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The Process of Getting to a Book Cover
My newest novel, The Letters in the Books, is just weeks away from launching. I’m super excited about this one, as it was two full years in the making. Writing is a labor of love for me, and I just want to tell a compelling, yet sweet story that’s perfect for a beach read. This book was heavily influenced by Brené Brown’s research on empathy and shame. I have read her books and watched her TedTalks a million times. Her work on empathy and vulnerability in particular are interesting and worthy of your time. I tried my best to roll her findings into Meg, the empath and bookstore owner at…
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Launching Little Milestones AND NaNoWriMo in one Evening on Campus
It’s been an unbelievably busy and exciting week! Launching LITTLE MILESTONES has been a thrill! I am so happy it’s available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and I’m doubly thrilled to be launching #NaNoWriMo this Tuesday on campus. It’s our third year of promoting writing on campus and getting students thinking about writing their own stories, be it fiction, nonfiction, or memoir. Students can also think about creating their stories on Wattpad or via a blog. When I was the age of my students, I would sit in class and dream of publishing something one day. At that time, you had to find an agent or publisher, or you…
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It’s Been A Helluva Week & A Little Milestone Is In The Books
The life of a writer: Wake up. Think about your writing. Edit your writing. Worry your novel isn’t good enough. Edit some more. Worry some more. Write more and delete more and rewrite the damn thing. Pretend like you don’t actually talk to your characters like a lunatic. Drink a lot of coffee and curse a lot of curses. Write. Edit. Write. Edit. Publish. Celebrate. Collapse. In all seriousness, I do want to collapse. And I’m just starting to think about the “celebrate” part, but I’m not quite there yet. Next week on campus, on Tuesday evening, we will officially LAUNCH my new novel, LITTLE MILESTONES, in conjunction with National…
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Well, it’s been a while…
I just opened up my blog to check the date of my last blog posting. It was almost a month ago on September 3. I’ve been a little MIA on this platform, something I’ve dedicated myself to since 2011 by making the commitment to posting a minimum of once a week. For the last several weeks, I’ve broken that promise to myself. Believe me when I say my absence was not intentional, it’s just that I didn’t know what to say or what to write about over the course of the last month. I’ve been preoccupied with the deaths of people we cared for, along with getting back into the…
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A Little Teaser for My Upcoming Novel: Little Milestones
*** Well, I’m officially getting excited! As I posted a few weeks ago, I finally decided upon the name of my fourth novel, LITTLE MILESTONES, and I have a first draft of the cover. When it gets to this point, it begins to feel as if things are coming together. I’m sharing the first cover design I’m considering. As I plan for a September release, LITTLE MILESTONES is a book that focuses on friendships among women with a little dash of romance thrown in, because as most of you loyal readers know, I’m a sucker for a good romance. I’ll also be taking you back with me to the Eastern…
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Stay Positive, Writers!
It’s the first day of summer break for me, and that means it’s time to dust off my work in progress and hunker down. I’d really love to have this novel done by the end of summer. However, in doing so, there are challenges. It’s really easy to tell ourselves that our work is mediocre…that it needs a lot more love and attention…and that may very well be true. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be wonderful! My current work in progress needs some love and attention. I have to start at the beginning and go through it, chapter by chapter and sentence by sentence. I have to pull this…
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The Postcard Gets 5-Star Review from Readers’ Favorite
Honestly, it’s been a pretty rough 2019 for so many reasons, but seeing this review this morning from READERS’ FAVORITE put a big smile on my face. It’s when I read something like this that I know that despite all the work and effort it takes to be an independent author, it is all worth it in the end. Thank you also to my former student, now PR pro, Grace Clark, for the amazing cover photo, which helped earn us a perfect 5 score for the collection, from writing, storytelling, to cover design. Cheers! THE BOOK REVIEW Reviewed by Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Readers’ Favorite A postcard is more than just…
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Creative People, Please Listen: Ignore the Noise and Carry On! A Pep Talk.
*** A friend of mine, a fellow author, and I were having an email exchange about the nature of people. As the two of us are both authors, one with a publisher (my friend) and one going it alone on the independent author lane (me), we were discussing the way people sometimes behave when you decide to put something out there–when you decide to be brave and publish your work. Some people are genuinely ecstatic for you–they jump for joy and are over-the-moon (we love you.) Some people support you quietly (we love you, too). Some people pay attention to what you are doing but say nothing (we also love…
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A Note of Gratitude
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A Sneak Peak at What’s Coming Next Week…The Postcard and Other Short Stories & Poetry
If you’ve read Jojo Moyes’s book, Paris for One and Other Short Stories, or Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Blue Bedroom, then you’ll have an idea of what’s coming in my new book The Postcard and Other Short Stories & Poetry. Heavily influenced by Rosamunde Pilcher as a young woman, and loving every story she wrote for The Blue Bedroom, I think I fell head-over-heals in love with writing—and wanting to tell stories—after reading her work. Her novels that followed such as The Shell Seekers, Coming Home, and September all inspired me to write stories where relationships and setting are the main drivers of the work. Likewise, Jojo Moyes has been a…
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You Can Control Whether You Quit or Persevere
Last night, we had to have the hard conversation with our daughter about possibly quitting something she’s involved in. She didn’t really want to quit, she just wanted to alter the way in which she does it. We talked it through, and we all came to the conclusion that persevering is the optimal course of action. If you’ve never watched the Markus Zusak Ted Talk, author of The Book Thief, then you are really missing something. He quotes writer Samuel Beckett in his talk, and offers his own perspective. It’s worth watching. The famous Beckett quote is this: “All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try…
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Playing With Book Covers For An Upcoming Collection
I’ve started the editing process for my upcoming book entitled, The Postcard and Other Short Stories & Poetry. So far, I’ve organized the stories and made a comprehensive list of what will be included and what is getting pitched. It looks like the book will feature 15 longer short stories, 25 pieces of flash fiction, and about 20 poems. Along with the organization comes the idea of what the cover of the book might look like. As a visual person, I need to have this in my head as I work toward completion. For me, the whole creative process of putting a collection together encompasses so much—the storytelling is at…
