Covenant): 1 Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians) 4:13-18


For further study on Rosh Hashanah, click the links below :

High Holidays and the Gospel




Shav’ua Tov!!! (Have a Good Week!!!)

**A special thank you to my FB friend Word מלה   Millah  for providing the above information **

God Bless!
T Denise Clary

Monday, September 26, 2011

Why Do We Tell Stories?

I thought the following Blog post from literary agent Rachelle Gardner was interesting and decided to repost on my Blog. Rachelle Gardner is a literary agent with WordServe Literary Group and recently won the award for Agent of the Year at the ACFW Conference in St. Louis....God Bless! T Denise Clary

Why Do We Tell Stories? ~ By Literary Agent Rachelle Gardner (re-posted from her blog at http://www.rachellegardner.com/)

Whenever I walk into Barnes & Noble and see all those thousands of books…

When I hear statistics like a million books published a year

When I look at the query section of my inbox …

When I attend a conference and meet with writers passionate to see their words in print…

I find myself getting all philosophical. Why so many books? Why do so many of us want to write? What is this thing inside us that drives us to want to share our truth with the world?

And of course (me being me) I come up with answers. I think that before there was the Internet, before television and movies, before radio, before newspapers, and even before books… (I am talking about the whole entire history of humankind, not just our lifetimes)… people have always connected with other people by storytelling. For some, storytelling means making up fantastical fables that illustrate truth metaphorically. For others, storytelling means sharing their own personal experiences and letting others be enlightened through them, or sharing what they’ve learned about history. For still others, storytelling means teaching, taking the lessons they’ve learned and relaying them to others.

People have always shared their stories verbally, with those in their extended family, with their friends, with their tribe. Before mass media or technology, the primary form of entertainment was talking to one another. Imagine Biblical times. Or a native American camp 500 years ago. Or even a Wisconsin farm family 200 years ago. The day is done, the chores are finished, the family is sitting around… what do they do? They talk. They tell stories. It’s how people have always connected with one another.

Men have been telling each other stories over campfires or in pubs or during the hunt… for thousands of years. Women have been telling each other stories while drawing water from wells or making quilts or birthing babies… for thousands of years.

As our society has become more fragmented and media-oriented, as extended families have ceased to be an important social construct, as individuals spend less time in face-to-face communication and more time in mediated communication, our need to both tell stories and hear stories hasn’t changed, but the way we fulfill that need has changed.

The need that used to be fulfilled by personal relationship is now largely satiated by less personal relationships. We maintain our friendships through email and text messaging and cell phones. We have relationships with the characters on our TV shows; with the radio hosts we enjoy; with the blogs we read; with our favorite newspaper columnists; and of course, with our favorite book authors.
We have largely replaced personal communication with technological communication.

We don’t just want to write and publish books. We want to be heard. To be known and understood. And we want to know and understand others. I think the desire to write and publish books is simply an extension of our very humanness.

What do you think? Why do we write and seek publication? Not necessarily you, personally, but we, as humans.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

New Bible Verse ~ Sunday, Sept 25th

New Bible verse posted as of September 25th...Have a great week!

Psalm 27:14 (AMP)

Wait and hope for and expect the Lord; be brave and of good courage and let your heart be stout and enduring. Yes, wait for and hope for and expect the Lord.

God Bless!
T Denise Clary

Thursday, September 22, 2011

It's Movie Night For Me!!

If you know anything about literature, you have heard of author Jane Austen.

Here is a VERY brief write-up from Wikipedia for those who don't know...

Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.[1]

Well the movie "Becoming Jane", the story about her life, starring Anne Hathaway is about to air at 8:00p.m. CST on the OWN channel 279 (Direct TV).

IT'S MOVIE NIGHT FOR ME!!!  :-)




Wednesday, September 21, 2011

I Took A Tour...An Inspirational Tour!

I went on a tour yesterday...an inspirational tour! A tour that lasted several hours, yet I didn't leave the comforts of my home. With my 'mango ceylon' tea in hand, I just sat at my computer and took a tour...

...I went on a tour of blogs...YES, a Blog Tour!

No, it wasn't an organized blog tour with rules, regulations, stipulations, etc. etc.

It was simply a random, self-motivated, self-guided tour that I decided to take on my own. And I enjoyed every bit of my tour. I browsed and visited many inspirational and insightful blogs with God inspired stories and themes. Electronically encountering different people and landscapes from around the world, sharing their most intimate details about their lives (i.e. One blog I came across mentioned how the blogger's two older children were abducted over 20 years ago and later found recently. Although their relationship is strained, she still praises God for the many blessings He has done in her life in spite of the horrible circumstances surrounding the abductions). Many posts read like novels...and rightfully so, since most of the blogs I visited were authored by writers or people with some type of writing background.

Some blogs were thought provoking and lended itself to a personal reply post from yours truely :-), such as my response to the question "Can happiness be bought?" on Heidi Chiavaroli's 'New England Inspiration' blog at  http://www.heidichiavaroli.blogspot.com/. Prayer challenges, such as the "7 Day Prayer Challenge" over our children on Melissa K. Norris' 'Fiction To Inspire" blog at http://www.melissaknorris.com/default.html. Even though my children have been in school for about a month now, it is still a useful prayer for everyday! Also self-help advice such as "How To Be A Better Person" on Martha Ramirez's 'Writer Unleashed' blog at http://www.martzbookz.blogspot.com/.  And several other blogs offered helpful tools to navigate through the publishing process. I could go on and on about all the different blogs I visited, but too many to mention them all!!

I think I toured about thirty-something blogs yesterday!! WHEW! And I joined several of them (the blogs I mentioned above were some of those joined)...

I came away from my cyber tour feeling uplifted, motivated, inspired about life and people...and to continue with my writing endeavors!! ;-) WINK!

Have you gone on an inspirational tour lately?

God Bless!
T Denise Clary

Sunday, September 18, 2011

New Bible Verse ~ Sunday, Sept 18th

New Bible verse posted as of September 18th...Have a great week!

Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."


God Bless!
T Denise Clary

Saturday, September 17, 2011

A Little Humor For You...

a little Saturday humor for you...

The Atheist & The Bear --

An atheist was walking through the woods.
"What majestic trees! What powerful rivers! What beautiful animals!" He said to himself.
As he was walking alongside the river, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him.
He turned to look.  He saw a 7-foot grizzly bear charge towards him.
He ran as fast as he could up the path.  He looked over his shoulder & saw that the bear was closing in on him.
He tripped & fell on the ground.
He rolled over to pick himself up but saw that the bear was right on top of him, reaching for him with his left paw & raising his right paw to strike him.
At that instant moment, the Atheist cried out:

 "OH MY GOD!"
Time stopped.
The bear froze.
The forest was silent.
As a bright light shone upon the man, a voice came out of the sky.
"You deny my existence for all these years, teach others I don't exist and even credit creation to cosmic accident."
"Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament?"

"Am I to count you as a believer?"
The atheist looked directly into the light, and said: "It would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask you to treat me as a Christian now, but perhaps you could make the BEAR a Christian?"
"Very well", said the voice.
The light went out.  The sounds of the forest resumed.  And the bear dropped his right paw, brought both paws together, bowed his head & spoke:
"Lord bless this food, which I am about to receive from Thy bounty through Christ our Lord, Amen."

God Bless!
T Denise Clary

Sunday, September 11, 2011

New Bible Verse ~ Sunday, Sept 11th

New Bible verse posted as of September 11th...Have a great week!

1 Peter 5:10 (NIV84)

And the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will Himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.


God Bless!
T Denise Clary

Friday, September 9, 2011

The 'REJECTIONLESS' Rejection!

For those of you in the "book world," myself included, chances are you have received, seen, read, or at least heard about rejection letters from agents. You know what I mean...when you send your ms (which stands for "manuscript" of course) to an agent for what you hope will be an acceptance of your masterpiece, which will hopefully lead to your ms being published, which will hopefully lead to a blissful life as an author. WINK ;-)

Well how many of you have actually received the infamous rejection letter or letters??  The ones that say thanks but no thanks to that beautiful piece of work you spent months, possibly years, working on that you thought would lead you to be the next J. K. Rowling! WINK WINK ;-)

How about those literary agencies where you hear NOTHING AT ALL!?!?!? What I call, the REJECTIONLESS REJECTION aka "No Response Means NO"!

Has that ever happened to you? The "No response means no" policy has definitely happened to me. However, I didn't have a problem with it until I encountered ONE particular agency, you can read about it from my Blog at this link http://tdeniseclarybooks.blogspot.com/2011/07/year-2011.html
In lieu of the "No response means no" policy, I ran across an agent's Blog that addressed that very issue from the AGENT's point of view. I found it interesting and thought I would pass it along, the agent's post is highlighted below...

"WHY I DON'T SEND REJECTION LETTERS"
I have been asked by quite a number of people why I don't send rejections, so I thought I'd post my answer here as well...

The answer is 2 prong...time and karma

First, I have not found an easy way to send a form rejection. I have to cut and paste every rejection into a response email and that takes hours. Right now I read many of the queries on my phone, getting to them as quickly as I can thus making that 1 month deadline....I reject most within a few days (sometimes minutes or seconds) of receiving them but hold on to the ones I am thinking about so that is why it is a month and not a 2 week turnaround time.

With rejections comes authors fighting back sometimes, sending followup questions, etc. I wish I had the time for that but with 3 kids I feel that the time spent on authors I am not taking on as clients is time away from my family.

I spent the first year sending out declines and it definitely took away from work time, family time, etc. Also, the negativity of sending so many no's really weighed heavy on me. Now I work only in the positive, sending yeses and encouraging emails when I feel moved to send them.

And this is where karma comes in. I announced my change to no answer means no policy on this blog and other places on March 4th, 2010, one year after becoming an agent. One year with NO sales. Yes, it was the worst time to be selling ms in this industry and yes, I was new and had very few clients to sell but still, zero sales.

On April 30th, 2010 I had my first offer for a book--the wonderful PURPLE DAZE by Sherry Shahan pubbed by Running Press. After that first sale (and no more negative rejections coming from my mind/hand/computer) the sales kept coming in....and coming, and coming. Fast forward to today, 1.5 years after the no answer means no policy, and I have sold 28 books with more offers on the way. Plus, I have a book deal of my own in which I am giving voice to 30...count 'em...30 poets in
DARE TO DREAM...CHANGE THE WORLD. Karma!

So that is why I don't send rejections. It is a huge time suck as well as time spent in a negative vibe which I do not feel helps my clients, my future clients, most writers, my family, nor me.

I know that feeling of not hearing....I lived it for years. It sucks but if you keep a database and check the no box after a month, you know the answer.


Although I'm not sure I entirely agree with all the opinions expressed above, I definitely understand where the agent is coming from, I too have a family equipped with 3 active kids!! I know all too well about having that work/life balance!! And like I stated above, I am O.K. with the "no response means no" method many agencies have adopted, as long as it is clearly expressed in their submissions policy.

However you weigh in on the subject matter, try to keep a positive mindset when receiving those rejection letters (or lack thereof). Trust in the Lord and allow Him to direct your steps...that rejection(s) just might be a Blessing in disguise! The Lord may be leading you down a different pathway!!!


 I will leave you with this scripture;
"They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord." Psalm 112:7 (NIV)


God Bless!
T Denise Clary

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

"Let The Illustrations Begin!"

I know that I've been saying that the INSIDE illustrations are coming soon, but now I can REALLY say that they are underway!!

Jeff, my illustrator, sent me an email yesterday letting me know that he will start working on the inside illustrations for the book Vinny Vain this week. Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am super excited and can't wait to see what Jeff comes up with for each illustration. It's one thing to read the words of a children's book, but to actually see the images that go along with the words, is something else altogether.

Vinny Vain will require about 13 images. I will try to post what I can as they are being developed.

God Bless,
T Denise Clary

Sunday, September 4, 2011

New Bible Verse ~ Sunday, Sept 4th

New Bible verse posted as of September 4th...Have a great week!

Romans 15:13 (NIV)

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.


God Bless!
T Densie Clary