Scandal lovers...

http://godxconfidence.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/scandal-the-true-deception-that-lies-beneath/

For the Scribal Writer...

I've been around @ProphetessTheresaJohnson long enough now to say this with confidence.

Just because you CAN write it, doesn't meant that you SHOULD.

If it's not sitting right with Holy Spirit....let it go!

TD Jakes Callings

Download the 101 Best Websites for Writers

http://www.writersdigest.com/pricing-guide

Listen To Family Internet Radio Stations with PWICU RADIO on BlogTalkRadio

Writing Tip of the Day

Question

How do I insert an en dash or em dash in Microsoft Word?

Answer

Using the Microsoft Word AutoFormat feature users can insert both an en dash and em dash by following the below steps.

Em dash steps

To insert an em dash,  do not enter a space, and then type two hyphens. For example, typing:

this is--a test

converts the line to:

this is—a test

Or if you find yourself needing to use this a lot, you can also do the same thing by using the shortcut key CTRL + Alt + <hyphen on the number pad>.

En dash steps

To insert an en dash, move the cursor between the words, add a space, type two hyphens, and another space and the next word. For example, typing:

this is -- a test

converts the line to:

this is – a test

#Ayani_exhales -- on Being a Christian

#Ayani_exhales

As Christians we don't always get it right, but don't dwell in sin. Wallowing in the mud, learning a lesson and getting up is totally different from repeatedly wallowing in the mud.

Don't be a habitual violator.

Ayani Meli #preachingtoselffirst #walkingoutthisJesusthang

Six Word Story of the Day

#Ayani_Exhales: "Brothers are phenomenal portraits of God."

Ayani Meli #loveinaction #loveblackmen

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/doj-backtracks-on-apple-punishment-recommendations/?et_mid=634064&rid=240991386

Ayani_Exhales 082513

I don't know who this is for...

Ayani_Exhales:  Don't allow guilt to undermine your relationship; be it spiritual, physical, emotional or platonic.  Know what you are getting into before you do it.

Spiritual Relationships:  Know whether it is God or the enemy.
Physical Relationships:  Sometimes conversation is just as damaging as the physical act.
Emotional Reltationships:  Are you supposed to have that deep abiding soul tie with that person?
Platonic Relationships:  If they bring more baggage to the RELATIONSHIP than even God can handle.  You need to rethink your friendship....or at the very least set some parameters.

Ayani Meli #preachingtoselffirst #AyaniExhales #thoughtfortheday

#Truth

Ayani_Exhales 082213

"The process may be uncomfortable, but it propels you in the direction of your destiny."  This can be applied not only to your spiritual walk, but almost every aspect of your lives.  And this is especially true for authors.

  Ayani Meli #preachingtoselffirst #Ayani_Meli

Ayani_Exhales: A Plague to the Body

Have you seen them lately?  I have.  I’ve also experienced them in the past.  I’ve watched them try to ruin people’s lives.  They hurt people.  I even had to learn to pray for them, without judging them.  Caustic or sarcastic Christians are a plague to the body!  

Let’s look at the definitions:

• Caustic:  1. Capable of burning, corroding, dissolving, or eating away.  2. Corrosive and bitingly trenchant; cutting. 3. Causing a burning or stinging sensation, as from intense emotion 
• Sarcasm (Sarcastic):  1. A cutting, often ironic remark intended to wound.  2. A form of wit that is marked by the use of sarcastic language and is intended to make its victim the butt of contempt or ridicule

When we hurt folks with our tongues, let alone our actions, ARE WE EXEMPLIFYING JESUS?

It amazes me how some Christians have personal vendettas against other Christians;  maligning their names, shunning them, and accusing them of "not being right with the Lord."  How do you know?  Are you speaking at the behest of the Holy Spirit or out of your own selfish desire to see them fail/suffer?  God is not pleased with such behavior, especially when done falsely in His Name.  You have become a PLAGUE TO THE BODY.

• Exodus 20:16, the eighth Commandment ,"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour"  
• Leviticus 6:1-4, "And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, If a soul sin, and commit a trespass against the LORD, and lie unto his neighbour…or hath deceived his neighbour…and lieth concerning it, and sweareth falsely; in any of all these that a man doeth, sinning therein: Then it shall be, because he hath sinned, and is guilty,"
•  Leviticus 19:11, "Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another."  
• John 4:23-24, "…true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth"

Things that we do that are wrong, that ONLY God knows….suppose He adopted the practice of airing our dirty laundry?  Would we appreciate it?  Would we applaud it?  Would we rebound from it?  Would we be able to bear the hurt of betrayal?

• Job 11:3,5, "Should thy lies make men hold their peace? and when thou mockest, shall no man make thee ashamed? But oh that God would speak, and open his lips against thee;"

On one hand...there may be some people who are operating out of the Will of God.  By all means if you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God told you to rebuke them…then have at it.  Don’t worry about offending them..  HOWEVER…If God has not told you to openly rebuke them, and they are operating outside of His Will, go to them and speak with them.  Don’t try to publically humiliate them; by so doing, you are hurting the Kingdom and smearing verbal and spiritual garbage all over them AND yourselves.  How are you to be credible after you take part in such a smear campaign?  Sometimes you may not have a clue what God has spoken to another saint.  Go to them in love, BEFORE open rebuke. 

• Matthew 18:15-17 ESV , “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 
• 1 John 4:20 ESV, If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 
• James 3:17 ESV, But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.

On the flip side, people or un-churched folks who are on the outside looking in say that they hate church.  A lot of what we hate about Church is not Church, but flesh.  Flesh rising up and doing it’s own thing, oblivious to the ebb and flow of the Holy Spirit.   

What is the bottom line?  The plague is a lack of love;  Straight, good old, healing, reviving, renewing…AGAPE LOVE.  A plague is running rampant in the church and needs to be eradicated.

How does a body deal with foreign antibodies (plague)?  It seeks to cast them out.  If you cannot walk in love you could be cast out. Could you deal with being cast out?  Could you deal with coals being heaped on your head, like you did to Sister-so-and-so?  Could you deal with losing everything…including your sanity, because somebody lied on you?

Does this behavior not make one lukewarm…having a form of Godliness but denying the power thereof (2 Tim 3:5)?  (IMHO, the folks at Laodicea had nothing on our society today)  You know God, have seen Him work in wondrous ways, BUT you continue to DANCE WITH THE WORLD. Shouting and going to church on Sunday and chasing that ticket to hell during the rest of the week.

The plague makes the Church sick.  Lukewarm water makes the body sick.  According to Revelation 3:16, He will spew you out of his mouth; so even in the natural that’s how the body rids itself of things that are making it sick.  If at all possible it spits them out or eliminates them in other ways.

How do we correct this problem?  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, walk in Love.  Somebody is waiting on you to show them Jesus.  If the only Jesus they see is a perverted one, they wa't nothing to do with Him, let alone the Kingdom.  So let me rephrase that…

Somebody is depending on you to show them Jesus.

  

© 2013 Ayani_Meli              

              Stilletto Warrior and Revolutionary Disciple

              #Ayani_Exhales #preachingtoselffirst

Ayani_Exhales

Rant for the day:  "Saints, you do not have the luxury of saying every evil thing that comes to your mind! "   You know better so do better!  You will reap what you sow.  A curse is a curse regardless of how its framed or what pretty words dress it up.  Be careful what you say. 

Proverbs 18:21
New King James Version (NKJV)
21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
And those who love it will eat its fruit.

Ayani Meli #Ayani_Exhales #preachingtoselffirst #rantfortheday

Twelve Weird but Fun Wordz.....

1. WEND

You rarely see a "wend" without a "way." You can wend your way through a crowd or down a hill, but no one wends to bed or to school. However, there was a time when English speakers would wend to all kinds of places. "Wend" was just another word for "go" in Old English. The past tense of "wend" was "went" and the past tense of "go" was "gaed." People used both until the 15th century, when "go" became the preferred verb, except in the past tense where "went" hung on, leaving us with an outrageously irregular verb.

2. DESERTS

The "desert" from the phrase "just deserts" is not the dry and sandy kind, nor the sweet post-dinner kind. It comes from an Old French word for "deserve," and it was used in English from the 13th century to mean "that which is deserved." When you get your just deserts, you get your due. In some cases, that may mean you also get dessert, a word that comes from a later French borrowing.

3. EKE

If we see "eke" at all these days, it's when we "eke out" a living, but it comes from an old verb meaning to add, supplement, or grow. It's the same word that gave us "eke-name" for "additional name," which later, through misanalysis of "an eke-name" became "nickname."

4. SLEIGHT

"Sleight of hand" is one tricky phrase. "Sleight" is often miswritten as "slight" and for good reason. Not only does the expression convey an image of light, nimble fingers, which fits well with the smallness implied by "slight," but an alternate expression for the concept is "legerdemain," from the French léger de main," literally, "light of hand." "Sleight" comes from a different source, a Middle English word meaning "cunning" or "trickery." It's a wily little word that lives up to its name.

5. DINT

"Dint" comes from the oldest of Old English where it originally referred to a blow struck with a sword or other weapon. It came to stand for the whole idea of subduing by force, and is now fossilized in our expression "by dint of X" where X can stand for your charisma, hard work, smarts, or anything you can use to accomplish something else.

6. ROUGHSHOD

Nowadays we see this word in the expression "to run/ride roughshod" over somebody or something, meaning to tyrannize or treat harshly. It came about as a way to describe the 17th century version of snow tires. A "rough-shod" horse had its shoes attached with protruding nail heads in order to get a better grip on slippery roads. It was great for keeping the horse on its feet, but not so great for anyone the horse might step on.

7. FRO

The "fro" in "to and fro" is a fossilized remnant of a Northern English or Scottish way of pronouncing "from." It was also part of other expressions that didn't stick around, like "fro and till," "to do fro" (to remove), and "of or fro" (for or against).

8. HUE

The "hue" of "hue and cry," the expression for the noisy clamor of a crowd, is not the same "hue" as the term we use for color. The color one comes from the Old English word híew, for "appearance." This hue comes from the Old French hu or heu, which was basically an onomatopoeia, like "hoot."

9. KITH

The "kith" part of "kith and kin" came from an Old English word referring to knowledge or acquaintance. It also stood for native land or country, the place you were most familiar with. The expression "kith and kin" originally meant your country and your family, but later came to have the wider sense of friends and family.

10. LURCH

When you leave someone "in the lurch," you leave them in a jam, in a difficult position. But while getting left in the lurch may leave you staggering around and feeling off-balance, the "lurch" in this expression has a different origin than the staggery one. The balance-related lurch comes from nautical vocabulary, while the lurch you get left in comes from an old French backgammon-style game called lourche. Lurch became a general term for the situation of beating your opponent by a huge score. By extension it came to stand for the state of getting the better of someone or cheating them.

11. UMBRAGE

"Umbrage" comes from the Old French ombrage (shade, shadow), and it was once used to talk about actual shade from the sun. It took on various figurative meanings having to do with doubt and suspicion or the giving and taking of offense. To give umbrage was to offend someone, to "throw shade." However, these days when we see the term "umbrage" at all, it is more likely to be because someone is taking, rather than giving it.

12. SHRIFT

We might not know what a shrift is anymore, but we know we don't want to get a short one. "Shrift" was a word for a confession, something it seems we might want to keep short, or a penance imposed by a priest, something we would definitely want to keep short. But the phrase "short shrift" came from the practice of allowing a little time for the condemned to make a confession before being executed. So in that context, shorter was not better.

Read the full text here: http://mentalfloss.com/article/51150/12-old-words-survived-getting-fossilized-idioms#ixzz2bxIi4ue6 

Book Promotions:

http://oosaonlinebookclub.blogspot.com/2013/07/book-bliss.html

"My God!  If some people have to reap what they sow....will they be able to handle it.  The sad part is that some folks are already reaping exactly what they've sowed and don't realize it.

If you sow discord, it will come back to you....as will bitterness, anger and hatred.  So, for your own sake, sanity and peace of mind, as well as those around you....SOW LOVE."    @Ayani_Meli #Rantfortheday #Ayani_Exhales

...To What is today dedicated?

Thought for the Day: "Be conscious for the journey. Don't check out, give up or get wasted on spiritual junk-food." Ayani Meli ‪#‎thoughtfortheday‬‪ #‎preachingtoselffirst‬ ‪#‎Ayani_exhales‬

A Must-Do List for Building Your Author’s Social Media Platform

1. Start Facebook and Twitter pages with links to buy your book. Focus on the quality of your posts – don’t go overboard – and focus on entertainment (not just selling). Utilize hashtags where you can, they will help. (ie. #fiction #books #romance)

2. Start a Blog. I used Wordpress, but Tumblr is also pretty good. Blogging has been the single most important factor in getting my name and style out there. You don’t have to blog about your book, but you do have to blog on a consistent basis. Again, think about the entertainment factor (but of course include links to your book or your website.)

3. Engage in Google+. This is often overlooked, but has become hugely important in increasing your Google search rankings. Click the Google+ button for everything you do! Set up your Google+ profile.

4. Set up a Goodreads and BookDaily account and add your title(s). This is a great place to start gathering reviews and ratings. You want your name and book to appear on Goodreads and BookDaily asap for credibility.

5. Build a Website. If you have the money to hire someone to do this, great. If you’re strapped (like me), use weebly.com to EASILY build a cute concise site, (and I am about as tech-illiterate as you can be.) Check out my site for an example:www.writerjessicaleigh.weebly.com. Don’t forget to add the newsletter option to begin collecting emails.

6. Frequently update your Author Central Page. Amazon is an amazing marketing gizmo/tool all in itself. It functions a bit like Google with all its different search algorithms and keyword triggers. Try and optimize just about anything you write on your author’s page OR book descriptions and editorial reviews with keywords you feel your readers would be looking for. Change it up frequently with little tweaks or additions, to keep yourself higher on the Amazon radar.

7. Sell more than one book. I have heard that the best marketing tool possible is to have multiple book listings – they will literally sell each other – at no marketing expense - other as your fan base grows. I have my second novel waiting in the wings, and I cannot wait to see the results upon its release. Keep writing!

8. Toughen up your skin. You are bound to hit some negativity at some point – it’s inevitable. When I received my first harsh review, it still stung me like an angry hornet and left me doubting my skills for several long days. Reach out to other authors in forums and realize it will pass. It’s a rite of passage. My sales did not stop or slow down. It just happens.

9. Pick out several successful authors in your genre and follow everything they do. Yes, it might make you feel a little like a stalker, but it’s an excellent way to learn. You can even repost some of their tweets or share their Facebook posts on your own page – they won’t dislike it, for it gives them even more exposure. I actually got noticed by and made a friend of a successful author that way.

10. Look for ways to mount a joint marketing campaign with other authors. If you can network with others in your genre, you have more than doubled your reach very quickly. Try and remember that there is more than enough space for everyone in the ebook world – don’t focus on competition, focus on joint effort. It’s much more profitable, powerful, and positive.

The most important thing to remember about building a great social media platform is that it should be extensive AND interconnected to achieve the greatest results.

About the Author:

Jessica Leigh is an emerging author in the romance field, and still holds her “day job” as a free-lance writer/PR specialist for a social media marketing firm. 

The World's Best Grammar Checker!!!!

http://www.grammarly.com/

Unstoppable the Movie

Question of the Day: Are many of us, who are struggling with illness, sickness or disease still struggling...because although we are believers, we close our minds to some of the avenues God may send us a healing? Maybe it is just our cup to bear. But could it be because we don't like certain preachers or certain people? Some of those same folk that we think are suspect, God is using them to heal others.

Children's books geared toward special needs kids...

The first book in the series  (Subject -- Disability)

God Says The Struggle is Over