Help With Writing a Book Proposal

It's less than a month till the February 1st deadline for submitting a book proposal for the Bridge Book Awards.

To help people with their book proposals, back in December there was a webinar in which Rev. Grant Schnarr, author of a number of books, talked people through writing a good book proposal.

You can download the audio from the webinar here. The webinar is about an hour and 10 minutes long. The file is 52.3 MB so it takes a little while to download. It's in WMV format so, if you have a Mac (like I do), you'll need something to convert it so that you can play it. I used a free program that makes it so that you can play it in QuickTime called Flip4Mac WMV. This particular copy of the file expires on January 11th but I'm guessing that, if you ask nicely, I could probably get another one put up or you could just contact Kristine Medley directly (Kristine.Medley@newchurch.org, 267-502-4901).

I hope that there are lots of people working on book proposals. I wish that I had the time to submit something myself.

Book Proposal Competition

As a collaborative effort to generate dynamic book proposals and publications from aspiring authors, the General Church of the New Jerusalem and the Swedenborg Foundation, publisher of the theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg, are pleased to announce a new competition, called the Bridge Book Awards. The authors of the winning proposals will receive a cash award in the amount of $1,500, be honored at an awards ceremony, and be guaranteed a review by the Swedenborg Foundation Press editorial board with the possibility of publication.

There are 4 categories you can enter: The Afterlife, Living a Spiritual Life, Biblical Commentary from a Swedenborgian/New Church Perspective, and Swedenborg for Dummies.

Entries are due on February 1st, 2011 and must include an entry form, a query letter, a chapter outline or synopsis, and one to three sample chapters.

You can read more about what's required in the Entry Form (PDF) or in the news item about it on newchurch.org.

I'm excited to see what comes of this.

Audio from Swedenborg Colloquium on the Future of the New Church

On October 9th there was an awesome event. It's lengthy title was “‘Behold I Make All Things New’ — How? The Future of the New Church, Swedenborg Colloquium.” The advertisements for the event simply said,

The public is cordially invited to hear 12 Swedenborgian speakers present a variety of visions for the future of the New Church.

If you couldn't be there, the best way to get a sense for what the event was like is to listen to the recordings of the speeches. To listen to or download the audio recordings, go to Independent Voice for the General Church Community (ivotgc.org), specifically to the Swedenborg Colloquium Audio page. The files are all in MP3 format.

I'm also going to put links to the individual talks below with a few scattered notes from me. If you were at the event (or just listened to one of the recordings) and want to add some comments, please do. My notes do not adequately represent what each speaker said.