Big Plans for Summer

 

I know, you can't even think summer right now. I can't either and I'm in Louisiana where it's 36 degrees a couple of days before the official start of spring. 

That didn't keep me from making plans to go to Jimmy Thomas' second annual Romance Novel Convention where up to 500 attendees will enjoy workshops, book signings, costume parties, and promo opportunities. There will be cover models there as well. 

Yes, the same Jimmy Thomas who is on 6000 covers! If you don't know this, Jimmy is a true knight in shining armor to romance writers. He offers valuable instruction and opportunities to promote through his website Romance Novel Center dot com His Romance  Novel Covers site offers the widest array of romance genre stock photos anywhere. Everywhere he goes,  he lauds the value of the romance genre. 


Yes, he's in the romance business but when you see a man who works as hard as he does, who singlehandedly coordinated a convention to keep costs low for the writers and others who attended last year's first event, his sincerity just comes through everything he does - his business, interviews, and the way he interacts with the romance industry.

I'm gearing up for my summer releases and the convention with the new website; working hard to get finishing touches on the first few books in the Storm Lake series; and reissuing my 2012 release with a new title. What are you doing in July? Why not join us at the RNC?

Viva Las Vegas for the Romance Novel Convention 2014

It's official! 

RNC 2014 is in Las Vegas 

Grab your costume, your books, and your swag 

and join us there. 

Workshops, parties, book signing, contests

Sign up at 

Romance Novel Convention 

There are lots of pictures and info on  Jimmy Thomas' Facebook Page

Your Creative Space

When I walked outside yesterday morning to " Mini sled dog wannabe" we stopped at the sound of a large whoosh and bubbling up of water about ten feet from the bayou bank. And up popped the seven foot gator DH had told me about the day before. Apparently he's been hanging around just beyond the brick steps that go down to the bayou.

Our business has been taking all of my time this year and I haven't had a chance to plant flowers around my little outside writing space. But the alligator sighting reminded me of the joy I got from my little creative space last year with the exception of the uneasy feelings when the alligators lay there and watch me write.

There are more creatures of all kinds on the bayou including mosquitoes. This has kept me from making the best use of my favorite spot most of the year. I don't know why it took me so long to thing about it but last year I bought a 10 by 10 screened in canopy which converted my problematic space because of these pests into a perfect spot on any non-rainy day between 60 and 85.





 Inside I'm safe from bugs but can enjoy the jumping fish, tall graceful herons, deer, birds - and keep an eye on the alligators, or the other way around.

We all have our favorite creative activities and the space that lends itself best to it. Where's yours? Is it a specially designed spot or the eeked out corner of the family kitchen? What do you do there? Write, scrapbook, paint?

Bad News Winters

I apologize for being absent for so long. I kind of unplugged to get some serious writing done.

It's been the coldest Louisiana winter we've seen in a while. We sometimes get one ice/snow storm every 7 years or so and it lasts a day and we're back up to the 80's for Christmas.

This year was different. Three storms in three weeks. The first one was brief but brought an inch or two of snow and had us all out watching our pets and children play in it. Temperatures rose a bit, then the next one hit. This one put an ice mix down that closed the schools and government offices but not the Mississippi River bridge which turned out to be a mistake because we're not set up for it and NO one around here knows how to drive on it. And besides who can drive on ice? Experience just tells you to stay in, not drive. After a semi spun out on the bridge the local law started handing out tickets to anyone out snow-seeing.

It wasn't just these three storms. We've been in the 30s and below for most of the winter. We're talkin' lows, people, Louisiana remember?  I know you're saying 30's! That's not cold. Well, when your winters are usually in the 50s with an occasional 30 and you have butane or small electric heaters, you never get warm.

I've spent the winter in ski skins and sweat clothes. Thank God for generators which we needed for three days during the last cold front when we got a couple of inches of icy rain and 20 degree weather which froze everything. Trees and limbs were coming down everywhere with booms and cracks. It was scary. But beautiful. Take pictures and pray an iced up spanish moss laden tree doesn't come down on your house.

DH kept coming in and telling me I needed to move to a different room in case the tree over the living room came down. I figure where ever you are, if it's your time, a plane can come through the ceiling, so I stayed in my comfy recliner, writing...

Well! It wasn't all bad. I got a LOT of writing done. Starting with Nano and going straight through until now when I'd planned on opening our snowball stand March 1st. I didn't really want to and it's early but decided people are usually ready so I'd just open early. Of course, I didn't consult the weather man. I did check the Farmer's Almanac and it said, first two weeks of March, colder and wetter than normal. I still didn't pay attention. But I did keep on writing.

The result four books in revision to be published every month beginning in June. And I have a new cover designer I'm giving the whole series to.

So bad news I froze my tail off, but it was great writing weather.

Was this a good news, bad news winter for you, or all bad news? Don't worry, Spring is on the way. It says so on the calendar at least.

Livia

Looking for Love

"Looking for love in all the wrong places..." the words to that old country song came back to me while contemplating this post.

Some thought provoking quotes from one of my favorite authors on the subject - Merle Shain.

From When Lovers Are Friends. "Very few of us are tough enough to be soft." Sometimes we don't recognize love when we see it. Do you know someone who is strong enough, and loves fierce enough to fight for truth and yet their kindness is just as obvious? You feel the love radiating from them and if you stand there, it can fill you up.

"There are many sources of friendship which we reject, many potential friends who we don't see, and hence there are many ways of enriching our lives which we overlook, many sources of love which we turn down." Do you turn from love because it's not the right 'kind' of love, not what you expect, not what you were taught love IS?

"Friends are people who help you be more yourself, more the person you are intended to be, and it is possible that without them we don't recognize ourselves, or grow to be what it is in us to be. Our lives are in fact many lives, and we can all be much more than we are, so there cannot be any doubt that the secret of who we become is whom we meet along the way."

Often caring friendships will carry you further and more securely than the kind we bet our futures on, rejecting them in hopes of THE ideal.

What's the best kind of love - romantic love? A friend's love? A child's love? Familial love? Fido's love?

From Courage My Love, Merle Shain quotes Mignon McLaughlin, "No one ever loved anybody like everybody wants to be loved." And Shain says, "We expect a lot from love-- often a lot more than we expect of ourselves."

What is this thing we call 'love' that we look for outside ourselves? How does someone 'prove' their love? Why is that necessary? Do we concentrate as much on proving ourselves as we expect from our significant others?

"People who are always trying to make the perfect choice, rejecting what they have for what they hope to find, bet the present on the future and end up missing both...

It is easy enough to love the one who got away or the one we never got, the real trick is to love ourselves enough to let someone know who we really are, and to pay them the same respect...

There isn't a perfect person somewhere, only a more perfect person we might become. You can think you must look still for the perfect one, or that the best one got away, or that love is a fraud and a failure and that you want it not, or that everything went wrong because your mother didn't love you, but the one you wait for is yourself."

There was never a truer word spoken.

Love is all around us, from friends, family and strangers. It may not be everywhere; it may not be constant; and it may not be a guarantee, but in our giving of ourselves we find it. In our acceptance of someone else, we find it. And maybe when we stop trying so hard to find IT, love finds us.

What does 'love' mean to you? Is it really about diamonds, jewelry or even chocolate? Is it about happy endings? Or is it about BEing, giving, and sharing happiness.

Maybe we could learn to be a love tree, ever blooming, forever tapping deep into the roots of love wherever we find it.

What's Under Your Bed?

Queue background music from Jaws…da…dum…da…dum…

dadum.. Dadum, DaDum!

Under my bed are a few dust bunnies (okay, maybe more than a few) and my first, oh, fifteen tries at writing. And Oh. My. God, were they scary to look at! Why, they scare themselves just like the fierce little monster above. (Come to think of it, he resembles me watching a scary movie... like Star Wars. Yeah, I know.)

Lately, I’ve been REcontemplating the writing process, something that happens whenever I start to doubt my ability, my story, my existence, lol. So this was the impetus to find my favorite box of writing books which I’d misplaced after the MS River fiasco. Serendipitously, a little book by Heather Sellers, Chapter after Chapter, jumped out of the box and into my hands.

I’d left off reading quite some time ago so I flipped to where the dust jacket was primed, to the chapter on Serious Writer Man. “When we’re unsure, or in quicksand, in order to deal with the fear of the unknown, we suit up and call on Serious Writer Man, but it’s fake…and always produces weak writing…When we’re driven to please, to fit in, to try to be heard, (to write for the wrong reasons) we’re prone to producing work that rings hollow. We don’t trust the greatness within us.”

Wow.

And…”Serious Writer Man must never be allowed into our writing

space.”

This was followed by advice on counteracting the “I should” mechanism.

Ms. Sellers likens writing a book to swimming across a vast lake. It’s scary and lonely. The swimmer is doing fine when she’s stroking, not worrying about the other side being far, far away, or what she should be doing. Every so often she stops and reassesses and then keeps going. She said we need to replace “’Should’ with curiosity and attention to the tiniest details. If I cup my hands will I swim faster? If I write in present tense, do things flow differently?”

Ironically, when I go back to some of my earliest serious attempts at writing, I find a fun freshness to the writing - not so many contrivances and attempts to style my writing to fit a mold or please anyone but me.

So what’s under your bed? What were some of your early stories about? Have you considered pulling any of them out to revise and submit? Which ones the scariest artistically? Did you always write in the same genre as you do currently, or did you explore your limits?

And most of all, when you re-read some of your earliest work, what do you see in those honest clueless samples of your voice? Has any of it resurfaced in the more advanced versions of your voice or style?

And readers, what’s beside your bed? Tell us what you like about what you’re reading lately? Did you ever make a stab at storytelling? Tell me about it. I hope you kept it somewhere precious, because everything we create is an opportunity to tap into our own unique soul center.

Labor Day

Labor Day - the official end to Summer, not meteorologically or cosmically speaking, but your kids have started back to school, the weather is cooperating, hopefully, bringing cooler air and a fresh attitude (or the desire to get lost in those closets).

Do you have goals for the rest of the year? How do you feel about your accomplishments for 201o up to now? Maybe the Labor Day weekend a kind of marker for you, a second wind, you know, like a fresh start to try to accomplish everything you set out to do in January.

This morning as I sat outside in the 75 degree cool breeze, literally grrrinning with pleasure, I couldn't help but think of Grace's Friday blog. I do love, love, love Fall, Grace, I'd almost forgotten how much. We so often see hurricanes around Labor day and excessive heat that this Labor Day weekend is especially wonderful. Not that I'd wish a hurricane onanyone! Hopefully, we'll all be able to enjoy the long weekend - I mean what other holiday promotes relaxation without guilt more than this one?

Even though I'll be laboring on Labor Day, I'll be doing something I enjoy. How about you? What's on the menu? Will you be spending it picnicking, on the lake, with family, working? Do you have a tradition you honor on this day, or do you SIMPLY relax? Breathe out... forget to breathe in...