Robin's Round Robin Blog August 2013

OH NO!! Thanks to the wonders of technology, this post was supposed to air yesterday! Apparently, it didn't work and I'll never try that again! So sorry to those people who were depending on me to be part of the link!!

Through my new friend Ginger Simpson, a fellow writer with Books We Love, I was introduced to this fun, monthly event called Robin's Round Robin Blog hosted by Robin Courtright. Basically, several various writers answer one question on their blog and provide a link to the next writer's blog so readers can follow along. Kind of like a writer's version of tag without having to get out of our creaky chairs!

This month's topic is:

Have you ever met a real-life character? Someone who was very different
from your preconceptions, or someone who was just bigger than life, or
whose lifestyle was so very different? A very eccentric someone? Tell
about them (without giving real identities) in any manner you like. Did
they change your viewpoint? Did you use them as a fictional character?

I have met a few great characters in the various jobs I've held. One of the best I've met so far was a customer in a bank. The perfect cliché for a blue eye-shadow wearing, toy dog packing, big haired, over the top character who actually talked about having to get her corns and bunions treated. OMG!! While I didn't use her per se, I have another character who could be her later in life named Mimsy Lexington who appears in my novel The Bookstore Lady! Mimsy is an 80 year romance novelist who gets around with a walker and wears ball gowns, tiaras, and plastic stilettos - the kind strippers wear. She not only appears in The Bookstore Lady, the first book in the Wild Blue Mysteries series, she also has a cameo in the second book in the series, The Mystery Lady, and will be featured in the third book called The Crazy Lady.

 

Purchase The Bookstore Lady

Thanks for stopping by, come back and visit soon!
And now off to the talented Rita Karnopp for her response!

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.


 

Just a Few Lines from Shattered Dreams by Janet Lane Walters

Okay, I'm a little slow on catching on, but here we go!

My publisher, Books We Love, does a segment called "Just A Few Lines" where my fellow authors send each other blurbs from their novels and they, in turn, post it to their own blogs to help promote each other. Here, for your reading pleasure, are a few lines from Janet Lane Walters novel Shattered Dreams.....

 

 

Without a glance at the waiting patient, she strode to the counter. The aroma strengthened. Hadn’t been her imagination. She turned her head and stared at the man wearing the green cotton examining gown. She gripped the edge of the counter. Blood rushed from her head.

“You’re dead.” The words slashed the silence. This couldn’t be happening.

“Hardly.”

The voice sounded like the one from her dreams. She opened her mouth to ask where he’d been and what he’d been doing for the past twelve years. She sucked in a shallow breath. Asking that question would only stir the emotions she had frozen.

“Don’t bail on me. Sit down.”

Her fingers had no feeling. Waves of darkness dimmed her vision. The edge of the counter disappeared. Her knees buckled. Blackness engulfed her.

 

* * *

 

“Manon!” Rafe Marshall leaped from the examining table in time to catch her before she hit the floor. He cradled her against his chest. “Didn’t mean to scare you,” he whispered. Why did she think he was dead? He knew news of his accident had been kept quiet because the police believed he’d been deliberately forced off the road. Who had told her? Had the informant been the driver of the dark car his rescuer had seen speeding from the scene?

 

Find Shattered Dreams here.

http://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Dreams-Moonchild-ebook/dp/B00DPZT6K2/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1375877610&sr=8-4&keywords=Janet+Lane+Walters

 

Janet can be found daily at http://wwweclecticwriter.blogspot.com/

 

 

Stay tuned. Next week Just a Few Lines features Jane Toombs

A Surprise E-mail

While checking emails yesterday, I noticed one from Amazon to recommending books for me to read. When I opened it, I nearly fell out of my chair! Advertising for MY NOVELLA! I have no idea how many people this actually went out to, but what a great surprise. Of course, I had to share this with everyone I know.

The neglect of my blog lately has been for a good reason, honest. I'm trying to get a blog tour underway for The Bookstore Lady. What is a blog tour? In the old days, publishers used to send writers on the road to promote their novels and gain fans. Today, with so many books published as e-books (mine is through Books We Love) and in print, actual book tours still happen but a lot of writers also go to other writers, reviewers and sites to put up blurbs about themselves and their work. While it is a lot cheaper, you also have one or two days to attract people to yourself and to the other person's blog.

I am finalizing a list this week and will post next week where and when you can find me! No two blogs will be the same in this round. Site owners ask for many different things: a blurb about the book and a picture of the cover, send you a questionnaire about your writing style, how you write, about you in general, and so on. So far, I'm working on one of each!

The bigger news for me, is that I want to host other writers. I'm still working on some ideas for how and when, but if you are a writer who would like some promotional help - email me!! I'd like to start hosting writers soon!
Have a great weekend!

Are you looking for something in our Mystery, Thriller & Suspense books department? If so, you might be interested in these items.

	Mystery, Thriller & Suspense books

Murder on Manitou Diane Bator   Price: $2.84

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