Let’s be honest—the publishing world is rigged.
After twenty years wrestling with words, agents, editors, publishers, and social media, I’m not saying this in a bitter way. Just as a matter of fact.
Continue reading “#Truth: The Publishing World is Rigged”So many people have told me I have to read Catherine Ryan Hyde. So finally, I purchased one of her books – Stay.
I read it on my kindle which is often not as good an experience for me as paper. It is harder for me to get a real sense of the book. I’m not sure why. Maybe I am a tactile person, but I think the cover, the heft, the quality of the actual book affect how I feel about a book. I just don’t have the same affection or love for an ebook as I do for a paper book.
Kindle aside, Continue reading “Do You Want More Suspense in Your Life?”
This was the first year in five years that I didn’t have a new book released.
(And yes, it does feel kind of surreal to say something like that and yes, I am one lucky writer and no, I am certainly not complaining. My cup and saucer runneth over.)
2019 was a year of growth and pain and frustration for me in terms of writing, and maybe in terms of life, but that’s for another post.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t writing. Oh, I was writing. Working like a little devil. I had a book contract for 100 Dogs & Counting and the manuscript was due December 1 and will be published July 2020, so the work has only just begun.
I’ve kept mum about this year’s other big writing project because Continue reading “Careful What You Wish For”
The last few months have been a whirlwind of launching Another Good Dog into the world. It’s been beyond my wildest imagination, surprising me again and again.
I’ve done enough TV now that I’m finally getting better at not blinking so much while talking and actually answering the question that was asked (as opposed to rambling on in questionable English while my mind is screaming, “OMG – I’m on TV!”).
I’ve even made peace with the fact that Continue reading “I Am Completely Beside Myself”
I am hard at work on yet another re-write of a manuscript that I have been working on now for almost eight years.
Enough already.
You would think, wouldn’t you?
And yet I can’t give up.
When my agent tossed the latest re-write back at me insisting it needed yet another overhaul, I was crushed. Continue reading “Just Found My Suspenders”
“There might be another way to say that,” I suggest to my child who has just bluntly announced an opinion about another child in a semi-public setting.
“It’s no big deal. It’s only one evening,” I tell my spouse when our son want to invite ten loud young adults over to hang out before they return to school when we had planned to watch a movie.
“I think we’ll have to agree to disagree,” I say to a relative with very different political leanings.
More and more, Continue reading “Playing the Peacemaker”
I’ve recently become I’m a fairy.
Really.
Okay, just a book fairy.
I learned about book fairies through goodreads. This is goodreads 10th anniversary, and to celebrate they created Hide-a-Book day in cahoots with The Book Fairies (they’re a real thing).
I ordered goodreads’ and book fairies’ labels and stuck them on each of my books in preparation.
And then I waited for Hide-A-Book Day to roll around.
September 18 turned out to be Continue reading “I Believe in Book Fairies”
As women we all play many roles. There are the respectable roles – parent, adult-in-the-room, community member, good neighbor, sibling, maybe even elected official, role model, local celebrity; but then there are the roles we dream of playing – famous novelist, perfect mother, instant millionaire, skinny-girl-who-can-eat-anything.
In my teens, the role I most wanted to play was beautiful girl.
I’d never admit it publicly amongst my geeky, feminist friends, but what I wanted most was to be the kind of girl whose looks stopped traffic. My aspirations didn’t come to much as I was trapped inside the body of a pudgy, Continue reading “Invisible Girl”
My Life in Paragraphs 