Tucson Festival of Books!

Posted on March 3, 2017 by rebeccabruner

header_0I’m very excited to be attending the Tucson Festival of Books for the first time ever! This is one of the biggest book fairs in the country, and I will have the privilege of selling my books there. I’m really looking forward to this opportunity to connect with new readers, as well as see some old friends. I will have a book table in the Young Adult Author Pavilion  on Sunday, March 12, from 2:30-4:30. Please stop by and see me!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Jealousy (Again)

Posted on February 10, 2017 by rebeccabruner

Today, I’m sharing a post I wrote several years ago. I’m re-posting it this week because its message is so relevent to where my heart has been recently. When a close friend’s son-in-law announced the release of a new book and did a guest post on a best-selling author’s blog, I found myself whining to God, “Why him and not me?”

The Father was kind enough to remind me of this blog post, which I really needed to read again. I hope it encourages you, as well.

Jealousy

On the day before Thanksgiving, when we are all supposed to be reflecting back over the past year and counting our blessings, why am I writing a blog post about jealousy? Well, let’s see…

Earlier this month, one writer friend of mine celebrated a very successful book launch. Yesterday, I got word that another fellow writer has signed with a well-known agent.

I’m happy for both of them (no, really, I am) but there’s still this little voice deep inside saying, “Why not me? When will it be my turn?”

Envy is part of the human condition. If we weren’t so prone to it, God would not have included, “Though shalt not covet,”in the Ten Commandments. We’ve all broken that one far more times than we care to admit.

Yet God describes Himself as a jealous God. If it’s okay for God to be jealous, why is it a sin for me to feel that way?

What occurs to me is that my jealousy is a sin precisely because He’s a jealous God. When I envy what He’s doing for somebody else, I place the thing I covet above my love for Him. It’s like saying, “I want the good gifts you give– especially those gifts over there– more than I want you, Lord.”

I remember the first time I realized how God felt about my envy of others’ successes. I was at a women’s leadership conference, surrounded by well-known speakers and writers. As I listened to their workshops and thumbed through their books, ugly jealousy bubbled up in my heart.

I went to the prayer room and got down on my knees, not to confess my envy, but to complain to God. “This is how I want to serve you, Lord. Why can’t I speak at a big conference like this? When do I get a book table?”

The Lord’s response blew me away. He didn’t chastise me for my sinful attitude. Instead, with a tone of sincere disappointment, He seemed to say, “Rebecca, don’t you want to see what I’ve got in store for you?”

I realized I would much rather walk alongside God into the amazing future He intends for me personally, than to wander off course in pursuit of the blessings He’s given to others.

It’s just that some days, I need a little reminder…

Posted in Faith, Spirituality, Thanksgiving, Uncategorized, Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Age of Book Stores

Posted on February 3, 2017 by rebeccabruner

The message on my answering machine was brief, but weighty. It was Karen, the owner of an independent bookstore that hosted an author event for me the year my novel was released.

“I don’t know if you are aware,” she said, “but we will be closing our doors. We still have some copies of your books here. If you can come pick them up this week, we will set them aside for you.”

I called back to assure the owners that I would be coming by to collect my books, and to express my sorrow over such bad news. “Remember us in your prayers,” they said.

I was reminded of a scene from The Fellowship of the Ring, when Sam and Frodo observe a procession of wood Elves who are leaving Middle Earth, never to return.

I realized this was a sad day, and not just for my friends, who are losing their family business. It was a grievous day for us all.

The time of the independent brick and mortar bookstores may soon be ending, just like the time of the Elves in Middle Earth. As with the passing of the Elves, something rich and good and beautiful will depart forever when they go. Our world will diminish as a consequence.

As Sam observed, “I don’t know why, but it makes me sad.”

Posted in Book Stores, Lord of the Rings, Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Don’t Miss Allen Arnold at Writers Conference This Saturday

Posted on January 27, 2017 by rebeccabruner

allen-arnold Christian Writers of the West will be hosting a one day mini conference with guest speaker Allen Arnold. Allen is the author of The Story of With, an allegory about a better way to live, love, and create. His mission is to help artists pursue God and their gifting from an awakened heart in intimacy and freedom. A former fiction editor at one of the biggest houses in Christian publishing, Allen knows first-hand how common it is for creators to become disheartened, overwhelmed or burnt-out – as well as what it takes to help the dreams of writers become reality.

The conference will be held on Saturday, January 28, 2017 from 9:00am-3:10pm at Camelback Church of Christ in Phoenix, Arizona. Allen will be giving four workshops:

The Creator’s Call…and Deeper Invitation ~ Why did God call us to be writers? The answer goes deeper and more personal than you may think – involving our identity, imagination, and heart. This discovery won’t just change how you pursue the story you are writing…but also the Story you are living.

Navigating the New Publishing Frontier ~  Allen offers counter-intuitive insights into the realities, landmines, and possibilities of the ever-evolving publishing world gleaned from his 20 years with one of the largest Christian publishing houses. After this session, writers will be better equipped to untangle the options, overcome what has felt overwhelming, and pursue their stories with new freedom and purpose.

How to Actively Create with God ~ Writers are offered many tips, tools, and formulas to help measure their progress and make it through their goals. But there is a deeper foundation to our creativity. What does it look like to actually write with God – following his rhythm and creating stories transformed by his presence? This is a fast-paced, powerful teaching that fuses the mysterious with the practical.

Q & A with Allen ~ Here’s the chance to ask questions and share insights with Allen and the gathering about this new way to approach our writing and creativity with God.

To register, please visit: Christian Writers of the West

 

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

One-Day Writers Conference Saturday, January 28, 2017 Featuring Guest Speaker Allen Arnold

Posted on January 20, 2017 by rebeccabruner

allen-arnold Christian Writers of the West will be hosting a one day mini conference with guest speaker Allen Arnold. Allen is the author of The Story of With, an allegory about a better way to live, love, and create. His mission is to help artists pursue God and their gifting from an awakened heart in intimacy and freedom. A former fiction editor at one of the biggest houses in Christian publishing, Allen knows first-hand how common it is for creators to become disheartened, overwhelmed or burnt-out – as well as what it takes to help the dreams of writers become reality.

The conference will be held on Saturday, January 28, 2017 from 9:00am-3:10pm at Camelback Church of Christ in Phoenix, Arizona. Allen will be giving four workshops:

The Creator’s Call…and Deeper Invitation ~ Why did God call us to be writers? The answer goes deeper and more personal than you may think – involving our identity, imagination, and heart. This discovery won’t just change how you pursue the story you are writing…but also the Story you are living.

Navigating the New Publishing Frontier ~  Allen offers counter-intuitive insights into the realities, landmines, and possibilities of the ever-evolving publishing world gleaned from his 20 years with one of the largest Christian publishing houses. After this session, writers will be better equipped to untangle the options, overcome what has felt overwhelming, and pursue their stories with new freedom and purpose.

How to Actively Create with God ~ Writers are offered many tips, tools, and formulas to help measure their progress and make it through their goals. But there is a deeper foundation to our creativity. What does it look like to actually write with God – following his rhythm and creating stories transformed by his presence? This is a fast-paced, powerful teaching that fuses the mysterious with the practical.

Q & A with Allen ~ Here’s the chance to ask questions and share insights with Allen and the gathering about this new way to approach our writing and creativity with God.

To register, please visit: Christian Writers of the West

 

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Allen Arnold Speaks at One-Day Writers Conference

Posted on January 13, 2017 by rebeccabruner

allen-arnold Christian Writers of the West will be hosting a one day mini conference with guest speaker Allen Arnold. Allen is the author of The Story of With, an allegory about a better way to live, love, and create. His mission is to help artists pursue God and their gifting from an awakened heart in intimacy and freedom. A former fiction editor at one of the biggest houses in Christian publishing, Allen knows first-hand how common it is for creators to become disheartened, overwhelmed or burnt-out – as well as what it takes to help the dreams of writers become reality.

The conference will be held on Saturday, January 28, 2017 from 9:00am-3:10pm at Camelback Church of Christ in Phoenix, Arizona. Allen will be giving four workshops:

The Creator’s Call…and Deeper Invitation ~ Why did God call us to be writers? The answer goes deeper and more personal than you may think – involving our identity, imagination, and heart. This discovery won’t just change how you pursue the story you are writing…but also the Story you are living.

Navigating the New Publishing Frontier ~  Allen offers counter-intuitive insights into the realities, landmines, and possibilities of the ever-evolving publishing world gleaned from his 20 years with one of the largest Christian publishing houses. After this session, writers will be better equipped to untangle the options, overcome what has felt overwhelming, and pursue their stories with new freedom and purpose.

How to Actively Create with God ~ Writers are offered many tips, tools, and formulas to help measure their progress and make it through their goals. But there is a deeper foundation to our creativity. What does it look like to actually write with God – following his rhythm and creating stories transformed by his presence? This is a fast-paced, powerful teaching that fuses the mysterious with the practical.

Q & A with Allen ~ Here’s the chance to ask questions and share insights with Allen and the gathering about this new way to approach our writing and creativity with God.

To register, please visit: Christian Writers of the West

 

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Allen Arnold Speaks at One-Day Writers Conference

Posted on January 6, 2017 by rebeccabruner

allen-arnold Christian Writers of the West will be hosting a one day mini conference with guest speaker Allen Arnold. Allen is the author of The Story of With, an allegory about a better way to live, love, and create. His mission is to help artists pursue God and their gifting from an awakened heart in intimacy and freedom. A former fiction editor at one of the biggest houses in Christian publishing, Allen knows first-hand how common it is for creators to become disheartened, overwhelmed or burnt-out – as well as what it takes to help the dreams of writers become reality.

The conference will be held on Saturday, January 28, 2017 from 9:00am-3:10pm at Camelback Church of Christ in Phoenix, Arizona. Allen will be giving four workshops:

The Creator’s Call…and Deeper Invitation ~ Why did God call us to be writers? The answer goes deeper and more personal than you may think – involving our identity, imagination, and heart. This discovery won’t just change how you pursue the story you are writing…but also the Story you are living.

Navigating the New Publishing Frontier ~  Allen offers counter-intuitive insights into the realities, landmines, and possibilities of the ever-evolving publishing world gleaned from his 20 years with one of the largest Christian publishing houses. After this session, writers will be better equipped to untangle the options, overcome what has felt overwhelming, and pursue their stories with new freedom and purpose.

How to Actively Create with God ~ Writers are offered many tips, tools, and formulas to help measure their progress and make it through their goals. But there is a deeper foundation to our creativity. What does it look like to actually write with God – following his rhythm and creating stories transformed by his presence? This is a fast-paced, powerful teaching that fuses the mysterious with the practical.

Q & A with Allen ~ Here’s the chance to ask questions and share insights with Allen and the gathering about this new way to approach our writing and creativity with God.

To register, please visit: Christian Writers of the West

 

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Mission Accomplished

Posted on December 30, 2016 by rebeccabruner

At the end of September, author Tina Radcliffe spoke to my Christian Writers group about setting goals. As part of her presentation, Tina asked all of us to write down three goals for our writing that we wanted to meet by the end of the year. She had us make two copies of this list, one of which got sealed in a self-addressed envelope.

“I will be sending these back to you in January,” she told us.

At first, I was intimidated by the idea. With the holidays looming, the last thing I thought I needed was a guilt-inducing list of goals.

I asked Tina about how to avoid the discouragement of unmet goals. Her solution was to set goals that were much smaller and more manageable.

So this time, I used a different approach. I thought about my life, the things I knew I had coming up, my schedule, my family and their needs, and I set goals that I thought were realistic.

My goals included:

  1. Entering my latest book, A Wife of Valor, in a contest I had been considering
  2. Submitting the same book to the local authors collection of the Scottsdale Library
  3. Blogging once a week

I’m pleased and excited to report that, as of today, I have achieved all three goals. Knowing that the weekly blog post would be the biggest challenge over time, I made it a point to count up the weeks from then until the end of the year, so I had a quantifiable target.

For fourteen weeks now, I have updated my blog at least once. Not all the posts have been brand new. Some were advertisements for coming events, which ran for multiple weeks. But I met the goal.

So what have I learned? Deadlines really can be helpful, so long as your goals are realistic. You aren’t setting goals to impress anyone. Your goals are only valuable if they enable you to reach your target.

I know this is a lesson that will help me in the future. I plan to be wiser and less ambitious when it comes to goal setting. By making sure that what I am aiming at is really within reach, I hope to have the satisfaction of achieving many more goals in the years to come.

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | 1 Comment

The Magnificat

Posted on December 23, 2016 by rebeccabruner

“My soul exalts the Lord,
And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.
For He has had regard for the humble state of His bondslave;
For behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed.
For the Mighty One has done great things for me;
And holy is His name.
And His mercy is on generation after generation
Toward those who fear Him.
He has done mighty deeds with His arm;
He has scattered those who were proud
in the thoughts of their heart.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones,
And has exalted those who were humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things;
And sent away the rich empty-handed.
He has given help to Israel His servant,
In remembrance of His mercy,
As He spoke to our fathers,
To Abraham and his descendants forever.” Luke 1:46-55

Recently, I’ve been re-reading Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby and Claude V. King. The writers make the following very important point:
Stop worrying about finding God’s will for YOUR LIFE.
Focus instead on discerning GOD’S WILL.

This reminds me of the Magnificat, Mary’s song recorded in Luke 1:46-55. In this poetic passage, Mary expresses incredible joy. The thing that I find interesting is that she is rejoicing, not only over the great things God is doing in her own life, but also about the bigger picture of God’s work throughout history.

She talks about God having mercy on generation after generation. She is excited about His justice in bringing down the proud and the privileged, while exalting the humble and filling the hungry. The fact that God is keeping promises He made thousands of years before she was even born makes her joyful and excited.

I think this is what the authors of Experiencing God are talking about. This is an important corrective for my own narrow perspective. Too often, I focus only on what God is doing in my life in the present moment.

This is perilous because it’s such a limited view-point. one that is dictated by continually changing circumstances, instead of the eternal nature of God. Instead, I need to be more like Mary, to look for the BIG picture of what God is doing to glorify Himself throughout the world, and to rejoice in it.

 

Posted in Christmas, Faith, God's Grace, Love, Spirituality | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Slaughter of the Innocents–In Memory of the Victims of Sandy Hook, December, 2012

Posted on December 16, 2016 by rebeccabruner

Today, I’d like to share a post I wrote the week following the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School back in 2012. We need to honor the memory of those who were killed that day, but we also need to remember the reason we have for hope, even in such a dark world.

Matthew 2:16-18
“Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became very enraged, and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its environs, from two years old and under, according to the time from which he had ascertained from the magi. Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying,
A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; and she refused to be comforted, because they were no more.”

It’s as much a part of the Christmas story as the visit of the Magi, yet you will probably never see this gory scene depicted on a Christmas card. We have whitewashed over this horrific detail of the Christmas story, and in so doing, we have forgotten something essential about why Christ came.

We live in a world at war. Cosmic forces of evil have been inspiring inhuman acts of violence from the time that Cain killed Able. But God is not sitting idly by, watching with a sense of detachment or resignation. He sent His own Son to be born into a world where babies are senselessly murdered by enraged despots because God intends to do away with such pain and suffering forever.

Through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, God triumphed over the devil and over death, making a way for human beings to be reconciled to Himself and giving us an eternal hope stronger than the grave. Those who put their faith in Christ can have the certain hope of a life forever in the presence of God, where He will one day wipe away every tear from our eyes and forever restore to us loved ones who have been torn from our embrace by death. Christ said, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die.” John 11:25-26a

In this tragic time, we would do well to remember that this truly is the reason for the season.

Posted in Christmas, Faith, God's Grace, Spirituality | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment