Rose Anderson's Blog, page 45

Living a Monet in a year

Today is less about taking stock as an author than it is about taking stock of the rest of my life as a whole. I learned early on that the New Year “resolution” doesn’t work for me. I know me. No matter the subject, it’ll be too vague, too boring, too inflexible, or too all-encompassing and hard to stick to. Instead I make plans. Plans have parts like individual bricks and you can take them on one at a time and pave a whole path for yourself. I’ve plans to make for 2014 — some are adventures that have exhilarating potential, some create solid foundations for the future, and others are downright scary but necessary.

Because the new computer is here I wasn’t going to do a grand post today. But after checking emails I read how a friend came up with a rather unique and inspired way to use Pinterest. Intrigued, I went there this morning to see if there was anything like her idea on the site. Of course I immediately forgot what I was looking for among the bevy of info there. That site is full of shiny things that can hook the attention of a magpie like me. Less than a minute in, I’d pinned a few things to my own boards. It was all I could do to escape! However, I did find something interesting and saw a great potential in it — potential that has to do with perspective. It’s one more brick and I plan to start January 1st.

Before I explain what that something is, I’ll add that an author’s life can be a lonely life sometimes. Believe it or not, it can be perilous. On occasion it delivers a square kick to one’s psyche in the form of savage reviews or rejections.

Lonely: I spend most of my day, 5-days a week, inside my fictional worlds and outside supporting and promoting them. I can relate my experiences and progress to friends and family but they’re not in the trenches with me. Comprehension can only be so much. They try to understand and they support and love me and I’m so grateful because that love and support comes completely from their hearts. I know they genuinely want me to find success. I love that they try. That said, it’s still a lonely life. I’m involved in a day-to-day world that only others like me truly comprehend. Successes are few and far between and mostly consist of a good review, a good turnout for an appearance somewhere, or if you’re lucky, an award and good royalties. Mostly days stretch into weeks and we wait and write and try like hell not to fall into the pit of inconsequence.

Perilous: Authors are driven to do what they do and even from this end of things I have no idea why! I do know this: All authors are artists and all art is emotion. These creations come from deep inside our souls and when we offer them to the world, it leaves us naked and vulnerable. It’s a rough world out there where critics abound and slings and arrows wait around every corner. It’s not enough anymore to simply not enjoy a book. The author who wrote it must bleed for your dissatisfaction. I have author friends who regularly bleed from attacks. It’s terrible and soul-crushing.

Rejection: Many years ago I had a weird and unsettling experience after submitting illustrated children’s books to several New York publishers. Some places never responded. Other places sent a form letter saying they weren’t interested. Three sent me actual letters and that’s what was unsettling. I’d written those books for my kids. And just like A. A. Milne did for Winnie the Pooh, I illustrated them too.

← Here are my three frogs.

Unlike most, one rejection wasn’t a form letter. It was nicely put, but still a rejection. The other two publishers said they loved either the story or the artwork. The letters went something like this: “We are interested in your story but would use our own illustrators.” and “We are interested in your illustrations but have another author in mind.” It was heart-breaking.  Call me picky, but I didn’t want another illustrator or writer. Those books were works of love created for my kids involving the toys I’d sewn for them myself. Those frogs went everywhere our family went. Our adventures were theirs. Another writer or illustrator wouldn’t understand. Like I said, all art is emotion. Those works of art were a mother’s expression of love for her children. Needless to say, I shelved the seven-book series. I plan to self-publish soon. It’s only been 25 years.

Perspective 1,2,3: What I’m getting at with all this, is perspective. Life is one huge Monet painting, author’s life included. When you’re too close it just looks like dabs of paint. Stand back and you take in the entire masterpiece.

1. Rejection of the work is not rejection of the person. I didn’t see the compliment in those two letters. I saw something negative. All these years later, I can see where I might have offered my illustration services and maybe even gotten a foot in the door. Clouded by emotion and my immaturity, I completely missed opportunity.

2. As for peril, we need to stop measuring our value as authors by the comments of others. Not every book we write is going to fit every reader. Unless they have real value for pointing out areas in our writing to assess, we need to stop taking negative reviews to heart. One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. We simply cannot please every reader. We never will. We can only tell the best story we can tell. And that’s the truth.

3. And lonely…I’ve come to the conclusion that it just is. But that doesn’t mean I can’t find dozens of good things that tie my two worlds together each week. I’m making a point to do just that this year. That’s the plan…or I should say, that’s the brick.

So here’s what I discovered on Pinterest today. As soon as I saw them, I imagined the jar in the center of my table.

It was the “synchronicity” that caught my eye. That I’m even blogging about being an author is due to a synchronistic series of events that put me here. I no longer discount things I encounter that make me pause. Now I reflect. Every time something good or noteworthy happens from small to large, taking note of it will help put it all in perspective. Will I see a larger picture of my life at year’s end? Stepping back to reflect, I’m sure I will.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

Sample my love stories for free!

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

If you’re here for the first time, my husband and I are assembling a vintage holiday postcard scrapbook one card at a time. I’ve been posting one or two post cards each day and plan to keep it up from now until January.

New Years cards from here on out. This is one of my favorites so far. 

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Author Suzanne Rock’s blog day.

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

Meet the RB4U authors!

http://www.romancebooks4us.com/

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Several promotional opportunities for romance authors can be found on my Exquisite Quills group blog.

http://exquisitequills.blogspot.com/

Exquisite Quills Yahoo Group

First Kiss Wednesday ~ share your best 300 word kiss.

Set the Scene in Six ~ share your backdrop or lead-up on Sundays.

The Genesis of the Story ~ share the spark that ignited your novel

Author Interviews ~ We’re booking 2014 now.

Coming January 2014

A place for your old stars to shine

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Taking Stock – day 2

I’m always thinking.  I think I was born full of ideas and thoughts. Friends chuckle when they see me fidget with something…a bottle cap, a wrapper off a piece of chocolate, a length of string. I fidget so I can pay attention to conversation because there are times when my brain just. won’t. shut. up.

I’ve often said if only I could connect my brain to my laptop I’d have a huge backlist of novels right now. lol

This is one of the reasons I take stock. I need to examine the mass of info and winnow the wheat from the chaff. Remarkably, there’s a lot of good info worth sharing. Here’s my author’s “brain cloud”. As you can see, it’s as full as a brain can be. I began taking stock on the 26th. I started by reflecting on how darn strange it is that I find myself a romance author, an award-winning romance author no less. Strange because my goal is to write literary fiction. I never envisioned being a romance novelist. Stranger still, because a friend’s taro deck said I’d be a contracted author at the very end of 2010, and I was. (scroll back for that story) Tomorrow marks three years.

Before I became published, I’d been given horrible advice from a horror author (no pun intended). I met him at a conference where he was the presenter for one of the sessions going on. I was hungry for information, so back then if any author was speaking somewhere, I was there listening. He explained how he had a contract with a large and coveted New York Publishing House but took exception to their editing process. In his words, he “pitched a fit” and railed on people “who couldn’t write their way out of a paper bag, let alone edit his work”. And just because he “was trying to protect his work”, his “contract was ripped in two and he was blackballed”.

He talked about the momentum he’d lost, never to be regained. Now that he was “blackballed”, he’d never succeed in this business because “just like doctors, all editors, agents, and publisher execs play golf together and talk“. (That “talk” was said with air quotes for nuanced emphasis) He went on about how none of us sitting in that room would ever get our books published if we went through New York. If by chance we did, the end product would be a “preposterous shadow of our work”. To be honest, he completely rattled me. Was this publishing world really so hard and unforgiving of mistakes? I’d been writing for years and five of them solidly on one huge story. I didn’t want a “preposterous shadow” made of it. If I made a mistake, any mistake, would they kick my can to the curb? What then? At the time, there was little print-on-demand self-publishing going on. It wasn’t possible unless you paid a small fortune to do it. 

In retrospect the horror author was bitter and I should have recognized it in his words instead of taking his experience as a one-size-fits-all. From the little I’ve seen in three years, it appears his view is not how this works. I recognize now the man was simply bitter and resentful topped off by a touch of indignant arrogance. He was also intentionally misleading in the two-hour rant he rooted in my head. Innocently or not, he had set it up in my mind that I was likely going to step in a bucket, clomp around pointlessly, and ultimately lose the single chance an author like me gets to put my magnum opus out in the world (details in previous posts). Anxiety and fear of failure stayed with me a very long time. Then three years ago, quite by chance, I fell in with a terrific bunch of authors. Several had been in the business longer than I. Through those friendships and occasional mentoring, I ceased to be afraid.

Because their helpful kindness was so grounding for me, I vowed to pass on the favor. I’d be helpful to any and all authors and would-be authors. I’ve even built the Exquisite Quills community for that purpose. Whenever I find something helpful or useful from slang dictionaries to promo ops, I share that news. My habit these last three years has been keeping track of all I’ve learned so it can be shared. The following is what’s what this year. Again, please know these are my experiences only. I’m sure there are different opinions.

The weekly mini blog hops ~

These lesser tag-a-long events are not like the Blog Hop events that pop up throughout the year, they’re more just weekly things to join in on. The similarity to the larger hops concerns everyone promoting the fact they’re participating, and that shines a broader beam of light on everyone involved. I regularly do seven — two Wednesdays, two Saturdays, and three Sundays. They all have one thing in common — you make a hook out of just a few sentences.  Typically this is done in 3, 6, 7, or 8 sentences, or in a small strictly adhered-to word limit. I enjoy participating in them. The comments are great and most often encouraging, and stats show they do generate sales and social media follows. I can safely say this is true because my sales for December are practically nil. The one difference — no weekly mini hops for me this month. I was too busy with life. After next week when I resume participating, I know I’ll see progress again.

We offer one on Sundays on the Exquisite Quills blog — Set the Scene in Six. And we offer First Kiss Wednesday too.  The EQ stats show a lot of interest on those days so visitors do enjoy them.

Here is a list of the ones I do now, and two more I do on occasion. I’m always looking for interesting weekly mini hops. If you have one, please share!

http://www.hornyhumpday.com/

http://humpdayhook.blogspot.co.uk/

http://mysexysaturday.blogspot.com/

http://thenuthousescribblers.blogspot.co.uk/

http://sneak-peek-sunday.blogspot.com/

http://exquisitequills.blogspot.com/

http://wewriwa.com/ 

Then there’s…http://sherifredricks.blogspot.com/   (she hosts a regular Friday Flames in comments for that day’s post)

http://blissekiss.co.uk/sunday-snog/

What about the assorted daily and weekly memes?

Memes are different from the mini hops in that they often have nothing to do with romance. There are so many of these I won’t even begin to list them now. A search can turn up dozens  for you. You’ll also find all manner of flash fiction prompts out there.

My opinion: It’s one thing to join a weekly meme where you can directly promote your novels, it’s another to just creatively post something each week that has nothing to do with your work. Unless the well is dry, I’ll save my creativity for my work in progress. In my experience, you really can’t serve two masters. I did some of these for a while in an attempt to break through a bout of writer’s block that came on the heels of personal loss. I’ve since left them.

What’s up for me?

I’m considering taking part in the Wordless Wednesday here on my main blog. The wordless Wednesday is a pictorial blog post that day. If you plan to try this, may I suggest always linking back to that picture’s original source/artist/photographer etc, even if they are in the public domain.

I will be starting another 100 Things Blogging Challenge. A daily blog post, no matter how small, really does keep a blog relevant on internet searches. It’s all about getting our name out there. Author name recognition in the huge haystack of the publishing world is a good thing.

In conclusion, I recommend weekly mini hops and a few memes for exposure and online presence.



Tomorrow ~ Taking Stock – day 3

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

Sample my love stories for free!

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

If you’re here for the first time, my husband and I are assembling a vintage holiday postcard scrapbook one card at a time. I’ve been posting one or two post cards each day and plan to keep it up from now until January.

New Years cards from here on out.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

our guest, Lily Harlem

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

Meet the RB4U authors!

http://www.romancebooks4us.com/

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Several promotional opportunities for romance authors can be found on my Exquisite Quills group blog.

http://exquisitequills.blogspot.com/

Exquisite Quills Yahoo Group

First Kiss Wednesday ~ share your best 300 word kiss.

Set the Scene in Six ~ share your backdrop or lead-up on Sundays.

The Genesis of the Story ~ share the spark that ignited your novel

Author Interviews ~ We’re booking 2014 now.

Coming January 2014

A place for your old stars to shine

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Taking Stock – day 1

“He, who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through a labyrinth of a most busy life.”

~Victor Hugo

You can’t plan unless you know what you’re working with.

~Rose Anderson

To the ancients, the Muses were considered the source of knowledge and higher learning. When I took my first steps as an author, I created Calliope’s Writing Tablet. My blog is dedicated to Calliope the writer’s Muse because she was all about learning and I am too. Just about everything regarding my journey has been put on my blog, lots about me too…including my laurels and skinned knees. In the remaining days of 2013, I’ll be wrapping up my thoughts on the year. The first of several musings: My test regarding blog hops.

I had a larger explanation planned for this week but the computer woes have made it smaller.  I was supposed to get my computer on the 18th. Didn’t happen. That eliminated more than a few gifts I’ve been assembling since August. Imagine opening an IOU Christmas morning. Good sports, my family. Tracking the laptop revealed it would come the 21st. No, there was a holdup somewhere in transit. Then it was supposed to arrive at 6pm on Christmas eve. Nope, didn’t come. On the 26th it was moving again. I’ve just tracked the package and it’s somewhere in Chicago. It might get here today. I won’t hold my breath. How I’ve managed to keep this machine running is a mystery. My keyboard has about a 1/4 of the keys not registering when I tap them. Now that’s an annoyance. Every Like is Lie. Every ‘ is a “. Every People is eole. Grrrr…what a time waster.

Anyway…

I’ve been doing blog hops for three years now. Such online events make sense to me. I have my followers as do the other participants. If we all promote the hop to our fans and followers, then that’s a lot of exposure to readers we wouldn’t have otherwise. Last November I decided to do a test. Over the course of the year, I joined every hop I could find with a plan to tally the outcome a full year later. With diligent hunting, I managed to hook up with one a month, and occasionally two or three. Hops large and small are the reason I have so many satellite blogs. My prizes were my ebooks and I’ve kept track of them as business expenses. Initially, I pictured a chart with highs and lows. Unfortunately, I found myself just too busy to make a chart.

Early on, I made up my mind not to mention which hops were the best and which turned out to be duds because one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor — or– a few may not have worked for me, but they could have been great for other participants. They take effort to put together regardless, so I’m grateful the hop owners tried.

When you’re doing one to three hops a month like I was, you pretty much get the hang of it. As they’re all basically the same, unless they have a theme, setting them up takes just minutes to do. Out of all of them, there were two that completely blew my mind because they were odd and very different from the others. Both organizers running them wanted me to post their page on my blog — a full page about them. How the heck would that benefit me? What’s more, every participant was supposed to post the same page. Why would any reader follow to the next blog if each page is the same?

I did one of them because just maybe there was something to learn here. I wanted to see if the odd setup would even work. My stats show no. The moment I discovered the second hop worked the same as the first, I bowed out. I hope it had the desired outcome for the organizers and the participants who stayed in. They just didn’t work for me. One suggestion I’d make if this is a plan they’ll stick with for future hops is tell the participants at sign up that it’s a different scenario rather than send the details later. Had I known, I wouldn’t have signed up for either.

So what I learned was this — not all hops are created equal. The following are results as seen through my personal lens. Another author might have had a different outcome. Here’s the rundown without a chart:

Some are run by keen social media divas who really know how to promote. As a result, they’re successful. The hops without this added oomph flounder sadly.
Most of the hops are attended by the same visitors leaving the same email addresses. When compared, it looks like there are approximately 50 visitors who regularly stop by all the hops. That’s what it looked like for me anyway. I write erotic romance. Perhaps the turnout is higher for other sub-genres. Hooking up with any and all, but especially new, readers is the main point to hopping. 
Themed hops were the most fun for me. I love the challenge of a theme or prompt that needs to be met. The stats reveal the most interest visitor-wise too. Translated that means visitors returned several times to reread. Visitors were actually reading me rather than just rushing through to comments before rushing to the next author on the list. I gained followers and also saw an uptick in book sales. There was one themed hop in the spring that went for a full week and all stats show it was a very good week for me.
Aside from that single spring hop, the long-established hops with large numbers of participants were the true winners. I had a lot of interest, gained followers, and even had spikes in my sales.
In these larger hops, I learned it’s best to either be at the end of the list or at the beginning. Being in the middle of a few hundred participants is not quite a no-man’s land, but it’s close.
I feel hops with expensive prizes like Kindles did nothing different for me personally. In fact, by brief and mostly generic comments left, I have the impression many visitors went to my page and just dropped their name and email address in the comment box before moving on to the next blog.
As for prizes…I had a few mugs filled with goodies and two handcrafted enameled pendants I gave away as prizes over the course of the year. I plan to do those again as they drew a lot of interest. Because my first two novels have been pirated all over the world, those are the only two prizes that were given as PDF’s. For my other prizes, I actually bought my own ebooks through Amazon and sent them as gifts to my winners. These have the DRM on them. That means Digital Rights Management – a technological means of protection of copyrighted material so it can’t be duplicated and pirated. To date I haven’t found a single one of these titles pirated. It’s a few extra steps to do it that way, and I’ll deal with extra tax work come April to write off this business expense, but it’s working to keep $$ in my pocket.
Hops have provided me with a database of potential readers to offer a monthly newsletter to. I plan to launch a newsletter in March. We’ll see how that goes.


I have a handful of hops I’ll certainly do again if I’m able.

In conclusion, I recommend the effort. Especially if you’re at a loss as what to do with your blog and need to post something. In this web-driven world we live in, something is better than nothing.



Tomorrow ~ Taking Stock – day 2

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

Sample my love stories for free!

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

If you’re here for the first time, my husband and I are assembling a vintage holiday postcard scrapbook one card at a time. I’ve been posting one or two post cards each day and plan to keep it up from now until January.

New Years cards from here on out.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Author Janice Seagraves’ blog day

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

Meet the RB4U authors!

http://www.romancebooks4us.com/

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Several promotional opportunities for romance authors can be found on my Exquisite Quills group blog.

http://exquisitequills.blogspot.com/

First Kiss Wednesday ~ share your best 300 word kiss.

Set the Scene in Six ~ share your backdrop or lead-up on Sundays.

The Genesis of the Story ~ share the spark that ignited your novel

Author Interviews ~ We’re booking 2014 now.

Coming January 2014

A place for your old stars to shine

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

A long strange trip

I plan to be lazy for the next five or six days. Almost as lazy as my over-indulgent puppy here. She’s feeling the after effects of holiday entertaining. Kinds looks like me yesterday!

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This week, I’ll visit with friends, hopefully see some family, eat myself into oblivion on party leftovers (and vow to diet come the 1st.), put the holiday decorations away, and make music and party the year’s end with people I love.

I’m still taking stock and have some ambitious 2014 plans, but the short list has me getting acquainted with a new computer, launching the Exquisite Quills Recycled Reviews and start the scheduling process for author guests, writing up my findings about blog hops, and then dusting off the magnum opus — the 5-book, 500,000-word, as yet unnamed labor of love I became a romance novelist for. Three years in I believe I’ve learned enough to do it justice. That was the point. I still have a few unfinished love stories to chip away so I won’t be walking away from romance entirely like I’d planned when I started this journey. I don’t know how I’ll fit it all in, but I will. Not only am I versatile, I’m determined.

What a long strange trip it’s been. Strange trip? Oh yeah. Four days from now marks my three-year anniversary as a published author…or I should say, my three-year anniversary as a contracted author. What began as a series of early readers for my son more than 20 years ago, changed course when I rehabbed an old Greek Revival house. I was inspired to write a story about that house in the time of the Underground Railroad. Years later, I started the huge project I refer to as my magnum opus. All in all those humble beginnings weren’t so strange. It was my encounter with synchronicity that made it so. That’s what put my feet on this path. I’ve mentioned before how a series of events over the course of a week inspired me to break into romance as a way to learn the publishing business. But I’ve never mentioned the last freaky bit.

I have a friend who is an accomplished tarot card reader. Back when I was a teen, I had a set of tarot cards.  Reading fortunes was a fun pastime with friends. To be quite honest, I put as much stock in tarot calling the shots as I do a daily horoscope or fortune cookie setting up one’s day. I consider such fun readings not attempts to predict the future, rather as mnemonic aids or prompts to insights already intuited and waiting in unformed thought. In other words…If your horoscope says you’ll be pleasantly surprised that day, in the back of your mind you might just be primed to notice something you’d overlook if you hadn’t been prompted by a prediction. Like being told number 9 will figure into your day, then seeing that number everywhere you go on billboards and signs, license plates, etc.

So back to my friend…

She came for tea one afternoon in early February and brought her cards. She said she’d read for me if I wanted her to. I said sure. I had no grand question to ask, but I came up with will I publish my magnum opus this year?

I Figured it would be an easy read. I was getting ready to submit the first book in my series to a publisher, despite the fact I had reservations. I’m well aware I can be wordy when I drop into stream of consciousness writing (or on my blog!). All thoughts pour through my fingers and then I go back and trim. The problem back then was I didn’t know how to trim. I hadn’t yet faced the fires of the editing process. Each paragraph was huge and inflated with details because in my mind that’s exactly how I saw them. Readers don’t need to see all that.

With no other burning question on my mind, I asked about my magnum opus being published that year. The cards said no. I asked about publishing my children’s books. No. I asked about my historical youth novels. No. She thought maybe I’d publish a book I hadn’t written yet. I laughed because I was knee-deep in the 5th book of my work in progress. I had no plans to write another book. She read the cards again with that question and they said yes. She then did a different spread that shows the passage of time. The cards said I’d be contracted with a publisher at the very end of the year, but not for anything I’d written up to that point. I smiled at the prospect, but still had no plans to write another. All in all a fun afternoon with a friend.

The card reading completely disappeared from my mind when her car pulled out of the driveway. In late summer that year, I had that synchronistic week with all fingers pointing at ebooks as the place to begin. In three days I crafted, what was for me, an edgy novel and submitted it. Months passed without a peep and I wrote the whole experience off. I’d been rejected twenty years before and not every publisher sent a letter, so I just figured that’s what the deal was. On December 29th, I received my contract. Freaky. That’s what makes it a strange trip.

Here’s my horoscope for today:

Get started on something new — even if it’s just cleaning house! You are feeling pulled in a new direction, and it should lead to opportunities if you keep moving in the right direction.

See? Things are obviously out of my hands! 

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

Sample my love stories for free!

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

If you’re here for the first time, my husband and I are assembling a vintage holiday postcard scrapbook one card at a time. I’ve been posting one or two post cards each day and plan to keep it up from now until January.

Christmas is over which is good because this is the last Christmas postcard. New Years cards from here on out.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Author Marianne Stephens’ blog day

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

Meet the RB4U authors!

http://www.romancebooks4us.com/

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Today it’s The Genesis of the Story with Author Janice Seagraves.

Several promotional opportunities for romance authors can be found on my Exquisite Quills group blog.

http://exquisitequills.blogspot.com/

First Kiss Wednesday ~ share your best 300 word kiss.

Set the Scene in Six ~ share your backdrop or lead-up on Sundays.

The Genesis of the Story ~ share the spark that ignited your novel

Author Interviews ~ We’re booking 2014 now.

Coming January 2014

A place for your old stars to shine

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Elves behind the scenes

From my family to yours, I wish you Merry Christmas. If this is not a day you observe, Happy Holidays, Happy Yule.  :)  I’ll be back on the 26th. Until then…

I grew up with an old 1930′s set of My Bookhouse books by Olive Beaupre Miller. I loved those stories and beautiful lithograph illustrations. One of my favorites was a story by the Brothers Grimm — The Elves and the Shoemaker. Because elves play such a helpful role this time of year, I thought it a fitting post for an extremely busy day. I could really use an elf or two around here right now. Here’s the full translation done in 1884. Enjoy!

A shoemaker, by no fault of his own, had become so poor that at last he had nothing left but leather for one pair of shoes. So in the evening, he cut out the shoes which he wished to begin to make the next morning, and as he had a good conscience, he lay down quietly in his bed, commended himself to God, and fell asleep. In the morning, after he had said his prayers, and was just going to sit down to work, the two shoes stood quite finished on his table. He was astounded, and knew not what to say to it. He took the shoes in his hands to observe them closer, and they were so neatly made that there was not one bad stitch in them, just as if they were intended as a masterpiece.

Soon after, a buyer came in, and as the shoes pleased him so well, he paid more for them than was customary, and, with the money, the shoemaker was able to purchase leather for two pairs of shoes. He cut them out at night, and next morning was about to set to work with fresh courage; but he had no need to do so, for, when he got up, they were already made, and buyers also were not wanting, who gave him money enough to buy leather for four pairs of shoes. The following morning, too, he found the four pairs made; and so it went on constantly — what he cut out in the evening was finished by the morning, so that he soon had his honest independence again, and at last became a wealthy man.

Now it befell that one evening not long before Christmas, when the man had been cutting out, he said to his wife, before going to bed, “What think you if we were to stay up to-night to see who it is that lends us this helping hand?” The woman liked the idea, and lighted a candle, and then they hid themselves in a corner of the room, behind some clothes which were hanging up there, and watched. When it was midnight, two pretty little naked men came, sat down by the shoemaker’s table, took all the work which was cut out before them and began to stitch, and sew, and hammer so skilfully and so quickly with their little fingers that the shoemaker could not turn away his eyes for astonishment. They did not stop until all was done, and stood finished on the table; and then they ran quickly away.

Next morning the woman said, “The little men have made us rich, and we really must show that we are grateful for it. They run about so, and have nothing on, and must be cold. I’ll tell thee what I’ll do: I will make them little shirts, and coats, and vests, and trousers, and knit both of them a pair of stockings, and do thou, too, make them two little pairs of shoes.” The man said, “I shall be very glad to do it;” and one night, when everything was ready, they laid their presents all together on the table instead of the cut-out work, and then concealed themselves to see how the little men would behave. At midnight they came bounding in, and wanted to get to work at once, but as they did not find any leather cut out, but only the pretty little articles of clothing, they were at first astonished, and then they showed intense delight. They dressed themselves with the greatest rapidity, putting the pretty clothes on, and singing,

“Now we are boys so fine to see,

Why should we longer cobblers be?”

Then they danced and skipped and leapt over chairs and benches. At last they danced out of doors. From that time forth they came no more, but as long as the shoemaker lived all went well with him, and all his undertakings prospered.

*To read the fairytales and fables I enjoyed as a child with an adult eyes is a very interesting endeavor. I’m struck by the notion they weren’t really written for kids.

I recall toy elves being given as a premium with Joy dish soap back in the 1960s. Ugly things. lol My sister-in-law has a sizable collection of these dolls, thanks to her mother going through all that soap to acquire them for her. A few years ago, my husband found one on his gift quest and gave it to me. Did I say ugly? I have him sitting on the stairway banister.
(where he can’t be seen! LOL)

There’s a trend regarding those spindly-legged elves. Someone wrote a book and then a toy followed. Now there’s the meme of The Elf on the Shelf. The idea is to take pictures of the elf in compromising poses. Very cute ideas for scenarios your elf gets into while you’re sleeping. If my children were little, I might try this. Imagine my sister-in-law’s large ugly elf collection carrying on when everyone is asleep…
Now that’s a nightmare in the making.

http://www.pinterest.com/mudpiestudio/elf-on-the-shelf-ideas/

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971
Sample my love stories for free!

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

If you’re here for the first time, my husband and I are assembling a vintage holiday postcard scrapbook one card at a time. I’ve been posting one or two post cards each day and plan to keep it up from now until January.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Author Cara Marsi’s blog day
http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

RB4U is participating in author Nikki Barrett’s READER APPRECIATION GIVEAWAY — Lots of prizes. Enter today!

https://www.facebook.com/NikkiLynnBarrettauthor/app_228910107186452

Our December contest ends at midnight tomorrow night. All 31 prizes go to one winner, including a $75 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card. I’m adding a free book from my backlist to the loot. Read the pages and find the dancing Santas.
http://www.romancebooks4us.com/

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Several promotional opportunities for romance authors can be found on my Exquisite Quills group blog.
http://exquisitequills.blogspot.com/

First Kiss Wednesday ~ share your best 300 word kiss.
Set the Scene in Six ~ share your backdrop or lead-up on Sundays.
The Genesis of the Story ~ share the spark that ignited your novel
Author Interviews ~ We’re booking 2014 now.

Coming January 2014
A place for your old stars to shine

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

* FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE *

Exquisite Quills presents A Holiday Anthology Vol. 1
Many holiday short stories in several styles written
by more than a dozen authors. And it’s FREE!
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/374815
And after tomorrow I won’t mention it again!

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

The Gift of the Magi

I’m uber busy today. Too busy to do more than launch the blog page. I’d like to share a beautiful love story written in 1905 by William Porter. You might know him by his pen name O. Henry. I give you The Gift of the Magi

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name “Mr. James Dillingham Young.”

The “Dillingham” had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called “Jim” and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling–something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pierglass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: “Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.” One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the “Sofronie.”

“Will you buy my hair?” asked Della.

“I buy hair,” said Madame. “Take yer hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.”

Down rippled the brown cascade.

“Twenty dollars,” said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

“Give it to me quick,” said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation–as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value–the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends–a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

“If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “before he takes a second look at me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do–oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?”

At 7 o’clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: “Please God, make him think I am still pretty.”

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two–and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It’ll grow out again–you won’t mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!’ Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice– what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.”

“You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. “Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?”

Jim looked about the room curiously.

“You say your hair is gone?” he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

“You needn’t look for it,” said Della. “It’s sold, I tell you–sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,” she went on with sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?”

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year–what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first.”

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs–the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims–just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: “My hair grows so fast, Jim!”

And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!”

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

“Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.”

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

“Dell,” said he, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ‘em a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.”

The magi, as you know, were wise men–wonderfully wise men–who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

I just love that story, it resonates on a personal level. For other charming Christmas stories and more visit Project Gutenberg.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

Sample my love stories for free!

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

If you’re here for the first time, my husband and I are assembling a vintage holiday postcard scrapbook one card at a time. I’ve been posting one or two post cards each day and plan to keep it up from now until January.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Here’s another party recipe from the mountain of files and it’s very good.

Spinach-Stuffed Mushrooms

12 mushroom caps (chop stems and set aside)

1 T. butter

1/4 cup chopped sweet onion

2 ounces softened cream cheese

1/4 cup sharp shredded cheddar

1 cup chopped, raw spinach

Preheat oven to 375 degrees (Fahrenheit).

In a medium pan, over medium heat, melt butter and saute onions and mushroom stems for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. In a bowl, combine onion, stems, cream cheese, cheddar and spinach. Spoon into cleaned mushroom caps. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until lightly golden. Makes 1 dozen.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

our guest, Krista Ames

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

RB4U is participating in author Nikki Barrett’s READER APPRECIATION GIVEAWAY — Lots of prizes. Enter today!

https://www.facebook.com/NikkiLynnBarrettauthor/app_228910107186452

Our December contest has approximately 30 prizes for one winner, including a $75 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card. I’m adding a free book from my backlist to the loot. Read the pages and find the dancing Santas.

http://www.romancebooks4us.com/

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Several promotional opportunities for romance authors can be found on my Exquisite Quills group blog.

http://exquisitequills.blogspot.com/

First Kiss Wednesday ~ share your best 300 word kiss.

Set the Scene in Six ~ share your backdrop or lead-up on Sundays.

The Genesis of the Story ~ share the spark that ignited your novel

Author Interviews ~ We’re booking 2014 now.

Coming January 2014

A place for your old stars to shine

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

* FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE *

Exquisite Quills presents A Holiday Anthology Vol. 1

Many holiday short stories in several styles written

by more than a dozen authors. And it’s FREE!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/374815

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

The Great Pyramid at Giza & the chocolate spoon debacle

She’s done it again. My Labrador retriever with her obsessive chocolate addiction did it again. It all started six years ago…

I make most of my gifts. My imagination, my affection, my creativity, and my time on earth, all align in focus to create interesting or lovely things for the people I care about. Six years ago I made chocolate covered spoons meant to be stirred into hot coffee or to add a boost to hot cocoa. I used high-quality Austrian chocolate and wrapped and labeled each one. Thirty of them. They looked like a fancy impulse gifts you might see at a store like Barnes & Nobel or at a kitchen boutique.

It was the evening of December 26th. Normally, we’d be visiting my sister’s family on Christmas day and the gifts would have been all parceled out. That gathering was postponed because the flu was traveling among the nieces and nephews and their families. For five days the spoons and other small gifts sat in a large basket on the floor. That night, our kids were off doing their own things and my husband and I were just home alone when a call came. Friends invited us to hang out with them for the evening. I unplugged the tree and off we went.

Returning home at 11:00 that night, we were met with ribbons and plastic all over the floor — plastic wrappings, curly vinyl ribbon, and spoon handles. This crazy Lab had bided her time for days until the ripe moment when she’d be alone with the chocolate. Chocolate is bad for dogs because it messes with their heartbeat, or worse, cause their pancreas to shut down. I called our vet and woke the poor man. He directed us to an emergency facility. We sped there only to find it closed. The sign on the door directed us to another animal hospital so we sped there. I wrung my hands the whole time. I love this dog as if she’s one of my children.

About an hour later, the vet came out and asked me what we feed her. I rattled off the blend of dog foods she eats. He said her stomach was full of odd non-dog food items. I asked him what kind of odd things, and he gave me a list…maraschino cherries, shrimp tails, cheese chunks, black and green olives, and an assortment of breads and assorted leavings. We host a large Christmas eve party and the next day take our bucket of leftovers, the kind people have picked through all night, and dump them out in the field for the crows. Well, this chow hound found the pile when she was out seeing to her business. Most likely her bout of gluttony saved her life, and certainly saved her from surgery. Most of the plastic-wrapped chocolate came up. The plastic spoon bits were blocked in her stomach and couldn’t damage her intestines.  The dog vomited plastic for three days — sharp and occasionally whole spoon bowls. A holiday bonus expense of $400 and a dog with a severe case of over-indulgence, not to mention the lack of gifts for my extended family.

Roughly four years ago, this dog ate six bars of Bavarian milk chocolate (less toxic to dogs) that she pulled right off the table. With wrappers! I could leave a steak on the table over night and she wouldn’t touch it. The night of the spoon debacle there was a package of beef jerky under the tree! She never did this sort of thing when she was a puppy. As an older dog, she’s clearly weighs the outcome and decides whatever trouble she gets in afterward is well worth it if chocolate is involved. Feast on delicious chocolate and get yelled at, feast, bad dog. In the end — chocolate.

This morning I finished the last of my pyramids. They’re special boxes, little replicas of the Great Pyramid at Giza. I designed them with hieroglyphic cartouches of the recipient’s name, printed them, cut them out, assembled them, filled them with Lemonheads for my kids, then glued them closed. The one I made for my husband was filled with foil-wrapped chocolate-covered caramels. In the 2 or 3 minutes it took me to put my supplies away and remember old dogs are insane, she had sniffed it out and ate it. Foil wrappers, cartouche, and all.  At soon-to-be 14, she’s arthritic and lumpy, hard of hearing and mostly blind…and she’s still my puppy.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

Sample my love stories for free!

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

If you’re here for the first time, my husband and I are assembling a vintage holiday postcard scrapbook one card at a time. I’ve been posting one or two post cards each day and plan to keep it up from now until January.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Here’s another party recipe from the mountain of files. I have yet to make them, but they sound simple.

Greek Yogurt Truffles

Makes 8

4 oz. real white chocolate

1/3  cup plain Greek yogurt

2 strawberries, hulled

Optional: powdered sugar or table sugar for coating

Instructions:

Chop the white chocolate into small pieces and melt in a double boiler. Stir in the yogurt. Chill the mixture in the fridge for 1 hour. Before rolling, chop the strawberries into bite-size pieces. Working quickly, scoop teaspoon-size balls of the white chocolate mixture. Roll it around a piece of strawberry in your hands until completely coated.

Optional: Roll in sugar to coat. Chill the truffles for 1 hour before serving, and store any uneaten truffles in the fridge.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Author Desiree Holt’s blog day.

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

RB4U is participating in author Nikki Barrett’s READER APPRECIATION GIVEAWAY — Lots of prizes. Enter today!

https://www.facebook.com/NikkiLynnBarrettauthor/app_228910107186452

Our December contest has approximately 30 prizes for one winner, including a $75 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card. I’m adding a free book from my backlist to the loot. Read the pages and find the dancing Santas.

http://www.romancebooks4us.com/

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Several promotional opportunities for romance authors can be found on my Exquisite Quills group blog.

Today it’s Set the Scene in Six. Come share your six-sentences

http://exquisitequills.blogspot.com/

First Kiss Wednesday ~ share your best 300 word kiss.

Set the Scene in Six ~ share your backdrop or lead-up on Sundays.

The Genesis of the Story ~ share the spark that ignited your novel

Author Interviews ~ We’re booking 2014 now.

Coming January 2014

A place for your old stars to shine

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

* FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE *

Exquisite Quills presents A Holiday Anthology Vol. 1

Many holiday short stories in several styles written

by more than a dozen authors. And it’s FREE!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/374815

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

The Long Dark

We had planned a 12-hour winter solstice drumming event for today. The food was bought, the space organized, the drums and percussion instruments all set out. We also have 6-8 inches of snow expected by tomorrow morning. Oh well. I’d rather my friends be safe at home than on the road. It’s better the storm hit us  now than on Tuesday for our party.

I have to say, the prospect of deep snow tickles the little kid in me. Must go buy bread, milk, and eggs to prepare. 

Today is the darkest day of the year, the day with the least amount of daylight. People have marked this moment and done so for tens of thousands of years. Tonight, turn off your electric lights and immerse yourself in the long dark. Light candles and reflect. Share the stories of your lives with your loved ones. Tell them how thankful you are that they are in your life. The return of sun is a good time to take stock,  a time to be thankful the sun will rise in the morning and you’ll live to see another day. Because of this, the winter solstice is a time to mend relationships and renew your hope and goodwill. And come tomorrow, you’ll find the day just a little bit longer, a little bit brighter. Spring is around the corner.

“The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of Nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a crust of bread.”

~John Burroughs, “The Snow-Walkers,” 1866

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

Sample my love stories for free!

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

If you’re here for the first time, my husband and I arebuilding a vintage holiday postcard scrapbook one card at a time. I’ve been posting one or two post cards each day and plan to keep it up from now until January.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Here’s another party recipe from the mountain of files…

Creamy Spinach Artichoke Spread

1 pkg. (8 oz.) Cream Cheese, softened.

1 pkg. (10 oz.) frozen chopped spinach, thawed and well drained

1 jar (7.5 oz.) marinated artichoke hearts, drained and chopped

1/2 cup Shredded Mozzarella Cheese

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

1/2 cup Grated Parmesan Cheese

Spread cream cheese onto bottom of microwaveable 9-inch pie plate. Mix spinach, artichokes, mozzarella and garlic powder until blended; spread over cream cheese. Sprinkle with Parmesan. Microwave until heated through. Serve with pita chips, French bread slices, or tortilla chips.

Amazingly good.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Author Renee Vincent’s blog day.

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

RB4U is participating in author Nikki Barrett’s READER APPRECIATION GIVEAWAY — Lots of prizes. Enter today!

https://www.facebook.com/NikkiLynnBarrettauthor/app_228910107186452

Our December contest has approximately 30 prizes for one winner, including a $75 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card. I’m adding a free book from my backlist to the loot. Read the pages and find the dancing Santas.

http://www.romancebooks4us.com/

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Several promotional opportunities for romance authors can be found on my Exquisite Quills group blog.

Tomorrow: Set the Scene in Six

http://exquisitequills.blogspot.com/

First Kiss Wednesday ~ share your best 300 word kiss.

Set the Scene in Six ~ share your backdrop or lead-up on Sundays.

The Genesis of the Story ~ share the spark that ignited your novel

Author Interviews ~ We’re booking 2014 now.

Coming January 2014

A place for your old stars to shine

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

* FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE *

Exquisite Quills presents A Holiday Anthology Vol. 1

Many holiday short stories in several styles written

by more than a dozen authors. And it’s FREE!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/374815

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Telling a story in a nutshell

If this is your first time here, I’ve taken a break from regular postings on my other blogs because I have too much to do and only one of me doing it. As authors need to maintain their presence, I’ve kept this blog active during this insanely busy month. Contrary to popular opinion, I haven’t worked out that cloning process just yet. Dream on, Rose, dream on…

I found a file filled with short blog posts yesterday and thought I’d talk about what they’re for. If I hadn’t taken December off, I’d be joining the mini hops that are all over the web each week. I enjoy them and stats show they generate sales. What’s more, they keep me sharp and well-versed in my merchandise. lol that sounds funny to say. It’s true though.

I’ve written two stories –Loving Leonardo and the Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo. Each stands alone but also carries over into the next book in their series. Both have deliberate open ends and peripheral characters that could be doorways to future adventures. I decided to make them full series one day because I discovered there was just so much more to say! That’s where the mini hops come in. Each novel an author writes takes us away from the books that came before it. The mini hops keep them fresh in my mind.

These weekly events all have one thing in common — you must try to say a lot in just a few sentences to make a hook.  Typically they go 3, 6, 7, 8 sentences or a small strictly adhered-to word limit. I do like challenges.

The following mélange consists of dynamic points in my stories, their few sentences carefully chosen to create an entire view or a platform for what is about to occur.  If you’d like to see the blurbs to have an idea what these snippets are about, you’ll find the trailers in the book tab at the top of your screen.

Setting the Stage: Bea recounts Alex’s interest in Jenna. Suddenly the three siblings realize something isn’t quite right about Alex.

My 8 sentences:

“I think he was moved by her tears.”

Lachlan asked sharply, “What makes ye say that?”

“What, that she was keening at the water’s edge? Makes sense no, it was her grandmother’s ashes they were sprinkling on the water and…” Eyes growing large, Bea put her hand to her mouth. “Oh my lord! Ye don’t think…”

Frowning, Lachlan said, “It wouldn’t be the first MacCodrum caught that way.”

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ



Setting the stage: At this point in the story, Livie takes the veterinary clinic’s new employee out for a quick bite to eat after a crazy hectic day. She finds this handsome Native American man quite compelling and Ash has already fallen in love with her. Days ago in fact. Ash is moonlighting as the wolf-cross dog in her home. Livie has no idea.

My 3 sentences ~

He wanted to hold her in his arms and kiss her. He wanted to feel her body wrapped around him while his lips chased the blush over her skin. And above all, he wanted her to love him.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Setting the stage: At this point in the story, Eli has tried to enter the White Spirit world but found himself in the Red Realm where the forsaken dwell on the other side of the veil that divides the spirit realms — in other words, Hell. Through the veil he witnesses the shape-shifting abilities of Ash and their teacher Nawkaw. Outraged, he wants this gift for himself.

The forsaken ones had never met a shaman with the ability to enter the spirit worlds, and never one with murders attached to his soul. They tell him they too can bestow such a gift, but it comes with a price. Naturally, Eli says yes.

I give you Eli’s “gift” in under 500 words.

Eli woke and found himself naked in tangled sheets. He ached all over and the stench of the Red Realm hung in the motel room like a fetid cloud. Sitting up, he realized it was he who smelled like rot because his lower half had shifted while he slept. No, he hadn’t slept, he’d lived a second life when he’d fallen asleep. Feeling a tickle on his calf, he looked down at a small wriggling maggot in an open sore. He flicked it across the room. Disgusting. 



A question lodged in his brain: Was he fated to return to their foul abuses each time he closed his eyes to sleep? He’d kill himself first. No sooner had the thought come to him than did he remember he was immortal. There’d be no escaping the Red Realm. A panic gripped him. He needed that bird stone. It would fly him to the White World. Once there, he’d plead his case before Sky Father and the ancestors. Surely they’d overlook his indiscretions if he showed them his regret.

Needing to wash, he headed to the motel bathroom. The floor to ceiling mirror took him by surprise. He stood there with the legs of an animal he couldn’t identify. Squeezing his eyes shut, his breath came out in a sharp hiss as he forced his legs into human shape. The painful transformation felt like his bones were breaking from within. He looked at his naked reflection and blinked in disbelief. Feeling his aching sack, he discovered that one of his balls was missing. A sickening recollection of his nightmare in the Red Realm came rushing back. When he’d tried to run away, they held him down while the whore stepped on his testicles until he swore not to run again.

Tears of frustrated rage fell. How dare they do this to him! His anger transformed his body as he stood before the mirror, and he saw himself for the first time. Where his feet had been, he now had cloven toes tipped with curled claws. His arms and legs were thin and riddled with sores. Overall, he looked emaciated. His head was tipped in small peeling antlers and his face was a muzzle more deer-like than not, but the yellowed fangs belonged to a wolf or perhaps a bear. He grabbed his head with his clawed hands and stared into his reflection. This was no wondrous transformation like Nawkaw becoming eagle. Eli was no proud wolf like Ashkewheteasu. He was a monster. He was a Wendigo. Would Sky Father let him in the White World now? He had to try, he had to.

Falling to his knees, Eluwilussit sobbed until he ran out of tears. Meeting his glowing eyes in the mirror again, he clutched the furry skin of his half-empty scrotum and rasped, “When I find you Ashkewheteasu, you will you die slowly as you watch me eat your body piece by piece.”

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Setting the stage: At this point in the story, the new friends Nicolas, Ellie, and Luca are aboard a steamer to Venice and Nicolas realizes their interest in Leonardo da Vinci isn’t the only thing they share in common.

My 8 sentences:

I believe we were all aware of a sexual tension growing in the intellectual-rich loam. There were little things at play now: the way Ellie moistened her lips and looked at us with eyes that lingered from one to the other. The way Luca’s irises had darkened from snow shadow to moon shadow as he looked upon her. The way I’d catch myself with a reminder to breathe as my eye was drawn to these small distinctions. Like da Vinci’s sfumato, our mutual attraction hung in the air, and I was struck by the notion that the smoky quality depicted in his art was desire. Desire like this.

“Ah.” Ellie nodded in understanding and circled the rim of her wine glass with her fingertip.

I could feel the gears turning in the perfect machine of her mind.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Setting the stage: Nicolas, Ellie, and Luca are in Rome to find the first Da Vinci masterpiece’s secrets. A sensitive soul, Nicolas finds Rome’s hard edge unsettling. I give you empathy in under 300 words.

I’d been in Rome on my grand tour and this visit, as the last, filled me with the same dichotomy of emotion. My eye was caught by a shriveled slovenly woman begging on the street below who had a babe in arms and no fewer than seven hungry, filthy children in orbit around her skirts. Within a few feet, a rotund cardinal with his bright red robes and matching wide-brimmed biretta walked by happily devouring his pastry. He didn’t give the starving children a second glance, not even the toddling child who held a beseeching hand out as he walked by. The sad image took my mind as I dug for a handkerchief in the top compartment of my trunk. The entire city was a dichotomy, and I did not like it here.

With a stack of coin tied up in my handkerchief, I returned to the window and whistled for the mother’s attention. Waving her closer, I tossed the bundle out the window. The tallest of the lot, I assume her eldest, ran to pick it up, then hurried back to his mother excitedly. She looked up at me tearfully and smiling, called something in a hard-edged language I didn’t understand but which I took for Romani. I returned the smile and tipped my head to her. I didn’t know from whence she’d come, nor why she was here in this city of extremes, but I’d given her enough coin to see her brood fed for the month, at least. If I were able to converse, I would have suggested she use part of the money to leave this place.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Setting the stage: In this scene, the ghost of Dr. Jason Bowen ponders how he came to be, and the gullibility that led him there. I give you a contemplative ghost in under 300 words.

When they met she’d been such a sweet and shy little beauty. That shyness, he’d come to learn, was part of their treachery – nothing but cunning craft. When she comforted him over the untimely death of his father, he’d been surprised by how quickly he fell head over heels. Seeking to win her timid heart and encourage the comfort that would eventually lead his wife into his bed, he gave into Cathy’s every whim. No more than two months had passed before he was compelled to offer her marriage. No more than four before he found himself dead with his spirit walking the halls.

He played the details of their courtship over and over in his mind, for what else was there to occupy his thoughts? Cathy Ames had accepted his proposal eagerly, despite her less-than-enthusiastic response to his advances. These always met with a cool reserve he erroneously mistook for maidenly shyness. But Cathy didn’t possess a shy bone in her body. No, far from it. He’d seen them together in bed, his wife and his murderer. Seen for himself the eager way she clutched Richard Mason’s body to hers and treated him to a carnal knowledge obviously developed from years of knowing. Not only did it shock his senses to see his shy wife play whore and play it well, it sickened him. What a fool he’d been. Unable to stomach the sight of them, he kept to the only room they never visited—the cupola at the top of the house—and decades passed there with little concern, because time ceased to have meaning for the dead. Yes, they continued on with their merry lives, raised their foul brood, and got away with murder.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Setting the stage: After a long drought in her self-confidence, Vivienne slowly begins to regain what a bad breakup lost. Before long, she finds she eagerly anticipates each email from her penpal S.

My 3:

“You’ve got mail” burst forth from the speakers. I discovered I had been conditioned to have an autonomic response to seeing the envelope and hearing the computerized words. Like Pavlov’s dog, I began to salivate.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

And it’s free!

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

If you’re here for the first time, my husband and I arebuilding a vintage holiday postcard scrapbook one card at a time.

I’ve been posting one or two post cards each day and plan to keep it up from now until January.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

our guest author Vicky Burkholder

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

RB4U is participating in author Nikki Barrett’s READER APPRECIATION GIVEAWAY — Lots of prizes. Enter today!

https://www.facebook.com/NikkiLynnBarrettauthor/app_228910107186452

Our December contest has approximately 30 prizes for one winner, including a $75 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card. I’m adding a free book from my backlist to the loot. Read the pages and find the dancing Santas.

http://www.romancebooks4us.com/

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Several promotional opportunities for romance authors can be found on my Exquisite Quills group blog. http://exquisitequills.blogspot.com/

Tomorrow: an interview with author Draven St. James.

First Kiss Wednesday ~ share your best 300 word kiss.

Set the Scene in Six ~ share your backdrop or lead-up on Sundays.

The Genesis of the Story ~ share the spark that ignited your novel

Author Interviews ~ We’re booking 2014 now.

Coming January 2014

A place for your old stars to shine!

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

* FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE *

Exquisite Quills presents A Holiday Anthology Vol. 1

Many holiday short stories in several styles written

by more than a dozen authors. And it’s FREE!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/374815

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

The wisdom of salty sea dogs

Jeeze. Where has this month gone? I’m hoping to complete a lot of things today. I have to. My old puppy has to go back to the vet tomorrow so my Friday is spoken for. I can tell she’s achy today. I’m achy today. If that alone wasn’t an indicator of a change in the weather, first thing this morning I was met with a frosty ring around the moon. Then I was entertained by a vermillion sunrise. Uh oh. We’re expecting rain today.

Most everyone is familiar with the two weather adages the sailors of yesteryear swore by: Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. Ring around the moon, rain before noon. How does that work? Well, the red sky is seen because the sunlight is encountering dust particles churned into the air from a storm system that just passed from the west, and indicates a storm system moving to the east. Typically, if the morning sky is a deep fiery red, it means a high water content in the atmosphere. So… rain on the way. Ring around the moon? High cirrus clouds full of ice crystals form those rings. Halos mean rain too.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Ugh..so many files. I had forgotten about this other Nicolas Halstead character interview. It was created for Romance Lives Forever. Kayelle Allen asked very good questions. She also owns the Marketing for Romance Writers group, blog, and Facebook page etc. I highly recommend MFRW as a terrific resource. Here’s a portion of that post:

Rose Anderson, welcome to Romance Lives Forever. We’re excited to interview your character, Nicolas Halstead from the book, Loving Leonardo – The Quest

What are your main characters’ names, ages, and occupations?

Nicolas Halstead 11th Earl of Halstead: 31 years old. House of Lords, Art Historian for the famed Ashmolean Museum. He acquires and manages her Majesty’s art collections.

Elenora Schwaab Halstead: 24 years old. The new Lady Halstead. Student of philosophy, Suffragette, and American Progressive. Daughter of the American Consul to her Majesty Queen Victoria.

Luca Franco: 32 years old. The new Professor of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum. Son of a Venetian merchant. Head of the Franco family. He acquires items of history to add to the vast museum collections.

Interview with Nicolas Halstead

Tell us about yourself.

Nicolas seated himself and crossed his legs comfortably before him. “Well, let me see…My name is Nicolas Halstead, 11th Earl of Halstead. I’ve assumed my deceased father’s seat in House of Lords. Though my travels puts me hardly ever there. As a young man I was educated at Eaton, and then finished my art history education at Oxford. From there I did my internship at the Ashmolean, where I recently became a fellow. It falls to me to add to her Majesty’s collections of state, and to do so, I acquire artworks from private holdings and collections.

I’m an exceedingly private person. To maintain that desired privacy, I live in London, away from the family estate. Mrs. Fletcher, my housekeeper, looks after me and has since the accident that killed my parents. My grandmother, Lady Augusta Halstead did me an immeasurable kindness when she gave me over to her trusted servant’s care all those years ago. She has no idea of the bond between Mrs. Fletcher and me, or what we truly share. You see, my Grandmother comes from a time of little deviation from the path society placed before you. The old dear would come undone in knowing the truth of me.”

Nicolas’ lips twitch. “Until recently, I lived a quiet, somewhat content, life.”

Tell us about Ellie and Luca.

The twitch transformed into a wide smile. “I’ll assume by the question, you are aware of my nature. Therefore, to phrase it simply, we three are lovers and I love them. It’s trite to say, but we complete one another in ways we hardly realized were incomplete. Through them, I’ve discovered and accepted myself.

Were I to describe my new wife, I’d say she’s unlike anyone, male or female, of my acquaintance. Bold as brass in speaking plainly…in attitude and affections as well. She’s a suffragette, a progressive in the truest sense. If any woman deserved the vote it would be she. Her mind is extraordinary, her heart fiercely loving and protective. She’s American, you know. In general, Americans reminded me of impressionist artists. The Impressionists violated the rules of academic painting, and Americans violate the rules of conventionality. As a student of nuance, I very much like her. That on top of the love I feel. I consider Ellie to be a true partner in life and love.

Luca? He and I are cut from the same cloth in our interests and we share compatible views. I see Luca as one of the world’s purest souls. He’s kind and sensitive, loving and thoughtful. And I’ll add to that — he’s compassionate and self-sacrificing to a fault. Luca is also bold and brave, far braver than I. He’s been through a lot in the last ten years. Were I able, I’d take the heartache onto myself to free him of it. I know he would do the same for me. He’s a man anyone would be proud to know, let alone love.”

What do you think is your strongest point?

“Modesty?” He laughed. “How does one consider their strongest attributes without sounding conceited? Let me see…I’m a loyal friend and devoted to those I love. I have empathy. Consequently, the unfortunate and hungry souls in Rome laid me quite low when we were there. It still weighs upon my mind. Admitting to that, I’d have to add that I’m more than soft-hearted, I’m painfully aware. I suppose that is my strongest and weakest attribute — my attention to detail. I simply do not possess a blind eye. Given my training and interest in the artworks of the ages, I readily grasp nuance. I see the subtle shading of life in those small details often missed by others. It allows me to read situations quickly. Not a bad skill for a man with a deviate’s proclivity in an intolerant world!”

As a child, who was your best friend? Tell us about him/her.

“When I was a lad of twelve or so, Mrs. Fletcher’s orphaned nephew Thomas came to Halstead. He was a few years older than I. Possessing a ready talent with horses, he took a position working in the stables. I got to spend time with him when my Grandmother was out and about. I found him witty and fun and although our stations in life divided us, we enjoyed one another’s company. I went away to school and we stayed in touch through letters. When I returned home, I went to the stable to find my friend, and instead found him with his lover, the farrier’s son. Thom and I became lovers shortly after. Our relationship changed. And so had I.”

What do you wish was different about your life?

“I was born to a world divided by class structure and limitations. My mind sees the outward trappings of this divide daily, especially at Halstead. But my relationships with Mrs. Fletcher and her nephew Thomas transcend such boundaries. They mean the world to me, and my heart rebels at the very idea that I must keep my love for them a secret. I love Luca as well. It wasn’t all that long ago, loving him would cost us our lives. There’s no longer a death penalty for homosexual Englishmen, but we still are not free to love. In summary, I long to openly show my affections.”

If you were given your fondest wish, what would it be?

“I’d wish to turn back the clock to see my dear Thom living a full and happy life. We’d been together nearly thirteen years before I married Ellie. It was he who ended our relationship out of respect for her. I miss him.”

What do you wish I had asked you? Please ask and answer it now.

“I would have asked, Will we ever live in a tolerant world? My answer would be, yes. It’s 1887. Look how far we’ve come. Women will be voting side by side with men shortly, and are soon to be equal in every way. Especially if my wife has her say! With such social progress broadening our understanding of ourselves, I can’t imagine it taking long for prejudice, bigotry, and hatred to fall by the wayside. Love and kindness, tolerance and charity – these are precepts of faith around the world. But we don’t need our faith to tell us this is best. Like water, mankind eventually follows the path of least resistance. I have every confidence that before long, we’ll do what makes sense.”

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

Sample books 1&2 of Loving Leonardo adventure & the rest for free!

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

If you’re here for the first time, my husband and I are building a vintage holiday postcard scrapbook one card at a time. I’ve been posting one or two post cards each day and plan to keep it up from now until January.

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Here’s another fun recipe from the mountain of files. I make these all the time.

Crunchy Spicy Chickpeas

Pre­heat the oven to 375°F. Lightly spray a large baking pan with non­stick cooking spray. Drain soaked or canned chickpeas and pat dry with a paper towel. Spread evenly over the pan, toss with the olive oil, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, and salt. Bake until golden brown approximately 40 minutes. Taste test one from time to time to be sure you’re not over-baking them. They do harden slightly and crisp up as they cool.

Using the same basic instructions, you can do these flavors:

Pizza Flavored

3 T sun dried tomatoes in oil, pureed

2 – 4 T olive oil

2 T dried minced onion, garlic powder

1 tsp of each: dried basil, dried oregano, dried parsley, sea salt

1/4 t pepper or to taste

3 T grated Parmesan cheese

Masala Flavored

1/2 tsp chat masala, paprika salt to taste 1/4 tsp each garlic powder, pepper 1 T olive oil

Super Spicy

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp each cumin, chili powder

1/2 tsp cayenne to taste. Sea salt and pepper to taste

Sweet

2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil 1 1/2 teaspoons Brown Sugar 1/4 tsp each salt, cinnamon

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Author Molly Daniels/Kenzie Michaels’ blog day.

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

RB4U is participating in author Nikki Barrett’s READER APPRECIATION GIVEAWAY — Lots of prizes. Enter today!

https://www.facebook.com/NikkiLynnBarrettauthor/app_228910107186452

Our December contest has approximately 30 prizes for one winner, including a $75 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card. I’m adding a free book from my backlist to the loot. Read the pages and find the dancing Santas.

http://www.romancebooks4us.com/

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

Today is The Genesis of the Story ~ Author J.D. Faver is sharing the creative spark behind A Sandcastle Christmas.

Several promotional opportunities for romance authors can be found on my Exquisite Quills group blog.

http://exquisitequills.blogspot.com/

First Kiss Wednesday ~ share your best 300 word kiss.

Set the Scene in Six ~ share your backdrop or lead-up on Sundays.

The Genesis of the Story ~ share the spark that ignited your novel

Author Interviews ~ We’re booking 2014 now.

Coming January 2014

A place for your old stars to shine

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ

* FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE * FREE *

Exquisite Quills presents A Holiday Anthology Vol. 1

Many holiday short stories in several styles written

by more than a dozen authors. And it’s FREE!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/374815

ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ ɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤɤ