MOOD STATUS: "Relieved". Made great plotting progress Friday!
RECENT IPOD DOWNLOAD: "I'm Your Boogieman" by KC & the Sunshine Band
As stated above in my "mood status", I did make some awesome progress with my plotting on Friday. (Sorry if I wasn't around much then. I was under major pressure to finish)
WHY? Because some of my critique partners have decided to join in for a little BOOK IN THREE MONTH CHALLENGE.(Like the name suggests, you write a book in 3 months) So I was really sweating my plotting because we all agreed we would start Feb 1st. TOMORROW!
Sheesh, whose idea was that anyway? Oh wait. MINE!
But you see it all has to do with my New Year's Goals. And one of those goals was to finish writing two books this year.
I feel I'm up for the challenge now. I've calculated it out and (since I don't write on the weekends) I have to write a daily word count of 833 words to make my 50K goal book.
Actually, when you break it down to word count like that, it seems like a walk in the park. :)
And I figured if I'm sticking to my P90X regime for 3 months straight, I can easily stick to a writing schedule like that, too. So if all goes well with both, I'll have a toned body AND a manuscript before RWA Nationals.
Go, me!
How are you doing with your New Year's goals/resolutions? Have you stuck to them so far? Have you made any changes to achieve your goals?
Congrats, Carol!! Please shoot me an email and let me know where you would like the book sent and I'll have Patti send it out to you ASAP. :)
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Whew! I'm exhausted now. No, actually I can't be exhausted. I still have to do my "legs and back" P90x workout to do and then the rest of the day I'm spending...
Plotting.Ugh.
I'm having a terrible time of it. I know my heroine pretty well, but my hero is in sad shape. So I need to spend some time figuring out what his "issues" are.
Hey, all! Happy Monday! I'm SO excited to be hosting such a special author on my blog today!
In case you didn't know, the one and only Patti Lacy is the author of An Irishwoman's Tale and What the Bayou Saw, both Foreword Magazine Book of the Year finalists. (In addition to being such a talented writer, Patti just so happens to be THE nicest woman on the Internet)
Her third novel The Rhythm of Secrets was just released and to some wonderful reviews. So I asked Patti to stop by and talk about her new book, which she will be giving away to some lucky commenter here! :)
So please welcome Patti! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hey, Jennifer!
Thanks for letting me plop down on your comfortable couch and share the story of what inspiredThe Rhythm of Secrets, my third literary baby.
On the morning of July 8, 2007, I opened the Chicago Tribune. Coffee (yeah, I’m an addict) sloshed on the table…and I didn’t care. Gail Rosenblum’s article about Sandy Sperrazza, a mother giving up…and then reclaiming…her baby grabbed my heart and wouldn’t let go. The idea for my third novel rustled right there in the pulpy pages, begging to be SET FREE!
Stories of two Vietnam veterans, a Moody Bible Institute student, and a brave pastor’s wife collided with the fictional character of Sandy. We time-traveled to my beloved N’Awlins during the 1940s, headed north when things exploded down South, and jetted to Thailand for a tumultuous climax. It was SO MUCH FUN!
How long did it take you to write this book? I received my box of author’s books on Christmas Eve of 2010. We are talking OVER THREE years for the birthing of perhaps my most unruly child. During that time, I was working on two other books, but still…
TALK ABOUT A PAIN!!
And now I’m “pregnant” with a fifth baby. Book four is in foster care right now with Bethany House editor Sarah Long. Translation? Substantive edits are in Sarah’s hands.
In the meantime, Below Normal and Beyond Normal are itching to get on paper. Here’s my hook: Evelyn Sechrist, a bereaved widow, and Jamie Sue Symmes, a mentally handicapped grocery bagger, fight their families and city hall to open a soup kitchen on the poor side of Normal, Illinois (by the way, my hometown!)
I hope y’all drop by my website, http://www.pattilacy.com/, from time to time. There are book reviews and a blog. If you’re an art lover, don’t miss my ART BITES, posted five days a week at on my main Facebook page.
Thanks, Jennifer, for letting me hang here on Monday, Monday! Blessings, all!!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ See? I told you she's the nicest woman on the Internet!
Here's a little about her book: The Rhythm of Secrets Since 1955, Sheila Franklin, a talented musician, has perfectly performed the role of devout pastor’s wife, locking away her past as Sheba Alexander and Sylvia Allen. Her carefully constructed façade crumbles with a single phone call from a young Marine named Samuel, the illegitimate son she secretly put up for adoption. Samuel begs Sheila to use her government contacts to get his fiancé, Mali, a Thai prostitute, into America. A dangerous mixture of love and guilt spurs her to help her only child even though it devastates her husband Edward and exposes her questionable past. After a quarrel with Edward, Sheila and Samuel board a C-130 for Thailand and then search Bangkok’s steamy streets for a Madonna-faced prostitute. The two whisk Mali from a brothel but are seized by a warlord who considers Mali his “number one girl.” In a teak “ghost house,” Sheila discovers God’s grace and gains the freedom she needs to find her own identity—Sheila, Sylvia, and Sheba. A framed story, this novel has roots in the bohemian 1940s New Orleans French Quarter and spans three decades, including the turbulent Vietnam era.
And here's the trailer:
Awesome, Patti!
CONTEST: Patti is generously giving away a copy of her book, The Rhythm of Secretsto some lucky ducky commenter!
The contest will run NOW until Thursday 11:59PM (EST). I will announce the winner this Friday, January 28th.
MOOD STATUS: "Hungry". Been dieting lately. Ugh. DAYS LEFT ON P90X: 78. Ugh.
For the longest time I was the only reader in the family. My mom doesn't read. My hubby won't read. My kiddo couldn't read.
Depressing, isn't it?
But then my daughter got a fabulous teacher in 2nd grade and now she has become a voracious reader. (Go, kiddo!) In fact, they read different genres each month in her school and she has come to the realization that she loves comedies the best. Huh. Just like her mama. :)
Kiddo loves Junie B. Jones and Judy Moody but her most recent favorite series that she cannot get enough of is the Dear Dumb Diary series.
Now my hubby was a harder nut to crack. He always felt "he didn't have time to read". **rolling eyes here** I wanted to point out all the opportunities he did in fact have, but being the good wife that I am, I bit my tongue instead. Then, lo and behold, on Christmas he received not one, but TWO books. I thought to myself, "Oh, brother. This should be good." But he surprised me and actually started reading one of them when we came home from Vermont. He reads when I read now. (I know, isn't that cute?)
This is what he's so actively reading right now: The Wave by Susan Casey. Being a surfer and all, he's LOVING this book about rogue waves and whatnot.
So there you have it. We all are reading now. :)
Now if I could just work on my mom...
What about you? Do you come from a family of readers? Do you try to encourage it? How many readers are there in YOUR family?
IN THE NEWS: Inmate sues the prison officials over rat bitten on his penis. (I'm NOT making this up) Read moreHERE. CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS STILL UP: Red Bells hanging on the lights over the garage. (Hopefully they'll come down today)
Well, since it's Martin Luther King Day--and the hubby and kiddo are home staring me down, I'll make this blog post brief. Briefer than usual...
I just wanted to let you all know that I broke a record (my own record, that is) for the amount of books read in a year. Last year, I read....57 books.
Cue the oooooh aaaaaahs... Yes, I managed to read a lot. (For me.) Yet, strangely enough, I have NOT picked up a fiction book yet and we're already half way through January. So what am I reading now? The very first book I decided to christen the new year with is: "We Are Not Alone: The Writer's Guide to Social Media" by Kristen Lamb. I'm only about 2/3 through it but already I'm wondering where this book has been all my life and more importantly when I first entered onto the Internet. Interesting stuff!
I still hope to break my 57 book record this year despite my slow start. After all, you know what Stephen King says: "If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time - or the tools - to write. Simple as that."
Simple as that. Do you know how many books you read last year? Do you want to read a certain amount this year?
A Little Holiday Extra: I don't know why this video cracks me up, but I never get tired of watching it.
Hey, all! Fellow Avalon Books author Joselyn Vaughn is on a blog tour for her new book COURTING SPARKS and my blog is one of her stops! So please give her a hardy commenting welcome and you'll be entered in to win one of her books! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Naming your characters is like naming your children.
You want them to have just the right name. Sometimes it just comes to you and sometimes you read baby names books until your eyes cross.
With character names, often I will settle on one and it will stick. I can’t change it even if I really don’t like it. Unless I find the name that works much better. So I do the find and replace in MS Word and get burned because I didn’t tell it to change whole words only. I’ve only done that a handful of times. Oy.
One of my favorite tools for researching names is the Baby Names Wizard. There is a webpage and a book. On the webpage, it shows a graph of how popular a name has been throughout the last hundred or so years. For example, Joselyn was at its most popular in 2006 and didn’t even make the list when I was born. Check it out. Find out how creative your parents were.
The book is also great, especially for writers. With each name, it provides a graph, a brief history of the name in pop culture, and sibling names. It mentioned that my daughter’s name was referenced in a song about a girl getting whatever she wants and another one about a transvestite. (No wonder it took some convincing to get my husband to like it.)
The sibling names are boy and girl names that would fit in a family. So if you have a son named John, you might like Mark for a brother. In the back of the book, there are a bunch of lists, sorting the names by region, culture, heritage, sound, style, unpopularity, etc.
When trying to pick names for our youngest, we paged and paged through this book. We found a girl’s name easily. (It was my second choice for our first daughter when I didn’t think I could sell my first choice.) Boy’s names on the other hand were awful. We couldn’t find the one that was just right. Part of the problem was that I had pulled character names from my baby names list. For a while, we debated about changing Noah’s name in Courting Sparks because we both liked it--rare occurrence for a boy’s name. Our searching mostly consisted of me reading our names I liked and him repeating them in a way that made it obvious he didn’t. Sigh. About a week before the baby was born, we found one that was acceptable to both of us. Then we had a girl. Figures. But now I have a great name for just the right character.
I’ve found it’s much easier to come up character names. I don’t have to run them by my husband first. :) How do you come up with character names?
COURTING SPARKS Dusting off the ashes of a failed relationship, Daphne Morrow decides she is ready to date again. But when her scorched prom photos are discovered to be the ignition point for a small forest blaze, marking her as the prime suspect for the arson, she finds they’re not the only part of her past sparking interest. After a friend’s wedding provides a romantic interlude with her longtime friend Noah Banks, Daphne tries to explain away her attraction to him: the atmosphere of the wedding, his resemblance to her ex, his heroic efforts as a volunteer firefighter. Still, their desire just won’t sputter out. When the arsonist strikes much closer to home, Daphne fears she must risk Noah’s friendship to find the culprit and clear her name. She’ll know their love is real if his interest isn’t put out by her need to uncover the truth.
To Learn More About Joselyn Vaughn and her books: - Blog - - Facebook -
CONTEST: Joselyn will be giving away copies of CEOs Don't Cry and Courting Sparks during her blog tour. The more you comment here and her other blog posts throughout the tour, the better the chance to win!! For Joseyln's blog tour schedule, click HERE.
I'm over at The PC blog today talking about my mom's NOT so secret "secret".
Stop by if get a chance!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ **Also...this Friday I will be hosting fellow Avalon author, Joselyn Vaughn. She'll be doing a guest blog post for me and hosting a giveaway for her latest Avalon romanceCOURTING SPARKS.
MOOD STATUS: "Upbeat".I love to make a list of goals! FAVORITE CHRISTMAS GIFT: The Griddler by Cuisinart.
Hi, all! Yes, I'm still alive. I just took advantage of a nice loooooong holiday break complete with skiing, eating, sleeping, baking and FUN.
I'm spoiled like that. :)
Anyhew, I missed all of you! Truly! And I hope you all had the very best Christmas and New Years. And speaking of New Years *cough cough* ... it's that time again. (Beyond remembering to change the year on all the new checks you'll be writing)
It's that time of year of resolutions and/or GOALS.
I'm not one to really hop on the bandwagon of New Years resolutions but I do believe it is an inspiring time to take stock of the past year and decide if you want to stay the course or make a change--personally and professionally.
I've been doing some hard thinking (scary, I know) but I've decided to do make a few changes in my own life this year. Want to know what they are? Oh, good! Because I was going to tell you anyway! And here goes...
PERSONAL GOAL:
Last year I made the decision to start running, drink more water and eat more organically.I'm glad I did because I more or less was success the whole year with that.
This year I getting a little nutty--er, aggressive. The hubby and I are doing the P90X workout regime starting...today! I admit, I'm a little nervous about this thing, but the hubby said if I stuck to it and did the whole 90 days he would offer an incentive--meaning new curtains in my dining room and new counters in my kitchen.
That was all I needed to hear. Bring it on!
PROFESSIONAL GOAL:
Last year I had a vague goal of trying to become more disciplined in my writing. Um, yeah. Unfortunately, vague goals are just that. VAGUE. So there was little accomplished on that front. Although I give myself an A for effort. :)
This year I'm getting more aggressive. (For me, anyway) Some of my critique partners and I will be doing a Book In 3 Months writing challenge in Feb. for a new story I'm plotting. My other goal is finish my manuscript Kissing Kendall. Both books I plan to have done and submitted by the end of the year.
See? A concrete goal. MUCH better.
Woo-hoo! I'm excited for this year already! How about you?
Have you mapped out any goals for yourself--personally or professionally? Do you like to make goals for the new year?
(PS, what was your favorite Christmas gift you received?)
USA Today bestselling and award-winning sweet romance author for Montlake Romance, and Entangled Publishing.
Loves the Red Sox and has been on a serious exercise kick. But don't hold those last two against her. :)
MOOD STATUS: "Relieved". Made great plotting progress Friday!
