Focus on Fiction Magazine Announces Final Edition

News Release

Media Contact: Kelli Standish

kelli @ focusonfiction.net

Focus on Fiction Magazine Announces Final Edition

Blaine, WA (October 2005)—After two years of publication, FocusonFiction.net will run its final edition on November 10^th. Although the website will not offer new content after November, the book reviews, author interviews, and feature information will remain online indefinitely for fiction readers to access as a resource. The Focus on Fiction staff will dedicate their final edition to giving thanks by featuring stories from readers about how Christian fiction has changed their lives.

“Providing support and encouragement to today’s Christian novelists has been my driving passion over the past several years,” says founder and editor Kelli Standish. “It has been one of the great honors of my life to advance the work of each of these storytellers, and I look forward to offering a powerful last word of encouragement to them through our Thanksgiving edition.”

Standish initially launched Focus on Fiction with plans to promote eight author friends over an eight-week period. But by the end of those eight weeks, she was overwhelmed with e-mails from authors requesting interviews and from readers asking for more. “I realized I’d found a niche where service was needed, so I decided to dedicate my skills to that service until God called me elsewhere,” she says.

That call elsewhere came in August, when Standish and her husband were given the opportunity to work as missionaries with MedAir, a humanitarian-aid organization operating in third-world countries affected by crisis, civil war, and epidemic. Standish and her husband depart for intense training in late October, but she will continue to write and offer author website design services from her post overseas.

FocusonFiction.net became a flourishing online magazine with an international readership and a volunteer staff of ten. In the two years since its inception, the magazine has featured in-depth interviews with such award-winning authors as Frank Peretti, Ted Dekker, Liz Curtis Higgs, Robin Jones Gunn, and more than thirty others. The magazine also presented author recognition awards such as the Deserted Island Favorite Award, and provided live podcasting and blog coverage of the International Christian Retail Show in 2005.

Standish credits much of Focus on Fiction’s success to the dedication and service of the current review staff, including Vennessa Ng, Melanie Dobson, Randall Murphree, Mick Silva, Cheryl Russell, Laura Domino, Dee Stewart, and Diana Urban.

“I’ve been amazed daily by the Focus on Fiction staff, and their love and commitment to authors and readers of Christian fiction,” says Standish. “After Focus on Fiction closes, every one of our staff will continue his or her service to the Christian fiction industry, whether through editing, writing fiction, or starting or continuing support sites for Christian novelists. I can’t wait to see what God does through each of them.”

###