Monthly Archives: August 2013

It’s not a woman’s job to teach a man to love

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By Denise Turney
It’s not a woman’s job to teach a man to love. Just reading the sentence alone might upset some. For years, women have been depicted as the saviors of men, the only people who could open men up to love. This belief caused (still causes) women to pay a heavy price.

For example, some women refuse to leave an abusive man, whether the man abuses her sexually, financially, psychologically or physically. Reasoning behind their refusal to leave may be that their presence helps the men in their lives to learn to love, to open up and accept love, to change and become a better person. Other women may feel that if they leave a man, the man won’t survive or will completely fall off the deep end.

But, if you look closely, you may see an air of arrogance, not to mention insanity, in that thought. To think someone couldn’t survive unless you allowed them to hurt you couldn’t be anything short of insanity. So, why do so many women do it?

Of course, many men don’t look to a woman to make them feel whole, complete, worthwhile. Not every man needs to juggle several women romantically or sexually to feel like he really is a man.

Howbeit, even loving men have lessons they can learn. But, women aren’t always the teachers.

To come to a place where we don’t believe we have to sacrifice anything in order for another person to get a life lesson . . . to wake up, would be a blessing. For some women, achieving this could take years of reconditioning, deprogramming old beliefs we’ve heard passed down through generations of women within and outside our families.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.

Opening to love is a great awakening

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By Denise Turney
Love may never be fully defined. It’s outside the realm of human logic. Those who experience its impact, serving as conduits for love to flow through, generally say the most they can do is feel it. For some, that may come while creating a novel. For others, it might occur while jogging, hiking or white river rafting.

Our painful pasts

Most of us know when we’ve been touched by love. We feel joy, peace and care. We may also feel as if everything is okay. Worry, stress, anxiety and concern melt away in the face of love. Knowing this, it’s a marvel that we don’t pursue love more, every second of the day and night.

Painful past experiences may be a leading reason why more of us don’t pursue, open to love. To truly be open to love, we have to give and receive love. If we’ve been hurt in the past (i.e. relationship breakup, career dream failure or sidestep), we might become convinced that those setbacks will happen every time we go after something we think we lead us to love.

Awakening to a marvelous way of being

If we find success, we might even feel that we’re not worthy of constant (I’m talking never turning off) love. As Raymond Clarke learns in “Love Pour Over Me,” both of these situations are caused by a lack of forgiveness, also known as an unwillingness to release the past.

Releasing people from the past is probably the majority of the work that psychologists do, as most, if not all pain, is rooted to a past event. To get and stay unblocked, forgiveness is absolutely necessary. There’s no way around it. All the singing, dancing, money giving and church going in the world won’t remove the need to forgive.

For Raymond, it’s a lesson that takes years to learn, but later is better than never.

What event from the past still has you? What’s holding you captive? Let love show you how to let it go. It’s time you awakened and advanced.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! 

Why do some people succeed while others don’t?

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By Denise Turney

You probably started noticing it when you were in pre-school or kindergarten. Some people consistently outperform others, and this, without intending to. It just seems to happen. In fact, sometimes no amount of training appears able to help some people succeed.

Education or knowing how to do certain tasks plays a role. Repetition or doing a job until the subconscious mind takes over, making the work seem natural (as if you’d been doing the work all your life) also plays a role.

However, nothing may cause a person to succeed more than self-confidence. Martin Luther is quoted as saying that, “Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times.”

It takes self-confidence to think you can reach a goal. It takes self-confidence to try a new endeavor, apply for a job, go out on a date, make a new friend, write and publish a novel, etc. The list of things it takes self-confidence to pull off may be endless.

If you’ve struggled with self-confidence since you were a kid, consider setting a small, short-term goal for yourself. Write down resources (i.e. computer, transportation) necessary to achieve the goal. Also, write down the specific steps (i.e. filling out a job application, creating a sample CD, writing the outline for a research paper) you’re going to take to achieve the goal.

As you achieve more goals, you’re self-confidence will build. Trainers use this approach to build a boxer’s confidence, pairing new boxers with opponents they know the boxer can defeat. Before long, a boxer can build enough confidence to step inside the ring with a heavyweight.

By setting and fulfilling small, then larger goals, your self-confidence could also increase. To tell if your confidence is gaining strength, think about how often you try something new, how often you introduce yourself to someone you never met before, how many new experiences you allow into your life each day or week.

The more self-confident you are, the more risks you’ll take and the more enriching experiences you’ll enjoy. Taking on wise risks and leaping into more rewarding experiences could also find you succeeding more, surpassing your biggest goals. As Eleanor Roosevelt shared, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'”

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn how Love Pour Over Me‘s Raymond Clarke builds his confidence (especially his confidence to accept and receive love), hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.

Readers Looking for Great Love Inspired Books

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By Denise Turney
True. The way readers get access to great stories has changed, more readers enjoying digital and audio books then they did a decade ago. What hasn’t changed is the fact that millions of children and adults love books. It’s this passion for entertaining, engrossing and emotionally charged books that find thousands and millions of readers regularly visiting literary websites like Good Reads, the African American Literary Book Club (AALBC), Rawsistaz, Amazon.com book discussions, The Red Room, Library Thing, Shelfari and Book Crossing.

For many people who love books, necessary elements of a great story include suspense, believable characters (even if those characters are placed center stage in a sci-fi novel), thought provoking dialogue and, of course, an intriguing plot. Readers, whether they appreciate and regularly buy love inspired books, mysteries, sci-fi novels, romance or westerns, want to care about characters in stories. They also want to fall in love with an author’s style, some readers preferring the work of authors whose writing flows akin to poetry.

However, perhaps it’s the way talented authors develop characters, dialogue, plot and story scenes that pull readers into the very heart of the stories they’re telling, until readers forget their own surroundings and challenges, that readers appreciate most. Before they know it, readers find themselves trying to figure out how to solve book characters’ problems, challenges that might mirror their own. As readers come up with solutions to challenges characters in books they enjoy face, they (without conscious awareness) gain solutions to their own real-life challenges.

It’s a benefit no one can put a price tag on. Redeeming love book stories change readers’ lives. And it might be because of that benefit that readers continue to seek out remarkable fictional stories. It might be why some readers can’t load their digital and wood bookcases with enough titles. What might be lesser known is that “the chance to change people’s lives in good ways” is a major reason why some authors sit down and create stories people love in the first place.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in my new book, Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love. 

Sources:

http://www.writersrelief.com/blog/2012/02/literary-love-stories/ (Writer’s Relief:  The One Thing All Great Love Stories Have In Common—And What It Means To Your Writing)

http://www.examiner.com/article/top-five-african-american-romance-novels (Examiner: Top 5 African American Romance Novels)

Funding the Early Stages of a Writing Career

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By Denise Turney
Your dreams of striking it big as a writer might take a few months, or years, to manifest. Before your dreams manifest, sitting in front of a computer screen, creating cliff hanging scenes, may not generate enough income for you to pay all your expenses. To keep moving forward, you’re going to have to find a way to fund your writing career.

Ways to Generate Income as a Fiction Writer

Some obvious ways you can fund the early stages of your writing career include getting a full-time or part-time job or starting an online business and selling digital products or services. If you want to have enough time to continue developing interesting novel plots, unforgettable characters and engaging dialogue, consider getting a part-time job. You could also start freelance writing for business clients, people who are looking for professional writers to help them market and sell their products and services.

Other steps you could take to fund the early stages of your writing career are:

  • Blogging (setting up your own blog using platforms like WordPress, Bravehost, etc. and adding affiliate ads to your blog so you can start earning money)
  • Teaching writing courses (you could teach a writing course at a local community college or you could start your own online writing course, asking attendees to pay a fee to attend webinars, etc. you lead)
  • Advertising business products (if you start your own radio show, you could reach out to businesses and establish marketing arrangements with them where they pay you a certain amount of money a month to advertise their products or services on your radio show)
  • Writing non-fiction articles and feature interviews for magazines, newspapers and journals (resources like Writer’s Digest, The Writer’s Market, Literary Market Place, Media Bistro, Journalism Jobs, etc. post writing job openings)
  • Edit other novelists’ manuscripts (I know of a few people who have earned money doing  this; it’s another way to stay close to writing while you earn an income)

Each of these steps does more than help you start generating additional income. The steps also allow you to continue to use and sharpen your writing skills. For example, if you worked as a copywriter, you could earn $50 an hour, developing banner ads, print ads, brochures and blog posts for clients. As you complete your writing assignments, you could also learn new ways to work with editors and strengthen your time management skills so you always meet deadlines. You could also discover new ways to market your novels, something that will definitely benefit you as you continue to move your writing career forward.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.