I received my first book blog review for Lord Midnight. Sizzling Hot Book Reviews gave it 5 hearts, their highest rating, and I'm so excited. Actually I'm beyond excited. I'm thrilled. That doesn't quite describe it either. Hang on while I find a thesaurus so I can type in every possible variation for giddy.
While I'm doing that, go check out the review. And feel free to bring back some champagne so we can celebrate!
I'm so excited to announce I've taken the plunge and self-pubbed one of my stories, a novella called Summer Lovin'.
I know I'm not the only one who isn't a fan of winter, so this story about Mia and Luke, who have a little summer fling that leads to more, might be a nice distraction from all the yucky snow and sleet. There's also Hellboy, an adorable Bichon with a shoe fetish, who does his part to get the romance going.
I love the cover, so I have to tell you about the wonderful Carrie Spencer, who designed it. It was so much fun working with her as she brought my story to life visually. You can see more of her work at Cheeky Covers, but don't get her so busy she won't have time to do more of my covers!
This story started from a writing prompt I had on the blog quite a while ago. It was a post called "Writer Laryngitis", discussing how important it is to keep our writer's voice intact. At the end of the post I suggested people write a little snippet about a puppy chasing a ball. At first it didn't seem like anyone was going to write anything, so I nearly took the prompt out, but then the intrepid Terri Osburn stepped up, so I left it in. We ended up having so much fun, with an amazing variety of stories showcasing everyone's unique style.
I finally added my own little story, and I got so intrigued with it I had to keep going. I knew it wasn't enough for a full-size manuscript, so I thought I'd try my hand at a short story. It ended up being a little bigger than that, so it became a novella. I thought since it was shorter it would take less time to write.
Hah!
It just goes to show how much you learn each time you sit down to write. I really had a lot of fun with this story, and I'm thrilled to send it out into the world, hopeful there will be others who will find it an enjoyable diversion.
The story is available at Smashwords, in a variety of e-reader formats, for the delightfully affordable price of 99 cents. You can also purchase it for your Kindle at the Amazon website too.
Thanks for being a part of this great adventure!
Hurricane Irene made her presence felt in a big way here. I lost my internet connection early Sunday morning, but at the time it was a great time to indulge in reading a couple of books while riding out the storm. That afternoon it seemed to die down instead of build up the way the forecasters had expected, so I thought we were done with the worst.
But Irene was a tricky one. That evening she decided to give it another try, and the high winds knocked out the electricity around midnight. I didn't have electricity until last night (Tuesday), and my internet connection just came back on this morning.
So I'm enjoying having the amenities back, and I will be back to posting again on Friday. I hope everyone made it through the storm safely, and I really hope we don't have any more of these to look forward to this year!
When I was younger, I used to watch football on TV every Sunday. We planned "the game" into our schedule like it was a holy ritual, with chips and soda our sacrament. When the season was over, we didn't know what to do with that extra day in the week. It was like being released from a religious vow.
Last month, I had the opportunity to watch the New England Patriots kick some football butt on TV. It was the first time in a long while since I'd done that, and it filled me with nostalgia, making me realize how much I miss the whole Sunday ritual.
However, it didn't take long before I noticed some interesting parallels between a game of football and writing.
You can read the rest of the post at Romance Writer's Revenge.
Do you remember that Mary Poppins song, "A Spoonful of Sugar"? It has lyrics that state, with utter seriousness, "In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun."
Ack. I wish I could agree with that. I remember singing that song, quite cheerfully, as a Girl Scout, while we were tricked into doing some yucky chore like peeling a thousand pounds of potatoes or picking up litter for a ninety-mile stretch of highway.
Maybe it wasn't quite that bad. Sometimes memories can be unreliable. And maybe it was the first clue that work isn't all that great if you have to sing a song about how wonderful it is.
I also remember the combination of work and songs when I had my first real job, at the ROTC summer camp, when I was right out of high school. The soldiers doing PT (physical training) outside would sing something called "Sound Off" to keep them running together in formation. It's a military type of limerick, complete with a variety of humorous lyrics, some of them probably made up on the fly. It generally starts with the phrase, "I don't know but I've been told", but I have to stop there since a) I can't remember the details, and b) clever as they are, they're probably unprintable. (Sorry.)
Now that I'm thinking about it, I guess it is possible to have fun while doing something onerous, or filled with drudgery, or even worse, that's "good for you".
Since we can't get rid of the yucky work stuff, and since I believe we deserve more fun, I have decided that 2011 shall be "The Year of Fun". I actually did this by accident, in a comment to a previous poster. But I realized it was the underpinning to a lot of my hopes for this year.
I'm aware we're getting a bit of a late start, what with it being mid-January (already). But once we get the hang of what fun is actually like, and how to incorporate it into our daily lives, we can proclaim next year as "The Year of More Fun". We'll even make a note on the calendar to start it on January 1.
As my part of the celebration, I plan to post some things for Wildcard Wednesdays that I consider fun, or silly, or worthy of a belly laugh. Hopefully they'll bring a little smile into your day, and inspire you to tackle work with a lighter heart. Before you know it, we'll have another year under our belts. But if we do it right, this year will be a lot of fun to look back on.
