Friday Fun Facts: I'm up for "Best of "August"!

Happy Friday, readers! My first chapters and book covers that were featured over at D. Renee Bagby's "First Chapter" blog are now up for "Best of..." voting for the month of August. I'd love for you to help me win bragging rights!

The poll is right here (and hey, if you don't feel like reading all those chapters, maybe possibly you could just vote for one of my covers? Please? I do love them...and I have a few in the running).

Please share the news with your followers too - it's always nice to gain a little recognition in that big bad publishing and marketing world!

Writers' Wednesday:Another Place to Promote

Hey fellow writers, just a quick mention for a possible promo avenue: Affaire deCoeure magazine is actively soliciting writers to participate in a variety of advertising options. Looks like they have both online and print options, for pretty reasonable prices, so you might want to check it out.

Also, Samhain Publishing is looking for readers!! Want to receive their newsletter? Sign up by clicking here. Though I haven't published with them in a while, I still stand by the quality of their product. If you're looking for a good read, Samhain is a great place to start.

Happy reading!

Monday Mentionables: What Does Your Place Say About You?

“I've heard that it's possible to grow up - I've just never met anyone who's actually done it. Without parents to defy, we break the rules we make for ourselves. We throw tantrums when things don't go our way, we whisper secrets with our best friends in the dark, we look for comfort where we can find it, and we hope - against all logic, against all experience. Like children, we never give up hope..."
(Meredith Grey)

Well, it's Monday of a 3-day weekend here in downstate New York, since the local schools observe Rosh Hashanah. I had never gotten Jewish holidays off from school before I moved here. Nor had I gotten 2-hour delays (in the event that weather is bad in the morning but improves so that the roads can be cleared) or, to be honest, snow days to speak of. I grew up in an area of NY where winter comes...and comes...and comes. If they closed school because of a few inches (or feet) of snow, we'd be going to school in July. So snowplows go out at 3 in the morning to make sure the roads are clear for the schoolbuses a few hours later. Actually, I have a very clear memory as a child of hearing the plows out on the roads before dawn, on a regular basis from December to March.

Here? They don't really clear the roads - not until the snow stops, anyway. And schools tend to close if there's even a hint of bad weather in the forecast. All depends on perspective, I guess. And I'm not really sure where I'm even going with thisblog post except that I find it interesting how we can be so shaped by the places where we grow up. When I was revising my novel One Night in Napa, my editor said to me, as I was cutting out parts of one chapter, "Please don't touch the paragraph on page....."

These are those lines she wanted me to keep:

"...Did children who lived in the shadows of a mountain range spend their earliest days looking up, dreaming, watching the clouds make shapes? If you moved those same children to a seaside home, would they lose that distant vision? Would they start looking out rather than up, or develop a rhythmic gait that matched the waves they slept and woke to? Did growing up inside a city of skyscrapers create tunnel vision from the day you were born? Or did living your earliest years inside gated walls mean that you looked at the world in fragments, in sliced-up pieces, so that you could never see the whole of something for what it truly was?"

I do truly believe in that influence of place on a person, and it's something for writers to consider as well. Where do your characters hail from? What does that say about them?

I'll be spending Rosh Hashanah not at school, thinking about it and working on my next project. Happy writing!