Articles

Jan 5, 2012 Writing Teen Romance

The Scots Way to Ring in the New Year

In Scotland, they celebrate New Year’s with Hogmanay. Traditionally, Hogmanay was a fire celebration commemorating the Winter Solstice. Because I'm a dictionary nerd, I'll share with you the following definition from The Free Dictionary: Hogmanay [ˌhɒgməˈneɪ] n a. New Year's Eve in Scotland b. (as modifier) a Hogmanay party See also first-foot And if you don’t like the pronunciation guide, it’s pronounced Hog – Many. Like lots of hogs. Hog – Many. Got it? Moving on… Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital

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Dec 4, 2011 My DrEaMwOrLd

A Tribute to Trish

Almost a week ago, I lost my mother-in-law to ALS, a disease many people know as Lou Gehrig’s disease. It’s a terribly cruel disease that strikes about 5,600 people in the United States each year. The disease is variable by person. Some patients live many years with it. My mother-in-law was diagnosed on her birthday, August 8, 2011. She died three months and twenty days later, on November 28, 2011. What struck me most--within those last months, she never complained about her disease. She must

Nov 17, 2011 Writing Teen Romance

The Moderator Diaries–Episode 2

Here’s another sample of the variety of ridiculous comments I’ve received on the blog lately. It’s obvious they don’t read the blog and I hate, abhor, no detest SPAM. But this does lend a little humor to the situation and it gives me a great subject to post about: #1 POSTED COMMENT: I think one of your advertisings caused my browser to resize, you might want to put that on your blacklist. POSTED BY: cesartipswordrddg@xxxxxcom MY RESPONSE (in my head of course because I’d never respond to any of

Nov 9, 2011 Writing Teen Romance

Why Editing is Like a Merry-Go-Round

Editing is like a merry-go-round. At first it can be a bit of a thrill, accompanied by a hint of butterflies. But if you stay on the carousel too long… you’re gonna get sick. Aside from editing the voice right out of your work, story fatigue becomes a factor. You get so sick of your characters, you don’t want to spend another second with them. You can’t see what’s wrong or right with the manuscript. Your inner critic tells you it’s crap and then asks… “What the heck were you thinking?” You want

Sep 22, 2011 Writing Teen Romance

On Writer Conferences

The beauty of an online writing conference is that you don’t have to physically go anywhere. You can attend via the comfort of your favorite chair or coffee shop. Anywhere you can connect via your laptop or internet enabled device of choice. It’s perfect for those of us with day jobs, as we can attend at night or when we get a few minutes of down-time. I attended two online writing conferences in August – making it a whirlwind month and it’s taken me almost another to recover from information

Aug 24, 2011 Writing Teen Romance

Why Writing is Like Cliff Jumping

The other day, while shopping at Publix, I spied a teenager, with her nose in a book as she walked the aisles with her parents. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get close enough to get a good glance at the title. I wondered if it was required reading in English class and whether she was a) behind, b) a very busy kid and had to take every opportunity to read, or c) it was quite simply a very interesting read. As I was stalking this child, I got to thinking about how bold I’ve gotten, thanks to my

Aug 16, 2011 My DrEaMwOrLd

Why I don’t allow comments

Here’s just a sample of the plethora of ridiculousness I’ve received lately: POSTED COMMENT: Energizer Bunny arrested, charged with battery POSTED BY: http://www.getlaidtonightinfo.com/ MY RESPONSE (in my head of course because I’d never respond to any of these spammers): Check out the URL link. Actually PLEASE don’t. Seriously people. What gives?!?! POSTED COMMENT: Hi there, I found your site via Google while searching for herpes cures as well as your post looks quite interesting in my

Jul 28, 2011 Writing Teen Romance

It’s all in the context

I needed to find out which South American country was the hottest, in terms of temperature or climate. So I went to my favorite search engine, Google, and typed in the following: hottest South American country Here are my less than helpful results: In case you can’t read the small print, the majority of the hits the search returned were referring to “hot women”. Definitely not what I was looking for. But based on the order of my words, that’s what Google thought I meant. In going for a more

Jul 21, 2011 Things I Love

The ever growing TBR pile

Aye! My TBR pile runneth over. At the moment – it’s a bit overwhelming. Here’s the stack of freebies from RWA. And here are two other piles that I haven’t gotten to yet. That’s a total of thirty books!! 1.7333 books per week if I don’t add any more books to the pile for a year. Since I have a book obsession, that’s not a very likely prospect. Case in point -- here’s what came today from BAM.com. And it’s going straight to the top of the pile!!! Actually – it’s skipping the pile entirely. After