DESERT ROSE - IS FOR SALE AT LAST!

You'll find Desert Rose - the search for my lost lesbian aunt - in the Kindle Store of Amazon and the print version will be out by April 15th, also available at Amazon.

LITTLE ROAD BOOK IS OUT! A BOOK OF MY TRAVELS

It's now 2014, I've sold my house, gotten on the road with my trailer for forty days and have the first of my three books published relating to my travels.  This book is in the tradition of Blue Highways and traces the best and worst of places I saw as I discovered the does and don't of living on the road for part of the year.

In the world of writing, changing scenery is a great way to change your books and your enthusiasm for creating books. But it's true for all of us, writers or not, that our lives become miraculous when we put ourselves in new situations and new places. 

What changes in scenery, from vacations to move to even airport stopovers, have changed your perspective on life? 

What are your goals for being a new you in 2014? 

YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK! I DID!

My published books in ten years.

Haven't we all heard writers talk about knowing they were born to write? They share the process where, from very young, they have dreams of writing. They recall how they secretly wrote in the dark after bedtime, or wrote little stories for the school paper. WELL NOT ME.

Oh, I wrote, all right, but it was junior high school essays, and high school research projects. I wrote my college literature papers gladly, loving the books. BUT, I never considered writing a book!

Then sometime around age 55, I began to notice whenever a successful author was on TV, I'd feel a secret, unfamiliar longing to be like her or him. And when I met someone who wrote, I'd start tossing out questions about how they'd done it.

And so it went, never really considering writing as a dream to fulfill. Then I participated in a seminar ten years ago where we were asked to share a secret no one knew about us. I shared that since I was a little kid, I'd made up stories in my head when I felt afraid or bored. I had never considered 'my stories,' as I called them, writing fiction. They were my secret escape from ninth grade geometry class, from nights after my sister died when I lay alone in our room, cringing at the dangers in life, in my boring high school English class. I could ignore everything around me and disappear into a fantasy world.

Once I told someone about my stories, my non-writing career was over. I wrote first a scene, then decided maybe I could write a chapter, then struggling and stretching out my thin story, maybe even a novel!

With five books in print, a sixth in edits and seventh written to page twenty, I am here to testify that anyone can write a book. Now I've even taken on coaching people who want to write -- whether it be a book, a journal, or whatever.  So, if you long to write, long to see a book or a story in print, shoot me an email.  If I can do it, YOU CAN! 

BLIND SPOT NOW OUT IN EBOOK!

A night of passion between two strangers binds them together four years later in a desperate effort to protect their child. Jack Roselli is a bomb squad cop, caught up with investigating ecoterrorism, whose life turns upside down when Sofie Novakoff shows back up in his life, desperately pleading for him to protect the child he didn’t know he had.

Sofie is a woman who has grown up in a household of women. She runs a feminist bookstore and is raising her daughter with her own values. Jack comes from the world of men, a large Italian family who all work in law enforcement. All that changes when Sofie and Jack are brought together. Distrust mingles with sexual desire as Sofie and Jack struggle to save Katya.

Release:  February 17, 2013
Category:  Fiction, Romance, Suspense
Rating/Heat Level: Sensual
Length: Novel, 92,000 words
ISBN: 

978-1-62237-128-0

THE WRITING GAME

Photo from Bookmaking

Authors seem to have an agreement that writing is hard. And authors who produce any amount of work consistently also agree that the only way to 'become' a writer is to WRITE...and WRITE...and WRITE.

My fourth novel, Blind Spot, will be in print soon (February, 2013 published by Turquoise Morning Press) while my fifth, The Unexpected Life of Sonny Betancourt, is done and in the first series of edits as of tomorrow with a publication date of June, 2013. I want to own up that this last book I started writing in 2009, so it's been a very long time getting to publication. Why? Because I got stalled out trying to figure out things, believing that if I could only get the right format, the right plot points, the right words, and so on ad nauseam, it would be easy to finish.  I was wrong.

Why I got this book written finally was creating a game plan, with a specific number of pages to write every day and then sitting myself down and writing it. I did not sell out on my game, did not beg off on days I was too tired or busy. Instead, I just keep my word and met my targets.  It wasn't hard really, once I committed myself to meeting those targets, but it took sharing my game plan with someone else, someone with no stake in the game except that she had my plan and knew I would not fail to keep my word with my goals. She didn't have to prod me or remind me; all she had to do was have my game and every week I'd report in that I'd won the game for the week. Simple, right?

Well, not always. But in the past three and a half years of 'trying to write' and finish my work in progress, I learned that I could have mastery around writing just having goals and keeping them.  It's all about practice. And writing.  The rest of it, the right format, right story line, and so on are all distractions or ways to keep ourselves stuck in fixing something.

A very knowledgeable man I know once said (I am paraphrasing here) 'when you stop to handle problems in life is when life does not work.' With that in mind, I might as well mention here that I have begun doing writer's coaching with Your Hidden Advantage, a web business offering all sorts of support services.  I began coaching of writers because I have run into so many would-be authors who are stopped not by their inability to write well, but rather by their inability to create a goal oriented game. So, if you are interested, feel free to check out Author's Advantage for more information.

Whether you dream of writing, write some but struggle with it or produce published work, I am sure you are going through the same barriers as we writers all are - WRITING! And I say it's not insurmountable when you create it as a game!  

WHAT GREAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW?

'The Top 100 Books Every Woman Should Read Part I: The Classics'

I took the advice from the above article in More magazine and picked out Doris Lessing's "The Golden Notebook." It's 500 plus pages but extraordinary writing and characterizations.  I think the theme varies from politics of the times (she wrote it in 1962), to male-female issues, to the writer's life.

What great book are you reading these days?

Book Giveaway - Night Noise

I am giving away two free copies of my most recent book, Night Noise, an ecothriller with romantic elements, through March. Go to Goodreads Giveaways to enter.

Murder can ruin a spring morning. And destroy everything Miller Abel has loved and trusted. Her family murdered, Miller is living in the dead zone and planning revenge, when FBI antiterrorist agent, Robert Matisse, knocks on her door. Grabbing at the opportunity to work with him and unravel a connection between the murders and his ecoterrorism case, she throws herself into the path of a killer and there's no way Matisse can stop her.