Book Spotlight: Bible Bites and Guest Post with Shirley Kufeldt

An interesting twist to learning the Bible and great way to preserve family history!

I'm not here to share my view points on religion, however, there are many Christians in my family so when I meet author Shirley Kufeldt and she shared her little booklets with me, I was intrigued. I had never seen anything done like this and really liked the idea. I know a lot of people who would love these personal journals/devotions. So I asked her to share a bit about her books and inspiration for putting them together.

 

Albert Einstein stated:  God always takes the simplest way.

BIBLE BITES booklets are small pocket-sized monthly journals that include current prayer requests and focused daily Scripture for journaling and reflection. This is a simple solution to a situation many would like to resolve. Through BIBLE BITES people can easily learn, memorize or meditate on Scripture as they journal regularly with direction and purpose.

TREASURE IS IN THE BIBLE with SHIRLEY KUFELDT

I’ve learned to use what God gives me and to praise Him for what He takes away because both attitudes bring glory to Him. 

My working years were spent as the admin in offices where I excelled in organizing, editing and simplifying the work process. Now retired, becoming an author is a total career change for me and a chance to start something new.

While attending a Christian-based support group at my church for a number of years, I realized recovery from codependency is hard work. Too many attendees just showed up without doing the homework and missed out on what God could do for them and through them. They didn’t invest time in their own recovery from codependency. It was my desire to develop a simple method for those folks who, for whatever reason, are unable to complete homework assignments but have a sincere desire to examine God’s Word and develop a personal relationship with Him. 

Many of us have received greeting cards with a Bible verse specific to the card’s sentiment. I now enjoy reading my Bible as History, using my admin skills to look for treasure, to find familiar verses in context and discover the author’s original intent. The Bible is the story of real people who lived, believed in God, disobeyed Him, experienced consequences for sin, and then amazingly found redemption in His all-consuming love for them. 

In 30 years of Bible studies, I’d been encouraged to journal my personal faith walk but was never successful. For the past three years, I journaled in small booklets developed as devotionals, which include pages for prayer requests and topical verses for each title in the series.

In prayer, God gave me the name BIBLE BITES and the cover photo for the first book, Meet God and His Son. BIBLE BITES records an individual’s faith walk and connects the writer to their descendants with a record of hopes, dreams, aspirations and answered prayers. BIBLE BITES will become a treasured family legacy similar to family photo albums and heirloom items passed on to future generations.

Albert Einstein stated that Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler. Beginning the habit of regular devotions while developing a personal relationship with God can hardly be simpler than responding to His Word in BIBLE BITES.

I continue to use my admin skills compiling verses for future titles. I’m learning to promote my books and have been gratified when friends enthusiastically appreciate my efforts to make Bible verses so much more user friendly. Now I can praise God for taking something away from me—my fears because BIBLE BITES deepens my relationship with Christ and brings glory to God.

Book Titles:

MEET GOD AND HIS SON

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61244-099-6

GOALS THAT LEAD TO SUCCESS

Paperback ISBN:  978-1-61244-100-9

AMERICA, LAND THAT I LOVE

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61244-101-6

THE WOW FACTOR

Paperback ISBN:  978-1-61244-102-3

Publisher: Halo Publishing, Int.

Places where your book(s) are available for sale:

www.halopublishing.com

Note: Verses come from the New Living Translation

 

BIO:

Shirley Kufeldt is a wife, mother, grandmother and tea party activist who helped raise their two daughters with prayers that ended by Thanking God for giving us our daughters. She now searches for Bible verses for her BIBLE BITES Legacy Series so others will easily find the one verse that will cause them to develop a personal relationship with Jesus Christ for salvation. Check out her posts at www.BibleBites.net and on Facebook.

You can find out more about Shirley Kufeldt and her Bible Bites series at http://tinyurl.com/bb3ofxd

 

KDP Select: good marketing or gimmick?

I thought about Kindle Direct Publishing "Select" for a long time - was it worth tying up my books to a single selling source? Do I want to give exclusivity to someone?  It was a moot question while the bulk of my work was with a traditional publisher, but when they went belly-up and the rights reverted back to me, I was now faced with the question of whether I would give it a try. If you're a self-publisher, I suspect you are too. So here are the basics:

• The key element of KDP Select is that your e-book is available exclusively on Amazon for 90 days. You have to remove it from all other stores including iTunes, B&N, Nook, etc.
• You are given the opportunity to promote your ebook for free for 5 out of the 90 days.
• Your book is enrolled in the Kindle Owners Lending Library from which Prime members can borrow one book per month and you're paid (at near royalty rates) every time your book is borrowed.
• KDP Select enrollment allows you to earn 70% on ebooks sold through Amazon’s new Indian store.

Is it worth it?  I'm still not sure. The free days and lending library are both pretty good opportunity to get your books into the hands of potential reviewers (though there's certainly no guarantee you'll get a review from those who've borrowed or downloaded your book) and to create word of mouth. For a relatively new or unknown author, this can be a very positive thing. In the long run though, it might do more harm than good to lock out readers from Apple's i-bookstore, Kobo, Sony and of course the ability to sell off your own website.  My own personal view is that it's a pretty good short term tactic to spread the word of new (or newly set up books) - 90 days isn't that long and once the period is done, and you've created a little buzz, you can then put your book elsewhere and open up opportunities for additional readers.

Of course, like anything, there's no point putting your book into KDP Select if you aren't going to promote it!  So how valuable it will be to you depends on how well you use it - how well you promote the free days and the lending to your followers, and ultimately, how good your book is!  If you entice your readers, they'll come back for more, and that's what it's all about.  I'm giving the free days a go with two of my books this year, and as part of your research, you owe it to yourself :-) to pop over to Amazon and download the copies during my free days.  For Christmas, there's the poetry book Blooming Red, which I co-wrote with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, available (just click on the book cover on the left) on the 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 of December.  It makes a great thoughtful, fast electronic Christmas gift for someone you care about so spread the word! Then there's Black Cow (just click on the book cover to the right) available between the 20th and 24th of December.  I hope you'll download a free copy of both of these books, and try out KDP Select from the users point of view. I'd love to hear what you think in the comments below, and do please share your own experiences with Kindle Select.

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of the poetry books Repulsion Thrust and Quark Soup, the novels Black Cow and Sleep Before Evening, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Deeper Into the Pond, Blooming Red, Cherished Pulse, She Wore Emerald Then, and Imagining the Future. She also runs a radio show, The Compulsive Reader Talks. Find out more about Magdalena at http://www.magdalenaball.com.

Fun Words to Think About

Here is a list of some important and interesting words for writers to think about, know and use. Have fun! 

ACTION: Action and plot grow out of compelling, interesting characters. Suspense, action, and conflict are what keep the reader interested. Action is presenting the real life evidence through characters, by showing, not telling the story.

BEATS: Beats can be the little bits of action interspersed through a scene, especially in dialogue. For example: “I don’t even want to go there,” I said. He laid a hand on my arm. “You want me to drive?”

CONSONANCE: Is the close repetition of the same consonants of stressed syllables, especially at the end of words, with differing vowel sounds. Example: Boat and Night.

DISSONANCE: Is a mingling or union of harsh, inharmonious sounds that are grating to the ear. Often used to create a disturbing or tumultuous atmosphere or confusion or bewilderment in poetry.

 EUPHONY: Is the harmony or beauty of a sound that provides a pleasing effect to the ear. It is achieved not only by the selection of individual word sounds, but also by their relationship in the repetition, proximity, and flow of sound patterns.

FLASHBACK: A window to your character’s past. A flashback gives you a way to “show” your character’s past through a scene without “telling” the story through narration. Be very careful in using these so it doesn’t “bump” the reader out of the action & story flow while you are explaining what happened sometime in the past. It can be passive. Keep it very brief and try to use a sense to trigger the memory, e.g. a smell or a sound, etc.

HOMOPHONE: Is a word that has the same in sound as another word, but different spelling and meaning. (For example: Pair as in set of two, and pear as in edible fruit.)

 METAPHOR: An analogy between two objects or ideas when you say one item IS another. For example: “Then it was there alongside, the locomotive a sudden tornado, black, huge, screaming…” A SIMILE is saying something is LIKE another: “The bird’s wings were blue as the sky.”

ONOMATOPOEIA: Words that imitate sounds, or any word whose sound is suggestive of its meaning. Using words like a musical instrument to create a specific sound. For example: the words “Splash” or “Plop.”

PARADOX: Is a statement that contains seemingly contradictory elements or appears contradictory to common sense, yet can be true when viewed from another angle. A good character trait to experiment with.

STORY LINE: The plot of a book, film, or dramatic work.

THEME: An idea, point of view, or perception expressed as a phrase, proposition, or question. The root or core of what is expressed. VISION: A mental image produced by imagination. How someone sees or conceives of something. Discernment or perception; intelligent foresight. The mystical experience of seeing as if with the eyes of characters within your writing.

Do you have any favorites to add to this list?

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A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in Northwest Washington. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, has recently won the national WILLA Award. Heidi has a degree in journalism, a certificate in fiction writing, and is a member of Northwest Independent Editors Guild. She teaches writing and edits, blogs, and is working on the next books in her “Dare to Dream” series.