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Saying Some ‘Thank Yous’ This Thanksgiving Season: A Reflection
Thoughts and a Reflection on Thanksgiving In my humble opinion, the best four days of the year have just passed. The four days of Thanksgiving weekend are always my favorite time of the year. We are permitted to just stop and reflect for a few days, spend time with family, and in our home, begin the Christmas traditions we set forth when the kids were babies of cutting down our Christmas tree and decorating for the holidays. For the last several years, I’ve cooked the Thanksgiving dinner, with sides provided by my mother and mother-in-law. This year, the pumpkin pie and apple crumb pie were ordered from Kirsten’s Cakery by…
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Let Us Take You to St. Michaels – the setting of my new novel, LITTLE MILESTONES, with a video tour
CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO One of the things I had on my “to do list” with Little Milestones, is to take you on a guided tour of the places and settings that inspired the writing of my novel, Little Milestones. I was patiently waiting for the perfect Saturday to go and shoot the footage, and that day came with blue skies, fall foliage, and a friend by my side to make it fun. Little Milestones is available on Amazon.com and BN.com. It’s a story of moving on, love, friendship, family, and forgiveness. It’s a light novel that takes you from Labor Day weekend through Christmas, and it’s set in this gorgeous…
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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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Launching LITTLE MILESTONES Today, my newest novel…
*** Okay, my friends, today, my newest novel, LITTLE MILESTONES is official and is on the market through Amazon (coming in days to Barnes & Noble). While this is not a true sequel to Inn Significant, it does tap into those characters as they become a part of Little Milestones and the lives of Olivia and Nan. The new book is set in beautiful St. Michaels, Maryland, and as you may have surmised, I have a slight obsession with the Eastern Shore. There are also some scenes in Annapolis because I love my home state so much. * I think of all the books I’ve written, this one has made…
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Finding Inspiration
As someone who writes fiction as my side job, I seek inspiration, either from other people or from places. Additionally, as a writer who is about to publish my 4th novel, I use places almost as I use characters in my novel—they must have a personality and purpose. Setting is very important to me, and getting a handle on that place requires me to do some digging and exploring. Next month, I will launch my newest novel, LITTLE MILESTONES, set in St. Michaels, Maryland, a place I love visit when I need to get away from the rat race of life. It’s only a little over an hour away from…
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An Update and the Plot Overview of Little Milestones – Coming Soon
Right now, my beta readers are looking over the draft of Little Milestones. I am reading the manuscript again, as well, for the hundredth time. As well, I’ve started to create some of my marketing materials for the book. For those of us in the trenches as independent authors, it’s a never-ending cycle of book promotion, writing, and editing. We’re at it all the time as we try to build our brand and find our niche of readers. I’m still at it and I haven’t given up. Today, I’m sharing the draft of the copy that goes on the outside of a book or inside a book jacket—you know, the…
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Finally…The Name of My Upcoming Novel Came to Me (with help from my mother)
A postcard for you, my dear readers. 🙂 And a special thanks to my mother, for the constant inspiration and support of my side-career.
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Fiction Friday: An Update
* I’m not exactly sharing a fictional story today, but I’m sharing with you the crazy writing journey I’m on at the moment as I write my fourth fictional novel. In December, after National Novel Writing Month ended, I was 45,000 words into a new story, one that I had set in the hills of the Cotswolds in England. After a conversation with my family about how the work was going and picking their brains a little one night over dinner, I decided to relocate the story to St. Michaels on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I know. Big change. I’m a Maryland girl (see my mug below thanks to…
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My Books Are All Influenced by Maryland: #ReadLocalDC Blog Hop
*** Magical Maryland. That’s what I like to call it. Our state has a lot to offer people who like variety—the mountains to our west, the beaches to our east, the Chesapeake Bay, nearby Baltimore and Washington, D.C., theme parks and casinos, pretty state parks and delicious Maryland crabs, the picturesque and historic capital city of Annapolis, and numerous quaint, tucked away towns and cities with charms all their own. I’ve lived in Maryland since I was five. I grew up in Bowie and Annapolis. I went to college in Towson at Towson University. Along with my husband and children, we’ve lived in Baltimore City, Ellicott City, and Severna Park.…
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Kind of In Love With the Eastern Shore
Two weekends ago, my husband and I celebrated 20 years of marriage with a quick getaway to St. Michaels, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It’s near the other town I love, Oxford, Maryland, where my novel, Inn Significant, is set. Both those towns have a ton of charm and are surrounded by water. They are quite special. We stayed at the Inn at Perry Cabin by Belmond, a place we had stayed many moons ago. As St. Michaels was celebrating Midnight Madness on the evening of December 2, we thought it would be fun to be a part of the…well…madness. With shops open until midnight, festive decorations lighting up the town,…
