Oops, here I am, a romance author,and I missed posting on Valentine’s day. Oh well, instead of spending the evening on the computer, I spent the evening with my husband, which really is the point of the day, to spend time with someone you love, and who loves you back. 🙂
I hope you had a great Valentine’s Day, and see you next post.
If we all listen to the song, Christmas really is the most wonderful time of the year. It’s great time for family and friends, and a good time to reconnect with those we haven’t seen for a long time, even if all we do is send a free e-card.
Sometimes, though, Christmas can be lonely. We all know how nice it is to hear from someone we haven’t heard from in a long time. I’d like to encourage everyone to be that someone who does the sending – if you know anyone who might not have a network of people to share the joy of the season, please be that person who reaches out to say you’re thinking of them.
Share the joy! Give someone else a Merry Little Christmas. (hear the song?)
I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve got another new series coming out. This is with Harlequin Heartsong, the continuation of the Heartsong Presents line.
This is a great move for Heartsong readers. Now owned by Harlequin, that changes the availability of the Heartsong Presents books to a much wider distribution. They will now be available almost anywhere, your favorite bookstore, supermarket, and book sections of your favorite department store. Of course they will also be available online to be read on your Kindle, tablet, or any e-reader. Or you can also buy the paperback on Amazon as well, if that’s the way you like to shop for books.
I must admit, I love my Kindle, it goes almost everywhere with me. I’ve even been known to pull it out of my purse when I’m standing in line at the bank.
Back to my series. I’m not sure of the series title yet, or if the series will have a title, but I can certainly give you a bit of information on the first book. It’s called The Best Man’s Secret, and will be out in June 2014. It’s about…. Dave Ducharme, who is the best man for his best friend, and he’s got a secret. I’ll have a better “back cover” description soon.
Book two in the series is going to have a Christmas theme, and it will be out for Christmas 2014, and the third book out in the spring after that.
In the meantime, we’re coming up to Christmas 2013. I’m thinking of how much fun it will be to be writing a Christmas themed book at Christmas time. Every other Christmas book I’ve done, I’ve written in the spring or summer, so I’m looking forward to lots of timely inspiration.
More to follow as time continues.
Here it is the end of October, and I find myself looking back at the last few months and wondering… what happened? I vividly remember planning to travel with my friend Tina to Portland, OR to go to a writer’s conference in the summer. It was hot, and we took her car instead of mine because it is air conditioned. We took our bathing suits, and then the only night we could have gone for a swim they were doing some kind of maintenance, and we ended up not going. But we watched for a while from our 3rd floor balcony as they cleaned it out.
But suddenly it’s almost the end of October, and I’m wondering where the time has gone. I’m working on a book deadline that’s due mid-November. I’m also thinking of the deadline of when I need to get my snow tires on my car. And thinking of snow tires, and snow, I was out shopping today and mixed amongst the end of the Halloween costumes and decorations are a few Christmas displays, already with colorful blinking lights.
That’s not right. First I want to see the displays of Halloween candy on at half price….
Wow, if you are like me, you are wondering what happened to summer. Here on the west coast it’s like someone threw a switch and suddenly the temperature dropped, and the rain started. I still have a bunch of green tomatoes outside, they have to come in to get ripe on the counter.
I got a couple of new blueberry bushes from a local farm and planted them – I couldn’t believe it, I planted them the day before the rain started. That means next year I should have a couple of bowls of yummy blueberries, if my middle son doesn’t eat them all first, as he has a major fondness for massive quantities of blueberries.
It’s time to start battening down the hatches for winter, I guess. But I’m ready. I just bought the cutest pair of boots….
I’ve been playing with a community orchestra for the summer, and this is the final week of practice. Today was also the first time the orchestra met with the performers, so it was an important practice. I’m playing my 5-string electric bass with this group, and I have to say I’m having a great time. I’ve got the amp turned up loud, and groovin’ along with a lot of 50’s style music.
While we were practicing I was amused, and maybe feeling a bit smug, when the cast, all of whom are young adults, checked out the orchestra. Usually there are few surprises, we’re all a bunch of musicians of varying ages, but it still raises a few eyebrows first, when the bass player is a woman, and second, and most amusing, when the rockin’ bassist is the same age as most of their mothers.
When I was that age, I would never in a million years have imagined my mother playing in a quasi-rock band. Sometimes I wonder what my own children think of me, with all the things I do. Most of the time they just shake their heads, but when they were little, they didn’t really realize that none of their friends’ mothers did any of this stuff.
Next weekend, dress rehearsal on stage Friday, then Saturday, 2 performances. If you live in my area, I invite you to come to The Act Theatre and have some fun.
After nearly a week, I’m back home safe and sound after a long journey. Maybe not long for some, but since I drove, it was long for me. Last week a friend and I drove to the OCW writer’s conference in Portland, OR.
Since we all know each other online, but most have never met each other face to face, we all wear name tags. Some tags had identifiers, for example mine said “Faculty” then under that, what I was doing on an official basis for the conference – Author, Mentor, Worship Team. For others, it simply had the city that person was from. I guess the tags only had one line for a description, so that’s what mine said.
Many people asked where I was from, so I said “Vancouver.” Keeping in mind that we were in Portland, OR, most people nodded and said “Oh” while mentally placing on the map how far everyone came from. Looking on the map, Vancouver, WA is next door to Portland OR. Therefore, I let the pause hang after the “Oh” then qualified it after about 5-10 seconds, adding “Canada”. Eyes widened, everyone then said an additional “Oooooohhhhhh……” Only needing to be asked a dozen or so times, I knew the question about to be asked. My reply. “Yes, it was a long drive. Eh.”
But the drive was great. Long, but I don’t think there was more than a minute of dead air space between myself any my friend Tina as the tires ate up the miles. Once we arrived at the conference I had a good time with old friends and made a lot of new ones. Since I was taking appointments to coach beginning authors I couldn’t attend all the classes, but I went to some, and they were good. I talked to a few editors, some professionally and some socially, plus I played bass guitar for the worship band. Overall it was a great conference, even though I never made it to the pool.
Maybe next year.
I’m so excited, I have just learned that my book coming out Aug 1 2013, The Path To Piney Meadows, which is book 2 in my Path series, (starting with The Narrow Path, out in 2011) has just got a 4 1/2 star review with Romantic Times Magazine.
While good reviews are always, well, good, a good Romantic Times review is great because it’s an industry standard.
While any review, including Romantic Times reviews are just one person’s opinion, some opinions count more than others, and this one really counts because it’s guaranteed to be done by a neutral party.
I don’t think I’ve stopped smiling for a whole day since I learned this. And now… how do I start book 3?
This is the week where both Canada and the USA have their national holidays, just not on the same day. In Canada, the national holiday is July 1st, in the USA it is July 4.
I had a great Canada Day. I went with some friends to a local Canada Day celebration in a local park where there was live music by a number of different bands and other live entertainment. On the side were all those booths of people selling crafts, jewelry, books, food, and lots of other interesting things I won’t list. My money and I are soon parted at events like this, regardless of the promises I make to myself. I like to think in advance and only take a certain amount to spend, but I always take a little extra just in case, and so that gets spent, too.
This year one of the things I bought was a Venus Fly Trap. I thought it would be fun until the lady told me the proper way to care for it. I can’t just water it and expect it to eat all the flies in my house. No, it needs to be kept nice and moist, watered daily. Plus I need to mist it daily, and then it must be covered overnight by a plastic dome. It can’t be in direct sunlight, sit in a draft, or be exposed to much temperate variation.
Of course I bought it anyway, not thinking of the maintenance. But now that I’m in charge of the care-giving for this plant, it’s easier said than done.
It’s been almost a week, it’s still alive, but it hasn’t caught any flies yet. I hope it does soon. It’s hard enough to keep watered, I hope I don’t have to feed it, too.
It seems that every store we go to, they have those solar powered yard lights. They have a plastic spike on the bottom, so they are simply pushed down into the ground and they charge all day, then light our paths at night. And they’re cheap, too!
Of course I had to buy a couple. They change color and are very pretty. Not only that, they cast just enough light to see our black dog as he wanders around the back yard. I’d never thought about it before, but we discovered the hard way that it’s very easy to lose a black dog once the sun goes down.
My husband thought this was a great idea, so he bought a different kind of solar powered lights and mounted them on the fenceposts at the back of the yard, to shed more light in. I think the idea is that when the lawn is mowed, we don’t have to find where the kids put them and reinsert them in the grass. But they are white and boring.
Being a great idea, my youngest son decided that since he and his girlfriend revamped my flower garden in the front yard, that needed a couple of solar powered lights, too. I don’t know why anyone might need to see the flowers in front of my house in the middle of the night, but there they are.
I couldn’t let that be. In order to see our black dog a little better, I bought a few more last night and put them all in a nice row in the yard, so now we have even more dog-height lights. Potentially, now we will be able to see our dog anywhere, all night long.
I guess the rainbow kaleidescope of color became too overwhelming. I thought it was all very pretty, but the word ‘tacky’ came into the conversation, and all my nice lights all got turned to plain white.
Oh well. Our yard has lost its sparkle, but at least we can find the dog.