Aspiring Novelists

Hello Everyone, Greetings from West Virginia.  I hope you had a wonderful Christmas.  Mine was exceptional.  The fam feasted on ham and turkey, we watched a couple of movies and mostly took the time to relax and enjoy each other.   It seems the older I get the more I treasure our get-togethers.  Mainly because there are not enough of them. The eldest of my three sons is off at college and he stays busy with his fraternity.  My middle son is a Senior in high school.  When he's not with his girlfriend he's with his buddies.  My ten year old stays busy with school and sports, and hubby works long hours.  Unfortunately, their hectic schedules leave little time to hang out.  What's really sad is I did not realize how rare family time was until we were all together.  Since the New Year is only a few days away I decided to li...

For those of you who haven't heard, this is is the first day of the Deja Vu Blogfest hosted by D.L. Hammons , Katie Mills , Lydia Kang , and Nicole Ducleroir .  If you're interested in learning more, stop by any of the above blogs for further details.  Since I try to focus on topics about writing, I decided to pull the post titled: What or Who Inspired You to write? dated January 2010.  I only received two comments on it so I decided to give it another try.  Looking forward to reading all those great posts out there.  Enjoy.   What or Who Inspired You to Write? While visiting Nathan Bransford's blog, I ran across a post where he asked, "How did writer's come up with the idea for their current work in progress (WIP)?" I wish there was some great story that led me to write my novel, that I had some sort of  "Eureka moment," but alas, this was not the case. Only after years of brainstorming di...

As many of you know,  in October, Literary agent, Becca Stumpf expressed interest in my manuscript and requested a partial.  Since then, I have been working diligently with a local editor to polish my book before submitting it to her.   In fact, I was just a few weeks away from a final draft.  That is, until last Saturday (12-10-11).  After brewing a cup of Go-Go juice, I headed to my office to get some writing done.  However, when I went to turn on my computer, it would not boot up.  I just purchased the device three months ago, so you can imagine my surprise.  As a person who tries to see the cup half-full instead of the converse, I was thankful for the external hard drive that backed up all my work each night. I called Samsung and explained the situation.  The customer service representative instructed me to complete another back up.  Then he walked me through ...

Hello everyone, it's time to write another post for The Insecure Writer's Support Group, hosted by the gracious Alex J. Cavanaugh ,   I hoped to publish this earlier today, but as usual, my hectic schedule interfered.  Best laid plans... Although Andy Williams describes Christmas as "The most wonderful time of the year," there are occasions when  I forget the reason this is true.   Long  lines filled with frustrated customers suck the joy out of shopping.  In addition, I feel overwhelmed by the whole gift giving process. It's difficult to find gifts that everyone will like.  All the hoopla during the holiday is draining. Today, while standing in the mall and stressing over who to buy what for, my attention was drawn to the sound of carolers at the lower level.  Without haste, I made my way to the music, and as I st...