#5 – The Scent of Cherry Blossoms: A Romance from the Heart of Amish Country [Kindle Edition] by: Cindy Woodsmall Annie Martin loves the Plain ways of her Old Order Mennonite people, like those revered by her beloved grandfather. Retreating from a contentious relationship with her mother, Annie goes to live with her Daadi Moses in Apple Ridge.
But as spring moves into Pennsylvania and Annie spends time amongst the cherry trees with the handsome Aden Zook, she wishes she could forget how deeply the lines between the Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonite are drawn.
Can Annie and Aden find a place for their love to bloom in the midst of the brewing storm?
#4 – Downfall (An Intervention Novel) [Kindle Edition] by: Terri Blackstock Emily Covington has turned her life around after a drug addiction, but her family still has trouble trusting her. Though Emily has committed herself to a year-long treatment program and has been sober for almost a year beyond that, even her mother walks on eggshells around her, fearing she’ll relapse. After her behavior during her drug years, Emily realizes she has a lot to prove.When police discover a homemade bomb under Emily’s car, and she then learns the wife of one of her friends was murdered that same morning, she knows things are deadly serious.But who wants Emily dead? And why?A conversation she had with two men, an Alfred Hitchcock movie, and a plan for a double murder all conspire for one explosive ride … and Emily is the only one who can identify the killer and save the life of the next potential victim.As she frantically works to solve this ever more complicated puzzle, Emily finds herself playing right into the killer’s hands.
#3 – Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family, and Freedom Before It’s Too Late [Hardcover] by: Jay W. Richards Many books have been written on conservative politics. Many more have been written calling Christians to holiness and spiritual revival. Few, however, have managed to combine a clear explanation of the conservative political perspective with its corresponding personal and spiritual virtue.
In INDIVISIBLE, James Robison, the founder and president of LIFE Outreach International, partners with Jay Richards, Ph.D., a writer who has appeared in both the New York Times and The Washington Post. Together, they tackle tough, controversial political issues facing conservative Christians today, including abortion, stem cell research, education, economics, health care, the environment, judicial activism, marriage, and others. Written to appeal to a broad spectrum of believers, INDIVISIBLE not only argues political questions from a Scriptural standpoint, it also provides simple arguments that Christians can use to support their beliefs in public settings.
#2 – Into the Free: A Novel [Kindle Edition] by: Julie Cantrell In Depression-era Mississippi, Millie Reynolds longs to escape the madness that marks her world. With an abusive father and a “nothing mama,” she struggles to find a place where she really belongs.
For answers, Millie turns to the Gypsies who caravan through town each spring. The travelers lead Millie to a key that unlocks generations of shocking family secrets. When tragedy strikes, the mysterious contents of the box give Millie the tools she needs to break her family’s longstanding cycle of madness and abuse.
Through it all, Millie experiences the thrill of first love while fighting to trust the God she believes has abandoned her. With the power of forgiveness, can Millie finally make her way into the free?
Saturated in Southern ambiance and written in the vein of other Southern literary bestsellers like The Help by Kathryn Stockett and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin, Julie Cantrell has created a story that will sweep you away long after the novel ends.
#1 – The Vow: The True Events that Inspired the Movie [Kindle Edition] by: Kim Carpenter Life as Kim and Krickitt Carpenter knew it was shattered beyond recognition on November 24, 1993. Two months after their marriage, a devastating car wreck left Krickitt with a massive head injury and in a coma for weeks.
When she finally awoke, she had no idea who Kim was. With no recollection of their relationship and while Krickitt experienced personality changes common to those who suffer head injuries, Kim realized the woman he had married essentially died in the accident.
And yet, against all odds, but through the common faith in Christ that sustained them, Kim and Krickitt fell in love all over again. Even though Kim stood by Krickitt through the darkest times a husband can ever imagine, he insists, “I’m no hero. I made a vow.”
After several false starts, countless hours of struggle, and a
ton of prayers for patience, the Christian Articles Resource is
open to all authors again!
I would like to thank all of the authors who were kind enough to
assist with the detailed testing of our pages.
A detailed guide on how to upgrade your account from the old
login to the new is located on the Frequently Asked Questions
page.
We are also happy to announce a new feature on the site called
the Article Cleaner. The article cleaner is a nifty new utility
that will clean your article text prior to your article being
submitted. (This eliminates the strange looking characters that
like to show up when people paste their articles from a word
processing program like Microsoft Word.) We are asking that all
new article submissions be run through the script prior to being
submitted to the site. Any new submissions that contain strange
characters will be declined until fixed.
As always, if you run into any problems with the account upgrade
or with any other parts of the site, please contact me via the
site PM system or email via the contact form.
Something we continue to encounter with authors is trouble with funky characters when they transfer their articles from Microsoft Word to our site.
Up until now, I have always recommended just transferring your article into Microsoft notepad before moving it to the site. However, I ran across a better way.
How to turn off Smart Quotes in Microsoft Word
On the Tools menu:
click AutoCorrect Options, and then click the AutoFormat As You Type tab
Under Replace as You Type:
select or clear the "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes" check box
How to fix funky characters in your existing articles
Another problem facing most authors is the existing funky characters that exist on older articles. So far, I have found one good method that can be used to make the necessary edits.
Use Control+F On The Edit Article Page – Most browsers allow you to easily find text by pressing down the control plus the f key. This brings up a small box that will allow you to find the quotation marks, apostrophes and dashes. Once the offending punctuation has been searched for it is then highlighted to show you exactly where its at. Once found, its just a matter of typing in the punctuation again to change it to one that won’t display poorly on our site.
I am turning off new article submissions and authors until I can work out all of these major issues the site is having. I will be in contact with some of you to assist with testing once these issues can be properly addressed.
Well, it looks like we are not out of the woods yet on the site upgrade issues. I’ll be using this article to track issues that people are having and the current status.
Please help us out by sending us feedback in the comments below. When listing issues please provide your operating system, browser, and screen resolution so that we can properly replicate the problem.
Current Issue – Not able to edit the author settings.
I’m currently working with the script developer to get this one fixed ASAP. For now, please continue to use the username and password that was provided in the lost password email. (If you have already had your username changed, use your new username and the password provided in the email for now.)
Current Issue – Old articles are not formatted correctly or have errors in them.
I believe this is working now for most everyone.
To Do List
Edit input boxes to fit 1024×768 screen resolution
Word filter detail edited.
Find way to reintroduce article stats
Thanks again for everyone’s patience on this and don’t forget to mention your errors in the comments! Read the rest of this entry »
After nearly a week of downtime the Christian Articles Resource is back online and sporting some fancy new software! (The old site software was throwing out some major glitches and was going to be impossible to repair.) We decided to take the opportunity to upgrade to the Article Friendly Ultimate script and we hope that you are not disappointed.
However, in order to access your account you will have to go through a few steps.
Step One – Click on the lost username or password link http://christian- topics.info/forgotten.php and fill in the spots for your email address you used when you signed up for the old site.
Step Two – Wait for your email from the site with a temporary username and password.
Step Three – Log in with your new username and password.
Step Four – Edit your profile and change your password to one you are comfortable with.
Step Five – Send me an email via the contact form or PM me with your preferred username.
Step Six – I will then update your new username directly on the database table and send you a PM or email with confirmation of your new username.
Step Seven – Check out your old articles to verify they look right with the new formatting and make changes as needed to things like your resource box. (I believe you will have to edit the links in the resource box to make them clickable.
We appreciate everyone’s patience during the downtime and hope to continue to work with you going forward.
And as always, if you run into any issues please contact me via shane@christian-topics.info, our contact page, or the new PM system.
Author Frank Walker returns to the Bible Czar radio program to discuss rasising successful families from a Biblical perspective. Be sure to listen in as he discloses his easy to remember 12 steps. Frank’s blog can be found at www.chapelgrace.com
One of the recommendations that we make to authors here at Christian Articles Resource is to have and to regularly use a blog. It has been proven time and time again to be an excellent vehicle to have your writing seen. Of course, one of the most common pitfalls of blog use is dealing with the comments. Good comments can bring lively discussion to one’s blog and works as a great way to develop links to your work. The flip side of comments are the dishonest spammers and spam bots that plague everyone.
Many bloggers either disable comments entirely or let them go unmoderated for so long that it becomes a chore to sort through everything. Others use excellent free plugin tools such as CommentLuv to give their commenters an incentive to behave and use comments in a positive way. I have personally used CommentLuv on some of my online endeavors and have found it to be a great tool, albeit somewhat simple. However, I always held out hope that there would be something that could do things better. Someone must have been listening, as there is now a new CommentLuv Premium!
CommentLuv Premium Takes the CommentLuv plugin and supercharges it to become a virtual Swiss army knife of tools designed to take blog commenting to the next level! Here are some of the features:
CommentLuv: Allows a commenter to add their own last blog post URL to the comments, giving them an incentive to leave quality comments.
Twitter Link: This adds an extra field to a typical comment form that will allow readers to add their Twitter username to comments. (This can be set up as a reward for having “x” number of quality comments.)
G.A.S.P Anti-Spam: This is a powerful anti-spam feature that trips up 99% of automated spam bots.
KeywordName: Similar to KeywordLuv but does more and stores keywords separately from names in the database. (Gives your commenters another incentive to leave good comments.)
Dashboard Widgets: Statistical analysis straight from your WordPress dashboard. (This lets you track which comments are helping you!)
Top CommentLuvvers: Configurable widget to display top CommentLuv commenters in the sidebar. (Who doesn’t like to be recognized?)
DoFollow: To set reader-links to nofollow or dofollow for example, after 3 comments.
Trackback Validation & No Self Ping: Self explanatory
Overall, I believe CommentLuv Premium to be an excellent value and have purchased it myself for all of my blogs. And at the limited time price of just $40 dollars, it is definitely a bargain as it can be used on an unlimited number of blogs once purchased.
Ann made a second appearance on the Bible Czar program on the 19th. This time she was discussing the Two kinds of freedom one enjoys in Jesus Christ. You can check out the podcast here.
One of the options available to our authors is the ability to create and use pen names on our site. Most will create one when setting up their account and never give it another thought. Sometimes however, the original pen name chosen fails to mesh with the content written and needs to be changed.
Here’s how to do it:
How to change your pen name at the Christian Article Resource.
