Thanks to all who participated in my Favorite Things giveaway by commenting here at Southern Exposure.  I really loved reading what you had to say.  You certainly cheered up anybody who took the time to read about the things that make you happy.  Random.org selected five winners and those readers will receive an autographed novel or quilt pattern book of their choice.

Drumroll please. . .

Congratulations to Lavanya, who loves reading with her puppy at her side. Emily, who loves hearing her son’s ringtone. JoAnne who loves flourless chocolate cake. Judy S. who loves a snow day. And Audrey, who loves the first sighting of a hummingbird in the spring.

If your name wasn’t chosen, don’t despair.  There will be more contests coming soon, with books and other assorted goodies.  Lots of assorted goodies.

Meantime, I’ll be back tomorrow with another post.  While you’re waiting, think of your favorite library moment.  Will you share it in a comment tomorrow?

Winter Blizzards

I truly wasn’t expecting the storm that began last night.  First, the Washington DC area, which has somehow managed to dodge all east coast blizzards this year, is suddenly under siege.  We woke up to a white world, no telephone, television or internet.  Our neighborhood was lucky, because despite that, we still had power.  This means heat, and in the scheme of things, worth trading for the Today Show and the daily flurry of email from correspondents who can’t spell but still insist they can help me find a publisher, employer, college degree or sexual fulfillment.  While I am, of course, properly grateful for their concern, I enjoyed my brief vacation.  I hope my readers are all warm and snug and their sidewalks shoveled.

Summer Winds

Winter storms in January are no surprise, but I was surprised by the number of people who emailed or Facebooked after I blogged on Monday to see if they could write my publisher and express their support for the Shenandoah Album series and the publication of the sixth book, Summer Winds. 

Publishers make decisions based on many factors.  While I understand some of them, I don’t pretend to understand all.  But why not make one of them a number of reasonable requests for another Shenandoah Album novel?  So please, do go ahead and write if you would like to.  Short letters from you and your book-buying friends will let Mira know that the books mean a lot to you–as you’ve told me so many times–and you would like at least one more tying up the series.  Then we’ve all done what we can. 

Some Good News

Ahem, in the meantime?  I finished Treasure Beach this weekend!  It begins right here on February 8th and every Tuesday thereafter until Sunset Bridge is on your bookshelf, too.  I’m officially switching my blogging days from Monday and Thursday to Tuesday and Friday so Pat Sloan and I can coordinate the novellini and the block of the month quilt that will go along with it.

And, of course, there’s a new series in the planning stages.  Plus two new books going up on Amazon, B&N and other ebook stores, or rather I should say two out of print novels which will be reincarnated as ebooks.  I have always loved these books and am SO glad they’re about to have a brand new life.  (Much like the women whose stories they are.)  You’ll see covers soon, right here.

Planning to Write That Letter?

Now, the address.  Please write if you feel like it.  This is your chance to be heard.  And know that no matter what comes of this, I am so grateful you care this much.   The characters in the Shenandoah Album novels came alive for you.  That’s a wonderful gift for an author to receive. 

Mira Books
c/o Reader Service
P.O. Box 9049
Buffalo NY 14269-9049

And in Canada:

Mira Books
c/o Reader Service
P.O. Box 616
Fort Erie ON L2A 5X3

And a late breaking addition.  Here’s an email address you can send your comments to:  

customer_ecare@harlequin.ca

Although I have never started a novel I didn’t finish, I have a host of quilts I’ve begun that are still waiting for their final stitch.  I quilt because it’s fun.  Not because I need warm covers on my bed or bright patches of color on my walls.  The real reason I quilt is because it brings me pleasure to try new things.  Apparently it brings me less to finish them.

Writing brings me pleasure, too.  Rarely does a day go by when I forget that being paid to do something I love is a priceless treasure. I have, for the most part, been able to write what I want to.  I have written family sagas and romances, friendship novels and mysteries.  I’ve added paranormal elements, suspense, melodrama, humor.  I’ve darted here and there, tried this and that.  I’ve prided myself on the variety of my work.  Were I a student today, some concerned teacher might suggest I have mild ADD.  Since many of my most talented colleagues admit that they, too, daydream at the darndest times, I find this a blessing.

Sometimes, though, it is necessary to plan.  Usually I have to be dragged kicking and screaming into a session that begins: “Let’s talk about the future.”  Lately though, I’ve been faced with decisions that require thoughtful analysis.  I have two publishers.  They have other authors and sales figures.  And publishing is changing so quickly that anything written about it today is no longer relevant tomorrow.

While I have never  left a novel unfinished, I have not “completed” two series.  One is the Shenandoah Album series, set in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.  Each book has a relationship (a different relationship) to a traditional quilt, but the novels are about the lives of women in the area around Toms Brook. The first novel, Wedding Ring, was supposed to stand alone.  Instead that novel expanded to five books and spawned audio versions and quilt pattern books.  I planned a sixth, but my publisher planned otherwise.  At this time Summer Winds is still unwritten.

At the same time I was writing the Shenandoah Album series, I began a cozy mystery series we called Ministry is Murder, about a free-spirited minister’s wife in a small Ohio town who solves murders.  These books, too, were such fun to write.  I love Aggie and her family and the situations she gets herself into.  I love her harmless flirtation with Detective Roussos, her crazy real estate agent friend Lucy, her aging flower child mother Junie.   I wrote these just because I wanted to.  They are five books I will always be proud I authored, but for now Aggie is in limbo.  When my contract was completed, I didn’t suggest more.

I have submitted a proposal for a new series, because after carefully crafted letters explaining why NOW is the time to finish the Shenandoah Album series, the answer was “no.”  Not “no” as in, “never.”  But “no” as in “not now.”  And while that door may still be cracked, I’m afraid that “not now,” is the same “not now” we parents use when a wheedling child wants us to go outside and play, and we have no intention of leaving our nice warm house.

Still a day doesn’t go by when someone on my Facebook page or in an email asks when the next Shenandoah Album will be released.  Today I have no answer except “not now.”  But here’s what I can say.  I am still working on this, and publishing IS changing.  Who knows what the future will bring for my quilter friends in Toms Brook, or for Aggie and her family?  I haven’t deserted them.  I am just waiting to see what unfolds and exactly how.  Then I can decide.

In the meantime, please come along with me on the next ride.  We took a whirlwind trip to Happiness Key and it was great fun.  I’m not sure what the future will bring, but I can only guarantee I will write the best book, the best series I can, and I hope whenever you read it, you will think so, too.

I’ve always loved writing novellas.  I’ve written more than a few in my years as an author, most often in a collection as a holiday promotion from my publisher.  For someone who writes long books, novellas are an odd attraction.  Still, from the beginning, I found the format was a welcome break.  While our practice as authors is to “show not tell,” we can tweak that rule with a novella.  While my regular novels hover between 100,000 and 150,000 words and leave acres of room for story development, my novellas are more often in the 25,000 word format. If I have background information to work in, I can simply tell it up front.  I can use direct narrative and description.  Something different, in other words.  Something different is almost always fun.

This week I began my first “novellini.”  This is not a real word, at least I don’t think so, so please don’t look it up and lecture me in an email.  My very first editor once used this to describe a short, short novella she was editing, and the term stuck with me.  Now I’m working on my own novellini.  Not quite a short story, not a novella, either. 

I’m writing it for you.

Let me back up half a mile.  So there I was, having lunch with my friend, the quilt designer Pat Sloan.  We were lamenting the end of our Season of Grace Block of the Month promotion.  For those of you who don’t know, this was a large wall quilt pattern we offered for free on our websites, designed to be either an advent quilt or a Christmas wallhanging, depending on the whim of the participant. The pattern was based on a quilt in my novel Sister’s Choice.  Pat and I had fun with the design, and judging from the email and photos we received, so did our quilters.

Anyway, at lunch Pat and I began to talk about the possibility of doing another project together.  Only this time, she wisely suggested I get out of the quilt block biz and back into the writing biz.  Why didn’t I write a “story” to put on my blog to go with a quilt she would design.

Wow.  Friends are a wonderful thing to have, aren’t they?

Since I was finishing Sunset Bridge, book three of the Happiness Key trilogy, we decided both the story and the quilt should honor the series.  And fueled by Cobb salads, a new project was born.

Treasure Beach, my novellini, will debut here beginning in February and continue through until July, when Sunset Bridge arrives at your favorite bookseller.  The story is set between the end of Fortunate Harbor and the beginning of Sunset Bridge, and features all my Happiness Key characters.  I’m having such fun.  I get to be with my Florida friends again after I thought I’d said goodbye. 

Each Tuesday of those months I will “blog” a piece of the story right here.  All you have to do is log on to Southern Exposure and read along. Of course, there’s that fabulous wallhanging, too.  Pat will sell a kit for the whole quilt (be sure to grab one!)… then at the beginning of each month she will have directions for the free block of the month at her blog.

Those of you who want to use your own fabric can get the free pattern online then.  But I’ve seen a mock-up of the quilt, and it’s absolutely charming.  Pat perfectly captured the feel and theme of the books.  I can’t wait to make one myself from her kit.

What can you do in the meantime?  Well, if you’re not current with Happiness Key and Fortunate Harbor, buy them and read, read, read.  The story will make more sense to you if you do, and then you’ll be ready for Sunset Bridge, the final installment.  Of course you don’t have to make the quilt, but why wouldn’t you?  Pat’s directions will be easy to follow, even for a beginner, and it’s really going to be a winner. 

So come share in the excitement.  Novellinis and wallhangings.  Not an Italian pasta dish, but something delicious of a different sort.  Where else but here?

PS:  Don’t forget to comment on my last blog for a chance to win an autographed book in my latest giveaway.  Deadline to comment is Monday, January 24th.

Right about now, many of you are dreaming about spring.  What a winter.  Blizzards, mudslides, floods.  And it’s still only January.

But let’s not talk about climate change.  In fact it could be dangerous for me to mention.  After all the Attorney General of my own fair state, a global warming skeptic, is currently trying to prosecute a University of Virginia professor for fraud because of grants he received to study that oh-so-controversial subject.  Watch out academia!  Nothing is safe here.  Studying, say, the mating call of the double-breasted cormorant could be next on Mr. Cuccinelli’s hit list.  Mating.  Double-breasted.  It could happen.  After all, this is the man who has redesigned the state seal to cover the naked breasts of the Roman goddess Virtus with armor.   

Instead, let’s discuss what to do about the wintry months ahead.  Today we’re going to talk about our favorite things.  And when I say “we?”  Listen up.  That means YOU, too.  In fact, I’m going to make sharing your favorite things worth your while, because I hope one of them might be an autographed novel from Emilie Richards.  Details at the end of the blog.

Meantime, here are a few things that make me smile. Remember this piece of advice: “When the snow falls, when the ice forms, when I need to thaw, I simply remember my favorite things, and then I don’t feel so. . . blah.” (Ouch, so sorry.)

A Few Of My Favorite Recipes:

• Cuban style black beans.  I have better results with 2 cups less water than this recipe calls for.  Practice making and eating before reading Sunset Bridge.
• Oatmeal bread.  A variation?  Three packages of Quaker Hearty Medleys cereal and enough boiling water to make 2 cups, in place of oatmeal. No honey needed.
• Cheese grits.  What more can I say?  If you don’t “get” grits, can’t explain.  But this recipe’s fabulous and simpler than many.
• Otsu.  I make this with regular soy sauce and rice vinegar. Can’t describe how wonderful this vegetarian dish is.

A Few Of My Favorite CDs:

• Somewhere Along the Road by Cathie Ryan.  Really anything sung by Cathie Ryan.
• Songbird by Eva Cassidy.  Again, anything sung by Eva, but “Fields of Gold” on this album is one of my all-time favorites.
• Part II by Brad Paisley.  Okay, not a huge country music fan, but when my husband and I heard “Two People Fell in Love” on our radio on a road trip, we pulled off at the next K-mart and bought the CD. His recent CDs are also great.  So okay, they’re mushy, who cares?

A Few of My Favorite Websites:

• Pat Sloan’s Quilters Home.  If you’re a quilter, Pat, an energetic dynamo, has something for you.  She’ll keep you busy in a blizzard.
• The Secret Life of Diane Chamberlain.   My good friend, plus an automatic buy for me when a new book is out.  Curl up with a DC novel or ebook.
• Harney and Sons, Master Tea Blenders.   The perfect tea for a chilly afternoon.
• Terrain.  Just one of many “wish list” websites to browse.  I just bought their chalkboard labels.
• Uncommon Goods.  Lots of tastefully fun things when you need a laugh or a splurge.  Who does NOT need an emergency clown nose?
• Peak Definition Productions and Two Ring Studio, and not just because a son is one of the owners.  Because the photographs are just so beautiful.

So now it’s YOUR turn.  What’ s just one of your favorite things, something specific that might make the rest of us smile or sigh contentedly?  Tell us by clicking on “comment” at the top of this post, and you’ll be entered in a giveaway for one of five autographed novels to help wile away your winter evenings.   Obvious spammers will be eliminated at my discretion, of course, and only one chance per commenter, although you can add as many favorites as you like.  No links required.  You have a week.   Random.org will make the selections.

Come on, make somebody happy today.  Spring’s on the way, I promise.

I’ve begun a new tradition.  When I wake up in the morning, I turn on the light and read for a little while.  It’s a much more civilized way to face the day than to jump out of bed running, which was my old tradition.  Lying in bed a few extra minutes has had a welcome side effect, too.  Since my husband often rises a little earlier than I do, he’s taken to bringing me coffee.  Who says men can’t be trained?  First I extolled the virtues of every man we know who does this.  Then I compared it to the joys of another activity often enjoyed in the same room. 

He got it.

I’ve begun another new tradition, as well.  I’m trying to read my backlog of magazines and recycle them.  This morning the traditions meshed.  I picked up my latest Better Homes and Gardens, and turned straight to an article about reducing stress.   Now, I don’t know about you, but the moment someone tells me I should reduce stress, I am more stressed.  It’s another job to do.  Feed the Dog.  Walk the Dog and Keep Him From Eating Bad Things.  Grocery Shop.  Write a Chapter.  Reduce Stress.

Right.

By the time I finished the article, I was too stressed to remember most of it.  But one thing stuck with me.  Women, it turns out, are far more likely than men to answer their email immediately.  After all, we live to please. Since that’s a stressor, the advice was to turn off the email alerts on the computer.  Then we can answer email when we have time and inclination.

Now why didn’t I think of that.   Why didn’t you?

Clearly the path to reducing stress is to take control.  Turn off the email alerts.  Stay in bed a little longer in the morning or go to bed a little earlier.  Take a walk midday–without the poop-eating beagle if possible.   Think about our own needs and put them forward, at least for a little while.

Later, while thinking about this as I loaded so many grocery bags into my car that the stranger beside me announced he was glad he hadn’t had to pay my bill, I realized I was heaving the bags like a stevedore with a quota.  Whose deadline was I on, anyway?  Maybe my New Year’s Resolution should be to slow down, to take note of the many times when I rush, tense, worry, and just stop in my tracks.

Of course New Year’s Resolutions are tyrannical stressors, so that was a bad idea.  But maybe paying attention will be today’s resolution.  I’ll note how many things I try to speed through and maybe walk slower.  Note how many times I tense up and maybe relax, instead.  Go home, put away food that needs refrigeration and leave the rest on the counter to put away slowly.  Maybe over wine tonight while my husband and I chat about our days.

Ahhh. . .

Dealing with stress?  Dealing is stressful.  So no dealing.  But noting stress whenever it occurs to us?  When it feels right to pay attention?  When we think we might possibly be able to change something tiny?  Maybe that’s okay.

As for me?  I’m going to turn off my email alerts for good, and when I feel like it, I’m going to put away the canned goods.  Everything else?  We’ll see.  

How about you?

Last month I submitted a proposal for a new series to my editor and agent, both of whom liked it.  A lot.  How lovely.

Whether an editor and agent like a book is not the first hurdle an author experiences. To begin we must come up with the germ of an idea, then expand it into something resembling a novel.  And if that idea is the catalyst for at least several books, the series idea must be explained, as well.  A proposal, by the way, can be different things, depending on where a writer is in a career.  In my case, I submit a synopsis of my story idea, essentially what I might say if you and I were sitting down together and I asked, “Hey, wanna hear an idea I had for a new book?”  Of course, it’s better written and better thought out (hopefully), with fewer “umms,” and “what was I sayings?”   But you get the gist.  Kind of the “once upon a time” of the publishing process.

The powers-that-be have yet to make a decision, but they’ve had a lot of questions.  That’s part of the process, too, and the hurdles are always mighty and not evenly placed along the field.    I jumped, they measured how high and took notes, and now they’ll talk among themselves.  If you have no tolerance for ambiguity, writing may not be the best career for you.

While I’m patiently waiting for my future and livelihood to be decided, I traveled to Florida for a week, as close to Happiness Key as I could get.  I walked on the beach, and sat in the sunshine, and ate vats of seafood.  I also woke up one morning with a brand new idea.  A very different one, too.

I always think best on vacation.  If you don’t “push the river” it flows faster, clearer, and sings a little song as it meanders along.   Demand that I come up with an idea and I will probably pull one out of the ether, but truthfully it won’t be very good.  Make no demands, in fact remind me I already have an idea being considered, and watch out world.  There’s a creative stampede.

Ideas are never a bad thing.  Choosing among them?  Ah, that’s the difficult part.  In this case after some serious thought, I’ve decided to stay with Idea Number One.  The concept is better thought out, has limitless potential if I can pull it off, and is just different enough to be a challenge.  But isn’t it nice to have another idea in my pocket?    It’s the road not taken–but not so far back that I can’t retrace my steps if I need to.

I like the thought of  Idea Number Two waiting for me, growing, changing, and perhaps one day asserting itself and saying “Hey, now it’s my turn.”   Who knows, maybe it will be, too.

On Monday I explained the reasons I was destined not to become a writer.  Other talents and activities.  Strange educational decisions.  No scholarly examinations of the written word.  And while all of those were factors, I saved the most important.  Like so many of us, particularly those of us of the female persuasion, I was told that nobody makes a living in the arts.  Unless we wanted to teach (fill in the blank here), then there was no point in pursuing an education in that field.  So while I had always loved writing fiction, on the rare occasions I was given the opportunity, I knew writing was not an avenue to follow. 

Forget that the short story class I took just for fun was the single most exciting class I’d ever taken.  Forget that later, as a therapist, the sheer joy of writing up my case notes should have been carefully explored.  Forget that I put myself to sleep at night with wild, exotic tales of other times and other people.  Nobody makes a living. . .

I was in my early thirties before I was mature enough to question why I believed something so silly.  I had fallen back on my years of piano, and was teaching twenty lively children while taking care of my own menagerie of three-going-on-four.  One of the moms told me that she’d submitted the first three chapters of a mystery novel and had gotten a nod to send the rest.

She had submitted chapters and someone in New York City was interested?  That happened?  I was as excited as she was, for slightly different reasons. 

Months later my husband came home and mentioned he’d met a woman who made her living as a writer.  Okay, she wrote fantasy game scenarios, but she wrote!  They paid her.  And suddenly, all the red lights I’d patiently accepted turned green, and I was speeding toward a new destination.

Sometimes change is that simple and that complicated.  I was finally old enough to question the wisdom of words spoken to me years before. Too,  I was finally old enough to say, so who cares?  I had nothing to lose.  What were a few rejections or even a thousand compared to the joy, the bliss, of sitting down at a computer and putting words, MY words, on the screen?  By then we were living in a strange new city (New Orleans is indeed stranger than most), and I had a new baby to care for.  But all that suddenly seemed like nothing.  I could find time.  I could find a way.  I could write.  And I did.

I started, as I’d learned to in graduate school, with research.  I read every relevant how-to book in my local library.  Short stories?  I wrote them.  Confessions?  Ditto.  A children’s story sold.  The $25 dollars I received in payment was my validation.  I could write.  Someone besides my husband thought so. 

I did the math.  At that rate I would need to publish at least a thousand stories per child in the family to get them to college.  And by then, I wasn’t going to stop writing, even if I had to move the family to the proverbial garret.  So it was on to novels.  At almost the moment I realized this, Kathryn Falk of Romantic Times Magazine came out with How to Write A Romance And Get It Published.  For me.  I was sure of it.  After all, that irrelevant education I mentioned before?  I’d studied what?  People, relationships, marriages, families, psychology, sociology, the American psyche, American culture.  Was there ever a better background for what I really wanted to do?

I wrote a romance, then another.  I found an agent (too good a story to tell quickly).  They sent the book off, and the next thing I knew an editor in New York was calling to tell me how delighted she was to have bought my manuscript. The skies expanded.  Angels sang.  I still remember exactly where I was standing when the call came.

Sixty-something novels later, the angels still sing, and I am so grateful that I finally questioned the axioms of good-hearted people determined to make sure I had bread on my table and a roof over my head.  But what did I learn when I finally realized I could and should write for a living?  I learned that we as parents, as teachers, as adults, should never question or tamper with the dreams of a child.  I told my own children that of course, they should pursue anything they loved.  That, of course, they could become astronauts or composers or Arctic explorers.  Even more?  I believed it.

I still do. Why wouldn’t I?

Some months ago I asked my Facebook fans to suggest ideas for future blogs.  What did they want to know that I could possibly tell them?  I received wonderful ideas, and today I’m using one from Denise who said: “I’m interested in how you started out, all the details of how you became a writer.”  Since it’s not that often we’re asked to recount our personal history, I’m going to jump right in and savor the opportunity.

First of all, forget “I always knew I wanted to write.”  Also toss out “I prepared myself from the moment I read my first Bobbsey Twins thriller.”  And while you’re tossing, get rid of, “I majored in Russian literature with an emphasis on the pre-prison fiction of Dostoevsky.”  I didn’t.  I showed promise as a pianist early in life, and since that happened to run in my mother’s family, I was immediately destined to become, if not a concert pianist, a teacher–or later, after my first horrifying music education class, a music therapist.  I accompanied choirs all through secondary school, performed in a show choir called Baker’s Dozen, and won a small piano scholarship to Florida State University, with its truly excellent school of music.  My path was set.

Only, it wasn’t.  Because while I did well in classes, I saw the musical score on the wall right away.  I was surrounded by gifted students who really loved every part of what we were studying.  They practiced their instruments for hours.  They adored performing.  I could sightread like a whiz and accompany with enthusiasm, but those hours in a practice room bored me silly.  If I could play it once, why bother playing it twice, not to mention a million times?

In my sophomore year the truth caught up with me, as it too often does.  In order to continue, I really had to practice, and I really had to forget all those other classes outside the School of Music that I would never have time to take.  Classes in history, psychology, sociology, humanities. . .  I changed majors without looking back, and settled on that most saleable of degrees, American Studies.  Later, as a young mom fascinated by families, children, and marriage, I went on to get my Masters degree in yet another “you majored in what?” degree in Family Development.

Have you noticed I have yet to mention “English, writing, composition, literature?”  No mention, no background.  My high school English and composition classes were so excellent that I tested out of the college versions and filled my communication credits by taking French, a language for which I had no aptitude.  Plus, to add insult to injury, the boyfriend who spoke it so beautifully disappeared into the land of past loves and never knew I was striving to understand him better.  I took, in total, one American literature class and one class on writing the short story, just for fun.  I missed that clue.

Clearly, I was not training to write fiction.  Only, as it turned out, I was.    And that’s part two of this story, to be completed on Thursday.  But while I’m here right now?  Exactly what did I learn from this part of my saga?  Well, actually quite a lot.  First of all, that just because you do something well, you don’t have to do it forever, and you don’t have to do it professionally.  Second, that we, as a society, are too quick to slot our young people into jobs/professions they may never enjoy.  And third, that becoming a writer doesn’t hinge on reading and understanding the complete works of James Joyce, nor does it demand an academic understanding of the difference between a dangling participle and participial phrases serving as absolute clauses.  

Becoming a writer is all about falling in love.