Monday, October 31, 2011

Happy All Hallow's Eve to you!

If you've read Storyteller, then you know tonight is the night Lily makes it to the True World.  Since epublishing the book in July, there's been more than 100 books downloaded, but only one review.  I hope some of you may have taken a look and could find the time to leave a quick note on Smashwords or a Tweet on Twitter about it.

Exciting new developments, the sequel will be ready to upload soon.  Check out the beautiful new cover on this blog.  If the cliffhanger ending of Book I annoyed you, I hope to remedy it soon, so hang in there with me!  This ride isn't over yet!

Happy Halloween!

book2-cover

book2-cover

Book II is coming soon!

Friday, October 7, 2011

I know this much is true~

I’m a bad blogger. I know this. You may know this too, but you forgive me because you love me, right?  I know I let laundry and dance lessons and work get in the way of my writing. These things are good and necessary and they have their place, but I also know my time in this world is limited and I have some things I just need to say. Well, a lot of things actually. They may not be important things, but they’re mine.

Recent events bring these lessons back to me with startling clarity.  Sometimes I get lazy and I forget, but I never fail to be reminded in the most jarring ways.  Unless you’re very young, I’m sure you have heard the reminders too. The universe is always knocking at the door, telling us, don’t wait. Never wait.

Don’t wait to write or paint or play or whatever it is you love. Don’t set those things aside for a rainy day. Do them now and enjoy every moment. Encourage others to do the same. That is the best way to show your love for this world and everyone in it.

My favorite book about writing is by Brenda Ueland "If you want to Write" written in 1938. What she wrote was true then and it’s still true now:

"The creative power and imagination is in everyone and so is the need to express it, i.e., to share it with others. But what happens to it? It is very tender and sensitive, and it is usually drummed out of people early in life by criticism (so called "helpful criticism" is often the worst kind)...This joyful, imaginative, impassioned energy dies out of us very young. Why? Because we do not see that it is great and important. Because we let dry obligation take its place. Because we don't respect it in ourselves and keep it alive by using it. And because we don't keep it alive in others by listening to them. For when you come to think of it, the only way to love a person is not, as the stereotyped Christian notion is, to coddle them and bring them soup when they are sick, but by listening to them and seeing and believing in the god, in the poet, in them. For by doing this, you keep the god and the poet alive and make it flourish."

So even though I’m a bad blogger, beset by my dry obligations, know that I believe in the god in you…this much is true.