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Best Podcasts: Edward Burns and Making It Happen

I like to listen to podcasts. I listen on my phone when I’m driving or exercising or shopping at Wal-mart. I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten several extra college degrees just from what I’ve learned in the abundance of great material available through podcasts.

My most recent find is Brian Koppleman’s The Moment. Brian is a screenwriter and novelist. Among his notable films are Solitary Man, Rounders and Ocean’s Thirteen. He’s a busy guy with majorly impressive writing credits who has added podcasts to his list of accomplishments.

Yesterday, I went for a run on the Roanoke Greenway and listened to his interview with Edward Burns, also a screenwriter, actor and director. Burns first became known with The Brothers McMullen, a great story about three brothers trying to find their way in life that brought the then unknown actor/director to the attention of many. If you haven’t seen the film, you can watch it on iTunes here.

I’ve watched most of Burns’ work over the years, always liked his stories and his acting. So it was interesting to hear him talk about his career journey. We make assumptions about the ease of other people’s success, and it often doesn’t happen as we might think.

Burns has definitely had his share of ups and downs. He described himself as having been put in “director’s jail” after some not so successful films and discussed how he basically lost all of his track record clout, essentially starting over.

But he never gave up. And the main thing I took from his descriptions of several low career points is that it’s easy to get lost in trying to be what we think the world wants us to be. Going back to our own creative vision and applying the same hard work to sharing it is how we’re most likely to succeed. When others stop believing in us, we have to put on the blinders and forge ahead.

Here are a few key takeaways from Burns’ interview:

1. Sometimes, you have to get out of the pack and chart your own course.

2. When the path becomes unclear, go back to what originally made you want to do what you love to do. Start from there.

3. Nothing is ever wasted. Things that we spend time learning or creating almost always eventually find their purpose in our lives.

4. Haters gonna hate. Move on.

Check out The Moment with Brian Koppleman here. Listen to the interview with Edward Burns here.

 

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Edward Burns and Making It Happen

I like to listen to podcasts. I listen on my phone when I’m driving or exercising or shopping at Wal-mart. I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten several extra college degrees just from what I’ve learned in the abundance of great material available through podcasts.

My most recent find is Brian Koppleman’s The Moment. Brian is a screenwriter and novelist. Among his notable films are Solitary Man, Rounders and Ocean’s Thirteen. He’s a busy guy with majorly impressive writing credits who has added podcasting to his list of accomplishments.

Yesterday, I went for a run on the Roanoke Greenway and listened to his interview with Edward Burns, also a screenwriter, actor and director. Burns first became known with The Brothers McMullen, a great story about three brothers trying to find their way in life that brought the then unknown actor/director to the attention of many. If you haven’t seen the film, you can watch it on iTunes here.

I’ve watched most of Burns’ work over the years, always liked his stories and his acting. So it was interesting to hear him talk about his career journey. We make assumptions about the ease of other people’s success, and it often doesn’t happen as we might think.

Burns has definitely had his share of ups and downs. He described himself as having been put in “director’s jail” after some not so successful films and discussed how he basically lost all of his track record clout, essentially starting over.

But he never gave up. And the main thing I took from his descriptions of several low career points is that it’s easy to get lost in trying to be what we think the world wants us to be. Going back to our own creative vision and applying the same hard work to sharing it is how we’re most likely to succeed. When others stop believing in us, we have to put on the blinders and forge ahead.

Here are a few key takeaways from Burns’ interview:

1. Sometimes, you have to get out of the pack and chart your own course.

2. When the path becomes unclear, go back to what originally made you want to do what you love to do. Start from there.

3. Nothing is ever wasted. Things that we spend time learning or creating almost always eventually find their purpose in our lives.

4. Haters gonna hate. Move on.

Check out The Moment with Brian Koppleman here. Listen to the interview with Edward Burns here.

 

**********************************

Never tried one of my books? If you like stories that take you away for a bit, feature characters looking to live fulfilled lives with love and dogs and relationships that matter, I’d love to give you a FREE copy of Good Guys Love Dogs! Please just click here.

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Katherine Heigl, Pit Bull Rescue and Random Acts of Kindness

Since I first became involved in dog rescue seven or eight years ago, I have seen some tragically mistreated dogs.  Nearly starved hounds.  Puppies with abuse-suspicious injuries.  Old dogs who’ve lived most of their lives without veterinary care.

But of them all, I would have to say among the most heart-wrending are the Pit Bulls who have been used as bait for dog fighting.  I know of one situation where a dog had been dropped on a side road when he was no longer usable as bait, only to be found curled up in someone’s garage just waiting to die from his horrific injuries.

In this case, he received care and treatment in time to save his life, but many of these dogs never get help because they die without anyone knowing what has happened to them.

By nature, the dogs who are often used as bait are the more meek and submissive dogs, dogs who would choose to roll over and give in to another dog’s superiority instead of fighting.

It’s hard for me to fathom what a person is made of when they consider it entertainment to stand by and watch while a stronger, more able dog tears a meek one to pieces.  That’s a part of humanity I wish I didn’t have to acknowledge exists.

But it does.

Hard as that is to accept, I have to believe that for every horrible action carried out by one person, there is another whose compassion can change a life.  I recently read that for one rescued Pit Bull puppy named Rufus who had been used as bait, actress Katherine Heigl, known for her work with rescue dogs, did exactly that.  When it was determined that the puppy‘s injuries were so extensive that he would have to wear a body cast for an extended length of time, she took him home with her.

I don’t know why we live in a world with such completely opposing examples of human nature and random acts of kindness. A world where it is possible for one person to heartlessly throw an innocent puppy into a fighting ring and another to selflessly step forward to save it and nurse it back to health.

But we do.

I’m thankful that people like Katherine Heigl and all the other rescue groups and volunteers who stand up for these dogs every day continue to fight the good fight, to throw light on the wrong, to insist that right win out.  Because it just has to.

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Never tried one of my books? If you like stories that take you away for a bit, feature characters looking to live fulfilled lives with love and dogs and relationships that matter, I’d love to give you a FREE copy of Good Guys Love Dogs! Please just click here.

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Best Business Books: The Zappos Story

I like to listen to books that might help me improve some aspect of my life. Whether it’s my writing, the marketing of my books, juicing or how to be more organized, I like continuing to learn.

If you’re looking for a book on how to start your own business, then my most recent read – by audiobook - Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh is for you. This is the Zappos story.

I love Zappos as a company and have been so impressed by their delivery, the selection of shoes on their site. I came to this book as an admirer of the business and completely convinced of their celebrity status in the world of internet business.

It was a little surprising then to see the company’s very humble beginnings and how it had started the way any idea starts. By regular people with doubts and uncertainties and a whole lot of hope.

One of the best business books I’ve read, this has a ton of life lesson takeaways. The thing that struck me most is how easy it is to assume that the guys who make it big got super lucky with a great idea and great timing.

Tony Hsieh reveals the story of how Zappos came to be in a way that makes it clear it takes so much more than that.

The main ingredient needed? The ability to problem solve. Time after time after time. After that is relentless determination. So that if the first solution to the current problem doesn’t work, you come up with solution number two. And then three. And so on. Until one is found that solves the problem. Then you wait for the next hurdle to arise, and tackle that one with the same resolve to beat it back down.

The world is full of naysayers. Ready to shoot your idea down almost before it’s out of your mouth. My time in dog rescue taught me a lot about naysayers. Here are a few of the regular responses to my belief that pets should not be killed because someone has decided they don’t want them anymore.

“Local pounds cannot be no kill.”

“There are just too many to save.”

“Nobody wants to adopt an old dog.”

“Only shelters with lots of money can find places for them to go.”

Zappos had plenty as well.

“No one will ever buy shoes that they can’t try on.”

“Vendors won’t sell to you because you don’t have a physical retail store.”

To grow a dream, you have to tune out the naysayers.

Zappos didn’t get waved into existence with a magic wand. The main players in the company hammered it into existence, one nail, one board at a time.

Dog rescue has taught me how to problem solve. And after listening to the Zappos story, I realize that’s a pretty handy tool to have in your toolbox.

Problems don’t mean your idea won’t work. It just means you keep after it until you find a solution. Even when others tell you there isn’t one.

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Never tried one of my books? If you like stories that take you away for a bit, feature characters looking to live fulfilled lives with love and dogs and relationships that matter, I’d love to give you a FREE copy of Good Guys Love Dogs! Please just click here.

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Embarrassing Stories: Egos and Kiddy Pools

My Grandma Holland called it uppity. You know, too big for your britches, thinking a little too highly of yourself.

I don’t think I’ve ever been an overly-confident person, but I guess there are phases in our lives when we might start to believe our own press. I’ve decided that God has a special radar for these moments and a pretty good sense of humor for issuing corrections.

And being a teenager can make for plenty of embarrassing stories. I was fifteen when I went with my aunt and uncle and cousins to Myrtle Beach one summer. I wasn’t yet allowed to date, sixteen being the milestone for that to occur, but boys had started to act as if they might like to ask me out on a date. And yes, that does do something for a girl’s ego at that age.

Mine was extra puffy that first afternoon at the swimming pool. I was wearing a fairly teeny lime bikini and had already gotten a start on my summer tan.

When everyone else went up to our rooms to get ready for dinner, I decided to stay on a little longer with the book I was reading. I think I was the only one left at the pool. When I heard someone whistling from the balcony above, I wasn’t exactly being conceited in thinking it might be directed at me.

I stayed in my chair another minute or two without taking my eyes off the pages of my book. But then I stood, grabbing my towel and letting myself glance up at the source of the whistles. Three guys who appeared to be seventeen or eighteen years old. Cute, too. Waving now with a, “Hey, baby!”

It was flattering. Who wouldn’t be flattered?

I smiled back at them and set off across the pool, book in one hand, open can of V-8 in the other, deliberately looking out at the ocean to avoid meeting their gazes. I might have secretly liked the attention, but I had no idea what to do with it.

I tried to appear as if this kind of thing happened to me all the time, that maybe I even found it a little boring.

I concentrated on the sound of the ocean waves, the smell of salt in the air. As soon as they realized I was ignoring them, they began whistling again. It was just as I decided to toss them another smile that the tile flooring beneath my feet completely disappeared and turned into water.

At the same time I heard the splash, I realized I had walked into the middle of the kiddy pool, which was all of eighteen inches deep. I landed on the bottom, hard, pitching forward. The remainder of my V-8 emptied into the pool, my book hitting the surface and absorbing the water like a sponge.

The boys didn’t laugh, although I cannot imagine how they managed not to. I also have no idea how I climbed out of that pool with a shred of dignity intact.

As ego checks go, it was darned effective, if not especially subtle. Correction noted.

More truths on being a teenager? Here’s a great post listing 27 of them!

Some quotes about growing up:

The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.

Max Lerner

 

Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up.

Tom Stoppard

 

No matter where you are or where you grow up, you always go through the same awkward moments of being a teenager and growing up and trying to figure out who you are.

Aimee Teegarden

 

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Never tried one of my books? If you like stories that take you away for a bit, feature characters looking to live fulfilled lives with love and dogs and relationships that matter, I’d love to give you a FREE copy of Good Guys Love Dogs! Please just click here.

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Free Kindle Books – Nashville – Part One

If you’re looking for free kindle books or Amazon Kindle books to try out something new, Nashville – Part One – Ready to Reach is available for free download on Amazon Books.  Part One is the first in a contemporary romance series set in the heart of country music: Nashville. Finding free books online is a great way to try new authors. Below are some reviews from Amazon.com readers!

Beautiful story! – “Ms. Cooper has written such a beautiful story that gives you hope. It fills you with laughter, sadness, and many other emotions. You feel connected to the characters and really share in their successes and hurt in their failures.

I can’t wait for the next part to come out. I’ve really grown attached to the characters and want to see what lies ahead for them. Again…beautiful story.” – TreeTX – Amazon.com Reviewer

Five stars amazing story!…Cece, Holden and Thomas’s Story…These three different personalities find each other on the road to Nashville, and become friends. There are so many possibilities for their futures; will she join them in the race to stardom? Or will she leave because being near Holden is too much for her. Holden has a different problem all together, he is falling for her, and he has a girlfriend. Will he choose the girl who left him alone or the one who gets him? They share a personal moment at the pound that had me crying and screaming “you are perfect for each other!!! Don’t you see????” – Carla – Amazon.com Reviewer

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Never tried one of my books? If you like stories that take you away for a bit, feature characters looking to live fulfilled lives with love and dogs and relationships that matter, I’d love to give you a FREE copy of Good Guys Love Dogs! Please just click here.

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Romance Novel Excerpts – Blue Wide Sky – A Second Chance Romance

Do you love second chance stories? I have always had a soft spot for them. LaVyrle Spencer’s Bittersweet was one of my favorites, and I’ve read it so many times, I feel like the characters are people I’ve really known. It is still one of the best romance novels I’ve ever read.

A second chance is something Gabby and Sam never expect to get in Blue Wide Sky, my next release. They fell in love as teenagers, but were separated when Sam’s father took a job in South Africa. Although they had plans to wait it out and eventually be together, life had other paths for them to take. Read an excerpt from the opening of the book when Sam arrives back at Smith Mountain Lake, the place where he spent summers as a boy and where Gabby still lives.

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You know how there are some things in life that you eventually allow yourself to admit you’re never going to do again? Things that you clung to when you were young with the arrogance that underscored life through your twenties, anyway. Until you hit thirty and that little ping of awareness started up. Uh-oh. This really might not go exactly like I thought it was going to. No u-turns in sight. Just straight ahead highway like the North Dakota stretch from Gackle to Beaver Creek where you can see so far in the distance, it looks like you’ll just fall off the edge of the earth if you ever do get there.

At some point along the way, that’s what I eventually came to accept about Smith Mountain Lake and my memories of it. That this place and everything I had loved about it as a boy were part of my past, a time long gone, so far behind me that it wasn’t possible to ever travel back.

Or at least that’s what I would have told myself just a few days ago.

And yet here I am now, behind the wheel of a rented Ford Explorer, headed out of Roanoke down 581 South to 220 and the winding curves that will take me back to the heart of my childhood summers.

The H&C coffee pot and the Dr. Pepper 10-2-4 signs are still here among the downtown high rises, both erected sometime in the 40’s. The factoid comes to my brain with my father’s voice still attached, and I remember how he’d point them out those first summers when we’d drive in from D.C., headed for the lake in our packed-to-the-gills station wagon.

New on the city landscape, though, is the train-shaped museum that is a more recent part of Roanoke’s contemporary identity. I had read about it in the New York Times online and remember the pang just seeing the city name in print lifted up inside me.

To the left of 581, Mill Mountain looms in the distance, its famous star now modestly dim in the daylight. At night, it glows red, white and blue on top of its post, earning Roanoke it’s nickname as the star city of the south.

A Starbucks, Lowes, and a BMW dealership have grown up alongside 220 heading out of Roanoke. It looks vastly different from the last time I was here, and I am suddenly anxious to leave the city limits where the countryside starts to appear in short, more familiar stretches.

But it isn’t until I’ve hit route 40 headed east outside of Rocky Mount that I start to see green pastures, black and white Holstein cows grazing slope after slope. Barbed wire alternates with white board fencing, the houses ranging in style from brick ranches to two-story farmhouse structures.

I’ve hit late afternoon traffic, and a big yellow school bus has cars lined up out of sight behind me. The transplanted Londoner in me itches to blow the horn and wave for the driver to pull over and let us all pass. I suppress the urge, realizing I don’t want to be that guy. Not here where everyone seems content to wait. Where I used to be someone content to wait.

The thought of London brings with it a ping of guilt.

I should give Evan and Analise a call. Let them know where I am.

But I don’t have the energy to get over that wall just now. It’s possible the kids haven’t even missed me yet. Evan’s on the fast track of a young career, and Analise is nearing the end of her junior year in boarding school. They are both busy and occupied with their own lives.

For now, I’m grateful for this. At some point, I will have to talk with them, but I can use the time here to figure out how I’m going to do that.

And as for Megan, I don’t really owe her an explanation of any kind. Sad, but true, after twenty-three years of marriage. The life we built together wasn’t initially mine by choice, but I did commit to it, and if what we had never felt like a love of a lifetime kind of love, I grew to care deeply for her. I was faithful to her. Odd as it sounds, in some strange way, I am glad that I wasn’t the one who caused our marriage to end, and that I don’t have that particular guilt to live with. . .

Get Blue Wide Sky here.

 

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Never tried one of my books? If you like stories that take you away for a bit, feature characters looking to live fulfilled lives with love and dogs and relationships that matter, I’d love to give you a FREE copy of Good Guys Love Dogs! Please just click here.

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Positive Quotes about Life and Living Well – Loving Ourself

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Never tried one of my books? If you like stories that take you away for a bit, feature characters looking to live fulfilled lives with love and dogs and relationships that matter, I’d love to give you a FREE copy of Good Guys Love Dogs! Please just click here.

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To Be Among the Best Romance Novels. . .

I’ve always thought that to be among the best romance novels in a reader’s opinion, my books must resonate with some piece of their lives.

I ran across a review of Rock Her this morning on a blog for romance book reviews. After reading the review, I felt that I might have done that for this reviewer. I so appreciated the time she took to craft this lovely piece. I felt as if she must have been looking over my shoulder as I was writing the book. Here’s a section of the review. You can read the whole piece here.

“The reader will think the story is on its way to the expected conclusion until a tragic set of circumstances brings the HEA into question.

Ms. Cooper not only gives us the story from the point of view of the main characters, but also Lizzy’s husband Ty and her daughter Kylie. While Lizzy and Ren are written in first person, so that you get both points of view, Ty is written in second person (“You think you know someone.”) and Kylie is written in third person (“Kylie hangs up from the phone call with her dad….”). It may seem disjointed but it works beautifully because each style portrays the character exactly. Ty is full of himself. Kylie is the detached spoiled child. Lizzy and Ren live in the moment.

And when it all comes together, Ms. Cooper’s exquisite, emotionally intense story makes us realize we’ve all been through our own crises the same way, experiencing it first hand if it’s our own problem, feeling detached and aloof if it’s someone else.

The metaphors are obvious: the beauty of a far off land, the use of photography as a way to open up, the broken rock star who, despite the pact he and his brother made when they first started out, is on his way to being the cliché. Yet the story never feels contrived, never seems obvious. And that’s the beauty of it. “Rock Her” is a beautiful song about life, a quiet must read, a true romantic tale of love, loss and self discovery.”

That last line is what the best romance books I’ve read have done for me. I’m honored to think I might have accomplished something of that in this reviewer’s opinion. To read more of the blog’s romance novel reviews, click here.

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Never tried one of my books? If you like stories that take you away for a bit, feature characters looking to live fulfilled lives with love and dogs and relationships that matter, I’d love to give you a FREE copy of Good Guys Love Dogs! Please just click here.

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Free Kindle Books – Try Forever Dreams Free Today

FREE Kindle Books

Fall in love with “Forever Dreams,” the first book in Leeanna Morgan’s Montana Brides series.

She came to Montana looking for answers…and found forever.

When Gracie Donnelly, a school teacher from New Zealand, arrives on a Montana cattle ranch, she has more on her mind than mending fences and feeding chickens. She’s secretly searching for her father and answers to questions that could destroy a family.

Just one look at the fiery five-foot-one redhead and Trent McKenzie knows Gracie is going to be trouble. Ever since the failure of his first marriage, he promised never to listen to his heart again. Especially when his heart is saying he’s falling in love – and the one thing Gracie’s searching for is the one thing that could take her away from him forever.

http://amzn.to/1EpumlX

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Never tried one of my books? If you like stories that take you away for a bit, feature characters looking to live fulfilled lives with love and dogs and relationships that matter, I’d love to give you a FREE copy of Good Guys Love Dogs! Please just click here.

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