New Life by Annie Try

What an exciting few days for ACW.  On Tuesday there was much rejoicing when the first ACW Lent Book came out.

For those who don’t know about this new venture, let me explain.  ‘New Life’ is edited by Amy Robinson and Wendy Jones and filled with meditations for Lent.  Each reflection is written by a different ACW member – some are seasoned writers while for others this is their first experience of being published.   We aren’t a publishing company so this has been a new experience, with Wendy finding a cover designer and publisher friends to help when difficulties arose.  It has been a complicated, exhausting process.

With the release date being so close to Lent, I thought it would be a quiet launch, with only a few copies sold this year.  How wrong I was! Already it has reached first place in the hot new releases in several categories, as allocated by Amazon.

So I have abandoned the draft of my original blog for today to praise the contributors drawn from ACW members and the dedicated team from our committee who put this new venture together.  I did very little, my role being confined to writing a short introduction.  Others like Jane Clamp and Dan Cooke have assisted in selecting the contributors, based on samples of writing submitted for consideration. There were short introductions to sections to be written, improving the structure for each week.  Marion Osgood undertook a mammoth final proofreading task after Wendy and Amy had attended to all the editing and formatting – not easy with so many and varied contributors. Everyone in this project has freely provided their work as an extra to their voluntary posts on the committee.

As Chair of ACW I am immensely proud of the team, but along with that I am thrilled that so many of our members can write such beautiful, thoughtful pieces and poems to encourage other Christians and even reach those who would not normally read a Christian book.

What an enormous pool of talent we have in ACW! I now know for certain that more than fifty of our members are brilliant writers who can touch other people’s lives. And I know of many more - those who write on this blog, others who write thoughtful encouraging comments on Facebook groups, or articles, books I’ve read and submissions to competitions. Hidden from me is the wealth of talent amongst those quieter writers of ACW.

Many of those contributing to the Lent Book had not been published before.  I wonder why not.  Let’s use our talents and not ‘hide our lamps under a bushel’. There is such power in the written word. Collectively and individually, we can be spreading God’s word to an incredible number of people.

So, write! Get your words out there in magazines, books, essays, letters to the editor, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and any way we can, telling of God’s love and helping people to find new life in Christ.

You can buy the book at any good bookstore and at Amazon

Annie Try is the pen-name of Angela Hobday, Chair of ACW.  At present she is writing a series of thought-provoking novels featuring the clinical psychologist Dr Mike Lewis and his extraordinary clients. The first two stories, Losing Face and Out of Silence are published by Instant Apostle.