Life…Such an awesome opportunity

I was feeling a little let’s just say down to earth this morning. If you know me then you know I’m always floating around on a cloud of thought and wonder. I’m blonde, what can I say 🙂

Well in this frame of mind I got to thinking of the wonderful opportunities we are given each and every day to make a difference in someone’s life. Maybe not a big difference but at least a little bit of a difference.

As writers we are given the chance to inspire with our words, to educate, or simply to take someone’s mind off the real world if only for a little while. That’s what I think of when I’m writing. What if someone reading my work is needing a reprieve from something? Maybe they’ve suffered a loss and just need to get away for a moment to another world. Maybe they have a bad marriage and just need hope.

Sometimes we get so caught up in our own lives that we don’t stop to think of others. I see so many different kinds of people from different cultures, different backgrounds and different financial situations in my business. Sometimes I just sit and listen as they tell me their problems. Not real sure why people assume an Accountant is like a bartender, but maybe it’s just I’m a good listener.

I get down on life sometimes, yes even me. Then I think of the horror that a friend may be going through or maybe I think of someone who is terminally ill and I look up and say Thank You and I’m sorry for having self pitying thoughts. I’m sure He looks down and smiles. That’s life. We have our up days and our down days.

I try to give advice when I can, but I’m always careful how I do it. One thing that’s helped me is my Faith. I give it to Him and He helps me through it. Some people don’t know to do this or don’t believe in Faith. I don’t push mine on anyone but I try to be a good example and I do let them know what gets me through the day or rather Who.

When I’m having a difficult day I try to remember it could be worse, a lot worse.

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…

Your leading man…

When writing a romance novel you’ve got to have a leading man. How do you design him? Here’s the top ten things I ponder when creating my leading men. Hope you enjoy even if you don’t use them 🙂

1: Leading men always need to be able to take charge, be the hero type, at least for me. They have to be able to handle whatever the leading lady throws at them, or at least eventually handle it.

2: In the same instance, I like my leading men to be able to show emotion, whether it’s anger, frustration, or down right cry. It shows a human factor.

3: Most of my leading men have to be able to wear a Stetson and ride a horse. I know that’s just a personal preference, but it works in my books. The black Stetson is kind of my trademark.

4: Most of my leading men have dark hair and blue eyes. You definitely have to define the leading man’s looks and stick with it. If somewhere along the story he suddenly goes blonde and green eyed you have a problem.

5: What about size? Is he tall and lean or medium height and husky? It’s up to you, but it’s a pivotal point. If he’s a string bean with no muscles and the heroine needs to be carried off into the sunset you might have a problem.

6: Is your leading man a general good guy or does he have a bad side to go along with it? Sometimes your leading man has to be a little bad to get the lady, but that’s just my opinion. Sometimes they have a little rogue in them that draws your leading lady in.

7: Will your leading drive a car or a truck? You may say that doesn’t matter, but it does in most stories. If he’s a high powered business man that wears a suit to work, nine times out of ten he’s going to drive a sporty car versus a four wheel drive truck. Now if he’s a cowboy he’s going to drive a truck. It makes the story more realistic to get the small details straight.

8: Will your leading man be a business type, a cowboy, a blue collar worker, or maybe be unemployed for the sake of the story? You can’t go from one thing to the other in the same story without a story line to support the change.

9: Is your leading man educated? In a lot of story lines this is important because the dialogue needs to lean in one way or the other.

10: Ok, this is a biggy with me, is he romantic? Will he bring the leading lady flowers when things go wrong? Will he be the first to say those three little words that most men have a allergic reaction to? Or is he totally unromantic and moody? Your call…

I could go on forever, but these are the top ten things I look at in a leading man. Sometimes if you sit down and do a character sketch ahead of time it helps you to keep the story in line.

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…

Friday night and smiling :)

Well I made it through another week. Thanks to all the well wishes I’ve received. I’m feeling much better, but still a little stuffy. I’m excited for the weekend. Not planning much of anything but some time for myself somehow among the tax returns, my son’s shot gun practice and house cleaning.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Friday night and remember to smile. It’s the weekend and God has given us in Georgia a beautiful weekend. Get out and enjoy the outdoors if you can.

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…

When life gives you lemons…

When life gives you lemons….

When life gives you lemons…

As you can tell from the title it’s been a tough week. I’ve been battling a cold or sinus or crud, whatever you want to call it. Since it’s tax season I’ve been working a lot of hours through the fog.

Of course as it usually goes, life goes on even when you’re sick. My son started football training for tryouts in May. My husband and I have always supported him in whatever he wanted to do. He played baseball for about five years and always wanted to play football. He’s on the 4-H Shotgun team and does really good with that. He loves anything outdoors. Football scares me due to the injuries that can occur, but I know I have to let him do things.

Well as you know I’m a Children’s Minister. Last night I’d prepared for the kids to watch a Bible DVD cartoon since I wasn’t feeling well. Since the teacher of the preschoolers didn’t show up I had all the children. Well as I tried to turn the projector on I soon realized something was wrong. I spent a few frustrating minutes trying to get the projector to connect to the laptop, but to no avail. I then moved the children to one of the rooms that has a large screen television and dvd player.

As I watched the children sit and watch the film I realized how lucky I am. I’m given such a wonderful chance to make a difference in the lives of these children. I smiled to myself and thanked God for the opportunity I’ve been given.

That’s the attitude I decided to adopt with my son on the football thing. He was so excited and I don’t want to dampen his fun by being overprotective. I’ll just be watchful 🙂

So when life gives you lemons, smile and enjoy every sour bite.

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…

A great post for all of those facing a problem this week. Check it out. It could really make a difference.

Eyes Wide Open

Today was weird, friends.

Until today, I haven’t really felt sad about the fact that I will be departing from the job I have held for over ten years now. Most of you who read this blog know by now that I talk a lot about feelings; how they are fickle; how they should not be what we rely upon; and how they can also just be a pain in the rear sometimes.

Yet, feelings can be good if they help us grow even more in our personal relationship with Christ. Even the not-so-feel-good kind of feelings can bring this glorious result about. It’s about keeping our eyes fixed upon Christ.

Today I have some of those less-than-pleasant feelings going on and rolling around inside of my head and heart. As I write this, My Lord is helping me to give them over to Him. I have been fighting against that all day long…

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Amazing! Have you tried this?

As writers we try everything to get our work noticed. We go on sites and follow other established writers to see how they do it. We put our name everywhere. I’ve put my name in some of the most unlikely places. Some have worked and others have just plain out flopped around like a dead fish.

Well I’ve found a couple of avenues for my work and I wanted to share them with you. Some of you may already be using these channels and if so I hope it’s going well, if not I hope this gives you some new advantages.

1. The Independent Authors Network

I’ve been playing with the choice of paying for a space on this network. I researched it and noticed that some of the authors I love are on there and it’s relatively reasonable. It’s a $24.95 one time fee for a basic membership and $74.95 a year for a Gold membership. I chose the basic. It’s like a author family of sorts. The network sends out your info periodically on their social media and other authors or readers send out your links and you do the same for them. I’ve noticed a real change in my sales since joining. My author page, yes I got an author page shows six of my books and some of the links that are clickable for purchasing my work.

2. Romance Writers of America

I wanted to join this earlier than I did, but the entry fee kept me held back. I’m really glad I decided to join this wonderful organization. I get a magazine monthly and newsletters periodically. They both provide some great advice and instruments I can use in making my author platform more sturdy.

3. allromanceebooks.com

This is one of the sites where you can sell your books. It doesn’t cost anything to set up a publisher/author account and have your books sold on their site through Paypal. You can put as many books as you want to on their site. It’s fairly easy to put your books on their site and they take several formats. Actually they recommend publishing them in several formats. I set this up and was able to put five of my books on there yesterday and already have had sales. You get 60% royalty. I figure that’s pretty good especially since it’s another avenue for my books to be seen and it’s FREE.

Maybe this will be helpful for you or just old news, but it helped me. My objective is to let others know when I find a great way to get my work seen. These are not my only avenues, but are my newest. If you use other sites, please list them and send to me. It could warrant a whole new blog post of what others use to market their work.

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…

When a program rules you…

For those that don’t know what I do to make a living, I’m an Accountant. Now you know one of the reasons I write, it’s to get away for a few minutes or hours. Well today’s post is a rant and rage so get ready, here it goes.

Since tax season is in full swing my desk has piled up with tax returns to be completed. Since I had to help with a IRS audit a couple of weeks ago, I’ve started out behind. Well, now the tax program I’ve used for the last ten or more years has major issues. It’s slow loading every return. It’s a complete nightmare.

This weekend was going to be a catch up and clean off desk weekend. I even put up my writing for the whole weekend. The program has progressively gotten worse and slower. It’s so frustrating watching the spinning wheel. You may be saying, well have you tried upgrading your ram on your computer. Yep, I even had more ram put in my laptop which is not over a year old to begin with. My computer tech told me this program is utilizing over 60% of my computers resources. He said a program shouldn’t do that especially with the laptop I have.

Well, needless to say I’m even further behind by the day. The sad thing is I have been working on three different manuscripts and my mind is filled with chapters on top of chapters of writing that is just pushing and shoving trying to get to the forefront. They were not happy when I refused to even pull them up this weekend. I did however keep a watch on sales as barnes & noble updated all weekend.

So as for my writing, don’t forget to check out my giveaway on Goodreads for “Rekindled Flame” and for a couple of days all my books are free on Smashwords during the March Ereader Campaign.

My weekend was not a bust as I had a big Children’s Ministry Meeting yesterday and was able to bring on more volunteers which helps me out. I no longer have to teach twice on Sunday mornings. The kids were good yesterday and it’s a good thing because I was unfortunately on a short tether. All this has happened on the heels of finding out one of my friends has gotten into some major legal trouble. This has troubled my mind all weekend.

So, good writing and May God Bless You…

P.S. I’m still smiling and optimistic. You know me, can’t keep me down for long.

Your Heart! Is it protected from your writing?

You may be saying, what??? What I’m saying is simply this, as writers we put our whole heart into what we do, or at least we should. To me it’s like pouring out my soul when I write. I sometimes finish a writing session as feel so drained and other times I’m cleansed from the incessant chatter in my head by characters that just have to be heard. Writers, you know what I mean 🙂

When you pour your heart into something and then it doesn’t go well, how do your heart feel? Sometimes it really bothers me when sales are down and then an upturn starts and I smile. But my heart does a flip flop and sometimes I wonder if it stops for a second to bask in the good fortune.

My newest novel has been doing really well, which is exciting. The funny thing is and maybe it shouldn’t surprise me, but it seems that people are buying it and the first book in the series together. The sales are coming in twos. One day I did really well and the sales were even on both books in the series. Maybe I should do more series, ummm,,,

So back to the heart of writing. If you go into your writing with both feet forward and your heart encased in the whole process, make sure that you’re ready for some aches and pains. Writing is a process and sometimes it doesn’t go like we want it to, but other times it goes better than expected. My heart stays on a constant roller coaster. i just hope it’s up to the challenge 🙂

In romance writing you have to put your heart in it. Sometimes it’s a lot of your own heart that you write about. Your fantasies, your flops in the love department or just what you’ve experience in the heart department. Some of my favorite writing has been from my own experiences, changed a bit for obvious reasons. Don’t want anyone to think I’ve lived a fantasy life.

So on this Saturday as you go about your house cleaning, your chores, your errands and hopefully your writing, put your heart into it, but put a protective hedge around it. Don’t let the downs affect your heart, keep the heart pumping and keep writing 🙂

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…