Greetings,

Part of me is ashamed that I don't have a personal relationship with many who will read this. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Tim Ward. I podcast on my website, and on the Holy Worlds Podcast. I am the head of the Holy Worlds Mentorship Program, a council member, and one of the leaders in the council regarding a desire to publish your work.

As you probably know, our forum admin, Jay (Sir Emeth Mimetes), is currently unavailable. The circumstances surrounding his unavailability were sudden, and as a result, the Council is either scrambling to keep things running smoothly, or unsure of whatever problems are not being addressed.

I'm writing today in the hopes that this letter will reach as many forum members as possible so we can gather around and discuss the state of Holy Worlds, how you'd like it improved, what you can do to help, and what we can do to help.

What are your dreams for this organization? I say "organization" instead of "forum" because I have dreams that go beyond just the forum.

We have a fantastic setting here for brainstorming, meeting and developing friendships with other like-minded authors and readers, and hopefully preparing you for a career writing for God's glory.

"The next step" is an email one of our council sent out today regarding our vision for turning Holy Worlds into a publishing entity. On the surface, that sounds incredibly exciting. Anyone else picture a HW logo on a building and cool offices decorated with Fantasy characters and Bible verses? Well, we have quite a ways to go from that happening, and that's partly why I'm writing this letter.

We're not sure how long Jay will be unavailable, but we certainly don't need to wait for him to get started with a few key areas that will prepare us for when he gets back.

1. Guard your hearts. Satan and his minions are an enemy who hate anyone on fire for God. Don't let your sin make you ineffective (Read the first eleven versus of 2nd Peter replacing the intro with "Timotheus, a bondservant and writer for Jesus Christ...).

2. Hone your craft. We are all guilty of letting time slip with all the info available on the internet. Don't let time on the forums keep you from what you are called to do. God gave us gifts to use for His glory; use them well and be an example of dedication.

3. Share your thoughts on how to improve. Feel free to speak your mind in a respectful, righteous way. The best way for us to grow is if we do it together. Everyone's opinion is valid.

Along these lines, I'm curious what you think is the best way to address the whole forum. Some of us don't do Facebook, don't check the blog, don't check "View new posts," etc. Is there a need for a new subforum "State, Future and Inbetween of Holy Worlds" or something like that for people to ask general questions, make observations, share dreams, point to problems, etc?

Now, to the concrete of how we can take Holy Worlds from a forum to a public enterprise. We need to do this in order to build the type of platform necessary to help sell your work and spread the glory of Christ through a wider reach of our people's products.

1. Make use of what we already have, make it known, and join the team.

What I mean by this is to look around at the projects we have going, either in the development stage or are out and running. We have lots of tools already in place to help us reach out: the blog, the podcast, the fact that we have three forums to help writers in these genres, our poetry book, all of our artists, our Herald's Hall forum for publishing advice... (feel free to add pieces you'd place in this sentence and I'll edit accordingly).

So, do you see these tools? Are you telling people about them? Are you helping them? If you have questions, you can reach me at [email protected] easier than by pm. I can help point you to people in charge of these areas and place you according to your skill and desire.

Do you like to read? Would you please help us by posting a blog about your thoughts on the book you just read? The best way to learn is by trying and watching others. It's really not that hard and it's NOT school. Blogging, while it requires professionalism, is also intended for leisurely readers. Make it fun, make it personal, but make it worth their time.

Also, there are ways to get free books, either from the library, or through book blogging services that give them away in return for a review. CSFF Blog Tour gives out a book a month from the top in Christian Spec Fic (click here for details). Booksneeze offers books as well, and being a Thomas Nelson outreach, those are good books too. If you have an ereader or don't mind reading on your computer, the opportunities are out there to get free books or for a few dollars.

The thing is, we need to attract readers, and one way to do it is to blog about the books they want to read. It helps our rankings on Google so that more people will find Holy Worlds, and it brings people who might want to join our group... or buy your stuff once we get it up to snuff and sell it.

Regarding the Holy Worlds Podcast:

We've been podcasting for over a year and I'm not sure how many of our members even know we have it. The more comments we have on our podcast page, the more attention it will get from search engines, and the better it will look to publishers and potential guests when they see that listeners respond. You can subscribe on iTunes, on the podcast page, or to the thread on our forum where we announce new episodes (though that is not the best way because it requires us to make that extra step of posting here, and I sometimes forget).

Using Skype is free, and easy to find a quiet place and chat about writing. I'm sure there are plenty of people on here who could come on for even a one time visit and share a book review, their thoughts on a recent movie, a topic among Christians related to fiction, how you worldbuild, etc. Do you have something to promote? Let me know.

Getting a team of audio editors could help get more content, and the programs we use are free and easy to train. Essentially, it's cutting and pasting and knowledge of a few commands. I have videos online teaching how to use Audacity (our editing software).

Do you have someone you want interviewed? Let us know. No one is too big. If we can get Terri Blackstock, we can get anyone, Lord willing.

Re: Publishing Short Fiction

We've got a mentorship program wrapping up the first half of it's six month trial period, in which I get to see eight stories that have been workshopped in the hopes of getting published, maybe by us.

There are other critiquing groups spread throughout Holy Worlds. What we want are people interested in publishing with us, in helping us read through, narrowing down the field and then seeing what we have to see if we can publish in the near future.

We've have three forums with various genres, so we need to decide if we want to throw them all together or make anthologies that are specific to a genre. I'm excited about the potential here to get your work out there, but we need to find a way to collect all interested parties into a communication thread to move this project forward.

Re: Publishing Long Fiction

We're not ready for this yet. Let's cut our teeth on the Poetry Book we already have published and anthologies or ezines before embarking on a novel. If you have a novel ready to publish, let us know over at Herald's Hall. We can help direct you to the proper resources.

Re: Art

I'm not the one to talk to about this, but we have resources for sharing and developing your artistic skills. These skills are more valuable than you may think. A great cover for an anthology or website is invaluable towards gaining people's interest.

Did I miss anything? Whew.

As you can probably tell, I have more of the shotgun approach to life. I don't get a lot done, but the things I put my mind to get a nice big shot of "attention" This is part of the reason why I'm not on here as much as I'd like, because I can't just come on and focus on one area. If you email me, that works a lot better for keeping me focused. I'm a writer too, and have a novel in an editor's hands, so I'm pretty busy...

Sincerely, and with love for your souls,
Tim

*bookmarks topic to come back and look at more closely later*

Very informative, Tim. Thanks.

A publishing company for HW?

Thanks for the update! **bookmarks**

Thank you for this, Tim.

I got very excited when I read this, thanks for posting, Tim!

Thank you for this, Tim. May I repost it on the other forums?

Thankyou, both Tim and Brendan.

Yes, feel free. Well, I can post it on the SF forum, but I haven't been able to log on to the HF forum for a while. You can post it there for me if you'd like. Also, I wasn't sure if this was worthy of a global announcement tag for this forum.

Okay, I'll post it on HF.

To your list of things we're working on you could add the Facebook-fan-page-promo-pack. It's not a huge project, but it's there. viewtopic.php?f=79&t=5884

God uses shotguns and laser beams.

Hey Tim,

I love where this is going - I really love it. So exciting for HW in general!

I've got some ideas about the home page that sort of tie in with this - I can post them here or PM them, whichever you'd prefer =)

Anyways, I had an idea regarding your challenge to use what we've got now. A while ago Google introduced a philosophy they call 'more wood behind fewer arrows' - I think as we grow, it's important to figure out what our core goals are and really work on driving those forward. That might actually involve dropping a few of our smaller projects in the short run but I think it would strengthen our core in the long run. Anyways...

Andrew

It's very, very exciting, but slightly daunting as well, if that makes sense. It would be wonderful to aim and achieve these HW goals though, and I think it's even more important that we keep them (maybe not even more, but just as important) now that Jay's not here at the moment. We can't let his dreams and goal (and thus our HW goal) to die out just because the devil is trying to get in the way. I'm not sure what needs doing right now? Anyhow, I'll try to help out in any way possible.

I put a tag in the Global Announcement thread, Tim.

Good thoughts, Tim.

Thank you, Tim.

Thank you for this Tim!

It looks more like an organized list than a shotgun scatter pattern to me. It is a great blessing to learn more about how I can further our work.

I truly want God to be glorified by this gathering of God's glorifiers.

Work together! Find out about each other and each others' projects! Focus on the work you have committed to!

As I mentioned above, one thing we can do to reach out is to participate in the CSFF blog tour. Here is the latest FREE BOOK OFFER info:

Book Offer. In May (since it’s already April and we don’t have books out yet) we’ll be touring Beckon by Christy Award winner Tom Pawlik. Below is the pertinent information.

If you’re interested in requesting a review copy, please send me your NAME and ADDRESS by Wednesday morning, 9:00 AM (Pacific time).

Thanks so much for making this tour work so well.

Becky
- - -
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Blog - http://rebeccaluellamiller.wordpress.com/
Editing Site - http://rewriterewordrework.wordpress.com/
Tour Site - http://csffblogtour.com/

If you would like to unsubscribe from CSFF, reply to this email with your request.

Beckon by Tom Pawlik
Adult supernatural suspense
ISBN-10: 1414338732
Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. (March 16, 2012)

From the Back Cover:

Some things weren’t meant to be discovered. But once they’re unleashed, there’s no turning back.
Beneath the town of Beckon, a terror hides, lurking in the darkness. Waiting.

Three people are drawn to the small Wyoming town for very different reasons. Anthropologist Jack Kendrick comes looking for clues to his father’s disappearance. Police officer Elina Gutierrez arrives in the near-deserted town on the trail of her missing cousin. And George Wilcox is lured by the promise of a cure for his wife’s illness.

All are looking for answers. But as they draw closer to discovering the town’s chilling secret, the real question becomes . . . will their quest uncover a miracle, or release an unspeakable evil?

I signed up, this looks cool. One question for you (or anyone else that's done this): They say they want three posts for each tour, but will be fine with only one...how does this work? A three part review, or what?

I am interested in the book a month, Tim, but I'm a bit confused as to what my part is in recieving the free book a month. Am I supposed to do something, or are they just sending the free book for general promotion? I want to sign up, but I want to make sure I can commit to whatever is needed from me.

Airi, here's their about page: http://csffblogtour.com/?page_id=406 I think that'll help, then there's also Q&A.

Ah! This would work great if I had a writing blog. As of yet I have not done that for marketing purposes. I am waiting until some publishing bits are ironed out.

Lycanis, I'd suggest going to this link to see how the last tour went (and you might be able to vote on best blogger). You can see how they did it. You might break your review up into parts, one day a summary of what you liked, another about what you didn't, or what you liked about the setting, what you liked about characters, any moral questions addressed, etc

I've been signed up for a year and haven't done it once. You choose when you participate by responding within the window she gives to have the book mailed to you. Does that make sense? So far the tour hasn't offered a book I want when I can read it. (I've learned better than to request books to read unless I know full well I can finish them.)

Lycannis, do you have a blog? If not, talk to Air about posting it on HW's blog. Air, why couldn't you just use the HW blog for your posts?

Oh! Now there is an idea. I never thought of that.

Oh, thanks! Yes, I have a blog, but I might be willing to post it on the HW one instead (if my posts are up to scratch, and assuming I do participate like I hope to) at least sometimes.

*facepalm* I've only mentioned it in the letter and in your thread on blog stats. That's what I've been trying to say as far as how this can help promote HW to the outside world.

Lycanis, if you request the book, you really should do so planning to participate. We can help you, but more so look at the bloggers they have had and model yours off of what you liked to read.

Well, I knew we could use the blog for promoting books through reviews, we've had a couple members write reviews and post them on HW, I just didn't think of writing a review for this and then posting it on HW.

Yes, I know. I've joined so far, I will only request the book if I know I'll be able to read it (as sure as I can get, at least), and then I'll do all in my power to make sure it happens!

Yes, well if I didn't say that clearly, I'm sorry. That is what I meant. If people join the CSFF they can use their blog, or ours, depending on your acceptance of their work and if it can be worked out around potential multiple members participating.

Oh, that's ok, I do that too. Sorry I misunderstood.

I think it would be great for the blog, actually, if multiple people wanted to do that. We could do a sort of blog series out of the reviews.

Ok, I will let you know if I decide to do it.

Cool. You can ask Katie. I love blog series.

Ok, sounds good.