Jennifer Wilck's Blog, page 55

Book Birthdays

My book birthday is coming up and I’m trying to figure out what to do. Skin Deep was published in November of 2011. Actually, my first book’s birthday came and went (shhhh) and I missed it, but that’s okay; its sales are better than Skin Deep’s, so it doesn’t need as much lingering publicity.
Authors do a variety of things to commemorate the date of a published book. For some reason, I’ve yet to find anyone who celebrates with cake. I may have to rectify that situation. However, the authors I know run contests and have giveaways.
I’m considering doing something similar during the month of November, and perhaps tying it in with something that helps prevent domestic violence. The heroine of Skin Deep escaped from that situation and I like to make a donation with some of the proceeds of my book to organizations that help victims of domestic violence.
I’d like to do a different kind of giveaway—something that’s new and exciting and will make people want to participate. The heroine is a makeup artist, so perhaps a basket of makeup goodies? And maybe a massage gift certificate? Of course, it would have to be tied to buying the book. J
This is the fun part of book marketing. I get to use my creativity in all kinds of different ways.
And if I’m lucky, it might even include cake! J

Resolutions

Do you make resolutions? I’m going to be kind of wishy-washy in my answer here and say “sort of.” But I’ll explain.
Being Jewish, I have two new years—the secular one in January and the Jewish one in the fall. Typically, I distinguish between the two by using the one in January to make external resolutions and the one in the fall to make internal ones.
The external resolutions are easy to make, and equally easy to break, which is why I haven’t made any in several years. For me, they tend to be things like eating healthier (chocolate is healthy, right?), getting more exercise, organizing closets, etc.
Making those resolutions are important, sure, but I can make them at any time, and usually do. They end up morphing themselves into to-do lists, which I post on my fridge and tackle as I get to them—my saving grace is that I don’t date them, so no one really knows when I wrote it. J
The internal resolutions are significantly harder to make, but just as easy to break. I make them every year. The period between our Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, and our Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, we have to acknowledge our sins and apologize for them—to ourselves, to God and to others. To me, part of that apology is trying to not repeat the sin; apologizing for being mean to someone and then being mean to them again (or others) negates that apology, in my opinion. So I, and many, many others, try to do better.
Taking stock of yourself and determining what you’ve done well and what you haven’t is a difficult process and fills me with guilt. I often say I hate this time of year. It’s not because I don’t want to be nicer (I do) or even that I’m embarrassed to apologize (I’m not). It’s just that constantly telling myself all the things I’m doing wrong is not something that helps my self-confidence.
And maybe that’s why I make to-do lists rather than secular resolutions. I save my energy for the internal changes I need to make. I’m a work in progress, and those resolutions might take awhile.

Weekend Writing Warriors

Last week was fun, and I got to read some great entries and meet some very nice writers. So, I'm doing it again. Below are eight more lines from The Seduction of Esther. In case you were wondering, it's one of the reasons the hero is such a great guy!


“Watch where you’re going, lady,” the produce guy shouted as he ran and surveyed the damage.

Samara’s face heated even more. She resisted the urge to press her palm to her cheek to make sure she wasn’t about to burst into flame, and backed away. Her heel caught on a potato
and her leg slid forward. A tanned hand grabbed her arm and held her up. Too mortified to do anything, she gripped the grocery cart and closed her eyes. His next words made them fly open.

“Sorry, it was my fault.” He bent down and picked up the runaway potatoes.  

The Seduction of Esther is available now through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, AllRomance and Bookstrand. Let me know what you think!

Check out the other participating authors here.

Weekend Writing Warriors

For the first time, I'm participating in the Weekend Writing Warriors. Here are eight sentences from The Seduction of Esther. This is when the heroine, Samara, first meets (and literally runs into) the hero, Nathaniel.
Slate-blue eyes twinkled at her. She yanked her arm out of his grasp.
“Let go of me, please!”
“Sorry, didn’t want you to run me over.”
She tilted her head--did his eyes always twinkle this much?
She was sure she’d never seen him before; his eyes alone would have been enough to spark
a glimmer of recognition if they’d ever crossed paths.
And his voice? His voice was unforgettable. 

The Seduction of Esther is available now through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, AllRomance and Bookstrand. Let me know what you think!

Check out the other participating authors here.

Anticipation…Is Keeping Me Waitin’*

We have been waiting and waiting and waiting for the first day of school and it’s finally arrived! This year, we started a week later than almost everyone else; I don’t know if it’s because of that or because one of my kids is starting high school and the other one thinks this year is going to be stressful, but the anticipation almost killed us.
Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but seriously, school couldn’t have taken any longer to get here!
Princess is starting High School today. I’m so excited for her! Yes, of course I’m a bit nostalgic for the kindergarten days, and I have a hard time believing that she’s actually in High School, but I really think it’s going to be great.
She, however, is not convinced. Despite going to two walk-throughs and two orientations, she believes that her high school has hidden corridors and hallways and stairwells that move, similar to Hogwarts.
I think that would be cool, and I’ve instructed her to call or text me as soon as that happens because I want to run over and see it. In reality, I happen to think that whoever built the school might have had a bit too much to drink, as the first floor of the A wing is actually the second floor of the rest of the school; if you go upstairs in the B wing you end up in the D wing; and apparently there is a hidden hallway in the B wing that looks like a supply closet, but isn’t (how much fun would it be to leave a few brooms outside the doors, just to mess with people?).
Now, I get that she’s nervous, and I was really lenient in the days leading up to today. Once we got past the discussion about how, even though everyone says there is no dress code, there actually is one and you don’t want to be THAT girl the first day of school, and once my husband had the discussion about being in school with 17 and 18-year-old boys/men, and how, therefore, you don’t want to be THAT girl either, I pretty much let her do whatever she needed to be less nervous.
Unfortunately, that included my getting up with her at the crack of dawn. See, my kids have always had an alarm clock and they have always been responsible for getting up on time. With two girls, I see no reason why I should have to get up with them just so they can have an extra 45 minutes to do their hair and makeup. I get up early enough to make their breakfast and their lunch and see them off. Anything earlier than that is up to them. But I offered a “one time only, first day of school special” and agreed to get up with Princess at 5:45 a.m.
Uch, even writing those numbers makes me yawn. Do you know that it’s still DARK then? 5:45 was actually a compromise. Her alarm went off at 5:30 and she wanted me up then with her, but I told her since she’s just going to lay in bed for ten minutes and then refuse to talk to me because she’s not a morning person, there’s no reason why I should have to suffer for an extra 15 minutes—please, I have things I’ve been dying to do today and I don’t want to be too tired to get them done!
So we got up, I said a lot of bad words related to it being so early and so dark, and we made it through the morning. I even convinced her to eat breakfast and drink some orange juice. I’m not sure if she was tired (due to the ridiculously early time that it was—have I complained about that enough yet?) or just resigned to the tradition, but we even got pictures of her! Of course, she looks like she’s about to be led to the guillotine…
Once she got out the door, it was time to kick Banana Girl out of bed—I said they have alarm clocks; I didn’t say they respond to them, and since I was already up…I walked into her room and she informed me that she has decided to be a bear and is going to hibernate. She pulled up the covers and turned over.
Well, I’ll give her points for creativity. Additional points for the growl (yes, it was actually a growl) she gave me when I told her she had to get up anyway.
Based on all of her nerves, I’m surprised she didn’t choose a bird, since she’s convinced she needs wings in order to get to her classes on time. And having seen her schedule and her classroom locations on the map, I can’t exactly say I disagree with her.
But, she ate, she got dressed and ready to go. And she, too, let us take her picture—the threat of doing it publically at the bus stop rather than in the privacy of our own home is an amazing incentive—and went to the bus.
They’ll have lots of adjustments to make in the coming days and weeks, as will I. In the meantime, however, I’m going to enjoy the fact the for the first time in more than six weeks, my house is EMPTY!
*Lyrics from Carly Simon’s Anticipation

Big Blog Change!

I’ve got some changes coming up soon. The first one is that I’m shutting this blog location down THIS WEEK. Fried Oreos will continue, but over at Blogger. So for those of you who follow me, or those of you who like to stop by occasionally to read me, please find my blog here. Go now!

You Found It!

You found me, yay! This is the new location that I'll be blogging from, starting next week, September 9. So if you followed Fried Oreos on my Wordpress site, please follow me here instead. That site will be shutting down soon. And if you're new to my blog, welcome! I blog every Monday and cover a little bit of everything. Sometimes I'm funny, sometimes I'm serious. I talk about my kids, my books, and things that strike my fancy during the week. I'll be moving my old posts over here soon so you can see what you've missed.

If you're a writer looking for guest spots, let me know. I'm always happy to host. If you're a romance reader and want to read my book and review it, please let me know. And if I write something here that interests you, please comment. I love to hear from people!

Thanks for making the move with me!

She’s All Grown Up

Miley Cyrus. Ugh.

Her latest song, “Don’t Stop,” has become one of my kids’ favorite songs to listen to. While the tune is catchy, I hate the message, which is, drugs are okay. I had to explain to my kids what exactly the song was about and why—it may not have been my best “mom moment,” but I was going for teachable moments. Now, I know my kids are not the type to take a song’s message like this to heart, I still object to it.

And then we got to the VMAs. None of us actually watched it. But I was online last night and actually on Twitter while it was airing and my feed blew up with all of the comments about Miley Cyrus, Robin Thicke and what she did. For those of you who don’t know, you can do a search online—I’d post a link, but really, the spam I’ll get from that will be enough to make my blog blow up and that’s not the kind of readers I want to deal with. Suffice it to say that her tongue, twerking and actions with a foam finger showed the world that she’s come a long way from Hannah Montana.

To put it bluntly, it was porn. And being alerted to that fact by my 14-year-old daughter is not the way I like to start my morning. Now, while she didn’t actually watch it, she follows people on twitter and watched videos from the night before that, in her words, were “disturbing and not something she can ever unsee.” In her own dramatic fashion, she’s been “scarred for life.”

Lovely.

But here’s the thing. I’ve spent a lot of today following the comments, news stories and video reactions of people. I refused to watch the actual video, but I’ve gotten the gist. And I wonder about something. Would Miley Cyrus have gotten the reaction she has if she wasn’t a former Disney star? If her Hannah Montana character hadn’t been such a wholesome one?

Those of us with children who watched that show have watched her grow up and separate herself from that wholesome Disney image. We’ve seen the growing pains. But stars like Madonna, Lady Gaga, Ke$ha and others have done equally offensive videos. And they’ve gotten past the reaction and made millions off of it.

I’m not defending her. She seems to have gone out of her way to make drugs sound cool and to show off parts of her body that really shouldn’t be seen by anyone other than her. She’s trying to prove she’s grown up, she’s going for the shock value and frankly, she’s achieved it.

I’m just not sure that’s anything new, or anything we should be helping her achieve publicity for.

Goodbye, Summer!

It’s the last week of summer. Well, actually, not really. My kids go back to school late this year; their first day of school is September 9. But this week is the last official vacation week, at least as I see it.

Next week starts orientation activities for high school. The following week is the beginning of the Jewish holidays. Therefore, this week, with nothing official on the calendar, is the last week of summer.

My younger daughter is going to day camp for the week. She’s been asking a lot of questions about it and wondering what to wear and what they’ll do. I was a bit puzzled about this; she’s been going to sleep away camp for five years now, she knows camp! But as I was driving her to camp this morning, I realized something. She hasn’t been to day camp since she was a toddler. Although I kind of think camp is camp, there is a big difference between the two. No wonder she doesn’t know what to expect!

Summer has not sped by, nor has it dragged. It’s gone at a perfect pace for us. We’ve had easy mornings, a light schedule and pretty much done what we’ve wanted to do. The best part for me has been the lack of traffic and the lack of advanced planning. As I sit putting together our fall schedule and adding all of the activities to the calendar, I realize how much I’m going to miss this.

Enjoy the rest of your summer! And remember, there’s still time to get in one last book!

Summer Vacation

[image error]Welcome to the Rebel Ink Press Summer Lovin’ Anniversary Blog Hop! Whew, what a mouthful! [image error] My publisher is turning 3 and this is one of the ways we’re celebrating and giving away a lot of really good stuff (read on for more info)! Since I’m a new Rebel Ink author, I jumped at the chance to participate. So thanks for stopping by and read on for my blog hop contribution…

Can you believe the summer is almost over? My kids are home from camp, we’ve started back-to-school shopping (gulp) and high school orientation starts in two weeks (double gulp)! I don’t know about you, but I’ve really enjoyed my summer vacation. Actually, I should call it my summer job, because I’ve been really productive. In addition to the everyday things—house, volunteer work, kids—I’ve gotten a lot of writing done. More so when my kids were gone, but even while they’ve been home.

I’m currently working on a summer romance, title as yet to be determined, and so far, I’m up to 51,000+ words. I wrote an awful lot while the kids were gone, but more importantly, I figured out a way to write while they’ve been around. The progress is slow, but steady, and I hope the manuscript will be ready for the October writing conference I’m attending. I’ve also been working on the next book in my series that started with The Seduction of Esther. That one is moving a bit more slowly, but it’s going, and as soon as the kids go back to school, I’m digging into the major plot issues that I have, and have solved (I hope).

All of this leaves me with about three weeks left of summer vacation. For me, summer means kicking back, sleeping late, throwing away the schedule and having fun. It means reading, learning how to be bored, swimming, fighting with your sibling, laughing, cooking and day trips. It currently means an inability to find things right in front of you, but that’s not a summer exclusive. [image error]

The books that I write are perfect for summer reading—light, funny (I hope) and fun. They’re beach reads, things to pick up when you want to escape reality for a bit. They’ve got spunky heroines who always seem to have exactly the right comeback for every situation (man, I wish I did!); heroes who will do anything for their women (even if they don’t know it yet); cute kids who facilitate situations and in The Seduction of Esther, a matchmaker or two.

So, use the rest of your summer to pick at least one fun book to read, whether it’s a tried and true, favorite author or a brand new one. You never know, you just might get hooked!

There are some great Rebel authors participating in this blog hop. You can meet them here. Additionally, my publisher is giving away a Kindle Paperwhite and a bag of author swag. To enter, click a Rafflecopter giveaway and follow the instructions. As part of the anniversary celebration, my book is on sale at Amazon for .99 (kindle)! You can buy it here. And, for one lucky commenter, I’ll send you an autographed copy of the paperback version after the blog hop is over.

Enjoy your summer, thanks for stopping by, and keep hopping!