Submisisons for Coach's Midight Diner Still Open 

Coach's Midnight Diner , our hardboiled genre anthology of horror, crime/detective/mystery, and paranormal fiction with a Christian slant is still open for submissions until May 1st on the Relief Writers Network. Get your stuff in before then! 

Relief Issue 2.2 Authors Will Be Announced Soon! 

Authors for Relief Volume 2 Issue 2 have been selected,contacted, and will be announced right here!  

Successful Diner Signing 

 Kevin Lucia had a reading and signing of three anthologies that his work was part of, not the least of which is Coach's Midnight Diner . Hit the Read More link to see some pics of the event. 

It's Tuesday, and it's time for some Relief News!

Festival of Faith and Writing, April 17-19 

Calvin's Festival of Faith and Writing is coming up really fast, and as you know, the Relief crew will be there with some dogs and ponies. This year's festival is looking pretty awesome, with Michael Chabon, Rob Bell, Scott Cairns, and many other fantastic authors on the docket. We'll be in the Exhibitor's Hall, so if you're at the fest, come by and say howdy!

Book Signing 

Kevin Lucia, Editor's Choice award winner for the first edition of Coach's Midnight Diner and member of the Diner Editorial Team for the Second Edition, will be signing copies of three anthologies in which his work appears on Thursday, April 3 (that's this Thursday) at the Barnes & Noble in the Town Square Mall in Vestal, New York.

Kevin will be signing copies of three different anthologies in which his work appears. First is Coach’s Midnight Diner: The Jesus Vs. Cthulhu Edition , in which his novelette “The Way Station” was awarded Editor’s Choice, and was then reprinted in The Best of Relief Volume 1 edition. His creative non-fiction piece, “Right Choices” – about how he met his wife - is a part of Tyndale House’s inspirational anthology, Life Savors. His suspense/thriller “Killing Time” is the closing story for Triad Publishing Group’s horror anthology, From the Shadows , which also features a foreword and short story by acclaimed writer Nicholas Grabowsky, author of Halloween 4.

So New York, come on out and visit with Kevin Thursday night!

Look Forward to an UnChristian interview  

A long while back, Editor-In-Chief Kimberly Culbertson posted up a bit about the book unChristian . We'll be doing an blog interview with Gabe Lyons soon about his thoughts on the book right here.

So that's the news for now. Stay tuned, true believers! 

Money Crunch

Yesterday was a sad day at Relief.  Upon tracking our taxes, budget, subscriptions, donations, etc. we realized that starting with Relief Volume 2, Issue 2 we will no longer be able to offer cash prizes for our “Editor’s Choice” winners.  We are currently seeking sponsors who would be willing to fund the Editor’s Choice prize while spotlighting their businesses and/or projects with a fancy full page add right at the beginning of the journal.  In the meantime, we will still be honoring authors with the title of “Editor’s Choice” (and a snazzy certificate suitable for framing).  Hopefully the impending sales and donation boom will once again enable us to pay the winners of our elite prize. 

Remember friends, your subscription helps make poor authors’ days every three months!  Just click here to subscribe!

Christians Have Sex?

According to Paul Wirth at Relevant Church , Christians are not having enough.  The reason?  The lack of time spent on fulfilling our spouse’s emotional needs.  What’s that you ask?  You're Single?  Well you’re getting too much sexual attention (not just sex mind you), which is weakening others areas of your connection with your significant other and with God. 

Over the past month, Relevant Church asked its congregation to take part in a 30 Day Sex Challenge.  Of course, not all Christians like sex (or they don’t find church to be the appropriate discussion venue).  As you can imagine, there have been varied reactions to their series.

Here’s a sneak peek at what people are saying about the challenge:

ThinkChristian.net

This is a forum page listing varied comments you might find interesting.  Click Here to read about what people are saying.

Straight From Relevant

Relevant’s own church sponsors a blog where you can read about how participants in the challenge have changed their marriages (and single lives).  Click Here to read about what Relevant has to say.

From the Newsroom

Many Tampa News teams interviewed members of the church regarding this challenge.  Among the newsgroups were St. Petersburg Times, as well as Fox News, CBS News, and many others.  Just type “30 Day Sex Challenge” into Google and see what you find. 

Relief Gets a Post Interview

Relief editor Heather von Doehren will be interviewing Paul and Susie Wirth right here at www.reliefjournal.com, so stay tuned.

Howdy howdy, Coach here with the latest breaking news:

• Issue 2.1 has shipped out, and if you haven't gotten yours yet, it should be on your doorstep this week. Sorry about the delay, we're still getting used to our new printer partner's schedule.
• Relief Issue 2.2 is in full swing and we're getting all the ducks in a row for that one.
  
• You can find Relief Issue 2.1 , The Best of Relief Volume 1 , and Coach's Midnight Diner on Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com, and about a billion other web stores. All three are also available to order from Ingram's and Baker and Taylor. From here on out, Relief and related anthologies will be available through more outlets.
  
• In response to our international friends who have trouble getting some Relief outside the borders, the rise of e-book readers like the Kindle and others, and those who just want the instant gratification of getting some Relief right now, we're looking into some eBook solutions. We'd like to remain purists about print, but we know that there's some folks out there that also would like to get it immediately and in digital form, so we're going to work on that for you. But don't worry, for you die-hards Relief will always have an ink-on-paper form. Look for a test-run of an eBook solution soon.
  
• Our staff is starting to undergo a few changes as the universe turns, so here's the quick re-cap of what's been happening the last couple of months:
  
• Alan Ackmann is moving up to serve as our Fiction Editor.
• J. Mark Bertrand is moving from Fiction Editor to be part of our forming Relief Advisory Board as his book deals start cooking. We're thrilled to keep Mark as an advisor, and his contributions have shaped Relief in a major way. 
• Lisa Ohlen Harris is changing titles to represent all her fantastic work. She's been a co-editor of Creative Nonfiction, but she does so much more. Her new title is Assistant Editor, and she'll still be working with the Creative Nonfiction side as well.
  Lisa is a major asset to our team, and we felt that her title should represent what she's already accomplishing.
  
• Jill Noel Kandel, as most of you know, is our Guest Editor for Creative Nonfiction for Issue 2.3. If you missed it, her interview can be found here .
  
• Karen Miedrich-Luo is moving from Creative Nonfiction Editor to Creative Nonfiction Consultant to focus more on writing.
• We're still trying to come up with a new title for Heather von Doehren, as she's working on some new partnerships and stuff, so for right now she's going to be Editor-Who's-Working-On-Cool-Stuff in addition to working with poetry and wearing as many hats as possible an Assitant Editor. 
  
• Calvin's Festival of Faith and Writing is coming up, and the Relief team will be bringing as many dogs and ponies as we can. We've got a booth reserved in the Exhibitor's Hall, and in addition to selling Relief stuff, I'm going to be looking at submissions for Coach's Midnight Diner on-site, so bring your stuff  on a USB stick or in hard copy if ya like. 

So that's news to know right now, gang. I'm going to do my best to keep you updated every Tuesday about the guts of what's-a-happening around Relief. Go out and do something good today, eh?

Your friendly neighborhood tech guy, 

Coach