Rozsa Gaston's Blog, page 4

“At night we are all strangers, even to ourselves.” —Alexander McCall Smith

What are you running from? Are you running from love?

Join George Bodarky on Cityscape this Saturday, July 6, 7:30-8 am for a discussion of Running from Love: A Story for Runners and Lovers. WFUV’s Cityscape is a radio show on WFUV 90.7 FM and wfuv.org.

George Bodarky, host of Cityscape, will interview author Rozsa Gaston about running with the Van Cortlandt Track Club, running in Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx, and topics touched upon in her book Running from Love such as overcoming downhill running and relationship fears. The discussion should be of interest to runners in general and specifically to runners on track clubs who have thought about or experienced dating a fellow member of their club. Tune in to 90.7 FM, WFUV, Fordham University’s alternative music  station and learn how to stop running from  love. I’ll be listening myself. Hope I learn something and I hope you do too.

Warmly, Rozsa

P.S. Who’s Alexander McCall Smith? A simply amazing writer and the author of The  No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, a fictitious tale of a female detective set in Botswana. I love this book!

“Be the message.”���Jamie Cat Callan

Jamie Cat Callan, author of Bonjour, Happiness! says if you want to send a message, be the message.

I agree. Do something brave today. Go out and be extraordinary. Or just be yourself. But get your message across. Walk it, talk it, breathe it. And find Jamie Cat Callan’s book with more secrets to finding your joie de vivre (happiness, darlings) at Bonjour, Happiness!

She has a new book coming out May 28, 2013 called Ooh La La! French Women’s Secrets to Feeling Beautiful Every Day. Watch for it.

Thank you, darling readers for the 16, 267 downloads Paris Adieu received during its recent Mother’s Day promotion. To continue my thanks, Paris Adieu ebook edition is now being offered at a discounted price so that every woman who wants to learn the secrets of Ava’s journey to self-discovery can read this coming-of-age tale. It’s themes are two-fold:

1) how to be comfortable in your own skin.

2) how to fake it till you make it.

Free eBooks Daily featured Paris Adieu for Mother’s Day. Read more here:

http://www.freeebooksdaily.com/2013/05/paris-adieu-by-rozsa-gaston.html

Enjoy, readers!

“Be the message.”—Jamie Cat Callan

Jamie Cat Callan, author of Bonjour, Happiness! says if you want to send a message, be the message.

I agree. Do something brave today. Go out and be extraordinary. Or just be yourself. But get your message across. Walk it, talk it, breathe it. And find Jamie Cat Callan’s book with more secrets to finding your joie de vivre (happiness, darlings) at Bonjour, Happiness!

She has a new book coming out May 28, 2013 called Ooh La La! French Women’s Secrets to Feeling Beautiful Every Day. Watch for it.

Thank you, darling readers for the 16, 267 downloads Paris Adieu received during its recent Mother’s Day promotion. To continue my thanks, Paris Adieu ebook edition is now being offered at a discounted price so that every woman who wants to learn the secrets of Ava’s journey to self-discovery can read this coming-of-age tale. It’s themes are two-fold:

1) how to be comfortable in your own skin.

2) how to fake it till you make it.

Free eBooks Daily featured Paris Adieu for Mother’s Day. Read more here:

http://www.freeebooksdaily.com/2013/05/paris-adieu-by-rozsa-gaston.html

Enjoy, readers!

You, the everlasting instant.

You, Lord, are both Lamb and Shepherd,

You, Lord, are both prince and slave.

You, peacemaker and sword bringer,

Of the way you took and gave.

You the everlasting instant;

You, whom we both scorn and crave.

Clothed in light upon the mountain,

Stripped of might upon the cross,

Shining in eternal glory,

Beggared by a soldier’s toss,

You, the everlasting instant,

You, who are both gift and cost!

You, who walk each day beside us,

Sit in power at God’s side.

You, who preach a way that’s narrow,

Have a love that reaches wide.

You, the everlasting instant;

You, who are our pilgrim guide.

Worthy is our earthly Jesus!

Worthy is our cosmic Christ!

Worthy your defeat and victory.

Worthy still your peace and strife.

You the everlasting instant

You, who are our death and life.

- Sylvia Dunstan

Sylvia Dunstan (1955-1993) was early encouraged by her family in her love of music and song, and she began studying with Sister St. Gregory in St. Joseph’s Convent near her home. She began writing songs in her teens, finding inspiration in the Catholic liturgical music of the early 1970s in the style of Ray Repp and the Medical Mission Sisters. One of the Mission Sisters, Sister Miriam Therese Winter, helped her learn how to write Scripture-based folk songs. Michael Hawn quotes Dunstan about these songs, “Most of these songs are now under a well-deserved and merciful curtain of oblivion,” and Dunstan moved on to concentrate on composing hymn texts rather than music.

Dunstan earned a bachelor degree from York University and received graduate degrees in theology and divinity from Emmanuel College, Toronto. She was ordained by the United Church of Canada in 1980, served as a prison chaplain for ten years, as editor of the Canadian worship resource journal, Gathering, and went on to serve as minister at the Malvern Emmanuel United Church in Scarborough, Ontario.

At the 1990 summer conference of The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, she was invited to lead a session exploring her hymnody. The Hymn Society released a collection of thirty-seven of her hymns and three gospel songs titled In Search of Hope and Grace in 1990. A second collection of seventeen hymns, Where the Promise Shines, was published posthumously by GIA Publications in 1995.

In March 1993 Sylvia Dunstan was diagnosed with liver cancer, and she died four months later on July 25 at the young age of thirty-eight. Her reputation continues to grow as one of the leading hymn writers of the twentieth century, and her work appears increasingly in published hymnals and choral works.

From http://www.gbod.org/lead-your-church/hymn-studies/resource/you-lord-are-both-lamb-and-shepherd-christus-paradox

Surf’s up – get playful.

Nancy Moon rides the waves

Surf’s up – get playful.

March’s debut heralds spring’s arrival. Throw off those February doldrums and get playful. You.

What’s that? You spend all your time helping others so you can’t find time to play? Care giving at both ends of the generational spectrum? Tired of everything, starting with yourself?

Stop boring me to tears. Get up from your desk, get outside, and get playful. That’s an order.

Here’s a babe who knows how to do just that. Does this chick look like she’s sitting around compiling a grocery list for dinner? Don’t think so. The Moon Girl is in the moment, following her bliss. What about you?

Facing the wave

By the way, Moon Girl is not twenty-five years old or under. She just looks like she is because she feels like she is. Not all the time, but at the moment these images capture.

Can’t afford to drop everything and take a trip to a surfing destination, never mind that you don’t know how to surf? That’s not an excuse.

Moon Girl glows in golden sun

Get out there and get some sun on your face. Today. That’s right, go out and greet Mr. Golden Sun and feel the vitamin D pour into your soul, filling every cell of your body with vitality. It’s easy, really.

The sun glows golden in the late afternoon right before it begins to descend. It’s a bit like the way the French refer to a woman of a certain age as “une femme mûre” or “a ripe woman.” The French highly admire attractive women in their golden late afternoon chapter. Many Americans do too. Connoissieurs of finely seasoned beauty can be found in many unexpected places. Find out more in Chapter Ten of Paris Adieu.

Did you see that man on the corner giving you the eye as you sauntered past? What? You didn’t notice? Next time you take a walk, saunter. Find your inner French femme. When you start to do that, the connoissieurs of this world will take note. Promise. You may even want to meet some of them. You won’t, if you’re in a rush.

Now back to your March marching orders. Go outside this afternoon and let the sun’s golden rays sink into your psyche. Later in the afternoon, coincident with that mid-afternoon energy slump, the sun’s rays are less bad for your skin than  between the hours of 10 am and 3 pm. Have you got a packed day today? Don’t have a single second to yourself?

Fuggedaboutit. Make it happen, darling. Take ten minutes and instead of hitting the vending machine, go downstairs, out the door, and say hello to the world that is your stage. Connect with nature. Open your ears to hear what that bird is singing about. He’s heralding spring’s arrival. A few weeks early, granted, but he’s out there noticing all the signs, just as you should be.

Moon Girl says thumbs up to life

Thumbs up to life, friends. If yours isn’t as glamorous as Moon Girl’s, remember — these shots capture just one golden afternoon. The rest of the time she’s running around like the rest of us, busy, attending to the needs of others, spilling her vitality right and left. But inside, she has bottomless energy to give. Because she knows she’s Moon Girl. Be a Moon Girl too. Follow your bliss. You owe it to yourself. Start today.

Playfully yours,

Rozsa

Be extraordinary.

Be extraordinary today. You owe it to yourself.

Attending trapeze school at Club Med Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic last week gave me a chance to be extraordinary. Give yourself a chance to be extraordinary too. Join me here on the adventure of the trapeze then move in your own direction and find your own moment to be extraordinary.

Let’s walk through the steps for our beginning trapeze experience. First, we climb the ladder.

Up on the platform, we experience our first terrifying moment, especially as the platform sways in the wind.

Immediately two cables are hooked onto either side of our tightly cinched safety belt. We have a brief second of relief followed by another moment of sheer terror when the instructors tell us to let go of the cable with our right arm, lean forward out into space and grab the trapeze.  This horrifying moment is then magnified one hundredfold by the next command. “Let go of the cable and grab the trapeze with your remaining arm.” Once you’ve accomplished this, you are committed. Ready?

I wasn’t either. The instructors tell you to hop off the platform the moment they say “Hep!” What nerve! Of course I did no such thing, so you can imagine my shock when they then pushed me off the platform. HELP!!!!

Here I look lame as I basically hang on for my life. The next task is the most difficult of the entire exercise. At the EXACT moment the instructors yell “tuck!” you tuck your knees up to your chest and try to get your toe under the trapeze bar. Once you’ve accomplished the toehold, you’re golden. After two rounds of severe humiliation, I managed the toehold on my third attempt. What a great feeling! Once the knees are hooked on, you think you have pretty much accomplished everything you need to do for the rest of your life. But just when you are feeling fabulous about yourself, the instructors yell “Hands off bar and swing!” What cheek. As if I hadn’t already done enough. After the terrifying second when you let go of the trapeze with both arms and realize you are not dead, this is your moment to look even more fabulous than the less glamorous knee hook moment. Here I am pointing my fingers in order to make my accomplishment look even more technically sophisticated.

This is truly the moment to take wing like a swan, so let’s review that very first image again as I soar backward and arch my back. Do you see how masterfully I’ve managed to point both index fingers? Sheer genius, no?

The next incredible accomplishment is the back flip dismount. Yes. Really. The instructors yell at you to kick your legs forward, backward, then forward with force and let go of the trapeze. Again, what cheek. A formidable back flip ensues, thanks to the instructors pulling on your cables, and voila! you end up on the safety net, hopefully in a respectable standing position. After you again realize you survived and are now on your feet, you dismount the safety net with a neat forward flip that looks fairly impressive.

On solid ground again, your body literally shakes with pride of accomplishment. Or happiness to still be alive. Not only are you alive, but you are blissfully alive. Enjoy!

Rozsa and Ava Gaston with Dominican beauty

Playfully yours,

Rozsa

Author

Paris Adieu

Running from Love

Follow Your Bliss and Self-Publish in 2013

Follow Your Bliss and Self-Publish in 2013

Presented by Rozsa Gaston to Dept. of Citywide Administrative Services, New York, NY, Jan. 4, 2013

Self-Publishing by Andrew Rice Time Magazine 12-10-12

Introduction

Happy new year. My goal with today’s blog post  is to make you feel like you’re fourteen years old again.  Believe it or not, we are now living in an extraordinary moment in history. For once, it’s good news, not bad.  It’s not global warming, it’s not war, it’s a revolution.

We are in the midst of a revolution in the publishing industry See Dec. 10 Time Magazine article on The 99 Cents Best Seller by Andrew Rice.

It’s a revolution that puts power in the hands of writers and sweeps away the power of publishing houses to determine whether your writing is good enough to be published. The barriers have fallen.  In 2013 you can see your work published. Online readers will decide if your work is good enough to buy, not publishing houses.

The handout I’ve given you is for you to take home and read later. If you don’t believe what I’m saying, believe what Time Magazine says about self-publishing in it’s Dec. 10, 2012 issue. Our moment is now. Let’s get started to find out how.

1. Why your life and health depend upon following your bliss

You will function more efficiently and attract more people to you if you yourself are happy. If you follow your bliss, you will be happy because you will be engaged in pursuing something that revs your engine. It’s important to go through life with your engine revving. Otherwise, you will get old and grumpy and no one will want to be around you. Don’t let that happen! Start following your bliss now and if you have no idea what or where that may be, start a blog.

Starting your own blog is FREE on wordpress.com.  If you have no writing skills whatsoever, start a pinterest account (http://www.pinterest.com) and start collecting images that please you. Pinterest is an online pinboard. It’s like a scrapbook. The act of doing this for 15-20 minutes everyday will relax you and help you better zero in on exactly what you’re all about.  It’s FREE and sooner or later you will pick up online followers with like-minded interests. You will be very happy when this starts to happen, especially if you can’t find any like-minded members of your own family.

A study was done of Minnesota nuns who had died and donated their brains for medical research. Some had Alzheimers, others had dementia, others had neither. The healthiest nuns were the ones who had a hobby completely unlike their daily jobs at the convent. For example, being an accountant and playing cello as a hobby. Or being head of the laundry by day and playing chess in one’s free time. Nuns whose hobbies most closely resembled their convent jobs were the ones most likely to have brain degeneration. In other words—mix it up to maintain your mental health. When you write, write about something entirely outside of what happens to you in your daily life.

2. Why writing helps you follow your bliss

Simply put, it’s an outlet to escape from daily stress. It’s also an inlet into your inner mind, where you unlock secrets about yourself, including your own behavior and perceptions about your own life and the world around you.

3. Why you need to write as if your life depends on it

If you don’t, you will never finish a book.

4. Why you need to have a problem in order to write as if your life depends on it

You won’t have the driving force you need to niggle at you, hound, harass, and irritate you to get to your writing desk everyday. When you get there, you’ll sit down, begin, and suddenly everything bothering you in your life will disappear. TRY IT.  You will be delighted and you will become addicted to the process. I don’t mind doing social media, blogging, editing, sending out query letters, writing guest author interviews or preparing presentations like this one. But I LOVE writing books. I’m now writing the sequel to Paris Adieu and even though I’m struggling with the plot, I love the struggle. I love the entire process.

5.  Why it’s not so bad to have a problem—or two—if you’re a writer

Not only is it not so bad to have a few problems to make it as a writer—it’s necessary.  If everything was going right in your life – you have enough money, free time, good health, no one is irritating you in your own family – you might start a book, but you would never finish it. Why bother? Life’s good, so you would spend your time enjoying it instead of slaving away in front of your computer.  For those of us who can’t escape our situations – not enough money, poor health, you’re in a care giving role with no end in sight – the only way to escape your present reality is to escape into your inner world by writing.  It’s free and you don’t have to go anywhere to do it.

By Deirdre Donahue, USA TODAY 10-20-11

 WASHINGTON — Writer Laura Hillenbrand, the author of Sea Biscuit, doesn’t write about what she knows. She writes about what she can never have in this life.

“I write about people and animals in motion,”says Hillenbrand, seated on a chair in the house she almost never leaves. Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), a mysterious and debilitating malady with a trivial-sounding name, has turned the 43-year-old into an unwilling recluse, a modern-day Emily Dickinson .

I agree with Laura Hillebrand’s method. Don’t write about what you know about. Write about something entirely different, using experiences you’ve had, but putting them into fictional situations. You will follow your bliss more closely if you move away from your present day reality. Adventure to a place inside where a deeper reality exists that you haven’t spent enough time getting in touch with. When you move toward that place, you will relax, become playful, and be a happier, more attractive person.

My motto is “Stay Playful.” Do I follow it all the time? No. But I’m always getting back to it. I love my motto and I like myself when I’m following my motto.

My grandmother used to say to me, “Zsa Zsa, you’re too selfish not to get your own way.” It wasn’t a nice thing to say. But I turned it around to make it an advantage, not a disadvantage. Are you selfish? Good. If you’re not selfish about taking time to follow your bliss, you’ll never find it.

Does someone in your life constantly remind you that you’re not perfect in some sort of way? Turn it around and use it to your advantage. The quality you have that makes you that way is neither negative nor positive. It’s just a quality that your Creator created you with. Use the quality to good, not bad.

Are you obsessive compulsive?  Good. You’ll finish your writing projects and be a terrific editor of your own work.

Are you a perfectionist? Good, to a point. Remember—the perfect is the enemy of the good (Voltaire). At a certain point, decide you’ve finished your book and hit the PUBLISH button on the CreateSpace platform or whatever self-publishing platform you’re using. If you can’t bear to do this, have someone in your family do it for you.  You need to finish your book and send it out into the public domain in order to be a published author. Just do it and get over yourself.

Are you selfish? Excellent. You’ll carve out writing time for yourself and let nothing and no one interfere with it. Start with carving out 30 minutes a day.

Are you angry? Wonderful. Take your anger and pour it into your writing. You’re the kind of person who can finish writing a book, because something is relentlessly driving you inside. Once you’ve finished your first book, you won’t be as angry because you’ll have a finished product outside of yourself that expresses who you are. That fact alone will dissipate your anger and motivate you to write your next book.

6.  Fake it till you make it—what it means for you in getting started in your writing career

It means you begin by naming your project. For example, “Dog Sitters.” The title says it all. Another example is “Wedding Crashers.” “Sudden Money” is another one. Come up with a title for your project and mention it every day. Mention it to yourself in the mirror in the morning. Then when you’ve gotten going on it, start talking about it to friends. Don’t bother to talk to your family about it. Remember—a prophet gets no respect in his own land. Mention it to total strangers on the subway, in line at the supermarket, or to friends at social events. A year later, at the same event, your friends will ask, “How’s your Dog Sitters project going? Then you will be shamed into telling them something. Make sure you have something to tell them.

7. How to get started with the daily discipline of writing

Complete your projects—If your project is to write one blog post, write it from beginning to end and post it. It will take you about 30 minutes. Remember – you’re not finished until you’ve posted it. Once you’ve posted it, you’re published. If you don’t like what you wrote the next day, you can go back and edit it. Just get it out there so readers online can evaluate it.

Take a Writers Online Workshop—I’ve taken about twelve workshops over the course of four years.  Go to writersonlineworkshops and look around. Classes cost a few hundred dollars each. Every time you take a class, you get a 20% discount coupon for the next one.  Once you’ve spent the money, you’ll stay honest and do the work. If you take 12 Weeks to a First Draft, you will be forced to finish the first draft of your first book. Your instructor will critique your work, which will be valuable. Your classmates will critique your work also, which will be less valuable but still somewhat helpful. You will be on deadline and you will be strict about sticking to your deadlines (one assignment handed in every three weeks) because you paid to take the class.

7 Key Skills for Great Storytelling
12 Weeks to a First Draft
28 Days to Your First WordPress Site
Accelerated Fundamentals Of Fiction Writing
Accelerated Fundamentals Of Nonfiction Writing
Accelerated Getting Started In Writing
Advanced Memoir And Nonfiction Book Writing
Advanced Novel Writing Workshop
Advanced Poetry Writing
Blogging 101
Essentials of Writing Personal Essays
Essentials of Writing To Inspire
Fitting Writing Into Your Life
Focus On The Nonfiction Magazine Article
Focus On The Novel




Focus On The Short Story
Focus On Writing Fiction For Children
Focus On Writing Nonfiction For Children
Focus On Writing The Personal Essay
Freelance Writing for Stay-At-Home Moms
Fundamentals of Fiction Writing
Fundamentals of Life Stories Writing
Fundamentals of Nonfiction Writing
Fundamentals of Writing For Children
Getting Started In Writing
Social Media 101
Successful Self-Publishing

Set deadlines and meet them—If you don’t meet them, set new ones and meet them. Don’t beat yourself up about the deadlines you failed to meet. Just get over it, make a new one and meet it. Then enjoy how good you feel. Wait until you publish that first book. You will feel wonderful about seeing your project through from beginning to end. So what if you only sell five copies to your friends? You are a published author. No one can ever take that away from you. It is entirely possible that one day down the line someone discovers your work and your book ends up influencing many people. This can only happen if you publish your work. If you don’t, it won’t.

When people call or interrupt you during your writing time, tell them you’re on deadline. They don’t need to know it’s your own self-imposed deadline. As far as they’re concerned it’s your editor’s deadline, or your publisher’s. It’s none of their business, and the sooner you convince yourself that you don’t need to explain your business to anyone else, the better.

If it’s your children getting into your writing space, train them. They will tell their friends, their teachers, etc. that you’re a writer, and as soon as your first book is in print, you will be. Until that time, remember your new motto: fake it till you make it. (Read Paris Adieu to learn more about this concept.) Your children will be very proud of you and you will be thrilled that they are talking about you in an identity other than as their mother or father. Not only will you feel supported by your own children in an identity outside of the parent role, but you will be providing a positive role model to them for their own successful adulthood.

If it’s your spouse or partner getting into your writing space, forget about training them. Just get rid of them as quickly as possible. Never complain, never explain. Benjamin Disraeli  said it and it’s a good piece of advice. (He’s a 19th century prime minister of England.) Just get done what needs to be done and get back to the writing. Your spouse will ultimately be happier that you’re happier when you get a chance to write. Your spouse will  recognize that if he or she doesn’t give you your writing space, he or she will pay for it in a disagreeable way. Don’t be nice and give way to anyone attempting to waste your time during your writing time. Be firm and professional. “I’m on deadline. May I get back to you when I’ve finished?” People around you will get it, sooner or later. If they don’t, move away from them. Their image of you is not your image of yourself, and your own image of yourself is more important. You don’t need to explain yourself to everyone. You just need to know who you are and what you are doing for yourself. It’s a very good thing to learn how to keep your own counsel while you are on your way to becoming the person you were meant to be. Remember—fake it till you make it.

8.  How to get started with the self-publishing process

Go to CreateSpace (www.createspace.com) and play around. You don’t have to spend anything to start your first writing project and complete the cover with CreateSpace’s free CoverCreator tool. You don’t even have to write a book. You can create and print out your cover, then tape it up next to your computer where you stare at it day after day until you’ve actually written the book that goes with the cover. For example, here’s the CoverCreator cover for Dog Sitters:

Cover images – For Dog Sitters I used my own photo of our own dog. It was FREE.

Running from Love uses an image I found at dreamstime.com. It cost me $12.95. Paris Adieu‘s cover was designed by a book cover designer found by my agent. I don’t know how much it cost, but probably not more than a few hundred dollars. It was well worth it, but the point is you don’t have to spend a dime to find a cover through an online stock photography website such as dreamstime.com or weheartit.com.

Cost – CreateSpace’s basic publishing package to create a paperback version of your book is $398.  The additional cost to convert your book to a Kindle Edition e-book format to be sold on Amazon is $69.  It’s cheap. Even more importantly, the distribution channel through which to sell your book all over the world is available through Amazon. Ten years ago, no distribution channels were available at all to self-published authors. The landscape has changed. Authors, not publishing houses, are now in the driver’s seat of their own writing careers.

9.  How to market your work using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, WordPress

 You can set up an author page for your book on Facebook in 30 minutes. You can get a Twitter account in 15 minutes and start sending out tweets (messages of 140 strokes or less). If you don’t know what to tweet about, use a line from your book and follow it up with a link to where the book is sold on amazon.com.  I use a shortened link called a “bitly” which I got for free from bitly.com. Paris Adieu‘s link is amzn.to/MLX194.

A typical tweet for Paris Adieu reads like this: Paris Adieu—a literate look at an au pair coming of age in Paris. amzn.to/MLX194

A typical tweet for Running from Love reads like this:

Overcome relationship & running fears in 2013 with Running from Love http://amzn.to/PUiQWx #running #romance

Pinterest is a free online images pinboard (www.pinterest.com). A social media guru told me it’s VERY widely used by women who buy online books.

Make sure you have plug-ins on all your online sites. Plug-ins are the Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or your book cover symbols that people can click on and go directly to your page.

 Make sure your online social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, WordPress blog) all connect to each other.

If the social media stuff seems overwhelming, don’t worry. It’s actually really easy. You find either a high school student or a social media coach to set up all four sites for you. Have them walk you through how to maintain these sites yourself on an ongoing basis. I use a member of my running club from the Bronx. She charges $47 a month and offers a free consultation to get started. Here’s her website.

http://www.sus4-media.com—Our mission

To help the little guy become the big guy online. Doubling your leads from the internet. Driving lots of traffic. Getting you seen, heard and experienced. We set the standard when it comes to Internet marketing.

Mandi Susman (@mandisusman) started Sus4Media in 2010 to help small, local businesses in her neighborhood thrive, not just survive, in this turbulent economic climate. Since signing her first client, she has grown Sus4Media to provide social media marketing, video marketing, mobile and text marketing and search engine optimization to small and medium sized businesses from coast to coast. Mandi’s first book, “Trade Secrets for Marketing Your Business Online” can be purchased through Amazon.com.

Final advice

Make it a priority to follow your bliss in 2013. Don’t let anyone talk you out of it, and when you get off track, fake it till you make it to get back on track again. You will be the most attractive person you can be to those around you when you follow your own bliss.

Remember this—Follow your bliss in 2013. Be your own party. Date yourself this year.

Yours playfully,

Rozsa Gaston

Overcome relationship and downhill running fears in 2013

Today my latest book, Running from Love, is downloadable FREE onto Kindle or any other e-reader device. Thurs. Dec. 27 and Fri. Dec. 28 only. Please take a minute to download, then take your time reading this story of romance between runners from rival track clubs.

Running from Love is a story to help you overcome relationship and downhill running fears in 2013. I’m still working on both and hope you are too. My gift to you, dear readers. Happy new year! – Rozsa Gaston, Author, Paris Adieu, Running from Love, Dog Sitters

Paris in Shades of Gray

At this time of year, Paris shows off in shades of gray. 

From mid-November to mid-March, Paris is one long season of gray days with the occasional breakthrough of a mild blue sky. None of those brilliant blue skies of a snappy, cold January day in New York, darlings. Instead, Paris cloaks us in somber, reflective gray that drives us inside to warm cafes and cozy corners where we keep company with a good book and let our imaginations wander.

An excerpt from Paris Adieu a coming-of-age tale of Ava’s journey to self-discovery in the City of Light. Christmas stocking stuffer? Yes, darlings. The season quickly sizzles between the pages of Paris Adieu.

Soon cloudless, warm October days gave way to iron-gray, rainy, cold November ones. The memory of Paris’s long, drab winter the year I’d turned twenty returned to me. Paris was nowhere near as cold as New York, but its skies were unrelentingly gray during the winter season, unlike the azure-blue brilliance of certain New York days in early winter. November to March in Paris was like one long month of February in New York.

Almost every day, I walked in Père Lachaise, where Arnaud and I had frequently strolled the month before. I began to notice the regulars who frequented the area: dog-walkers, couples, and lone walkers. All of us seemed shrouded in private thoughts – the cemetery a perfect backdrop for our self-reflection.

Statue over the Seine, Paris

Upon entering the main gates late one gloomy, gray Friday morning I spotted a notice affixed to the lamppost next to the entrance. A print of a painting of a sharp-faced, aristocratic looking man announced an artist’s opening exhibit at a local gallery the following day, Saturday, November fifteenth. Startled, I realized a month had already passed since Arnaud had left. Even more shocked, I realized I hadn’t thought about him very much over the past few days.

I examined the poster more closely. The man’s petulant expression was similar to the way Arnaud looked at times. Almost guiltily, I admitted to myself I didn’t like that side of him at all. It reminded me of the sharp-featured, beautiful woman in the photo in his country home. I didn’t like her either. Suddenly, it made sense to me why he’d spoken of her as his mentor. They were most likely two of a kind – all angles, questions, and sharp edges. For the first time, I gave myself permission to accept how very different Arnaud was from me. I loved learning from him. But I wasn’t like him at all. Why was I trying so hard to fit into the image of a woman he might fall in love with?

I continued on my way into the cemetery, where I passed the next hour deep in self-examination. À chacun son goût, to each his own taste, Arnaud had said. On my own, without him around, I was free to explore what my own tastes were.

I picked my way among the monuments and gravestones, mulling over the possibility that my own choices might differ from the man I was involved with. My thoughts were subversive. My mind tingled and raced. I was falling in love with a new person.

Myself.

As I made my way down the main boulevard toward the exit, a tall, lean-faced man walked toward me. His gait was awkward, as if he was just renting space in his own body and wasn’t quite familiar with it.

As he passed, his eyes briefly made contact with mine. They were warm, strangely reassuring. Instantly, I felt a connection. Whoever he was, he wasn’t polished, smooth, one hundred per cent self-sufficient and perfectly packaged like most Parisians appeared to be, foremost among them – Arnaud. This stranger seemed a bit out of his element, interested to reach out. He hadn’t yet arrived, I’d guess. Just like me.

I shivered, hurrying on to escape my illicit thoughts. I was crazy about Arnaud’s blue-green eyes. Why had I even noticed for a moment the warm, brown eyes of a stranger? Shaking my head to clear it from conjecture’s cobwebs, I berated myself. Yet the thought remained. Arnaud’s glance didn’t reassure me. It was exciting, electrifying – but rarely reassuring. Was that what I really wanted out of a relationship with a man?

From Paris Adieu, chptr. 14, by Rozsa Gaston. A sizzling tale to lose yourself in when the season cloaks you in shades of gray.

Rich People

Rich People – Musings on Those Unlike Us

Countess Jacqueline de Ribes does rich nicely

Rich people are much busier than you and me. For example, a rich person wouldn’t have time to read this blog, never mind write it. They’re too busy doing other things such as talking on their cellphones, texting and ignoring whoever is nearby.

Rich people are good at multi-tasking. What they’re not good at is paying attention to what’s happening in their immediate environment. That would require an attitude that shouts, “I don’t have anything better to do than hang out with you right here, right now!” That’s not a rich person’s attitude.

Would you like to be rich? Me too. While we’re working toward this goal, we need to fake it till we make it. What’s that all about? Read Paris Adieu (start on p. 63 if you’re really in a hurry to know) or continue reading here.

Faking it till you make it is about visualizing yourself somewhere, then filling in the gaps along the way to getting there. There’s more to it than that, but for a complete discussion of the technique, roam around Paris Adieu, my book on Ava’s adventures in Paris, to discover how Ava graduates from plump, frizzy-haired cluelessness to becoming a woman with a certain air that scents the atmosphere around her and turns heads for the rest of her life. Her passport to her destination is to fake it till she makes it. She’s still faking it, frankly, but never mind. As far as you and I are concerned, she has arrived.

Rich people frequently act as if they have arrived and you haven’t. Problem is, the place where they’ve arrived is usually somewhere other than where they are at the moment.

One of the problems with being rich is that you’re no longer living in the here and now, once you’re there. You’re somehow somewhere else at every single moment of your present one. Think of how professional models act when someone takes their photo in public. They look away from the camera, as if there’s a better party they’re about to leave yours to go to.

That’s how rich people are too. So my advice to you, dear reader, is to work on becoming rich, but don’t worry too much if you’re not there yet. Better to stay in the here and now than in the somewhere better, some other time. At least you’ll be fully present. That’s a present to everyone around you. And what could make you feel more rich than being able to offer gifts to people everywhere you go?

This holiday season be your own gift to yourself and be here now. If you’re not quite there yet, then fake it till you make it. If Ava can do it, you can too. Happy holidays!

Fabulous book alert – I Want to Be Her! by Andrea Linett with illustrations by Anne Johnston Albert. An illustrated treatise on how to look rich.