Jan Scarbrough's Blog, page 5

Good people find their way to Alley Cat Advocates

I’m updating my blog because Alley Cat Advocates is 20 years old and embarking on a new project to benefit Louisville and its surrounding communities. Check out their recent press release: Louisville, Ky. – February 26, 2019.  Founded 20 years ago today, Alley Cat Advocates has spayed or neutered over 45,000 stray, free-roaming cats and […]

Romance authors start new blog with Rafflecopter Giveaway – #romancegems

Did you hear? Twenty-three bestselling, award-winning authors have started # RomanceGems, a new blog that opens Feb. 1, Friday. There are #giveaways all month long. Drop by & visit us on Friday. My blog date is the 7th of each month. For now, you can watch this  introductory video.  

Cowboy Up!

This blog was originally posted October 17, 2013. I made a few changes to update it. I’m reposting because it’s something I need to remind myself all the time. It’s easy to get discouraged as you live your life. If you are a writer whose goal is to publish, your life may be filled with […]

Looking Back and Forward: Relaunching the Bluegrass Reunion Series

Back in the day, I sold my first book to Kensington for their Precious Gems line. It was a book I’d worked on for a few years, revised, cut out 30,000 words, and submitted. After that sale, I wrote another book, hoping to sell it to Precious Gems. I did! The Kensington editor named it […]

1968 vs 2018

It’s been fifty years. I missed my high school reunion this year, but I received the directory of classmates that the reunion committee put together. Near the back, someone had summarized the major events of our senior year: “1968 in the United States was marked by several major historical events. It is often considered to […]

It’s that time again – high school reunion

Here we go again. High school reunion time. This year is a milestone reunion—number 50. Okay, I’ll admit it. What the heck, you only have to do the math from the essay below, and you’ll figure it out. I’m not old! Sixty is the new forty—I think. So, my classmates are getting together this coming […]

Time Travel: How times have changed!

This blog was first posted on the Gems in the Attic blog, November 10, 2017. I found an audio diskette from the 1996 Romance Writers of America (RWA) convention in Dallas, Texas. I was younger then. Eager. Unpublished. I remember rooming with a couple of ladies whom I met on the Internet. The Internet? eMail? […]

FREE sampler with a few of my writing buddies

This sampler collection of romance first chapters by established, award-winning, and bestselling romance authors is guaranteed to whet your happily-ever-after appetite and send you running back to Amazon to download the full novels to your hearts’ content! This eclectic mix of sweet to steamy reads has you traveling from the past to the future, with historical, […]

Write what you know, they say

First shared in the Gems in the Attic blog, Friday, July 14, 2017. Novel writers are told to “write what you know.” I suppose that’s why I write books set in Kentucky and enjoyed my vacation last summer to Montana where I visited the setting of my Montana McKenna series. Yet, I don’t need to always stick […]

First Lines of my Novels

I’m taking an online class on writing conflict in novels. Begin each novel with conflict. Period. That’s the advice we were given in lecture 8. If we have no trouble in the first sentence, paragraph, or page, the reader might put down the book and never read another word. As a multi-published author said in […]