Free for the weekend!

This weekend I'm giving a Christmas present to my friends and followers.  Friday through Sunday, you can download a free e-book version (Kindle, Nook, Sony reader, etc.) of Living Canvas! Click here to download your copy! The only thing I ask in return is a review or a rating on your favorite book site (Amazon, BN, iBooks, Goodreads, etc.) when you've finished. Authors love feedback (good, bad or indifferent).

I've been adding lots of books to my "TBR" pile. Christmas is often when I stock up on new authors or books by my favorite authors.  Looking for a Christmas idea? Buy the reader in your life an Amazon Kindle gift card - that gives them the opportunity to pick and choose and take a chance on an author they might not otherwise buy because, in essence, they're getting the book as a gift (read "free"). Likewise, Barnes & Noble has gift cards, and there's always the iTunes gift cards. 

I'm excited to have finished edits for Mist on the Meadow, so it's ready when my editor is (she has me scheduled in January). I also did an outline for a new story (as yet untitled), but right now that feels like a climb up Mt. Everest. With the holidays upon us and life events happening, looking at another hike up a mountain is a little intimidating. It's always a thrill to start out, but with the rugged climb I just completed (metaphorically speaking, of course), I'm more inclined to revisit one of the manuscripts sitting on the shelf to push it forward (or throw it in the trash).  Epitaph is the story that is reaching out to me, and once that one finds its way either forward or lost forever, I will have moved the last of my shelved stories that I feel is workable. It's fun to pick it up again, re-read it and I still like it! Why did it go to the shelf instead of to an editor, you ask? There are some areas that need improvement, but fixing something that's already written feels more like climbing a hillock instead of a mountain. Much more manageable and slightly less brain power required.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year I have much to be thankful for.

I'll start with the new baby in our family, 2 weeks early but definitely not premature. I'm thankful that mother and daughter came through the ordeal and both are doing well and are healthy.

I'm thankful for my Dear Husband, who gallantly protects me from the evils of the world (even when they aren't really evils). He is guilty of showering me with random acts of love (yes, he buys flowers, and candy, and he knows when I need a hug) and he wants to shelter me from all the things in the world that make me sad or unhappy.  Sometimes, you have to take your medicine, but its nice to know there's someone standing by with a chaser.

I'm thankful for my children. There are days as a mother where you feel like the birds have left, never to return. This morning at breakfast, I saw a young man who will never leave  his parent's nest and so I choose to be thankful that my baby birds are able to fly.

I'm thankful for my parents - what were they thinking having four children? And I'm so grateful they did. Sisters are a blessing, and there are many days I might not have gotten through without them.

I'm thankful for my gift of imagination. And I'm thankful for my readers who share it with me. I'm humbled by the kind words from the people who have read my stories and grateful for the opportunity to share those words.

I'm thankful for the day job. Through the years, they have provided me with the skills I needed to excel at my job. They have not only encouraged me, but have given me to the opportunity to grow and to be successful.

I'm thankful for my faith (this counts as another thank you to my parents). On those days when you feel you can't stand one more minute of things that can go wrong, I'm grateful for all the blessings in my life that make it "right."

Happy Thanksgiving.

Doing the happy dance

I've finished my editing checklist!

Does that mean edits are completed?  No, but the worst is over. I'll have to read through Mist on the Meadow one more time (maybe more than one more time) to make sure I haven't created new problems with the edits. That should all fall under the realm of misplaced words, though.  Easy-peasy.

There is something liberating about completing this process. I feel empowered! I have confidence in the story and in the strength of the writing (which may all come crashing to pieces once I finish re-reading, but let me enjoy the moment).

My horoscope for the day says to jump into new projects with my sleeves rolled up.  Yes, I feel like I could/should start the new story. And with that comes the resolve to write clean from the start.

Yeah, that'll last about two chapters.

We all have our obsessive/compulsive traits. Mine is to finish something that I've started. As much as I'm itching to start my French Spicevendor story, I need to finish Mist on the Meadow. And write a logline. And a synopsis. And a blurb. {sigh} Someone asked me at one of the book signings what the new book was about, and I had a hard time telling her (largely because I was focused on selling Living Canvas, mind fimly set on relaying that one clearly and concisely). Nothing like standing there saying, "ummm. . . . ahh . . . well . . . you see its about . . . well . . . "  So how about this . . .

"The way to this man's heart is through his head."

Marissa Maitland is your ordinary, run of the mill café owner, until her “Herr Drosselmeyer” great-uncle shows up for Christmas. He bestows on her a family legacy, a gift for her twenty-fifth birthday on the Winter Solstice. But this is no ordinary gift.


Wolf Harper has gotten along fine for the last eleven years without familial attachment. The only thing he has left is the family business – which his uncle is running into the ground. Upon his grandmother’s death, Wolf is compelled to honor an obscure “last request” which he hopes will save the company. It isn’t until after he’s rear-ended Marissa’s car that he discovers his grandmother’s last request is meant to save him.

No? Yeah. Well I'll keep working on it. Let's not spoil the moment. Right now, I'm doing the happy dance.

The hardest part of writing

Do you have a brilliant idea? One that would make a great story? That's the exciting part, the fun part. Then you  take that idea and put it down on paper. Still not so hard. The writing process can be difficult at times, but it's also fun, especially when you have that brilliant idea. The story unfolds as you write, characters reveal themselves to you. Some people describe the process as a movie that plays in their heads. Each step becomes a little more difficult, but the creative process cannot be denied.

Now you're done. But that's not the end. In spite of your best efforts, you've left behind dozens of words that don't belong. Phrases that shouldn't be there. The brilliant idea has been transcribed to paper, but that doesn't make it readable. Which brings me to the topic of today's wandering.

Every story I start with the intention of writing "clean." Watch the crutch words. Watch the overused adverbs and adjectives. Watch for passive voice. In the years that I've been {cough cough} "perfecting" my craft, I've improved my first drafts, but I'm one of those people who writes with a mission. The story is in my head and I have to get it down now. Ideas flow faster than I can transcribe them and so my first editing pass is generally to make sure the story flows when I've taken an unexpected bend in the river. 

Mist on the Meadow is done, but its far from "reader ready." I am amazed, once again, at the things that I overlook on that first, frantic dash to reach the finish line, and now I'm paying the price with edits - the hardest part of the writing process.

Not that editing is hard, it's time consuming. I've finished this story. I want to start the next one. In fact, I've had two new flashes of brilliance (well, flashes anyway) that I want to work with, but I have to finish this one first. Otherwise I'll be distracted with the new stuff and never go back. Okay, I'd go back, but I can't market a book that isn't finished, and until I have the discipline to stop and fix as I go instead of purging the story from my head, I have to take the time after I've finished.

I recently saw a television show that referenced the shoemaker and the elves and I thought, how many authors wouldn't like someone to finish their work, the way the shoemaker had the elves? Elves that could do the editing. (I actually went back to my Grimm's Fairy Tales  and re-read the story.) 

Then again, if I didn't put in the time, it wouldn't be my story. Like any job, it isn't done until you finish it. So I'm agonizing now over every word of Mist on the Meadow, and it's nearly done. 

Again. 

I will whine, but I will persevere.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween! Oh wait. That was yesterday. Happy All Saints Day.

Halloween is a fun day – people get to dress up and be someone else for a few hours. For the kids that go trick-or-treating, it’s a fun way to see the neighbors in a world where people see increasingly less of each other in the neighborhood. The kids are adorable (for the most part), the parents are smiling and happy and even the family pets come out in costume. With my kids out of the house and grown up, it is probably less significant to me. I never was a major player for Halloween, although I’ve always been fascinated by the origins.

A pagan holiday. Yep. Some will even say a satanic holiday. I’ve been a member of churches where they rallied against it, but as a Lutheran, we had another thing to celebrate, Reformation Day. But my “intellectual” interest in Halloween (if I dare to refer to myself in that vein) is always piqued. The “Fire Feasts” and Celtic superstitions have always fascinated me. Halloween is Samhain. I love a good scary story, always have (scary, not gory). Ghosts and goblins and fairies and their holidays. I suppose that’s why I can’t seem to avoid allusions to those things in my own writing. I’m not committed to go full tilt into the whole paranormal realm with my writing, but we all have a little mysticism in our lives that defies explanation. That’s where you find me on the subject. I’m not going to go full bore into theories and debates, but writing is about imagination. I have my own beliefs on the subject of the supernatural and most of them are in line with Christian doctrine.

So like Halloween or hate Halloween, whichever side of the fence you’re on (and fortunately it’s not usually a polarizing topic), for one day out of the year, it’s fun to remember that sometimes there’s more to this life than we know about. And it’s fun to have an excuse to knock on a neighbor’s door and say hello (even if it’s just to beg for candy).