A REAL LIVE RED-HEADED, GREEN-EYED HEROINE?

Well, that’s Cindy Sproles in the flesh, complete with a beautiful smile, a contagious laugh, and outgoing personality. You can’t miss her. And I’m sure glad I didn’t.

I met her at the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference in 2004. She was a beginner, said she was scared, not sure what to do, but it sure looks like she’s done the right things.

“First,” she says, “I realized in order to write my best for God, I needed a deeper relationship with him.” She began to pray for understanding and ability. Then she put her fingers to the keyboard and focused on devotional writing. Not just occasionally. She wrote a devotion every day for four years. That’s determination!

Now, with all her other activities, she writes one devotion a week. Cindy, along with Eddie Jones, founded Christian Devotions Ministry (ChristianDevotions.us). The two of them penned He Said, She Said devotions for over seven years then collected them into the best-selling devotional titled… ta dah… He Said, She Said.

As she began to take her steps along her writing journey, one thing led to another. She learned the craft of writing devotions and began holding retreats for others wanting to write them. Her efforts did not always come easily, but typical of Cindy, she said, “When things get tough, God doesn’t call us to retreat. He calls us to advance.”

 One thing led to another and before long, The Billy Graham Training Center, The Cove, in Asheville, NC opened its doors for Cindy’s next venture. Now she is director of Writers ADVANCE! Boot Camp.

"I understand how it feels to not know the lingo or understand what to do at a conference,” she says. "So I make it my goal to help new conferees make the best of their conference time.”

She has a love for the beginner, and delights in teaching new conferees, but the Workshop also offers a strong track for advanced writers. Between the amazing venue of The Cove, to the unique format of Writers Advance, conferees walk away filled up and sent out. That’s only one facet that makes Writers ADVANCE! so special.

Registration is limited and fills quickly for this reasonably priced conference held at The Billy Graham Training Center, better known as The Cove, in the panoramic mountains of Asheville NC. The conference dates are February 21-23, 2014 and registrations can be made through www.writersadvancebootcamp.com.

 I, Yvonne Lehman, am privileged to be included among the faculty. Some others are Steven James, Lynette Eason, Mike Dellosso, Ann Tatlock, Lori Hatcher, Edie Melson, Denise Loock, Janet Roller and of course, our red-headed, green-eyed heroine who makes ADVANCE such an enjoyable, instructive, happy time for writers.

In 2011, Cindy’s collection of devotions, New Sheets, was a finalist for a Selah Award. She has a very unique, creative concept for this book. She writes: Need to change your husband? Change your sheets. Want to change jobs? Change your sheets. Long for a new life? Just change your sheets.

God uses our life experiences to shape us. When the friction of frustration chaffs the skin, God offers us respite and rest. Sleeping on worn-out sheets meant holding on to the past, but new sheets...new sheets marked a fresh start. The slate wiped clean. Crisp. Fresh. New.

With each monumental event in her life, she tossed out the old and ushered in the new with a set of fresh new sheets. From the cheapest muslin to the most expensive Egyptian cotton, she saw how God was shaping her into the woman she needed to be.

Cindy has come a long way in her writing journey. She speaks for women’s conferences and writers conferences nationwide. She is an acquisitions editor for Lighthouse Publications of the Carolinas.

In 2014 Kregel Publications will release her first novel, Where the River Begins. Cindy sounds like a heroine to me… and she’s very likeable!