1. Josephine Templeton – my dear friend and one of the Rowdy Girls. She has a pirate book and a fallen angel book coming out soon!

2. Leah Marie Brown – My dear friend. She is obsessed with Paris and has a book out about a spy in the French Revolution.

3. Geri Krowtow – Another dear friend. She writes contemporary romances for Harlequin.

4. Penelope Marzec – A friend who writes inspirational and paranormal romances.

5. Rachel Van Dyken – An Astraea Press author. She writes Regencies.

6. Joanne Brothwell – The Author of Stealing Breath, the first book I’ve edited for Crescent Moon Press that has been released.

7. Claudy Conn – A new author I met online and who came to HeartLA’s Readers’ Luncheon last fall.

8. Ursula Whistler – Another author who came to our Readers’ Luncheon. She lives in New Orleans.

9. Rhonda Leah – a good, good friend.

10. Laura Burks – a new author and a member of HeartLA.

11. Eleanor Cocreham – A member of HeartLA who writes glitz and glamour books.

12. Elaine Grant – one of my best friends, even if she moved away!

13. Jennifer Armintrout – a funny vampire author who loves Doctor Who and who would be one of my best buddies if we ever meet face to face.

I read the Twilight series about four years ago or whenever it was, at the insistence of my daughter who loved them. I didn’t.

I will admit that I read books these days like a writer, critiquing as I go, but also, later I kind of analyze what I’ve read. There are many times I ask myself where the author’s critique partners were when books were in their formative stages. What about all the things I’ve learned in all the conferences I’ve attended?

Why is it that some authors can seemingly break all the rules, or at least the big ones, and yet their books not only get published but are wildly successful?

Bella was not a great heroine. She has no wants, needs or desires of her own other than getting Edward. She wasn’t really complete person, and we never got any sense that she had a life before she stepped onto the first page of the book.

I could go on, as I’ve thought a lot about this, but that’s not the point of this post.

Those books were amazingly successful and they do generate discussion, especially among writers. There are people who love the series and others who cringe whenever they’re mentioned.

Regardless of your feelings about them, the author has to be thrilled. They sold, they have rabid fans of all ages, and they have become a cultural phenomenon. What more could an author dream of?

But most of us struggle to hone our craft, attending workshops, reading technical articles, polishing, critiquing, submitting, polishing more. We work hard every day to have our books be the best they can be, to make them shine, sparkle and sing, and yet we collect rejection after rejection, while books that seemingly never saw a critique or an editor’s red pencil soar to the top of the bestseller charts.

There’s a new series out now that is creating the kind of love it or hate it vibe that the Twilight series had. I haven’t read this “book everyone is talking about” except for the first chapter, and again, the writing isn’t great.

Last night, I went to a meeting of the Vacation Bible School committee at our church, and several of the women there – devout Catholic women – were talking about these books. Not just talking, but RAVING about them. One of them even said, “She’s such a good writer.”

I cringed. An author I admire has been doing a chapter by chapter critique of these books over at Goodreads and her post are hilarious.

Even with the not so good writing, the books are selling.

Why? Why do some of us struggle for years to make our work the best it can be and never succeed while someone can write a book riddled with cliches, inconsistencies and characters no one likes and the books soar?

I can’t figure it out. Do some books touch a nerve in readers that have nothing to do with tight, polished writing? Is it that the story hits the target market at exactly the right time? Is it that some stories are so new/timely/primal that they fill a need in their readers’ soul/unconscious/subconscious/some undefinable thing?

If you have any thoughts on the matter, I’d love to hear them. Also, have you read “The book everyone is talking about”? Did you like it? Why? Why not?

Questions:

1. For Mother’s Day I spent most of it at my in-laws’ house. At around 9:30 Noah and I met Juliette at Ihop for a wonderful brunch. I had blueberry Belgian waffles. The three of us had a nice time together. Later, Juliette and I went to a Mother’s Day bowling tournament. That was fun, laughing with her and her friends. Their moms, too. Juliette won $5, and I bought an order of Tater Tots. We made it to 6 pm Mass about 1/2 hour before it started. It was a busy but fun day.

2. What is your favorite dish that your Mom makes? My mother was the Queen of scalloped potatoes in our family. She always wished she could make meatloaf and complained that hers always fell apart. So, instead, she made the potatoes and my aunt made the meatloaf. However, to be honest, something I remember fondly was the “potato doughnts” she made in the deep fryer the year our kitchen was being remodeled. I don’t know where she got the recipe or why she decided to make them, but the memory of those days “smells” like deep fried doughnuts to me.

3. Who are you a “Mom” too? – Juliette and Noah!

4. What did you have for Mother’s Day dinner? – We had chicken, backed potatoes, green beans and salad.

5. What is your fondest memory of your Mom? – I remember coming home from the Army, very self-centered, and seeing that Mom and Dad weren’t happy. Dad was getting sick with his Polycystic Kidney Disease, but they didn’t know it yet. Anyway, in my self-centeredness, I asked her why she didn’t leave him. She said, “You don’t leave just because things get bad. Marriage is forever.” It was one of the best, most important lesson she every taught me.

Check out Never Growing Old and join the Meet Me Monday!

I’ve neglected this blog but with Sword & Illusion coming out in three weeks (THREE WEEKS!!), I’ve started thinking more about my social media/promotion efforts. I’m so excited about this book coming out! I think it truly is the best thing I’ve ever written and I can’t wait for you guys to read it.

Anyway, while I have TMIS (Too Many Ideas Syndrome) when it comes to my fiction, I stink at thinking up things to write blog posts about. So, today i’m going to do Fragment Friday, which I got from Half Past Kissin’ Time, which you can find in the link above.

The idea of Fragment Fridays is to think about your whole week and jot down little “fragments” about the days. Here’s mine:

– This past weekend was our church’s annual festival. As usual, we went Friday night. Also, as usual, I found a spot in the food tent and set up “home base.” Noah is ten now so he just runs off with his friends and after I get him a ride bracelet, he’s set for the night. He did come back at one point to get some food. He wanted fries but that line was too lone. I got him chicken nuggets and he was happy. The rest of the family got crawfish, naturally. I really don’t like seafood of any kind, but I’m getting better at being able to sit in the midst of people eating crawfish and not freak out too badly. And that’s a good thing down here in Louisiana!

– Saturday was a regular Saturday for us. We went to Chick-fil-a for lunch. Juliette joined us, then she and her dad went to see The Hunger Games. Steve got me a new keyboard before he left, and I set it up when Noah and I got home. Turns out, however, they couldn’t see the Hunger Games because the projector broke, so they got to see the Avengers AND got free movie tickets! I think the whole family is going to see it tonight! I can’t wait. I LOVE superheroes!

– Sunday I did some scrapbooking and of course, went to Mass. I told my friends in the choir about the book’s release and they were all thrilled for us. However, it still amazes me how many people don’t read ebooks. I have a feeling I won’t be selling many copies to that crowd until (and if) we sell enough that it will come out in paper.

– Weight Watchers on Monday. I was up 2.2 pounds, so it’s back on the wagon for me. A woman there had sent me three pages of a book she’s working on and I guess I did more editing than she expected and to thank me, she have me a lovely earring and necklace set she made.

– The rest of the week was average. Had a Cub Scout leaders’ meeting on Wednesday and actually got to play Guild Wars when I got home. In the process of setting up my new keyboard, which I’m still adjusting to, I unplugged my speakers so I had to play with no sound, but no big deal, except when the rest of the guild was talking about a growling sound I couldn’t hear.

– No Rowdy Girls on Thursday due to graduations and Charlaine Harris visiting BR. I haven’t read any of her books, and I heard the line was going to be LONG so I wasn’t interested. Also, we asked her to be the keynote speaker at our annual luncheon and she wanted $15,000! I’m not exactly impressed with her these days.

– Today men are here working on the duct work in the house. They have to AC on, I guess to see how it works, and it is getting cold in this house! Also, my “pile things on the desk and get to them later” filing system bit me in the butt as the guy asked if I had the estimate he gave me. I KNOW I saw it recently, but do you think I could find it for him?? Not on your life. So embarrassing. However, I do think he should have a copy since we didn’t get the original in the first place!

– Today I try to get Pigsty Princess back under control. I’ve been working on one scene for two days and it hasn’t come together. Last night, though, I think I came up with a new approach that should work better. We’ll see.

Okay, fans, that’s my week in a nutshell. Hope you have a fabulous weekend. I’m going to find a sweatshirt to put on!

This past week, I tracked as well. I used less points in the early part of the week, so I was set for the weekend.

I weighed in today and gained 4.4 pounds.

I’m stunned. I can’t figure out how that happened. I felt so good this morning. I even thought my stomach felt smaller. I put makeup on and walked into the new facility feeling great.

Then that STUPID scale.

I love my WW meetings and the ladies there, so they helped me keep from falling apart, but I don’t get why that kind of backlash. I didn’t expect another 3 pounds loss, and I would have been okay with a pound gain as I figured my body was adjusting, but FOUR POUNDS??

It makes no sense.

I get that it might be water weight, but it’s still discouraging, especially when other people get 5 pound stars left and right.

Well, onward and downward!

I am in growth!

I have known about the Sidetracked Home Executives since about 1993 or 94, when my husband was in graduate school and my daughter was very young. I heard them on Focus on the Family and they spoke to me.

Anyway, I have been “in the box” off and on for years. I spent a lot of time doing Flylady which is kind of an offshoot of the SHE system. I met a lot of wonderful Flylady friends, some of whom I still keep in touch with, but I honestly feel the box system works better for me.

It’s easier to carry the 3×5 cards around from room to room to know what to do next rather than a big binder, and I think it’s easier to add or take something away from the box, too.

Anyway, I bought myself a big card file and set things up from the Happiness File, another book by the authors of the Sidetracked Home Executives which is like my get organized bible.

With Christmas come and gone, I decided that Dec. 26 would be my New Year and I would get back on track with Weight Watchers and my home.

I searched all over for my box and my organization books. Yes, I get the irony of not being able to find the box and books that help keep me organized. Finally, I found them on the floor next to my husband’s chair. He’d been watching me go through, literally, every drawer and shelf in the house trying to figure out where these things went. See, about a month or so ago, I had planned to get back in the box and i knew exactly where I had done that planning – on my side of the sofa/recliner he sits in. Everything got moved for Christmas and I knew the stuff had to be nearby. He must have moved them off his end table to the floor!

So, I spent a good chunk of yesterday figuring everything out again and planning my days/weeks/months. I knew that today would be a half cleaning day and I would do all my before bed stuff so we’d be ready for today.

THEN:

All the drains in the house backed up. It was pouring outside and we have a huge, lovely live oak tree outside our front door and we thought we’d handled the root problem, especially since we had a “weed” tree (I don’t know what it was the but arborist said no one actually plants those trees) taken out of the yard, too.

Guess not.

We quickly packed up all of the stuff we would need and headed to the in-laws’ house to spend the night since we couldn’t flush anything.

So, now Roto=Rooter guy’s been here and we’re back. But my card file system is already out of whack as today was supposed to be a cleaning day and Steve said we needed to run to the store to get cleaner as the toilets backed up into the tubs.

I didn’t get home until after 10 am which messed up my morning plans. However, the system is new-ish to us and this happens every time I try to get back in the box. Not the drains but something pops up to throw me off the system.

I figure I’ll do what I can card-wise today and just keep going. It’ll be better than it was, if not perfect. Flylady says that you’re never behind, you just jump in where you are. She also says even housework done imperfectly blesses your family.

I will keep going.

I actually got a friend request from a woman whose name I didn’t recognize, but I figured she was a writer as a lot of my Facebook friends are writers. When I clicked on her page I saw her maiden name which is the same as mine and that she had, among her friends, a man with the same name as another of my cousins.

Before I had a chance to send her a message to ask if we were indeed related, I got a note from her saying she found me through the PKD group. It turns out she has a page on Facebook searching for a kidney donor as her PKD has worsened.

I thought this was such an exciting thing (Finding her and seeing that she’s taking a non-conventional route to finding a donor) that I sent a note to all my writing groups, sharing this information.

My email program must have a glitch because apparently, although I sent this about 15 days ago, people are just now responding and I’ve gotten some surprising comments.

In one group, the discussion quickly turned into a “rant” about how Facebook is terrible because of all the private information that is now available to anyone and how the world is all so “social” that real live, face to face, interactions are dying.

I started to write a response because I think some of that is wrong and some is true but not the fault of Facebook or even the Internet itself, but I decided that would serve no purpose. Instead, I decided to write a blog post instead.

Periodically, I find some of my friends on Facebook freaking out because “people can find your phone number” so easily. I’m not totally sure why this is so bad, but I guess these same people don’t remember that even though no one I know uses one anymore, phone books are still printed and they are specifically designed to allow people to find your phone number.

It used to be a thing. If you wanted to talk to someone to invite them out or give them information or just chat, you’d look up their name in the phone book and voila, there was their number! Plain as day, right in print!

How did we ever manage to avoid stalkers? And you know what, your address was right there, too!

Crazy.

Another criticism I’ve read of the Internet and Facebook in particular is that we’ve lost the ability to have face to face relationships because we’re living our lives virtually.

Well, I don’t have any scientific data on this, but personally, I don’t see how we can “live our lives virtually” for real. Most of us still have to leave our houses to go to work or to school, and we have to leave to do many things that are just part of life. I actually feel like I spend most of my time running errands when I’d rather be at home writing. The Internet/Facebook hasn’t changed the way I get groceries or pick up my prescriptions or go to the dentist. And I have to deal with people in all those arenas, face to face. Facebook hasn’t changed that.

However, something it has done is given me friends, true and real friends, in far away places. For instance, right now, I have a friend living in the Northeast who I met through a group of romance authors who were formerly in the military. She and I have shared our weight loss struggles and she sent me a message, through Facebook, that I inspired her to join Weight Watchers and we’ve been supporting and encouraging one another through messages back and forth.

I have another friend that I met in 2006 when I went to the RWA National Conference. She wishes she lived in France but she really lives in the Midwest. We’ve chatted about a lot of things and interests we share through Facebook and I don’t think we’d be this close if it weren’t for the Internet.

I’ve reconnected with family members spread far and wide, as well as high school and college friends. I’ve listened online to a radio station in Harrisburg, PA online because one of my dear college friends did the traffic in the mornings.

I don’t worry about stalkers, which seems to be a big concern with other people in regard to the amount of information and photos that go online. Facebook, for me, is a kind of backup for all my photos and scrapbook pages.

I understand there are weirdos out there who want to look at pictures of kids for sick reasons, but I don’t think it’s any riskier to put pictures of my kids out there for family and friends to see than it is to let them actually be outside. There have been sickos throughout time. Facebook didn’t create them. Any guy with a camera could take his own pictures of anyone’s kid if he really wanted to. I would rather that my friends could see how cute my kid is than worry.

Someone said that because of how easy and social the Internet is, people have forgotten how to write letters.

Nonsense.

I have moved five times since I got married and every time, I’d cry in my friends’ arms and they’d promise to write. I would get to my new home and be horribly lonely for my friends back home and write letters (this was back in the late 80s/early 90s – no easily accessible Internet) to the friends back home with my new address. I can count, 25 years later, the number of letters I received in reply on the fingers of one hand.

The Internet didn’t kill letter writing. Among most people, it was never quite as alive as those who are nostalgic believe. My mother was a great letter writer, and she would write me twice a week for years, until cell phones made it easier to call and postage kept going up and up. When I was young and in school, I wrote letters. Lots of letters, but rarely did I receive anything in reply, even from boys I was dating over summer vacation.

Some people just would never write letters, even without Facebook.

I realize that some people will never accept social networking, and that’s fine. For me, though, I always hoped the Internet would be a place to meet people and that’s what Facebook is.

Like everything, it can be abused and a few bad apples can spoil it. I just don’t think they are the majority and I don’t think any technology is inherently bad.

I welcome your thoughts.

Can you spot the imposter in the picture? Couldn't pass up a chance to include a guinea pig in my post!

My daughter recently got an internship with a big NYC literary agency. It is exactly the internship and the kind of job she wants and she is thrilled. Busy, stressed, but thrilled.

It’s all “virtual” in that she still lives in her apartment near the LSU campus and is taking classes, but she works two or three days for the agency, reading manuscripts they send her and stuff like that. All online.

Last week, she had a conference call for something they call “Intern Academy.” It’s apparently a chance for the interns to ask questions about the publishing industry and books and such.

She was totally freaked out by this because, as she said, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” I told her she’s an intern and by definition she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Plus, I said, “I don’t think anyone in any kind of creative, ‘thinking’ job thinks they know what they’re doing.”

I know several multi-published authors who finish a book and are convinced that’s the last one they will ever write. I worked as a Kelly girl for years and I often DIDN’T know what I was doing because it was my first day on the job or sometimes my only day in that office and the training was little to none. But there were other times when I worked some place for months and still often felt like I was just making it up as I went along.

I was in the Army for two years and always felt like I wasn’t REALLY in because I was in the Intelligence and Security Command and after basic training, it wasn’t really very military, and I was terrified someone would realize that I wasn’t really a soldier. To this day, I’m a little chagrined to stand up on Veterans’ Day with all the guys who served in war. I was in during “peace time,” if you can call the Cold War that, and don’t feel worthy to stand with people who literally risked their lives for the country, but that’s a different story.

The point is that EVERYONE, I think, who is doing “skilled” work, sometimes feels like an imposter.

Maybe if you are a dog walker or mow lawns or flip burgers for a living you might not feel that way about your job, but you might feel it about something else.

None of us, I maintain, ever REALLY feels like a grown-up, and therefore, we never really feel like we know what we’re doing.

I know I don’t.

What do you think?

When my first book came out years ago, my mother was proud but also amazed. She said, “Where did you get your creativity? I’m not creative.”

This from the woman who made much of my clothing and that of my sister when we were growing up. Having a son of my own now, I’m not sure Mom sewed much for my brother. It’s hard to find patterns for boys.

Anyway, after I got married, Mom took up quilting and found her medium! She made quilts, jackets, tote bags, and placemats and table runners galore. She made quilts when there was no one to give them to. She made them because she loved it.

She died two years ago and I inherited all of her sewing stuff because my sister-in-law didn’t want it. In fact, she tried to get me to take HER sewing machine, too, but as much as I love to sew, a girl can only use so many machines.

I found a baby quilt top Mom had finished. It only needs batting, backing, quilting and binding to be done, so I’m doing that. There are several more tops and parts of tops I’ll be working on, too.

All of this got me to thinking about creativity. Mom didn’t think she was creative because she didn’t think of herself as an artist.

What is an artist? Is it merely someone who paints masterpieces that hang in galleries, or is it someone who sews her daughter a skating costume to wear to the roller skating rink every Saturday?

I know lots of writers and nearly all of them engage in some other form of “art work.” Many paint, but others do needlework or garden or create scrapbooks and other paper crafts.

Creativity, I propose, is a way of thinking. An outside the box way of thinking. A way of thinking that says, “Just because we’ve always done it this way might mean it’s time to do it another way.”

I think if you make your child a lunch for school and you decide not to put in a sandwich because you know he won’t eat it, even though that’s what a school lunch is supposed to be, that’s creative.

If you decide to take a vacation to a campground in Canada when everyone else is going to Disney, that’s creative.

Sometimes just taking a different route to work or school because it might be fun is a creative thing too.

Be creative today!

This is very unusual because the general practice is that the new priests are ordained in May and around the end of that month, hew assignments are announced. Priests, as I understand it, are asked by the bishop every year if they are willing to move. It has been my experience that older priests tend to stay where they are for a good length of time. For instance, when we lived in Illinois and we became Catholic, the priest of that church had been there nine years and was still there when we left five years later. On the other hand, probably half a dozen or so associate pastors came and went in that time.

Father Andrew had only been with us a year when he was asked to take another parish and it wasn’t during the normal assignment rotations.

What he announced set my imagination and that of my husband whirling in our heads.

Father Andrew said that he was being transferred so quickly was that in this small parish in a little town I never heard of one of the priests took a leave of absence and the other had a nervous breakdown.

Well, as a fantasy author, and the writer of a Catholic vampire short story that has yet to find a home, I have to wonder.

What’s going on in that parish and why are we sending beloved Father Andrew into it? What will happen to him??

I have a theory. It might be bunnies!