It's been a bit of a crazy weekend. We took Thing 1, aka our oldest son, off to University.

 

Up until Friday, I was scurrying around getting things packed, making sure he has what he needed, working, and writing. Then came the trip home yesterday. Long and quiet. Exhaustion had taken over. In need of a distraction, I read all the way home, Rachel Brimble's A Man Like Him. (Review to come soon!)

 

Today I'm cleaning and getting the other kids ready for school. Trying to not be a smothering mom to my 18 year old who just wants to be left alone to check out his new world. At least he has a roommate who is also athletic and has a great sense of humour. They should get along well! Like every mom, I just want to know he's eating well and happy.

 

Thing 2 brought along the manuscript of Four Possessions to read on the road trip. According to him, it's one of the best he's ever read and I'd better get it edited and printed soon. Love having such encouraging fans. At least with everyone back to school soon, I will have the time to sit and finish edits and all the accessories I have to send to my agent.

 

Sorry, a bit of rambling today. Just trying to get my head and everything else in order. A bit of clean up before I get down to work tomorrow. Speaking of which, time to change loads of laundry. The once constant in life.

 

Happy Labour Day weekend!

 

Summer's End

There have been a few ends occurring this summer.

Firstly, my oldest leaves for University next weekend. While we'll definitely miss him, we will have many opportunities to see him between now and Christmas with all of our karate activities. It's going to be strange packing him up to move into his dorm for the next 8 months!

Secondly, my mom lost a good friend of hers this past weekend. Marjorie was 92 years old, nearly 30 years my mom's senior. The two met while Marjorie's husband and my grandma were in the nursing home. Both mom and Marjorie were there every day to help with meals and struck up a wonderful friendship that saw them both through their losses over the past twenty-three years. I will always be grateful for Marjorie being there to help my mom deal with her grief and wish with all my heart I could be there now to help Mom through the loss of such a dear friend. They kept each other young and active!

Thirdly, the loss of a lady I knew briefly but who made an impact on my life. Jill gave me a job when I was desperate and told such vivid stories of her life that she helped spark my own stories. A mom of four, she had already lost two of her daughters before I met her and suffered hardships I could never imagine. She also drove a convertible and a motorbike! Courageous, vivacious and a fighter to the end, Jill passed away from cancer on Monday. From her, I take the message to live my life doing what I love and to roll with the punches.

Where there are ends, there are always new beginnings. New lives, like the baby boy my friend Dawn gave birth to last week. My nephew who turns 1 tomorrow. The kittens Tammy's cat just had.

My new beginnings are editing Four Possessions to get off to my agent, joining in a blog tour or two, and focusing on healing my body and soul to carry on with the writing I love.


 

Five Minutes Peace

I had wonderful delusions of keeping up to date on this blog at least once a week. In reality....
Still doing promotions for The Bookstore Lady. I'll be doing a blog tour once I find some more wonderful writers who will host me and plan to have some special guests of my own. I'll let you all know where & when!

Have Four Possessions with Beta readers before I send it off to my agent in September and have some paperwork to clean up for Dawn as well.

Book Two of the Wild Blue Mysteries, tentatively titled The Mystery Lady, is written and undergoing edits.

Aside from that it's been a very busy summer between work and training to grade for my Green belt in karate in September. I'm also juggling writing time between spending time with my oldest son before he goes off to University. There will be big changes in store this fall! On the plus side, I'll have more writing time once the kids go back to school.

Read a wonderful book the other day. Anne Van has written a great book called Tokyo Dare you can order on Amazon. Anne is a fellow writer who shares not only the same agent (Dawn Dowdle at Blue Ridge Literary) but the same publisher (Books We Love) as I do! Feel free to check her out! Great book and I really hope she has a sequel!

Have a great weekend!

 

The E-Book Process

When Books We Love offered to publish my novel The Bookstore Lady, I didn't expect it to be available until later this summer. Wrong!

We designed the cover last week, did the edits Thursday/Friday and added my dedications then Saturday morning, the novel went up on the internet. The Bookstore Lady is now live at Smashwords and All Romance e-Books. It will be live at Amazon, B&N and Kobo and will filter over to Sony and the iBookstore from there! http://networkedblogs.com/N783T

WOW!

Now I am scrambling to get links everywhere I can on Facebook, my blog, my website, my writing group site, everywhere! Then I can take a breath.

So what's next? Into the editing cave I go! Edits for Four Possessions, my second book which I'll place into my agent's hands this fall.
After that, I'll work on The Mystery Lady, book #2 in the Wild Blue Mysteries series. Looking forward to reuniting with Danny Walker and Leo Blue, my favourite detectives!

I am so grateful for all that has happened in the past two weeks--good and bad!
While the good gives motivation, the bad offers perspective and introspection.

Stay tuned!




 

A Lazy July Sunday

Now that all my paperwork is done for The Bookstore Lady and I need a day to shift gears to edit Four Possessions, I wanted to do something a little different. Yesterday, the kids and I celebrated our town's 150th birthday by wandering through the festivities downtown. Parading dragons, acrobats, artists, dancers and singers abounded. So did the heat! Today, with the rain, we wanted to do something a little bit different.

Having obtained my Reiki III not so long ago, I've been itching to teach some of what I've learned. My kids, likewise, have been asking me to teach them. With the rain coming down in buckets this morning and hubby away, my kids became very willing students. We only did a half lesson, giving them time to absorb the things we discussed, but wow the things that came out of that session were amazing!

First off, who knew three teenaged boys could sit still so long without a computer or a video game?

Secondly, meditation means different things to different people. It blew my mind what each boy thought of what they went through. Sensations of heat/cold/peace/comfort and gifts received during the guided meditation.

Thirdly, how energy pulses through each of us in different ways. One son's hands were hot, another son's hands were warm and the third son had one hot hand and one cold hand.

The one thing that struck me the most about all of it was the rain outside. It was raining when I took my Reiki I a few years ago. It was kind of an affirmation for me. A cleanse of sorts. Today, the rain poured while we did attunements then died off as we ended the session and chatted.

Afterward, I felt like I'd achieved a wonderful sense of peace and energy. Energy that has guided me today to recreate both my blog and my website! I hope you, my wonderful readers, like what I've done!
Please don't hesitate to leave a comment.

Love and Peace,
Diane
 

A pause while I catch my breath!

What a wild week at my house!

First off, the older kids finished school Monday. My oldest is now officially a high school graduate AND enrolled in University AND got his first real job for the summer and has to get up at 4:30am every day! My middle son is taking advantage of having the house to himself to squeeze in video games, friends hanging out and walking with me. My youngest finishes school today and HAD to go because he and a buddy are going out for lunch. Hard to believe how mature they can all be in the real world. Certainly a different story at home!

As for me, I got a great email from my agent on Wednesday to say that she wanted to represent Four Possessions and work on getting it published. Woohoo! Great way to start the day, which led to a good karate class that I sweated like crazy in. It was when I came home for lunch afterward that I nearly fell off my chair...

My wonderful agent Dawn phoned me to say we had an offer to publish The Bookstore Lady!! I won't give out details just yet until all the paperwork is signed etc. Needless to say, its hard to eat a stir-fry when you're dancing around the kitchen. Things get messy!

We're holding onto the offer until today because The Bookstore Lady is also with three other publishers. Dawn sent them each a notice to say we have an offer and if they want it to speak up before the weekend. Today is the deadline. We'll know by tomorrow at the latest what my options are and I may be able to submit more books to them in the future!

Wow! Very glad for a long weekend this weekend! Need to sit back and catch my breath for a few minutes.
Of course then I have to update my blog when I get more news, update my website, update facebook, send out twitters...