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What's HappeningE-NEWSLETTER: Once you've signed up, you'll receive a letter asking you to confirm your subscription. Your subscription can't be activated unless you reply. Note to AOL users: Unless your spam filters are off, you may not receive the confirmation letter. (Scroll down for the latest feature article.) POSTCARD: I send out postcards of the front cover of my newest book about a week prior to its release. If you'd like to receive one, simply email your snail-mail address to me. As with email addresses, I do not share readers' addresses with anyone else, nor use them for any other purpose. Latest News The fifth book in the HOME series is now in bookstores and available online! It appears the HOME series will conclude with the fifth book. I do have ideas for six and seven, so never say never! UNABASHED BRAGGING TAKE ME HOME (September 2007), chosen as a featured alternate by Doubleday, Literary Guild, and Rhapsody Book Clubs. HOME BY STARLIGHT, chosen as a featured alternate by Doubleday, Literary Guild, and Rhapsody Book Clubs. HOME AT LAST held a top 25 spot on Barnes & Noble's bestselling mass market romance list. SING ME HOME won a first place 2004 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE in the debut novel category from Reviewers International Organization (RIO). Books are nominated and judged by reviewers. SING ME HOME was named a 2004 Best Contemporary Novel with Romantic Elements award by RT Bookclub Magazine and finalled in the Holt Medallion's mainstream/ SING ME HOME was honored as a selection of Pat Rouse’s Romance Top Picks List for 2004! Pat Rouse is a well-respected critic of the genre, former reviewer, and now publicist. FOLLOW ME HOME was released to glowing reviews. It held a spot among Barnes and Noble’s bestselling romance novels. Romance Reviews Today called it “a powerful tale.” Romance Junkies said it was “emotionally charged...(a) book you won’t want to pass up.” Harriet Klausner praised it as “Intriguing... brings the message of hope...” ------ Feature Article from the Jan/ FEATURE ARTICLE: WHAT A MESS! Writing books—-the actual, literal writing of books—-is a messy business. Another writer (I may have mentioned her before, my good friend, Libby Sternberg) once said that after I'd been moaning about the tangle I'd created. It made me feel more relaxed about my process. Process. That sounds so professional, but, really, for me, it's just a lot of comments scribbled in margins, a lot of highlighted areas on my rough drafts (yes, that’d be drafts, plural), and indecipherable notes jotted on innumerable legal pads. And it occurs to me that my writing process is much like life. I don't want to scare you off by talking about God, but I happen to have one, and I’m bringing Him up today. Because it's struck me lately how often I get what I pray for. A lot of times, though, I don't recognize it. At least, not right away. For one thing, it never happens in one fell swoop, like, God: "Alrighty, then! Here's your million, sweetums. Enjoy." I mean, it was my idea to earn my living through self-employment, but I had in mind one very sizeable book advance--or, better yet, a blockbuster movie deal. What I didn’t have in mind was juggling 1.1 gazillion freelance endeavors to support myself while I write a book on spec. (Although I’m actually enjoying it.) Nor does the answer to my prayers ever look quite the way I'd envisioned... Me: "Um, scuse me? God? When I asked for a stretch of R&R, I forgot to mention I didn't want to spend it in a hospital." (No, no, no...don’t send cards and flowers. Well, go ahead and send flowers if you want. Except know that I haven’t been in the hospital; it was just an example. A good one. On why it’s not the best idea to ever ask for a long stretch of R&R.) When I write, ideas come and go, I double-back and revise, I cross-out and start over. I get afraid through the rough spots, and sometimes ask for help, and sometimes the answers surprise me. Yet, the process is often exhilarating, especially when it eventually--and sometimes only slowly--yields up a coherent and satisfying (hopefully satisfying) book. A book that rarely looks the way I envisioned it when I wrote down the first words. And isn’t that just like life? Life’s a... (and I’m copping these words from an author I recently read and who I can’t acknowledge, as I did Libby Sternberg, because my memory is just about as clear-eyed as my process)... Life’s never a straight line, it's a zig-zag progression... a messy task. But if you can put aside fear, weather the zig, and enjoy the zag... you'll eventually look back on a job well-done. |
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