Maggie Shayne's Blog: Maggie's Coffee House Blog, page 16

Why Be Grateful for the Bad Stuff?

Blessed Mabon, to those who celebrate this beautiful holiday otherwise known as the Autumnal Equinox. This is a time when our focus is on two energies: the energy of the harvest, and the energy of perfect balance.
This the second of the three harvest festivals observed by many. The first was Lammas, early in August, and the third is the final harvest, Samhain, where the energy is quite

Autumn Equinox Update!

It’s September 22nd, and overnight, the foliage around my home just popped to life. I can see how vivid the leaves are today, despite the lingering fog, mist, low hanging clouds, and rain. Yesterday I was looking around saying, “Here they come. Any day now. Almost there.” And today, there they are. As soon as the clouds clear I’ll start snapping some photos and sharing them here and on my Facebook page. Until then, I’m sharing this stunner from years gone by, taken just up the road from where I live, at a place I dream about living someday soon. Right on that lake. I don’t know who owns it, but I’m planning to find out, and ask them to put me at the top of the list should they ever decide to sell, even a little piece, on that gorgeous lake. Perfect spot for my dream home.

I love to dream.

As fall rolls in, and the Equinox in particular, my thoughts turn to harvest themes. This is the second of the three annual harvest festivals observed by many of the nature religions, and it’s a time of Thanksgiving. I have a lot to be thankful for, including a career changing event that I thought was a disaster at the time. Due to a number of circumstances beyond my control, I was forced to make a decision that terrified me–I left traditional publishing and went completely independent. I cried, I panicked, I ranted, and I raged.

The very day after that happened, I had a little “Note from the Universe” in my email box. I’ve probably posted about this before. It said (Paraphrasing here) “You keep saying you want things to change, and then when they do, you scream bloody murder and hold onto the old way for dear life. Relax. This is what you wanted.”

Well, in hindsight, that Note from the Universe was eerily accurate. Leaving traditional publishing is beginning to look like the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Another of the things I’m most thankful for, both today on Mabon and every day of the year, is you, my readers. Those who’ve stuck with me through thick and thin, through years and decades, as well as those who are only just now discovering me and my work for the first time. I truly love you. All of you. I try hard to let you know that through my interactions with you online. I hope you know it’s sincere.

So let bring you up to speed on where we are with our releases, and what’s coming up for this holiday season.

Wings in the Night

The series of my heart lives on with a brand new book that represents both a new beginning for the series, Wings in the Night: Reborn, and a new beginning for me, as it is my very first self published original title. Twilight Guardians is on sale now in ebook at all online outlets, worldwide, and in print at Amazon and Create Space. We’re looking into ways to get it into brick & mortar bookstores, as well. TG is selling briskly, lingering in the Amazon Top 100 Vamp Romances since release day, and garnering some fabulous reviews. The series will continue with another novel to be released in the Fall of 2015.

The Texas Brands

All nine books of The Texas Brands are now on sale in all outlets, worldwide. Book 1, The Littlest Cowboy, is FREE, and the other eight titles are $2.99 – $3.99 each. We don’t have them all available in print just yet, but that’s in progress. For all the books in the series, in order, with all links, hop over to the BRAND FAMILY PAGE right here on the site. All nine Texas Brands books have been in the Amazon Top 100 for western romance (most of them in the top 20) ever since we released them. We’ve been selling over 1000 copies a day for most of September and we think that’s going to rise in October thanks to some strategizing on our part.

Oklahoma All-Girl Brands

In progress now: We are currently re-packaging, re-proofing, and re-releasing all five books of the Oklahoma All Girl Brands, and I’m writing a sixth. By reader demand, Vidalia Brand is getting her own story, a holiday tale of miracles and magic that I hope to have out by Thanksgiving, but for sure in time for Christmas. The title will be Sweet Vidalia Brand, or maybe just Sweet Vidalia. Which do you like better? As they become available they will be added to the Brand Family Page, as well.

Brown & de Luca

I still have two more titles releasing from my former publisher, and they are both part of my award winning Brown & de Luca novels. Innocent Prey releases in exactly 8 days, on September 30th. Then Deadly Obsession comes out near Thanksgiving. Both can be pre-ordered right now. I haven’t yet decided whether I’ll continue this series or not. A lot will depend on how well these two titles sell. I left Rachel and Mason in a very good place at the end of Deadly Obsession, so if it’s the final book, it’s a perfect place to end it. But I really love these two and I doubt I’ll let them go.

For all the pre-order links, hop over to the main page. They’re right there.

I have no idea what I’ll be writing after I finish Vidalia Brand’s story, but I trust that my muse will guide me as she always has. (Rhiannon popped into my head as I typed that, so chances are, it’ll be the next Wings in the Night: Reborn novel.)

Thanks, readers. And Happy Fall!

 

 

 

 

 

Why Did I Manifest THIS? Part 2

So I posted last week about the kidney stones I was battling, and how I thought it was a wake up call to change my diet for the better. This week, I have a whole new take on this entire episode, so naturally, I'm sharing here with my LOA tribe. 

It wasn't kidney stones. Not even close. It was an injury to my back causing pressure on the sciatic nerve, which resulted in pain so excruciating I

Overnight Success in Just 22 Years!

I’ve been waiting a long time for the kind of success I’m having right now. I’ve been planning for it, dreaming about it, and fully expecting it every since August 24th, 1992, the day I sold my first novel to Silhouette (now Harlequin) Intimate Moments (now Romantic Suspense.)

Where I was mistaken was in how it was going to come. Every time I had a new release, I expected big things to happen. And every time I had a big single title new release, as opposed to another category romance, I expected even bigger things to happen. My expectations of success were accurate. But every notion I had of how or when or where it was going to come to me were way off.

When my most recent contract with Harlequin MIRA expired, I fully expected there would be another one to sign within a few weeks. That’s how it has worked for the past 22 years, after all. My advances had risen to the point where the signing payment on a new five-book contract represented a solid year’s worth of income for us. When my discussions with Harlequin went south, and I realized there wasn’t going to be another contract at all, I was in a complete panic. Not only heartbroken that this long and lucrative relationship was coming to an end, and feeling betrayed at how little the company was willing to do to keep me, but terrified about how I was going to make up the loss of income.

 

 

However, I knew it was the corporate bean counters who forced me to leave. The people in the editorial offices were almost as devastated as I was, and asked what they could do to help me make the transition easier. I asked them to revert one of my series, an entire series, so I could make a living while creating original front list titles, which would obviously, take some time. Wings in the Night was, naturally, at the top of my list, but short of that, I said I would like to have the Texas and/or Oklahoma Brand series back. I was both surprised and delighted when they game them both to me. This was no small thing. The books were Harlequin’s legally, for several more years, and it was a logistical nightmare for them to pull them all from every outlet, in every format, worldwide. It took several weeks, but they did this for me. They did this because I had never let business come between me and my team at Harlequin. When I disagreed with company policy, I and the senior staff had discussions that lasted weeks, and while we did not agree, we were always kind, respectful of each other, and we never let things get heated or personal. When others jumped on the “Let’s bash Harlequin” bandwagon, I not only didn’t join in, I often posted rational, reasonable comments and blogs calling for calm and understanding both sides of the issue of the day. At those times, I was personally thanked by more than one Harlequin staffer for those posts and comments. I have never, in my entire career, treated my publisher as my enemy the way so many seem prone to do. And I didn’t do it because I honestly love the people I’ve worked with in publishing.

So Harlequin returned The Texas Brand series to me, in its entirety, books 1-9. A couple of the stories had already reverted, but now I had them all. They also returned the Oklahoma All-Girl Brand novels to me. I had two of them, they reverted two more and one is still in progress. I’m writing a sixth.

My brilliant daughters (Jessica of AuthorsLifeSaver.com and Jena of PracticalProofing.com) and I got to work immediately, scanning the Texas Brand books into Word documents, proofreading them, formatting them for ebook and print, and creating covers. We found a cover look we liked, and decided to make it consistent through each book in the series. We changed a few of the titles that were not our favorites: That Mysterious Texas Brand Man became The Lone Cowboy. And The Husband She Couldn’t Remember became Long Gone Lonesome Blues.

Once we got the first few books uploaded, I made book 1, The Littlest Cowboy, free at all the outlets where I could do that, and figured it would take Amazon about a week and fifty “report a lower price elsewhere” emails before they would price match and make it free there as well. This had been my experience with other backlist books I had self-published.

But the Universe had a whole different plan. Amazon price matched it on day-one without a single email, and by the time I noticed it, books 2 and 3 were in the top 20 on Amazon’s Top 100 list for western romance. I knew right then that this was going to be something special. All of this happened without a single ad, and before I had even got around to posting the freebie on my FB page or tweeting it, or listing it on my website!

Now, today, the first 7 books are on that top 100 list, and they’re hanging there steadily. Our usual monthly earnings from Amazon tripled in August, and so far September sales are running double what August’s were. We have an ad scheduled for October 6th that will boost sales even further. I’m seeing the kind of success I have always dreamed about, with books I wrote a decade ago and more. At this rate, we will earn in just two months, about the same amount that new contract would have provided. Except this money isn’t an “advance against royalties.” It’s based on actual sales. And I expect the momentum to keep rolling. Especially since we haven’t even begun to re-issue the Oklahoma All-Girl Brands yet! We anticipate similar success when we do. I’m writing a brand new (pun intended) OK Brand Christmas story, Sweet Vidalia Brand, for release around Thanksgiving, giving us a total of six novels in that series, three of them Christmas stories. (We didn’t plan it that way, it just happened.)

The morals of the story: “Nothing happens to me. Everything happens FOR me.”

What I thought was a disaster, being forced to leave Harlequin and traditional publishing after 22 years, was probably the best thing that ever happened to my career.

And: “Ever mind the Rule of Three. Three times what thou giveth, returns unto thee.”

The happy outcome I’m having now is, in large part, due to the relationships I built and the way I treated the people I worked with over the years. You can never be too kind or love too much.

I just love stories with happy endings!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why Did I Manifest THAT?

It's easy to happily accept that we create our own experiences, when our experiences are happy ones. But when we manifest something nasty, we might start to doubt. After all, no one would deliberately put themselves through hard times. Right?

Wrong, it turns out. 

Right now, for example, I'm having a health issue. Major, debilitating pain that is most likely kidney stones. It started Thursday

Welcome Fall!

Fall is my very favorite time of the year. The sun is still warm, but the air takes on a fresh tang it didn’t have during the summer. The breezes bring more delights than before; ripening apples, decomposing leaves, a bracing chill you can almost take a bite out of in the evenings. The kids go back to school, and I spend lots of time in folding chairs on soccer fields watching them kick butt and take names.

When the leaves begin to change, I really hit my stride, taking hundreds of photos, because I live in the most beautiful place in the Universe, especially in the Fall. They’re just starting to turn now. You can catch a whisper of red underlying the green on the hills and mountains all around us, and here and there, a bright red sugar maple or mustard yellow poplar who was just too eager to wait for the rest.

We have campfires on the back lawn in the fall. Daisy loves them. When we do our morning and evening walks around the property, she now shortcuts directly to the fire pit, finds a comfy spot and lies down, asking us in doggy-speak, “Fire now, please?) Niblet hates them. She paces from one of us to the other, silently saying, “This is not our normal routine! This cannot be tolerated. It’s dark, we belong indoors.” Dozer’s cool whatever we do, as long as he can be near us. When the flames flare high and hot, he often plods over to place himself firmly between me and the fire, just in case.

I know it’s only the first week of September, but I’m getting the urge to decorate for Fall. The Autumnal Equinox, Mabon, falls on the 22nd this year, and we often celebrate with Thanksgiving-like feasts and a complete focus on gratitude and appreciation. Then we’ll have Halloween, the kids and costumes and tricks and treats, witches and spooks galore, followed by its forebear, Samhain, when we honor our beloved dead and visit with them.

I’m planning to get big spooky eyes to cover two upstairs windows that face the road. I want some pretty multicolored corn and fall themed wreaths for the doors. My Halloween village gets to come downstairs to take center stage in the living room, and we’ll add to it, as we do every year. Cauldrons bubbling with mist will line the fireplace, and my light up skull will sit between them. And I’ll pick up a few new pieces to add as we go along.

We don’t get trick-or-treaters, because we live so far out in the country. We buy chocolate every year, just in case, and then eat it ourselves. And it’s a fine time for divination. I love reading tarot cards and trying to catch a glimpse into the future. You know they say the Veil Between the Worlds is at it’s thinnest this time of year.

I’d love to hear about your fall traditions and see pictures of your decorations.

 

An LOA Perk

I just love when the Law of Attraction is so obvious you can't not see it working. Like today, for example, when LOA decided to reiterate for me that "You get more of what you appreciate."

In fact, the very word "appreciate" means (among other things) to increase in value. When we really bask in something that gives us pleasure, we increase its value. And we end up enjoying more things like it.

"Genie, you're free." ~Academy of Motion Picture Arts & S...

"Genie, you're free." ~Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences





My post on this topic has been removed, as it seemed to be causing some pain and anger among people who do not understand or want to understand, Law of Attraction. It is never this blog's intent to put negative energy into the world, no do we seek to convert anyone to our way of thinking. The intent of the removed post was to

Pre-Release Jitters? Me?

Pre-Order Here

This book, TWILIGHT GUARDIANS has suddenly become real.

I think it hit me when the pre-order button went live on Amazon. All of a sudden, I was unable to share it. I put it off for hours, thinking, well, we have a lot going on this week. Maybe I should wait a few days. Maybe the pre-order page is looking sparse without the print version yet up there, so maybe I’ll share the link once that goes up.

Then I stopped myself and took a clear look inside my head. Why would I hesitate? When had I ever, in 22 years, had exciting book news and not shared it immediately? And I realized that I was nervous. More nervous about this release than any release ever. I didn’t know enough about the business to be nervous about my first book. I was just glad it was being published. But for this one, which is number 59, not counting nearly 30 novellas and anthologies? I am a wreck.

The reason is pretty clear to me. I’m publishing this one on my own. I chose the cover art, the model (my daughter,) the photographer, the pose, the outfit (those boots are my own!) the background. I’ve got no big publisher behind me this time, and it feels like flying without a net. Jumping without a ‘chute. Leaping without a bridge. You pick the cliché, it’s that times ten.

Even re-publishing my own backlist books wasn’t this scary, because they had already passed muster. They had been given the stamp of approval by a New York publisher.

This is very different. No one has told me this book is worthy. You would think that after writing this many novels, I’d be a bit more confident than that. It’s been ages since my editor has changed more than a few extra commas, caught an inconsistency or two, or asked for further clarification on a line here and there. Why am I so nervous? It’s illogical to be.

But, logical or not, I am. This is a whole new world for me. I guess I’m supposed to be nervous. We didn’t even have time to send it out to reviewers yet. I’m still polishing for one more week. So we have no idea what the response will be.

So that’s where I am today. Taking a break before re-starting my final pass through the book, and being nervous, while trying to talk myself down.

The pre-order price at Amazon is $2.99, which is considerably less than the regular price will be starting on 9/1.

And we will be putting pre-order links up anywhere else they allow it, but most outlets do not. Regardless of price or pre-order buttons or my own nervous breakdown, TWILIGHT GUARDIANS, Book 1 of the NEW Wings in the Night: Reborn, goes on sale at all outlets, worldwide, on September 1st.

And if my nerves continue to build up until that date, I’m going to need blood pressure meds or something!

 

Step by Step: Changing Bad Health

I write all the time about the theories and energies behind this thing we call life, what it is and what it isn't, and how it works and why it works that way, and how we ultimately have a lot more control than we think. I write about creating our own experience. 

Today I thought I'd take a stab at showing you how. How to, step by step, change a reality in your life that you do not like.

First,