I don’t like perpetual complainers. I don’t understand people who always find something to complain about. I don’t get it. Why go through life looking for the negative stuff? How depressing. How much nicer it is to see the silver lining even in the darkest places. It’s not always easy to see the positive side of things, I get that, but there is always something to be thankful for. The truth is, most of us have some challenges in our lives to deal with. But, we don’t have to harp on them. We all have good things in our lives as well. (more…)
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So I’ve been spending a LOT of time lately learning how to market my book. For those of you who are not writers, let me just say that when you write “the end,” you’re only about a third of the way done with that story. Next comes rounds of editing and proofreading to get it exactly right and then comes the selling part. This is the hardest, yet most important part. After all, what good is a really good book with an amazing cover if nobody knows how to get their hands on it? 
It’s finally here – almost! Launch day for my very first full-length novel On Common Ground. Some of you might be sick of seeing the cover so I won’t be posting that again, but I will be providing some helpful links for those of you who haven’t yet pre-ordered your copy. You’ve still got 2 days to pre-order. Launch day is Wednesday – 2 days from now – so go. Go now.
I know a lot of folks like to read. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say, there are a lot of folks who LOVE to read. I’m one of those folks. Most writers probably are. Everyone has their favorite authors, books, series, genres, etc. Me? I like to read lots of stuff. The only things I don’t read are science fiction, horror, and books that “preach” at me about anything. 
About a month ago I blogged about the importance of a good title, in relation to articles and books. A lot of that post was poking fun at embarrassing headlines from newspapers, but the point got made – how something is titled is important. Because I’m on the brink of publishing my first novel, I’m at the point where I need to start making some very important decisions about not only titles, but the items that will make or break someone’s decision to buy my book. The items that create a good first impression. The things that will make my book stand out from the rest on an already crowded shelf. 
I’ve noticed lately a strange phenomenon when I watch TV. There are very few blondes in any of the shows I watch on a regular basis. This led to a more extensive investigation on my part. I started randomly watching shows I’ve never watched before just to see what the main characters look like. The phenomenon continued. Hardly any blondes. 
I don’t know where the time goes every day, but it seems like every time I look at the clock an hour or six have gone by and I’m still on my feet doing this or that. Now I didn’t think running an inn was going to be a walk in the park, but neither did I expect that there’d be more days than not that I rarely have a chance to actually sit down. I even have help now and it still seems like I’m on my feet all day long. Always something to do.
I’ve decided that from now until the end of the year, I’m going to try to take a few minutes every single day to simply sit. Sitting has great benefits (in my opinion). A forced slowing of movement accompanied by some deep breaths to purge the hurry out of my system. I may even close my eyes and just listen to, feel, smell my surroundings. A new perspective for a few minutes.
