The birth of a novel.

Have you ever read a novel and wondered what the author was thinking about when they wrote the first word? Like what was Charlotte Bronte thinking when she started Jane Eyre or J.K. Rowling when she started Harry Potter? Did they know at the moment of the first word that it would be a success?

As I started my last novel I was thinking, will someone want to read this. Will it make the New Your Best Sellers list? I typed the first word and suddenly the words were flowing from my fingers. It was as though the story had to be written and I’d been chosen to write it. I knew what had to be said and what the characters had to go through to get to the words The End.

As the story evolved I became immersed in the lives of the characters. It was as though I was watching the story from a distance. I could see the house, the people, the horses, and feel the pain, love or just happiness. I even cried at one point which is so in character with myself.

To make the great novel what do you do? You put everything inside you on paper. You leave nothing unsaid and no feeling unfelt. I’m not saying my novel is the great novel by any stretch of the mind, but instead I’m saying it could be to me or maybe a fan of my writing. I can dream of the day it soars to life in someone else’s heart.

The one thing I hope to achieve from my writing, other than making a little extra money, I hope to take the reader to another world, another time and help them to experience love through my characters. My Christian series was created to help others cope with something in their life. My romance novels were created to inspire romance. Everyone needs it.

So as I close this post, I glance out my window and watch the sun shine on the golden leaves as they fall from the trees. My mind is working on the novel at my fingertips and I smile. Maybe one day after I’m gone, someone will read my books and say, “I wonder what she was thinking as she wrote these words.”

As always good writing and May God bless you.

Self Publishing: Do or Don’t?

I’ve read several posts lately regarding the decision whether to go traditional publisher or do it yourself. It’s a hard question to answer without some investigating your options. That’s what I did before I published my books. Here’s my findings and remember, this is just my experiences and opinions.

When I first decided to publish my books I sent a query letter to a traditional publisher. Well, after several months I didn’t receive a response and I was really wanting to the book out. So, being the person I am, I started looking into other options. I didn’t know a lot about self publishing, but soon I was immersed in the how-to’s. It was an interesting concept. What really impressed me was the royalty rates versus traditional rates.

One of the issues was that in traditional publishing you have someone doing book promos for you and the self publishing market you do it yourself. Being an accountant by trade I wasn’t sure about this. But with more in depth investigating I realized I could do this. Thank goodness my assistant is in college and she is very with working computer magic.

The funny thing is that it was easier than I had ever imagined. I was not a social media butterfly, so easing me into that part of the marketing was extremely funny to my assistant. The first time I received a follower on Twitter I was like, really, someone I don’t even know followed me. She just laughed and rolled her eyes. Since then it’s been crazy. I blog, I tweet and I have my books on every website I can find. My accounting office has turned into publishing central.

We even design our own covers and have gotten some real good reviews on them. I have gotten a couple of calls from traditional publishers wanting me to sign with them. That’s been gratifying but the only thing is some of them want me to pay for their services. I asked one the other day and they are a big publisher, what are you going to do to market my book? Guess what, I was doing the same exact thing they were going to do, and paying thousands less than they wanted to do it.

So, I guess with me, I’ve had a good experience with self publishing. I won’t say that I’ll never go with a traditional publisher, but for now I’m happy with doing it myself. I have been talking with a small publishing company that is interested, but that will be later on. At least with self publishing I can get it out there now, not next year.

Hope this helps you if you’re trying to decide. As always great writing and May God bless you!

How authors are portrayed.

Have you ever read a book and you had an idea in your head what the author would look like? Come on, you know you have. Well, since becoming a published author I’ve thought long and hard about the portrayal of authors. If you write a horror story does that make you ugly and mean? If you write a romance does that make you beautiful and romantic? No, the genre you write in doesn’t make you who you are.

I’ve talked to people that know me and they always say, “Yeah, I can see you writing romance novels.” Why do they say that? What makes me more of a romance novelist than someone else? In my opinion nothing. Who says I couldn’t write a gory horror story, well I personally couldn’t but just by looking at me you wouldn’t be able to tell that.

It’s profiling plain and simple. Just like with models, everyone thinks they all have eating disorders, but not all of them do. Some of them are naturally skinny, it’s just in their nature. One of my favorite authors of romance and I’m not mentioning any names, but she was totally different from what I portrayed her as. I could see the younger person and she turned out to be a retired grandmother. This in no way made me stop reading her work because I still love her writing. It actually spurred me on because I hope I can write as well as her when I get to be a grandmother. Wait, I am a grandmother, well a step grandmother.

Oh well, good writing and may God bless you!

Cover Mania!

Having a little cover mania. It’s only one more day until the weekend. Working on a Twitter profile page design, my cover designer did this for me. It looked so cool, that I just had to share it.Now we have to get back to designing the covers for my two new novels that are coming out this month. So exciting.

Music that inspires me!

We all have different inspirations for our writing. I’ve written several posts about the inspirations for my writing from leaves to just people watching, even slimy slugs. Well, this post is about the music I use to keep my mind in the mood to write. I call this post the “Music that inspires me” for a reason. Here is my as I call it, “Writing inspiration playlist”.

1: Point of No Return from the Phantom of the Opera (Gerard Butler’s version)

2: I’ll Be There Where the Heart Is – Kim Carnes

3: Before the Dawn – Evanescence

4: Total Eclipse of the Heart – Bonnie Tyler

5: Right Here Waiting For You – Richard Marx

6: I Don’t Want This Night to End – Luke Bryan

7: I Cross My Heart – George Strait

8: Haunted – Evanescence

9: My Immortal – Evanescence

10: Open Arms – Journey

This is only 10 of the over 50 songs that rotate on my RealPlayer. I have several Evanescence songs, also Mariana’s Trench, Muse, Paramore and many others. They just inspire me.

Let me know what kind of music inspires you. Everyone has that song that just inspires them to write. What’s yours?

Hope you enjoyed this post. As always enjoy you writing and May God Bless you.

The mind of a writer!

The road we take as a writer is not always beautiful and lyrical. Most of the time it’s frustrating, nail biting, and down right scary. As I sit and watch the light mist fall outside my den window, I ponder what makes a good writer, what makes a bad writer?

The mind of a writer takes on several layers. A writer can swing from one emotion to another rapidly. It’s funny how quickly things change in the mind of a writer. I know personally I have had an idea about how a book would go and suddenly halfway through it takes a different turn. Sometimes I sit back and say “Wow, didn’t see that one coming” then I laugh to myself, why would I say that knowing it came from my own mind. Sometimes I think I have two brains, one the inner writer and two the outer person.

As a writer you usually see a story out of the simplest thing. I picked up a beautiful bright yellow leaf and looked at it. My mind exploding with possibilities. I traced the veins with my brain, suddenly thinking about a story line about the road less taken or maybe even a story line of the winding roads of life. Yep I got all that from a leaf.

Last night I was helping my son feed the dogs and he picked up a bowl outside and grabbed a slug. He immediately said, “Gross!” I immediately thought of a story about a person being a complete slug and how they pulled themselves out. This being thought of as I showed my son what happens to slugs as salt is sprinkled on them. Now that’s scary.

At Christmas time I get nostalgic and that brings on a wave of new writing possibilities in my mind. I can’t seem to stay on the same piece of work, I’m constantly swinging from one to the other. My mind saying you’ve got to do this, not that.

Don’t get me started on how music effects my writing. I have a long writing playlist. I use this while writing. It inspires me. It ranges from classical, country, classic rock, love, and just plain crazy. That might be my next blog post, the playlist of a writer.

Well, I’m through rambling. Aren’t you glad? As always good writing and if it comes through your head, write it down immediately and spread it into a story. You never know. May God bless and keep you.

2 new books for the holiday rush!

Well, as I’ve mentioned a couple of times, I’m almost ready to have the 2nd book in the “Flames of Love” series published. It will be a New Year’s Eve holiday book. It is named “Rekindled Flames” and I’m real excited about it. It is the continuation of “Tender Flames” which has garnered over 1100 downloads so far. This is about a couple that have been best friends for a couple of years, but when they go to a New Year’s Eve party and drink a little too much champagne, they end up sharing a room. Just when he realizes that he loves her, she leaves town. He sees her again two years later and finds out why she left. Will it tear them apart or will they rekindle their old flame.

The second book is a book that I hadn’t planned on finishing this year, but as you know, writers are slaves to their brains and my brain told me to finish this one. I haven’t quite solidified the name but am going with “And the winner is love”. It is about a Accountant from Atlanta that wins a contest to spend a romantic weekend in the Colorado mountains with a big star. The funny thing is she didn’t enter the contest, her best friend entered her into it. The nice thing is the star is one of her favorites. What happens when they get to the Chalet is both funny and romantic. It will be a holiday based book.

Hopefully they will be published in the next two weeks or sooner. Just finishing the last editing and cover glitches. I’m excited about this holiday season with sales. Hopefully they will ramp up as people start Christmas shopping. Maybe two holiday releases will help with that.

As always, good writing and May God Bless You!

The journey of a writer.

Have you ever wondered why you became a writer? Maybe you had an idea one day that was interesting and you decided to expand on it. Maybe you experience something in life that you felt others would like to hear about. Maybe you just simply love to write.

I started writing when I was a teenager and we won’t discuss how long ago that was. My grandfather wanted me to be a journalist. It got me to thinking about all the stories that ran around in my head. Sometimes I would spend most of the day in my room making notes or filling a notebook with words that came so easily. I just filed those away and went on to the next adventure.

My assistant was cleaning my old desk one day and found those old manuscripts. Some of them were written in pencil and had faded, but you could still see the words. Some were typed on an old typewriter. It actually brought back memories of sitting at a typewriter with the bottle of whiteout beside me. My typing skills came later.

Being a writer means different things to different people. For me it is a stress reliever. I get so relaxed when I’m emptying my brain on the screen. Sometimes, like yesterday, the words just flow from my fingers. Sometimes I get frustrated that I can’t type as fast as the words come. Sometimes I get way ahead of my fingers and I marvel at the fact that my fingers remember the words. It gives me pleasure when I finish a manuscript and look at it.

I know that some people may not like my style of writing, but that’s ok with me. Through reviews I’ve found that some people do like my writing. I’m not in it to become rich because I’ve done my research and I know that’s a one in a million chance. At least I can dream about it though.

My writing experiences have been fun. Sometimes it’s just fun to go back and read what I wrote years ago. My latest novel was started several years ago and all that was written was the first chapter. I don’t even remember why I stopped, but I’m glad I finished it. It was found by my assistant on a 3-1/2″ floppy. That tells you how old it was.

So, if you love writing keep it up. If you love experiencing the agony of marketing keep doing it. If you love the challenge of watching your sales numbers and not going nuts keep it up.

As always, good writing and may God bless you!

Reviews that cause you to pause!

Ok, so you’ve poured out your heart into your work. You love it, your editor loves it and even the dedicated friends that read it before it was published loved it. Then the dreaded reviews come in. Someone thinks it needs help. This post is dedicated to the feelings a review gives you.

1: A great review – Well the first great review you get makes your heart soar. You feel like nothing can hurt you at that moment. Your work has been approved by one person. Well, one person is not enough to make your book a best seller, but one good review could make it more popular than no reviews.

2: A good review – This is that review that says it was a fairly good book. But usually on a good review, there is a “But” in it. I always listen to that “But” because it is the suggestions of a complete stranger that usually makes more of a point than that of a friend who doesn’t necessarily tell you the truth about your writing.

3: A fair review – We’ve all had that review that really sat us back on our heels. I received one the other day. It was kind of half and half. What I mean by that is this. The reviewer started with “It was a great story line and I really liked it” which made me smile, but then they went into this “But, it was too rushed and didn’t get into enough of character building for me to really like it.” I sat back for a moment going, ok. That is the kind of review that can still sell books, but can also put off others.

4: A bad review – I’ve received some reviews that were pretty bad. It’s funny that you receive several raving reviews and then one of those nasty reviews come in and you go “WOW” where did that come from? I received one that said, “Sorry, but I couldn’t get past the first 4 pages”. Well, I’ve read some best sellers that I had a hard time reading them until I got past the first chapter, so I totally wrote off that review as someone who just didn’t like the story line, but then the very next review said they were pleasantly surprised how good it was as you got into the story. I think they were speaking to that other reviewer.

5: A questionable review – This is the kind of review where you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they never read the book to begin with. I was reading a review the other day where someone wrote a paragraph about the good and bad points of one of my books. The problem with this is that the information provided from the book did not match my book. I even showed my editor and she said that is not from your book at all. They evidently read the description of the book and did their own version.

6: The follower review – This is the review that goes with the other persons review. Have you ever received a review whether good or bad and within a few hours you receive another review that says almost the same exact thing? It’s as if the other person just marked your book as read and then just copied the other review.

7: The “not my genre” review – I had someone write a rather nasty review of one of my books, but what was funny about the review was that at the end of the scathing review they stated that they hated romance novels. Why on earth would you purchase a romance novel and then decide to write a review on it if you didn’t like romance novels?

8: The nasty review – These are the reviews that are just down right nasty and they usually come from fellow authors. I received one that was a full paragraph totally tearing my book apart, then they went on to say that they would like to read more of my work. That was really weird to me. Especially the way they tore the book apart and told that the author (me) was not their kind of writer. Oh well, can’t please everyone. Made me feel good, because that is my best seller so not real concerned.

This post was just to state my feelings of the different types of reviews I’ve received. I have even posted some of the bad reviews on my selling sites. You may be saying “Are you nuts?” Well, yes I am, but that’s the life of a writer. Do you know that I started having more sales after posting the fair review. It’s funny how the review process works.

I think some people read the reviews and that makes their decisions on purchasing or not. Some people never even look at the reviews, but others just shrug and say, well it may not have been their kind of book.

So don’t take reviews too seriously. Not all reviews that look bad will hurt you. Don’t let a bad review cause you to put your writing on a shelf to never pick it up again. I’ve read a lot of best sellers that to me were horrible, but I knew it was not my style of book that I like, but I didn’t tear it apart in a review.

Also, when you do write a review, try to be as kind as you can. Offer some gentle suggestions and support the writer when you can.

As always, good writing/reviewing and May God bless you!

Good Wednesday Morning!

It is a beautiful Georgia morning. The air has a slight crispness to it. As I sit here with the windows open, the cool breeze comes softly across me. I sip my coffee and have my laptop in my lap, just enjoying the morning. I can hear the birds chirping in the trees as if agreeing with me.

Of course I know that I need to get up and get ready for my day, but I just put it to the back of my mind. Life is so short and we run around all willy nilly not stopping to smell the roses or feel the breeze on our face. Why? If we miss life’s precious moments what have we accomplished?

I made a decision the first of the year to start stopping and smelling the roses. Sometimes it gets me behind on projects but I know the fact is I am getting older and missing out on many things. I have spent the last twenty odd years building my accounting practice and working constantly. I have missed out on so much that the sweet side of life has to offer. Well I have been doing more for myself.

One of the main things is publishing my books and writing in my spare time. It has been so refreshing and revealing to me. I did not realize how much I had missed. I actually feel better physically and mentally. It is as if a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

Well, try it yourself. Just stop and take a deep, cleansing breath. See if you don’t feel a little better. As always good writing and May God Bless You!