Remember Logan?

I interviewed Logan for the Oh My Hero Blog hop a few weeks ago. He is from a short story that I wrote, and it's going to be published! (Yay!)

This summer Turquoise Morning Press is coming out with an anthology called Foreign Affairs. It will include six short stories about affairs with, you guessed it, foreign men. (Did I mention that Logan is English?) ;)







My heroine meets Logan, who's here for a study abroad program, just a month before he is scheduled to go back home. Although Bree doesn't think a month of Logan could possibly be enough, she decides to make the most of it!

I will be telling you more about the other five stories soon. :)

Summer Reading Trail

Just found out about this and thought it seemed like a lot of fun, so I had to share!

Lazy summer days and reading.

The two go hand in hand. By the beach, at the lake or on that old porch swing, there's no better way to spend away a warm day than with a good story.

The Summer Reading Trail is a collection of stories from every genre. They might be short stories, deleted scenes, excerpts or novels. The one thing they all have in common is that they are all completely free.

This is a place where readers can find their next favorite story and authors can connect with new readers. Pick your favorite path and mosey on down it. Your next favorite author is waiting for you.

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Trails include:

Junior Explorers - Middle Grade, PG
Promise Trail - Inspirational Fiction and Romance - PG
Teen Scene - YA, PG-13
Main Pathway - General Fiction, adult PG-13
Lover's Lane - Adult Sweet Romance, PG-13
Cozy Retreat - Cozy Mystery - PG-13
Dragon Cave Path - Fantasy - R
Flirtatious Footpath - Adult Mainstream Romance - R
Dangerous Ways - Adult Adventure and Suspense - R
Adult Trails - Adult and Graphic General Fiction - NC-17
Hedonist Hike - Erotic Romance and Erotica - NC-17
Terror Trail - Horror - NC-17
Rainbow Bridge - GLTB - all levels

 

Check it out here. 

Blog Hop!

Victoria and Jaycee are having another fun bloghop! This time it's all about the ladies. Interview, and post a picture of, your awesome heroine. Get the details and sign up here.

A Lovely Award

A big thank you to Angeline Trevena for this award!

If you don't already follow Angeline, you should! He blog is helpful, encouraging and entertaining! What more could you want?

To accept the award I must follow these rules:

1. Thank and link back to the person who presented you with the award
2. Answer the ten questions below
3. Share ten random facts/thoughts about yourself
4. Nominate seven worthy blogs for the Kreativ Blogger Award

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What is your favourite song/singer?

This is way too hard! I have a lot of favorites. One of my favorite singers is Willie Nelson, I stood outside, seven months pregnant, to see him in concert. :)
"Can't Help Falling in Love With You" was our wedding song, so that's another favorite.

What is your favourite dessert?
For our birthdays our mom always made rainbow chip cake with rainbow chip frosting. It's pretty much awesome, and it's what I make my kids now.

What ticks you off?
The thing that always makes me lose my temper is when I can't get things (usually the computer) to work right. Example, when I couldn't get my van door to open I eventually yelled, "piece of sh*t!" Once the door opened my two-year-old looked at me and asked, "piece of sh*t?" Um, whoops.

When you're upset what do you do?
Hmm, probably eat something sweet. Which is what I do when I'm celebrating, too. . .It's a wonder I'm not 300lbs. Thank goodness for having to run after little kids, I guess.

Which is/was your favourite pet?
This is tough, too. I'm going to pick two. :) Our collie, Chance, that we had when I was a kid. He was just like Lassie. No, for real, he was. :) And my first show horse, Beatle, (short for BBeat Goes On.) He is 22 now (we still own him) and is still teaching kids to ride. In fact he just took a little girl to a show last weekend.

Which do you prefer black or white?
I'll agree with Angeline on this one. Black, it's slimming. :)

What is your biggest fear?
My kids getting really hurt.

What is your attitude mostly?
I think I'm a pretty easy going person. Hmm, maybe I should ask my husband. . .
Okay, he said caring, but he might be sucking up. ;)

What is perfection?
I think it's all about what is perfect for you, whatever you're talking about. Whether it's a person, book, outfit, whatever, it's all about how it fits you.

What is your guilty pleasure?
Vanilla coolers from Caribou Coffee. I know they are filled with too many calories plus they cost more than they probably should, but they are so yummy.

Okay, now for ten random facts:

I live in the same small (less than 3000 people) town I grew up in.

I'm the middle of five kids.

I knit.

I've never been able to do a proper cartwheel, even as a kid.

I played Maid Marion in my high school play.

I can do a pretty decent impersonation of the giant tortoise from The Never Ending Story. (I did it for a speech in high school called Prayers from the Ark.)

I know how to make biscotti.

I'm messy. (And I married a neat freak.)

I've probably seen every episode of Gillmore Girls at least three times.

And #10- I recently had a short story I wrote picked for an anthology! I'm super excited, it's a first for me. I'll share more later. :)

And now to pass this on to seven others:

Doctor Faerie Godmother
Ashley Nixon
Tracey Joseph
Angela Cothran
The Ubiquitous Perspective
Losing Sanity
Literary Engineer

All of these blogs are great, so check them out!

First Loves Blogfest

It's the First Loves Blogfest! The idea is to share four of our first loves. First movie, song or artist, book and person. Check out the others here. Thanks for hosting, Alex!

First Movie: The Never Ending Story. I loved the idea of hiding out and spending the whole day getting lost in a story. That he gets to then be part of the story was just too awesome. And I totally wanted my own luck dragon!

First Song: I remember as a kid my mom had a CD called Girl Groups of the Sixties. It was filled with songs like Soldier Boy and Johnny Angel. I remember dancing to those songs in the living room with my little sisters. Coincidentally, I married a Marine and named my first son Johnny. . .

First Book: The first book  I remember not being able to put down was A Dog Called Kitty. The funny thing is, I don't really remember the story any more, but I do remember the pain of having to put it down when my mom made me come eat my dinner.

First Person: My high school sweetheart. I was shy, he was the class clown, opposites attract and all that. We had a lot of fun together. It ended badly, as most first loves do, but I still think he was a great first love to have. He was very sweet.

I am looking forward to seeing everyone else's first loves. It will be a nice way to kick off a very busy week for me. My husband is having knee surgery tomorrow, (he's not nervous but I kind of am.) Then the high school play that I am directing is this Friday and Saturday. The show is great and the kids are awesome. It's going to be a ton of fun, but we still have a lot of work to do.

Have a great week everyone!

Dust it Off Bloghop: What I Learned

Elizabeth and the Fairies was the first novel I ever wrote. Before that I wrote some (really bad) picture books. I learned a lot from writing it. Not the least of which was to always have your work backed up! (I am so computer stupid, my kind brother bought me a flash drive and taught me how to use it.)

But I learned a lot about writing, too. The biggest thing I learned from writing this story was about developing characters. I love my main two fairies in this novel. However, Elizabeth, my MC, is totally boring.

I think part of why this happened is because I felt I had more freedom with the fairies. They aren't real, so I could make them however I wanted. Ten-year-old girls are real, and I wanted Elizabeth to be realistic. Because of this I ended up asking myself "how would a ten-year-old girl react to this?" It was, of course, the wrong question.

I should have been asking, "how would this ten-year-old girl react? What would Elizabeth do, think, etc?"

When I wrote Elizabeth and the Fairies, I didn't know what the problem with it was exactly, or how to fix it. Thankfully, I was able to recognize that there was a problem, even if I didn't know what it was. So I never sent it out anywhere.

I've learned a lot in the last few years. I've been to conferences, read books on writing, read blogs written by people who know a lot more than I do. :)

I still like the story, and some day I hope to go back and find a way to fix it. Heck, if I wait another three years my own Elizabeth will be a ten-year-old girl and I could base it on her. ;) She has loads of personality!

So, thank you again Theresa and Cortney! This was a great blog hop!

Dust it Off Blog Hop: day 2

Today we are supposed to share an excerpt from our old, all-but-forgotten manuscript. In case you missed day one, mine is a middle grade novel called Elizabeth and the Fairies. It was finished, revised once, but never sent out. Some days I think about working on it again, but it needs a LOT of work.

One of the things I did love about it was Penelope, a fairy that helps Elizabeth and Fiona on their quest to save Fiona's sister, the future (if they have anything to say about it) Fairy Queen. So I decided to share the scene where we meet Penelope. :)

                The sun was beginning to set when they finally spotted the fairy village. There were a dozen or so little houses all crowded together in a small clearing. They were built of out of pebbles, with moss roofs. Some had little, round, open windows and bark doors. Elizabeth had never seen anything like it.

                Gabriel hopped up to one of the houses on the edge of the village. Standing in the doorway was a delicate little fairy with curly red hair. She had pale skin and a few freckles splashed across her cheeks. She wore a simple brown dress and her feet were bare, but she had tiny yellow flower behind one ear. Her wings were a lovely pale blue that matched her eyes, which were twinkling with mirth.

                “I’ve been waiting for you all afternoon,” she said with a huge smile on her face. “I’ve been pacing by the window, back and forth, watching for Gabriel’s big floppy ears.” She stepped forward and scratched the rabbit under his chin and he nuzzled into her.

                “What took you so long? Come in, come in!” She talked very quickly and seemed to be bubbling over with excitement.

                “How did you know we were coming?” Fiona asked.

                “Well the flowers were whispering about it, of course, but it’s so hard to get any real information out of them. The way they gossip and giggle all day, it’s shameful really. Trees are much more reliable, but it’s hard to get two words out of them. So finally I had one of the bluebirds fly off to find out for me. He confirmed it. He said you were coming, and that you had a little human girl with you. Hello little human girl!” She threw Elizabeth a wave and a smile. “Where are my manners? I’m so sorry. My name is Penelope. It’s very nice to meet you.”

                “I’m Elizabeth. It’s nice meeting you, too.” The words stumbled awkwardly out of her mouth.

                “Well come on now, what are you waiting for? Come in. I’ve got supper all ready.”

Dust it Off Blog Hop: the Pitch

A big thank you to Theresa Paolo and Cortney Pearson for hosting the Dust it Off Blog Hop. It's all about those novels we wrote and then realized just weren't going to work. It will be running over the course of the next week, with two more posts coming. Click on their names for more info and the links to the others participating.

Day one we are posting a pitch for one of our shelved manuscripts. Mine is a middle grade novel I was calling Elizabeth and the Fairies. (Very unoriginal, I know.)

Ten-year-old Elizabeth is less than thrilled about having to spend her summer in the middle of nowhere with a great-aunt she hardly knows, until she meets Fiona. Fiona is a fairy with a torn wing (thanks to Aunt Louise's cat) and a grumpy disposition. Elizabeth joins the fairy on a quest to save Fiona's sister from a frog and crown her as the Fairy Queen.

On Saturday we will be posting one of our favorite excerpts from our shelved manuscript. I actually lost a lot of this one when our computer crashed a couple years ago. Not a huge loss as the novel was not that great and needed a ridiculous amount of work to make it any good at all. But I have a printed version (or most of one) and I am looking forward to posting a little something from this story.

Now I am off to check out the other novels people have put 'under the bed,' 'on the top shelf,' 'in the trunk,' or wherever. :)

IWSG: Waiting (And Being Asked About It)

First Wednesday of the month. :) Time for Insecure Writer's Support Group. Check out the others here.


I am in the middle of the waiting game. (As I know many of us are.) And I'm fine with it, really I am. I have other projects I'm working on, plus, ya' know, real life to keep me busy. What I don't like is having to answer the "So, have you heard anything yet?" questions.

I know people are curious, and excited for me, but it always makes me feel like a bit of a disappointment. "Nope, nothing yet," I say. I try to explain that it is totally normal to wait months for a response, but I know (to some) it sounds like bull. If they were interested, surely I'd have heard something, right? And while I can tell myself (and believe it) that that's not really the case, I still feel uncomfortable when asked what the status is on my submissions.


Does anyone else feel that way, or are you all so cool and confident it just doesn't get to you? ;) I wish I was that way.