The perfection you seek
is not in your hands
but at his feet.
~Me

King also gives some great practical and realistic writing advice that really tops the chart of 'On Common sense'. Overall, this was a great read. One of the few books I've highlighted & underlined. It's a keeper that will be going on my resource shelf. I highly recommend this one.

Favorite Line: "I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever."  -Stephen King, On Writing

Terri Blackstock is offering the first two books of her Cape Refuge series FREE! Yes, I said free. Starting today through the next 2 weeks you can download Cape Refuge and Southern Storm from Amazon's Kindle Store. If you haven't read any of her work, this is a great opportunity to sample it. She's an excellent mystery writer (one of my favorites).

This is great if you got a Kindle for Christmas. There's nothing like a free book. Don't have a Kinde? No problem. Amazon recently released Kindle for PC, a free download for your computer as well as the Blackberry and iPhone. Here's links to all those:

Here's a great contest for an ARC of First Drop of Crimson by Jeaniene Frost. This is the first book from the Night Huntress World...an extended world of Cat and Bones.

Literary Escapism has the best contest going on there. Follow the link for your chance to get this great Advance Readers Copy. Plus check out her site. She does an amazing job at interviewing authors, reviewing great and not so great Urban Fantasy books, and she always has something great going on.

Best of luck!



About FDOC (taken from Amazon):

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Night Huntress series comes a breathtaking new journey to the dark side of desire.

The night is not safe for mortals. Denise MacGregor knows all too well what lurks in the shadows—her best friend is half-vampire Cat Crawfield—and she has already lost more than the average human could bear. But her family's past is wrapped in secrets and shrouded in darkness—and a demon shapeshifter has marked Denise as prey. Now her survival depends on an immortal who lusts for a taste of her.

He is Spade, a powerful, mysterious vampire who has walked the earth for centuries and is now duty-bound to protect this endangered, alluring human—even if it means destroying his own kind. Denise may arouse his deepest hungers, but Spade knows he must fight his urge to have her as they face the nightmare together . . .

Because once the first crimson drop falls, they will both be lost.

About the Author

Jeaniene Frost lives with her husband and their very spoiled dog in Florida. Although not a vampire herself, she confesses to having pale skin, wearing a lot of black, and sleeping in late whenever possible. And while she can't see ghosts, she loves to walk through old cemeteries. Jeaniene also loves poetry and animals, but fears children and hates to cook. She is currently at work on the next novel in her bestselling Night Huntress series.

Check out the other great books in the Night Huntress series at FrostFans.com. I'll give my take on the books soon. FYI: AWESOME Urban/Paranormal Romance.

Sometimes I get discouraged by real life cutting into my creative time. It's a road block. It stops me from writing freely without interruptions. Living in a house with three teenage boys, who are I might add louder than a concert, I get very little uninterrupted moments. As I type this, one of them is wrapping another up in a blanket...let me correct that...several blankets until the one being wrapped can't move or breathe. This is apparently a fun activity. Its also very loud. It also makes me smile. While real life cuts into my writing time it does give me a lot to work with. There isn't a day that goes by that some odd ball incident, some bizarre stunt they pull, some beyond logic conversation doesn't inspire me. I'm inspired in so many ways. Not for a full length piece of literary work to capture the attention of demanding readers but just to write. To write, wel, to just write. There's nothing like having writer's block to sit down and write about some 3 stooges moment to let the creativity flow. I guess that's just what life is. Not so much a road block but a detour. I have characters come to life with such strong and wild personalities sometimes I wonder where they come from. Tonight I realized where. They all have a piece or two that draws from the manic moments in my home. From my children. Ain't life grand?

Not real torture. Really just being a spoiled geek. My laptop went out. The repair guy was sent a new motherboard, battery, and cord. I was so excited to see him come to my office today to fix my pink Dell. After all, today the biggest snow of the year (Its January for pete sakes) was falling on the ground outside. After 30 minutes of joyful celebration, he turned to me and said "I'm sorry but it appears the hard drive has failed. They didn't send one. I'll have to order it" That's my Technological Torture.

I've had this story come to me in pieces. Some large. Some small. All vivid and ready to be brought to life. I've not let them down. The words are hitting the pages. Only slowly. Slowly the fall on to the notebook pages and blank typing paper. Even a few have landed on the pages of a small notepad I keep in the car to record mileage. I'm keeping all these pages together in a three ring binder. They're waiting there. Not really patiently but they're waiting. Parts of the story come back to me from time to time. Changing their words, their character involvements, and more. It would be so much more pleasant if I could just type the words in the computer, rearrange them there when they called for it, and save them all without having to slow down for the movement of my hand to hit the page.

There is something to the whole manual writing process. I can write where ever I am and the words flow easily out of the pen. Well, except for the dialog which I need to get past my fear of. That will take time. Until the computer is fixed, until I can sit back with my laptop in any nook of my choice, I'll continue to pump out their words from my mind through my arm to my hand to the pen to the page below. They won't let me stop even if I wanted to. That's a good thing.

A friend of mine once told me repeatedly that writing was like a Nike commercial. One must remember one thing…JUST DO IT!! Don’t think about it. Just write. Every time he would mention this I would secretively roll my eyes. I’m a planner. Well, I at least like to think of myself as a planner. Then, over the Christmas Holiday, my Muse dropped a load of words and story line on me. At first, I was a bit intimidated by the amount of information coming to me; so much so that I found myself over thinking nearly every angle to death. This nearly ended the story before it began. Then one morning I woke to a completely quiet house. A rarity. I grabbed a notebook, a pen, and a cup of coffee. I pulled up a chair at the seldom used kitchen table. Picking up the pen, I just started writing. I didn’t think. I just wrote. I let the words and ideas that came to my brain flow through the pen onto the paper. When I was done I had five or six pages (front & back) of a story outline, four pages of character descriptions, and two fully written scenes. I amazed myself. I did it! I just did it. I wrote. No analyzing. No picking apart. Just writing. It felt so good. I found myself nearly every morning, or evening in some cases, sitting down over that notebook scribbling out the thoughts in my head. The voices. The stories they were telling me.


I’ve found when I’m stuck, I just write about something else - even the process itself. I write about not being able to write. This somehow always leads to finding my way back into my Muse’s hands; guiding the story that was given to me. Now I don’t have to try to write. It comes. When it comes, I just do it.

Writers always talk about word count. I started counting just out of curiosity. How amazing it is to watch yourself go from struggling to get 500 words to making yourself stop at 2000 because you have to sleep and eat at some point. The best part is, as more words hit the pages, the better the work tends to be.

An apology is in order then… to my friend, who grins and holds back his “I told you so’s”. He was right. While I may have put my writing on the back burner for a couple of decades, my writing was only waiting to pour out on to the paper. Waiting for me to just do it.

I use an online bookshelf to keep track of things I read (that's it over there on the right--->>). I stumbled acrossed it last year and fell in love with it. aNobii.com A quick rundown: You enter the books you've read, you are reading, you want to read, and even review books. You can check out other peoples shelves, read their reviews, and even see your compatability. My favorite feature is the Groups. Groups are  based on your interests. Its fun. One I belong to is a 50 Book Challenge. Some people do more. Some do less. Either way its a fun way to keep yourself accountable.

One of the members has added a twist to their challenge. They're going to blog each of their books. I thought this was a wonderful idea. I'll give it a go here. It'll help me come up with content for this blog. Plus it'll combine my two great loves: reading and writing. I always look for excuses to combine the two.

Looking back at 2009, (at least since I joined the site sometime in late spring, early summer), I've read 34 books (not counting text books) equalling 13,525 pages. Probably not alot for most but I impressed myself. Especially in the short time I recorded my reading list not to mention the countless pages of text material I covered last year.

Looking ahead to this year, I set my goal for the 50 books. I hope to pass ithat. No. I know I will pass that. More importantly, I have set a goal to read more variety. This past year I allowed myself to get caught up in the Paranormal Romance genre (aka vampire love stories). I'm not big on romance. I suppose when they threw in a few gory fight scenes they hooked me. So for 2010, I'll branch out.

At the moment, I'm reading On Writing by Stephen King (love this one) and The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr (this one I'll reread forever). I'm attempting my first audiobook with Dan Brown's The Symbol. I've never made it through one because the narrator's irk me. I'm going to look past that or at least attempt to. I spend a good half hour in the car one way Monday through Friday. I should put that time to good use.

That's my plan. At least my reading plan. I've been writing as much as reading. A writer friend and professor here where I work gave me some great advice last year. Just do it. Don't think. Just write. So far this year, its working. But that's a story for the other blog.

Happy New Year and Happy Reading!

Little Bit & Crisco many years ago

This is one of my favorite moments in life. There's really too many to pick from but this one stands out in my heart so well. Crisco is my oldest...the one on the right...he was two months premature and has had heart surgery and other aliments in life. The most obvious one is the gift of Tourette's and OCD. I know, how can that be a gift? You'll have to ask the big guy upstairs that question but to us and him it's a gift. He sees the world even to this day in a completely different way than we do and it's wonderful to see it through his eyes sometimes. This picture was taken probably twelve years ago. Little Bit is now very much a 13 year old with all the teen angst he can handle (and me for that matter). This was taken at their granny's house. Crisco always watched this silly old black and white VHS of Superman...the original cartoons. He wold always push that stool up and sit three feet in front of the TV and eat a snack. Little Bit was usually always on my tail skirt (he's a mama's boy). This day he ventured off into the opposite room (this room). I heard the sound of something scooting across the floor and witnessed Little Bit pushing my aunt's old wooden stool from the dining room into the living room next to his big bubby. He parked his little rear down next to his big brother with a cookie in his hand and watched TV just like his brother. They sat there together in silence watching the movie. It touched me so much. Mainly because even to this day, while the rest of the world looks at Crisco slightly different, his brothers from a very early age look up to him. They see the smart, loving young man that I see. As Little Bit says now, "Crisco is so cool. He's weird but really cool." This picture is just one in a million I have that shows how much I've been blessed. Thank  you Big Guy!