So God Told You To Write a Book - Now What?
Author Wendy Jo Cerna gives writing tips and writing inspiration for people who feel called to write a book but just don't know where to start or how to finish the process. Whether you are self-publishing, hybrid-publishing or going through a traditional publisher, your writing journey is just that -yours. Grab the tips and inspirations from Wendy Jo and her guest and run with your ideas all the way to the finish line - a book in your hands.
So God Told You To Write a Book - Now What?
Ann Harrison - Devotional - Praying Through The Seasons
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Ann Harrison is my guest for Episode 6 of Season 2. She is the author of a new devotional entitled Praying Through the Seasons: Seven Aspects of Prayer and Communion with God. Ann is not only an author but a poet and freelance editor - she is also totally blind. She is tenacious about overcoming obstacles whether that be from technology, external forces or her own inner struggles. Throughout this conversation, you will find that Ann has connected herself to a bunch of writing resources and groups including Christian Book Academy and 540 Writers Community. I learned so much from Ann and I'm sure you will too.
Hello, authors, and welcome back to So God Told You to Write a Book, now what? I'm your host, Wendy Joe Cerna, and I am excited to venture into the second season of the podcast. In season one, I took you along with me through the process of writing, editing, and publishing my third novel, Soul Buck in a Tale of Generations. I'm currently in the thick of getting my fourth novel, The Sabotage Scroll, finished up and published. But enough about me. Season two is going to be all about my fellow Christian authors who are launching their books. We're going to chat about the journey they took from the inception of their books to holding the finished products in their hands. So hop on board for season two of So God Told You to Write a Book Now What? I'm convinced you're gonna find both inspiration and practical knowledge to help you obey the call of God on your life to create the book He has given you to create. Hey, if the author and finisher of all things told you to write a book, he believes that you can. And so do I. That's right. Hello authors, welcome back to So God Told You to Write a Book. Now what? We're in season two, and this is episode six, and today we have a real treat because I have with me today author Ann Harrison. Welcome to the show, Ann.
SPEAKER_05Well, thank you. It's good to be here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Ann and I met, uh it's probably two years ago now. Uh, and we haven't never met in person. We only met um through Zoom calls because Anne interviewed me on her podcast. Uh Inspirational Journey. Was that the name of it?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, Inspirational Journeys, Stories That Matter, was the name of the one the podcast I was running at the time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Uh, and she interviewed me because I had just published my, I think it was my third book, Soul Backen, at the time. And we had a wonderful time on that interview. So now it's time to turn the tables. Can I get to interview Anne about her new book, which is a devotional called Praying Through the Seasons: Seven Aspects of Prayer and Communion with God. Now, Anne, are you living in Georgia currently? I am. Is this your is Georgia home to you?
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_00Born and raised there?
SPEAKER_05Yep.
SPEAKER_00Wow. All right. Well, good. We're I'm out on the West Coast, so we got a little bit of a time difference here. But Anne is an author, a poet, and a freelance editor who is totally blind. Blind from birth, Anne?
SPEAKER_05Yes. Well, I well, to be honest with you, um, I was only supposed to get eight hours of oxygen and I got 24. So the um the optic nerves did not uh did not develop like they were supposed to.
SPEAKER_00Ah, okay. So you've lived with this your whole life?
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yes, but despite all of that, Anne uh is busy. She's uh she loves to crochet while listening to podcasts or music, or you can find her with her hands in a book reading from her electronic braille display. And this is not your first foray into writing either. You've written some other things. What else have you written?
SPEAKER_05Well, I the one thing, another thing that I'm really proud of, but um, that I wrote a poetry book called Um The Spirit of Creativity, Inspirational Poems for the Creative at Heart. I've written some other things, but had to rebrand them due to some branding issues that I had with other com with other companies and all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00Sure. So you have a poetry book out. My mom was a poet, published a lot of poetry, so I'm familiar with that. That's lovely. I'll have to look at that as well.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00So this specific book, how did you hear from God to write this book?
SPEAKER_05Okay, this is what was interesting. Back in January, I was doing, I was right, I was working, putting together another poetry book, put my fiction aside for a while, and then God said, I need you to write a devotional to go with this poetry book. And I'm like, Okay, Lord, I'm not finished with this. No, I was not like okay. I was like, wait, what?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05God gave me the foundation. I'm like, hmm, okay. So I started the bigger project, and then of course, two years before that, I'd um been to the Kingdom Writers Conference career courageous writer edition uh from that was sponsored by Christian Book Academy. And um God kept nudging me to to God nudged me a couple years ago to try to join, and uh, I was on my laptop, only had one screen reader at the time. So I it would not it would not work for me. And then since I got my desktop, I have both Jaws, which is job access with speech, and NVDA, non-desktop visual, non-visual desktop access. Okay, and and I have a way that I can switch between the two. And so I had paid for a workshop on how to write a 21-day devotional. Of course, mine was a bit different, but anyway, and so I got the free trial and I kept trying, kept trying, kept trying with the Jaws. God told me, you know, why don't you try NVDA? And so I did that, and of course I'm on Christian Book Academy with a scholarship now, or half scholarship. But the thing is, um, once I started, it was when I was trying to learn how to market my poetry book that God told me to to break the devotionals, the big devotional that I had that I was trying to write into smaller ones.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_05Because Shelly is Shelly Hits is all about and I'm and I'm and she's not saying that you can't write a big book, but she's saying to get your to get something out there while you're working on the bigger book, she's all about starting with the short Kindle ebook or the short book. Because you can do it in Kindle and print.
SPEAKER_00And who is this you're referring to?
SPEAKER_05Um CJ and Shelly Hits run Christian Book Academy.
SPEAKER_00Okay. CJ and Shelly Hicks. And that's a program you can sign up for.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's a membership program.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_05Um go to Christianbookacademy.com, okay. You can learn more about their program. And I like their training methods. Because you know how you go to conferences and you get these workshops that are maybe 50 minutes to an hour and a half, and it's a lot of information covered in one big workshop. Shelly does the bigger workshops like that, but during the workshops, most of the time you're it's you're it's implementation, but she also puts them in lessons in in like shorter chunks. So you're not overwhelmed.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah. I know you get it's like drinking from a fire hose at conferences because you just you get a lot of information, you know, and you're trying to absorb it and then think, okay, how do I implement this? So this is a little bit a slower way to feed yourself a constant flow of learning.
SPEAKER_05Right. You can you can learn how to do like publisher book and you know, even writing your first doing your outline, writing your first chapter, writing your first draft, all of that in one in little chunks, usually one at a time, which is what works better for me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That sounds that sounds very interesting. So so you started this book like last January, January of 2025.
SPEAKER_05Yes, this past this past January. Okay. I started working on this, and then this one actually came out in July, the ebook came out in July.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_05And I did the paper back in in September.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_05Because I knew I had my friend had I have a friend who helped me with the cover and the formatting.
SPEAKER_00Sure. So but this is you're also busy. So you decided to do this in smaller chunks, which is an interesting strategy. And so you you're also working on like the the next chapter of this, is that correct? Walking with God through the chapters.
SPEAKER_05Is a series, yeah. I've got a a book that is right now called a time to journal, um, deepening your relationship through the art with God through the art of creative writing. But actually, that book, because of the way I God told me to structure it, it needs to be broken into two books instead of two parts. So the first one is gonna be from triumph, from tribulation to triumph, deepening your relationship with God through the art of self-expression. Because a lot of my testimony will be put in that book. Okay, and then the second one is your sacred writing space, connecting with God through two-way journaling.
SPEAKER_00Hmm. Interesting. So you've got a lot of projects. You never a dull moment with Ann Harrison.
SPEAKER_05Right, and plus God's pulled me back into my my original fiction.
SPEAKER_00Oh, really?
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Oh my gosh, that thing has morphed so many times.
SPEAKER_00You're still working on that, we're not.
SPEAKER_05Oh, yeah, from um just a mystery to trying to do a psychological thriller to just a regular thriller. The research bogged me down on that, to middle grade and then up to young adult speculative fiction. And now I'm in the process on the third draft of the rebrand, um, rewriting the story.
SPEAKER_00Oh wow. You got your hand in a lot of pods. Interesting. So this book that you've just put out, the devotional, did you self-publish this or was this through a hybrid publisher?
SPEAKER_05I still published it. I had some help, but I self-published it.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so I yeah, I was wondering who did so you have software that helps you with Yeah, I have two screen readers. Screen writers.
SPEAKER_05Reader, screen readers. It's text-to-speech technology.
SPEAKER_00Okay, yeah. So you need that, but you also have people who are helping you. And so how did you connect with how did you connect with your the people who've uh assisted you?
SPEAKER_05Okay, so I have a very dear friend, and she was learning how to do um formatting through vellum and the cover design. She because she'd learned how to do the ebook cover and this full print cover. Yeah, and so she she did that for me. I told her I picked something, and she's like, no, just wait until you get going really good, and then you can pay me for it. But actually, and I and I edit for her.
SPEAKER_00So oh, okay. Okay, so she so you sort of uh scratch each other's backs, as it were.
SPEAKER_05Right. I mean, she's one of my editing clients, and I don't charge her exorbitant fees for doing the for doing the editing for her. She wants to pay me for that.
SPEAKER_00But that's a great way to do it. A little barter system.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and she'll do much more in formatting. And the editor I used, um Sally Shoop, I met her through a workshop that my uh friend Jen Lowry was doing on, I don't remember if it was book launches or something. She had done some some free workshops during COVID on Zoom. And I met Sally Shoop through that, and I reached out to three editors.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_05And Sally Shoop was the one that I could afford the most.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Did she do a do how did she do a just a copy edit for you, or what kind of levels of edit did she do for you?
SPEAKER_05Well, she did a line edit, and I'm sure she did some developmental stuff too. Yeah. Some minor developmental stuff. And then I had another lady who was helping me, a friend of mine from the 540 writers community, who was helping me. She was going through it and looking at it and giving me some other feedback too. Yeah. I had some people helping me with that.
SPEAKER_00So you're connected to uh you've been very intentional about connecting with a lot of different writing communities. Is that true?
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And where do you find those? Are you just one leads to another?
SPEAKER_05Or well, the five 540 writers community, I found through uh meeting our president, and well, she calls herself chief encouragement officer. I found her through the Kingdom Writers Conference, that big five-day event that I attended. I mean, I've I had been a member I've been I've been following the the Kingdom Writers Facebook page. It was like a free community page, a group or yeah, it's a it's a group. And that's where I learned about it. And then and then followed Becky and joined that. That's a free a free a non a non for nonprofit, not for profit organization for writers because she wants to have conference quality workshops that that she does. She wants to have writers to have access to that when when we can't afford if we can't afford to go to a conference, she wants to give us the mini, the mini workshop, the workshops on Thursday nights, and a and a writer's and a community where we can write together.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And it's called Kingdoms Kingdom Writers.
SPEAKER_05No, this one the one I'm talking about is five for 540 Writers Community.
SPEAKER_00540?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, 540 Writers Community. Writers Community Comm is the website where you go and sign up for the newsletter.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. And where is the Kingdom Writers Conference? Where is that help?
SPEAKER_05That's what that's through Christian Book Academy. I'm trying to think. I uh if you want to learn more about Christian Book Academy, you go to Christian Book Academy.com. If you want to find out about the Kingdom Writers Conference, she has a Kingdom Writers Conference.com website. They just had one. She just did one in May.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yeah, and it's a it's a long conference. Five days.
SPEAKER_05No, that was that one particular courageous writer edition.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_05She's doing them like in one day.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05There's like the kickoff call and then she has a workshop the next day that she does.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_05But there's all you also have if you do it for free, you have five days to access the presentations.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_05And then but if you're a Christian book academy member, you don't have to pay for it.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_05Access you you you get that.
SPEAKER_00Um part of the deal.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's part of the deal. There's a lot that's part of the deal.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So you do a lot to connect yourself to uh writers and those that can hold your hand, as it were, as you're going through the process of getting it up and out written and not just written, but out published.
SPEAKER_05Into the yeah, into the hands of of read of the right reader at the right time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05That's one of the things that that CJ and Shelley encourage us to pray to pray for.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, because you realize, I mean, I've written a few books now, and you realize, okay, writing the book is only like half of the deal. Then you gotta get out and figure out how pray about and constantly work on how do I get this into the hands of the readers who actually will really benefit from it.
SPEAKER_05Yep, and that's where you they Shelly has there's like four different you can you can do um in the in the Christian book academy, she has these marketing things where you have the marketing compass where the north is all about writing. If you want to be if you want to use writing for your marketing, um, she shows you how to do that, but I think there's more in-depth. I've taken that that part of the course, but there's more in-depth to it because I was a bit overwhelmed just trying to listen to all of the videos and things.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And then the South Comp is for podcasts and speaking.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_05And then I think there's one for Amazon ads, and then there's one for just doing a short, just you know, taking the simple route. But then she also has the um marketing explorer, which I haven't looked at it yet, but there's a choose your own adventure. So they have a lot of different workshops that you can choose from in the uh on on an airtable database that she does.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of different ways to uh market anymore. But he also I think finding the way that that suits you best is part of the is part of the challenge, is because not everybody is can you can't be all things. Um, but like you do pot you did podcasting for a year. You're comfortable with that. And so coming on here and doing this is sort of a sweet spot for you to get your book out to people that because I live out on the West Coast Um and I'm part of a couple different writing groups. So now we can you know go and intersect with each other's uh writing communities, which is part of how you get the word out, right?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I mean, and you also want to look for readers too. So another thing, and I have not uh I need to take off my duff and do it, but I've been busy with projects too, so but um another thing too, she they also have milestones for each each part of the Kingdom Writers path that you follow for the Christian Academy. You get a reward for choosing your topic and writing your outline. I think I think you get an instrumental music album. You get a reward for doing finishing your first draft. You get a I think there's a finish your first chapter award, and some of them are workshops. And you get a reward for like finishing your first draft, publishing your book, and launching your book. There's different, and then the impact lives is a hundred book sales.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So you get so they keep you moving forward, progress, dangling a carrot out there to keep you, which is great. You get accountability and you also get some rewards. Nice.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, you get milestones, you get workshops, you get art. Um you get a a um notebook and pen with one of the milestones that she let the notebook she lettered, she did the lettering on it herself.
SPEAKER_00Hmm. Cool. Yeah, so it really keeps you going forward in the process, which is part of the challenge of writing a book is to continual just one step, the next step, and then the next step, right?
SPEAKER_05And with the progress pods, because I'm in the progress par progress pod on Tuesday mornings, and the one thing that I mean, we we do talk about our insights and highlights for the week, but the one thing that we focus on and and and the the people in each pod focuses on is the next tiny step.
SPEAKER_00Yes, that's good.
SPEAKER_05That's that accountability part.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's really good. So, did you have any like big obstacles you had to overcome? I mean, I know there's lots of little obstacles, but as you're writing this book since last January, what are some of the things that sort of got in your way that you had to push through?
SPEAKER_05Well, I had a lot of resistance because I was really excited about writing the devotional, and then I get going on it, I'm like, oh, how can I do this? And then the devil tried to taunt me into working on this fiction before I was ready for it. God said, No, you don't need to do that, you need to work on the work on getting praying through the seasons out because he really wanted it out, yeah. And just waiting for somebody else to do the formatting and stuff, just that waiting period, that was a big thing because I'm like, Lord, I know you gave me this date, like July 17th for the ebook. And I said, I know you gave me this date, but I'm struggling to get things done. And even my friend who was doing who did the cover for me, she said God told her to get it ready so that I could get it out on that date.
SPEAKER_00Wow. That's that's good, good confirmation. I know part of the I mean, when you have to rely on other people for editing and those things, I know in my last book that my editor had some I mean, just personal issues come up that were pretty big and difficult to deal with. And so give her grace to set it aside for a few weeks and then deal with her life. And but all those things are part of your process too. They that you have to wait and and then trust that God has got the exact right moment for it to be birthed into the world too, which maybe is or isn't what you had anticipated, right?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and and what was interesting, now that I've started rewriting the fiction, the novel, um, I kept I got I'm like, Lord, you told me to do devotionals, but now your my characters just start yammering at me, and the Lord told me follow them. And it's all related. I'm going, okay.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And then I needed that encouragement. So on the Right Conversation blog that Edie Melson does, there was this article about following, give give yourself giving yourself grace to follow your calling. It's like because he had he had written a three-book series, and one of his characters came back and told him, he said he was the story was finished because but she said no, he left her pregnant until uh at the end of the third book.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And he was not only was he writing her character, he was trying to write her husband's character, and God said, Don't write him, follow him. So that was the encouragement that I needed to go where God leads. And and one thing I heard about on the David McGee show, which is a podcast I've been listening to, he did an essay on life, and one thing that he said on yesterday's episode was writing pushes the boundaries, and then that God gave me and gets you out of the box you put yourself in.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, I know with my books I wound up I've written now three books that I put into a collection. Collection called the Saint Gerard Collection because they all revolve around characters from this little town called Saint Gerard. But I certainly did not anticipate. I wrote one book about it, and I didn't realize that there was a whole lot more to tell about those characters. And like you say, they come back to you with there's more, there's more to tell about our lives. And so exploring that is kind of fun.
SPEAKER_05And Becca says, You need to let Becca and Maggie, my twins, in my book. I said, You need to let us tell our story. Don't tell it the way you think you should. You need to let us tell our story. Yeah, I discovered with my fictional character. She's she's um struggling with faith and not believing in some things that she sees. And there are some supernatural, or some spiritual and maybe some supernatural elements but given to me by God. And God told me, follow, and not just said, God, what do you want me to do with this? Because you told me to write devotional. He said, Follow your characters.
SPEAKER_00Hmm. But now's the time to do that. Because he seems to have given you a specific time to write this devotional and get it across the finish line, true.
SPEAKER_05True. And he's not, he's he's I know that the journaling devotional that I've that I've gotten working on, he I'm letting it sit because I kind of need to. I was ready to start editing, but he said, wait, and then I got an editing project, and then that's when he gave me this one to start writing again. So when he wants me to do whatever project he's got me doing and taking me between project, as long as I'm not getting stuffed, uh stuffed, stuck, yeah, it's okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, all right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so but do you find that um at least for me, I think I talked with another guest about this, that doing something different that is still creative, when you go back to the last thing that you had to set aside, it still it uh like loosens up some creativity in you.
SPEAKER_05Yes, because I even wrote a children's story. I haven't even I haven't even edited it, I haven't finished editing it or anything. I even wrote a children's story called Um The Case of the Missing Socks. And it was a fun right, but will it get published? Probably not now. Because and and and one of the guys and the guy that's in my critique group, he said he liked the story, but he said, You don't have the passion for this one as you did for your devotionals. And he couldn't say why, but he saw that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05So it was just a fun right after going through getting tooth extractions. I think God was like, Here, I'll give you something fun to fun to create while you're dealing with that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's tooth extractions are not fun, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_05No, they're not.
SPEAKER_00Oh boy, well, I I feel that pain. I've I've been there on a few a few occasions. Um, so let me let me ask you this. Have you always wanted to be an author, or is this a newer thing in your life?
SPEAKER_05Well, it's kind of been off and on because I started I I dabbled in it when I was in high school.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_05And I never finished, I've I dabbled in it a couple of times, never really finished the story. Because got side I got sidetracked and I started reading. But um, and then in 2001, well, not in 2001, it was like 2003. I listened to this, the this, because it's they the National Library of Service calls them talking books.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Honestly, I call them audio. There's they would still be considered audiobooks just with the accessibility features. Yeah, yeah. Um, I listened to the it was called New Stories of the South. It was edited by Lee Smith, and she was talking about how one of her students felt like she couldn't write. And she said, tell me about the the weekend, and she said she would walk through North Carolina in a mall in North Carolina. So and then she illustrated Lee Smith in that introduction, illustrated how she taught her student to write, and that's when the writing bug really bit. And that's when I ended up making the first of two serious mistakes.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_05Um, I went with a print on demand, not a print on demand, of what I've learned late later on was a vanity press.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_05Because they caught they pay they charged a bunch of money to get the book published. They didn't have an editor, we're charging for any marketing materials and all this kind of stuff. And a friend of and another guy, another friend that I used to talk to, he said they're looking for suckers, meaning that publishing company, and I believe it. So, and then I actually ended up doing that again the first time I tried to publish the book that I'm the the first brand or the first I don't know, iteration is not the word I'm looking for, but still, I mean it was like don't go with these vanity presses. They may or may not charge you a lot, but they don't do your book justice. Because one of the things I did the second time I did it, it was like when I pulled the contract, then um I looked at it because I was using a different voice than what I used to use for my screen reader, and she mispronounced the word because I had spelled Asher, A-S-H-E-R. Come to find out the editor had misspelled the character's name, and not only did the editor misspell the character's name, but there was semicolons in the dialogue. There was a lot of stuff.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05I don't go into the whole horror story, but that's when I had to redo the whole thing and and it morphed into and I'm still trying to figure out I think the story's still trying to figure out what it wants to be.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You have to be careful with the whole publishing, because there are there are a lot of, I guess, non-integrous uh individuals out there who will take advantage of the fact that you don't know what you're doing in the publishing world. And then they will say they're gonna give you a bunch of things and then just wind up, you know, charging you a bunch of money and not really giving you uh what you've paid for. And you have to be careful. And so you've got to find uh, I think, you know, personal references, knowing people who've down been down that path before you and know the individuals is probably the best way to go if you have if you're gonna go down a publishing with a publishing house that um maybe you're you're unfamiliar with. So you gotta be careful out there. There's a lot of options, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Oh, I've learned a lot of that. I've worked for I've worked as an editor for two publishers. Okay. I work for Scrivening, well, I've worked for three. I work for Scrivenings Press now, and I also work for Elk Lake Publishing.
SPEAKER_00Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_05I'm in between projects with them, but I did work with Celebrate Lit for a while.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So you've you've actually been on the inside of some of those helping helping authors get their their stuff polished and better, right?
SPEAKER_05And they don't right, and they don't charge you to to publish with them. They're small traditional houses.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_05Those the ones that I work for, they're a print-on-demand publisher.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_05Like these big warehouses where they can do big print runs.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05They're they're the small houses like that, they want you to feel like part of their family.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So it's like a family-oriented type thing. At least at least two of the three that I've worked for.
SPEAKER_00Good. So uh tell me a little, let's talk a little bit about this current book. It's very much focused on well, it's called Seven Aspects of Prayer and Communion with God. How did you land on that as prayer being the topic?
SPEAKER_05Well, okay, so I started reading well, I first read The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson, and then I read Draw the Circle. And God said, and and and I prayer was one of the things because I'd written poems about prayer, and God said, do this one on prayer because people need it. And then I I went through the um Christian Book Academy lesson workshops on how to hear God's voice. I mean, I had already started listening for God's voice, but I went through that to kind of delve deeper into that spiritual aspect and to kind of gain a little bit more, to learn a bit more.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05That's where God gave me the words to write. And I was about ready to publish when God gave me the one about um corporate prayer. So yeah, so God gave me the words, and I was just like, the words just flowed out of me like water onto the Yeah, that's cool.
SPEAKER_04That's a cool experience.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and I had the introduction, I had the all he laid out the all the all the chapters for me, and with the journal prompts and the creative challenges and journal reflection prompts, and then the conclusion with a final prayer and all that. So it took me about three or four months to to write it and put it together before getting it published.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I love that I read through it, and I love that a lot of not a lot, but yeah, a lot of it is actually geared, uh aimed at people like you and I who spend a lot of time writing, and you give some very particular prayer tips for authors.
SPEAKER_05I do, but I also have this one chapter, I think it's like chapter two. There was one where parents can talk about the intercessory prayer with their kids with that little little Rain's Big Assignment story I put in there.
SPEAKER_00A little mini, a little mini fictional story. That's a that's a good illustration. It's like a parable.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But I appreciated the tips on you know, corporate prayer, but like having a prayer support group that you and you give tips about building that and oh yeah, a prayer team. A prayer team. Do you have a prayer team yourself?
SPEAKER_05Yes. I have one, let's see. One, two. There's at least four or five of us together.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And you do you support one another or they Yeah, we we we pray for one another.
SPEAKER_05If they need prayer, they they call me or text me or whatever. And then also on my progress pod, they've become um prayer team too. Yeah. Because we pray for one another in there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So that's great. One of my one of my guests, I think it was Susie Crosby, she talks about that she has a prayer team that she um she checks back in with every January to say, look, you can still be part of this or you can take a break. There's no condemnation here. And she gives them like an out. If it's because sometimes seasons of life we just get too busy and actually committing to pray for one another sometimes doesn't fit in well. So I thought, well, that's a good idea to actually give people an option out or in and and make sure that this is still something that they feel called to.
SPEAKER_05Right. Because I had prayed about who to put who at who to ask to be on the prayer team.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05I had, and and I pray for them too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. It's a mutual, yeah.
SPEAKER_05And when I was facing the resistance, yeah, I called and texted my prayer team right then and there because I knew that this I was gonna need their help. I could pray, but I needed these people to stand in the gap for me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, it's so valuable to build that prayer team. So your book came out. You said the ebook came out in July and the paper back in August.
SPEAKER_05In September.
SPEAKER_00September. And are you getting feedback from people yet?
SPEAKER_05I've gotten a f I've got a look and see how many reviews I have, but I've got a few reviews, and I'm also getting people like another lady. There were two people that were in my progress pod. They told me they read it. Um, my friend Christina, she who was in there, she was going through some tough times with her family.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um, and she said she was she had read it on Kindle Unlimited, and she said it couldn't have come at a better time.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_05She really needed it. And then um another lady from Canada who's in my me in my pro in my pod, she said she got it and she was looking at it and she was like, Well, is this the tiny testimonial? I said, it's it's a it's a short devotional, and with the paperback, KDP put some blank pages in it, which I was gonna, you know, see if I could get my friend to fix that. But honestly, and I don't know where the blank pages are, but honestly, you can use those as churn people can use those as journal pages.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because you really uh you really encourage at the end of each chapter some journal challenges that you give to people to to actually I mean, not to just read your stuff, which is good, but then to actually process it personally and write out those things in their journals.
SPEAKER_05Because this God and my friend Jen Lowry, she I read her Happy Renewal Year uh Challenge devotional. I read a couple of her devotionals, and that's what she did. And I actually wrote one um called about the broke the one about the broken walls. Yeah, I just redid it for this book, but I wrote that for a book of a devotional called Help for the Hurting. And it was it was written to but the proceeds were were going to net to NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, mental illness, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and so I and she that's what she wanted. She wanted the guiding Bible verse, the the heart of the devotional, the devotional thought, and then and a journal reflection prompt. And so, and then I read Soul Care for Writers by Edie Melson, and she has this thing called forging a creative connection. And God said, Why don't you and God told me he said, Do a creative challenge and a journal reflection prompt at the end of each devotional.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And so that's where I got that idea. It's not the same as what somebody like Cindy Sprolls would teach, or this or that one would teach. It's everybody writes their devotionals differently.
SPEAKER_00Sure.
SPEAKER_05And this is what God gave me.
SPEAKER_00So it's I found it very helpful too, because it forces you to reflect and and actually sink a little deeper into the things that you're that you're uh revealing through your writing. So I think it's a great idea.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and a lot of uh I've read several. Um there was one that had like the the title of the chapter, the devotion, then you've got the Bible verse, then you've got a a pr um a thought, and then a prayer, and uh and an activation. I'm reading one that's like uh that's centered on different aspects of the gospel. You get you get the title and the contributor's name and all that, and then you get the Bible verse and then you get the devotional thought, but you don't get a prayer or any action to take afterwards. So like I said, every devotional writer is different.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And that's part of the challenge with devotional writing is that you have to there's a format that you have to pray about and and implement that is best best for you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So let me ask you this a little change in topic. Did you have any particular scriptures that helped you in this last year as you were writing this?
SPEAKER_05Oh yeah. Um, Jeremiah 29.11.
SPEAKER_00Hmm.
SPEAKER_05And um John 16, 33.
SPEAKER_00Which what do those verses say to you?
SPEAKER_05Okay. Um Jeremiah 29.11 and in NIV says, I know the uh I don't know all of the I I'm paraphrasing here, okay, but it's something about I know the plans I have for you, plans not to harm to give you a few. Prosper not to harm you and give you a future and a hope. King James says, I know the thoughts I think toward you, thus saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you an expected end. And John 16, oh my gosh, I'd have to look that one up.
SPEAKER_0133.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I'd have to look that one up. But um Matthew, Matthew 6, 33 is seek you first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05That's one, and I also followed Kingdom-driven entrepreneur for quite some time, and that was their foundational verse.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so I think okay, so I just look up John 16 33 says, These things I have spoken to you so that you may, so that in me you may have peace. In the world, you have tribulation, but take courage, I have overcome the world.
SPEAKER_05Yes, that one.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_05That's one of my favorites, too. Yeah, I know. I was like, I know what it is, but I'd have to get it and look at it.
SPEAKER_00I know that word, that word for tribulation a few years back. My husband was we own a business, and so there's always pressure points when you own your own business. And one day he was feeling a lot of pressure in the morning, and this verse, John 16, 33, came up, and the Lord told him, Look up what that word tribulation actually means in the original Greek. And if you look it up, it actually means pressure. In this world, you will have pressure.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00But be of good cheer, because I have overcome the world. And I think all along the writing, as you're writing, there's different pressure points that come. Whether it's in the creative mode or the editing mode or the publishing mode, there's different pressures that come. So to be of good cheer and realize that he's overcome it all. There's a way to get through all of it. But at some points it feels pretty intense, right?
SPEAKER_05Mm-hmm. One more thing, too. Um, and our writer, our monthly writing retreat for Christian Burke Academy, this month it was the theme was the unseen servant. And as I was, as I was listening to the devotional thing that CJ Hitts did, God told me, You, the world may you may be unseen by the world, but I see you. And it was like another confirmation that what I'm doing is what God wants.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's right. We're never hidden from him, right? And I I was reading somebody's, I don't know, it was some author's blog the other day, and about, you know, if you know the why of your of your writing, you have to know the why of your writing. And if God has called you to do it, to be content in knowing I'm doing what he's asked me to do, regardless of what the outcome might be, as far as how many people read the book or how far it goes out into the world, that my obedience is actually just to do what he asked me to do, and then to leave the results. I mean, you have to work on the marketing and stuff too, but uh but that the um satisfaction comes from knowing no, I'm do I'm in the right spot doing exactly what God has given me to do in this moment in my life. I thought that was good.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that is good.
SPEAKER_00Okay, one one more question here. If you could give aspiring authors one piece of advice, what would it be?
SPEAKER_05Trust the process.
SPEAKER_00Huh.
SPEAKER_05Because believe you me, as I was working through the fiction side of things, and I kept asking myself, okay, why am I doing this? The Lord told me to write devotions, now he's pulling me to this. What is behind this? Why, how is this related? I kept asking the hows and whys, because I'm one of these people who want to know the why behind the what.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And and God just said trust the process.
SPEAKER_00That's good. Because it's a long process, it's not an overnight deal.
SPEAKER_05Oh, well, Rome wasn't built in a day, right? And don't and don't compare yourself to somebody else.
SPEAKER_00Uh, that's good too.
SPEAKER_05Just because somebody's got all the their book isn't bookseller status, they got millions of followers, they got this, that, and the other. Don't compare yourself to them. I struggled with that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think we all do.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_00And it's easy to do because there's a bazillion books out there and a bazillion authors, and uh, it's easy to look at the ones that are doing what you're kind of doing and say, how come they've got all that, and I'm just slogging away here, blah blah blah.
SPEAKER_05I know. You give you what God wants you to get, and you God will God can take things and do with them what you never expected.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's exactly right. So your book is on Amazon, is that true? Both paperback and ebook?
SPEAKER_05Yes, and I will be at the in January. Um, it's on Kindle Unlimited for now, but it will be coming off on on, I think it's January the 11th, but I'm or January, I don't remember the exact date, but it will be coming off of Kindle Unlimited because I am actually going to publish my book with go wide with with draft to digital because that's what I told me to do. Draft to digital.
SPEAKER_00Huh. I'm not familiar with it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, they are a um draft to digital is a it's a self-publishing platform.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_05It is a they distribute your book to libraries and all sorts. They can put your book on hoopla and to Luna and I mean when SmashWords was its own publishing company, it distributed to certain places, and then draft to digital expanded it even further.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_05So all right.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's a good resource for my listeners. Thank you.
SPEAKER_05Wait, draft the number two digital.com.
SPEAKER_00Draft the number two digital. Okay, good. And your website is just anharrisonauthor.com. Yes. Anne with no e.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00Anharrisonauthor.com. And they can also find you on Facebook and Instagram with that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, uh Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest and YouTube and You're just everywhere, Ann. Yeah, now now Twitter is at AnnWright75 or X, because I could not I could not change that because it's too many letters.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I get it, I get it. Right. Ann Harrison author is longer. Is there anything else you want to add before we wrap this up, Ann?
SPEAKER_05Well, all I can say is follow God's lead in your life. And if you do get and when you do get your hands on the book, if if God leads you toward my toward this book, I invite you to share it with somebody else.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_05And pray for those who you share it with.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That's right. Prayer is always the book is about prayer, and prayer is about the book.
SPEAKER_05Exactly. And also, if you don't mind, take the take a minute to leave a review. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's so helpful, isn't it?
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_00So helpful when people do, even just rate it. That takes about two seconds, but leaving a review is super helpful.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_00All right, Ann, it's been a pleasure talking to you again. You too. It's really and so the name of the book again is Praying Through the Seasons. Seven Aspects of Prayer and Communion with God, and the author is Ann Harrison. So go out and buy it and pray through it and hand it off to somebody else. It'll be an encouragement.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, Ann, for your time. I appreciate it. And thanks, listeners. Uh, I sure love and appreciate you. Blessings and peace. Shalom. Shalom.