Time to Write

As a writer you have to make time to write. If not, you’re not writing. I sometimes struggle with this as I’m a busy person. As I’ve said before I’m an Accountant, Mother, Wife, Children’s Minister, Blogger, and Writer. My philosophy is you only live once so live everyday like it’s your last.

Some days I get frustrated because the characters of my books are running around screaming in my head, but it’s alright. I know that they’ll find their voice. Do you have a hard time finding time around life to write? Do you struggle with your characters being louder than everything?

Oh, and I forgot to add that I now have a small publishing service called Horseshoe Publishing. Yep, I’m a glutton for punishment. Not to mention my assistant is leaving me in two weeks to finish up college at the University of Georgia. I’m so proud of her, but that’s for another post as I’m already tearing up just saying it out loud. She’s also my niece, so I’m a proud aunt.

Let’s just say time is on short supply and I need at least 36 hours in a day. Go over and support my writing and maybe I can eliminate one of the jobs. Just kidding, I love what I do. Well, you can still go over and support my writing if you want to. I’m not a pushy person as you well know from my blogs.

As always, great writing and May God Bless You…

I’ve climbed out!

Well, if any of you were wondering about my lack of blog posts, tax season took me hostage. I was snowed in and weighed down in 1040’s and paperwork stacked all around me, caging me in. I worked until midnight last night and filed too many extensions to even count.

I’m back in full force with book advertising, writing and blogging. Hope you’re ready for the onslaught of me telling it like it is in my life.

My question is this. Why do we let work take over our live? Deadlines? My son was so sweet all weekend and last night as I worked feverishly to finish. He would sit in my office playing games on his IPOD. I guess he figured if he was going to spend time with me, that was where it would be. My hubby refused to go to bed last night until I was done.

Hope everyone has been well. If you get a chance go on over to my friend Rosie Amber’s A-Z Challenge.

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…

Does your cover reveal too much?

As with any writer I always struggle with my cover design. Sometimes I’ve got a picture in my mind of how I want the cover to look. During the writing of my books I’m constantly thinking of the cover. Some parts of the book inspire the cover.

It’s so discouraging to pick up a book and look at the cover expecting one thing and reading the book to find something totally different. I’ve done this several times as I know you have too. For example, the book has a vampire on the cover and the only thing about vampires in the book is a short part from a nightmare with a character. So why put a vampire on the cover when the book is not about vampires at all but about something totally different.

Then you get into the aspect of revealing too much with the cover. Let’s say that in the book there is a secret that will not be revealed until the middle or end of the book. You don’t want to put something about that on the cover if it will tell the reader what the secret is. This just spoils the whole suspense plot.

So in my opinion the cover has to be thought over quite a bit. The cover can reveal a lot about the book. When my assistant and I designed the first couple of covers it was so wrong. We quickly revised it until we were happy. I was careful not to reveal too much about the plot but I also made sure the cover was relevant.

Hope this helps if you’re working on your cover. It’s often one of the hardest things to me as a writer other than the dreaded description, but that’s a whole new blog post 🙂

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…

Nice surprise on Twitter yesterday…

One of my Twitter friends Tattie Maggard sent me a nice tweet. She has a Christian ebook blog and she featured “With All My Heart” yesterday on her blog along with 3 other Christian romances. It was a nice surprise. Check out the link to the post.

http://christianfictionebooks.blogspot.com/2013/01/four-christian-romances-to-fit-your.html

As I Ponder 2012…

I thought this picture would be a refreshing change. Everything here is starting to look drab and dull. Winter can do that you know. I can hear the birds chirping this morning as I make my post. I love it. Well, on to the new year.

As I ponder the past year I wonder, what did I accomplish? What did I want to accomplish but didn’t? Well, let’s see. When 2012 started I had only played with the idea of publishing some of my manuscripts. Now six of them are a reality. That’s exciting to me. Wow, I published six books in 2012, should’ve been seven, but that’s water under the perpetual bridge so to speak.

My ship didn’t come in, meaning I didn’t win the lottery or sell a million books, so today I have to come back to my accounting office and start the busiest time of the year for an accountant. I love this time of year. Weird, I know, but that’s just me. I love it when it’s busy and I don’t have time to think about the things I haven’t done.

I am thankful for a healthy, happy family. It’s wonderful to have friends that care, family that is close and all of you. That’s another thing that changed in 2012. I became a social media junkie. Yep, that’s right, me, ‘Ms I don’t do social media’. 🙂 Well you all know how that turned out. Here I am blogging, tweeting, facebooking, and any other site I can get on. Funny how publishing a book can change your life and publishing six in one year really changes things.

Well, I hope you all have a prosperous year.

As always, good writing and May God Bless you in 2013!

Beautiful Blogger Award! Me! Thanks!

I want to thank Sonya Loveday for the wonderful honor of nominating me for the Beautiful Blogger Award. I accept this honor with much humility and adoration.

The rules for the Beautiful Blogger award are as follows. Thank the person who nominated you. Thank you again Sonya! Add the badge to your blog- and then reveal seven things about yourself. Choose 15 Beautiful Bloggers and pass the award along to them.

Seven things about me:

1: I am an Accountant and own my own Accounting business.

2: I love romance. Guess that’s why I write in that genre, huh!

3: I am a mother of a 13 year old son and been married for 18 years.

4: I love horses and cowboys!

5: I always wanted to be a concert pianist. (Studied for 8 years)

6: I have a passion for children & my faith, that’s why I am a children’s ministry director.

7: Christmas is my favorite time of the year! (Just wait for those blogs. I get really giddy at that time of year.)

So thanks again Sonya, you’re the best. If I list you and you don’t want to play along I totally understand. Here goes:

http://nikkiziehl.wordpress.com

http://busyteacher.wordpress.com

http://candaceknoebel.wordpress.com

http://melissarsmith.wordpress.com

http://rosieamber.wordpress.com

http://bottledworder.wordpress.com

http://igamemom.wordpress.com

http://henryspruce.wordpress.com

http://paulaacton.wordpress.com

http://seanmacuisdin.wordpress.com

http://joannewadsworth.wordpress.com

http://organizedmama.wordpress.com

http://wyattmcintyre.com

http://cristianmihai.net

http://amatuerstorywriter.wordpress.com

I have so many wonderful blog friends, so if I did not include someone I’m sorry, but I had to get only 15. I love you all!

Revisit of old post – Something as simple as watering flowers!

This was a post from last August that brought about a lot of discussion. I recently sent it to another blog for a blast from the past and it stirred a need to repost.

Have you ever thought about the comparison of watering flowers and life? If you don’t water the flowers, they will die

without any rain. Life is that way. We have to constantly add something in our life to entertain ourselves. We have to have food and water to live.

Just as our writing, if you don’t keep watering your audience, eventually, unless you grow really famous, your audience goes down and you die. You have to water by blogging daily, adding yourself to every site imaginable, and tweeting til your fingers ache.

I was watering the above flowers last night and thought about that. Even with my faith which I take very seriously, I have to keep read up and prayed up. If you don’t stay focused you lose some momentum.

As I tell my son all the time regarding his dogs, if you don’t feed them they will starve to death. He always comes back with they will find something to eat mom! (Kids you gotta love um!).